Coronary Intervention Improves Disease Specific Health-Related Quality of Life but Not Individualised Quality of Life: A Potential Response Shift Effect?

To explore potential response shift effects with different quality of life (QoL) instruments in cardiac patients undergoing coronary intervention. Study Design and Setting: Recalibration was assessed with the disease specific health-related quality of life (HRQL) instrument MacNew in combination with a then-test approach. Reconceptualisation and reprioritisation were assessed with the individualised QoL instrument SEIQoL-DW. Significant treatment effects were seen on the MacNew (global Δ: 0.6 ± 1.1, p = 0.004) but not on the SEIQoL-DW (Δ: 3.3 ± 16, p = 0.37) 6 months after coronary intervention. No recalibration effect was found on the MacNew then-test, while with the SEIQOL-DW potential response shift effects of reconceptualisation and reprioritisation were seen. For the first time response shift effects were explored in cardiac patients undergoing coronary intervention. This study confirmed that there is a clinically significant improvement in disease specific HRQL over time following successful coronary interventions. However, no treatment effect was seen for individualised QoL with the SEIQoL-DW. This might be due to reconceptualisation and reprioritisation response effects. Future studies need to focus on exploring response shift effects, and the interrelationship between its different components, captured by different patient reported outcome instruments in larger patient groups undergoing coronary interventions.     

Cognitive Appraisal Therapy: A Treatment Plan for “Silvia”

The principles and procedures of Cognitive Appraisal Therapy (CAT) are applied to the case of Silvia. The assessment plan focuses on affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of personality. The patient evidences self-pity and anger, and rebellion and withdrawal in her interpersonal relations. Key interventions include encouraging positive methods for comforting her feelings, building self-respect by doing what she deems morally right, eliminating self-defined victim status by active pursuit of her goals, and correcting cognitive distortion of self-image and pessimistic forecasts. Other characteristic CAT interventions are also discussed and illustrated.     

Quakerism: A Faith for Introverts?

Three samples of 166 practicing Quakers, 241 practicing Anglicans, and 172 practicing Catholics completed the extraversion scale of the abbreviated Revised Personality Questionnaire. The data demonstrate that Quakers tend to be more introverted than the other two denominational groups.     

Androgyny: A Goal for Counseling?

Although psychological androgyny is a useful and attractive concept for many counselors, a review of the literature suggests that androgyny cannot now serve as a concrete goal for sex-role counseling. It may also pose its own problems for individuals.     

Religiosity and Attitudes Toward Diversity: A Potential Workplace Conflict?1

The study investigates relationships between 2 measures of religiosity (immanence orientation and religious fundamentalism) and 2 measures of attitudes toward diversity (universal‐diverse orientation and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians). As expected, different conceptualizations of religiosity relate differently to diversity attitudes. Immanence orientation related positively and religious fundamentalism related negatively with both measures of diversity attitudes. However, when both measures were included in the hierarchical regression equation, immanence orientation no longer related significantly with attitudes toward lesbians and gay men; and religious fundamentalism no longer related significantly with universal‐diverse orientation. Finally, gender and immanence interacted to predict universal‐diverse orientation. Implications are discussed.     

Workplace Branding: Leveraging Human Resources Management Practices for Competitive Advantage Through “Best Employer” Surveys

Workplace branding has generated more attention in the practitioner community than academia. A contributing factor for the sparse academic research is the fact that the theoretical foundation of workplace branding has not been fully developed. In addressing this need, this article outlines how workplace branding uses a similar approach used in marketing a product or service to build an effective workplace brand. An increasing potent form of workplace branding lies in the new popular annual “best employer” surveys. In reviewing various “best employer” surveys, we identify eight common themes in terms of human resources best practices associated with outcomes ranging from high levels of retention to increased rates of growth in sales and profit. Finally, this article presents several research issues and questions that should be addressed in the future.     

Free Time Management Makes Better Retirement: A Case Study of Retirees’ Quality of Life in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between free time management and quality of life for retirees. Data were collected by convenience sampling from the four main districts of Taiwan. Overall, 454 usable questionnaires were received. The data showed a positive relationship between free time management and quality of life (r?=?0.72, p?<?.05). However, contrary to this, the relationships between time allocation and quality of life were not significant or even negative. These results indicate that retirees who effectively manage their free time can enjoy a better quality of life. Suggestions are made based on the observed relationship and some directions for future research are discussed.     

Cognitive control: A role for implicit learning?

We investigated the influence of implicit learning on cognitive control. In a sequential Stroop task, participants implicitly learned a sequence placed on the color of the Stroop words. In Experiment 1, Stroop conflict was lower in sequenced than in random trials (learning-improved control). However, as these results were derived from an interaction between learning and conflict, they could also be explained by improved implicit learning (difference between random and sequenced trials), under incongruent compared with congruent trials (control-improved learning). Therefore, we further unraveled the direction of the interaction in 2 additional experiments. In Experiment 2, participants who learned the color sequence were no better at resolving conflict than participants who did not undergo sequence training. This shows that implicit knowledge does not directly reduce conflict (no learning-improved control). In Experiment 3, the amount of conflict did not directly improve learning either (no control-improved learning). However, conflict had a significant impact on the expression of implicit learning, as most knowledge was expressed under the highest amount of conflict. Thus, task-optimization was accomplished by an increased reliance on implicit sequence knowledge under high conflict. These findings demonstrate that implicit learning processes can be flexibly recruited to support cognitive control functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Rules-plus-exception tasks: A problem for exemplar models?

Erickson and Kruschke (2002b) have shown that human subjects generalize category knowledge in a rule-like fashion when exposed to a rule-plus-exception categorization task. This result has remained a challenge to exemplar models of category learning. We show that these models can account for such performance, if they are augmented with exemplar-specific specificity or exemplar-specific attention. This result, however, is only achieved if the choice rule that converts evidence for competing categories into probabilities is sensitive to small differences between evidence values close to 0. Exemplar-specific attention provided the best overall approximation of the data. Exemplar-specific specificity provided a slightly worse approximation, but it predicted better the rule-like generalization pattern observed.     

Multiple-target tracking: A role for working memory?

In order to identify the cognitive processes associated with target tracking, a dual-task experiment was carried out in which participants undertook a dynamic multiple-object tracking task first alone and then again, concurrently with one of several secondary tasks, in order to investigate the cognitive processes involved. The research suggests that after designated targets within the visual field have attracted preattentive indexes that point to their locations in space, conscious processes, vulnerable to secondary visual and spatial task interference, form deliberate strategies beneficial to the tracking task, before tracking commences. Target tracking itself is realized by central executive processes, which are sensitive to any other cognitive demands. The findings are discussed in the context of integrating dynamic spatial cognition within a working memory framework.     

A dilemma for non-naturalists: irrationality or immorality?

Either 1. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as relevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters, or 2. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as irrelevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters. The first state of mind is morally objectionable, for one should not change one’s normative beliefs to pander to the patterns of some non-natural realm. The second state of mind is irrational, for if you think you are aiming to represent non-natural properties correctly, you should (rationally) be interested to know which actions share a non-natural property and which do not, and you should (rationally) be prepared to change your mind accordingly.

     

A dilemma for internalism?

Internalism about epistemic justification (henceforth, ‘internalism’) says that a belief B is epistemically justified for S only if S is aware of some good-making feature of B, some feature that makes for B’s having positive epistemic status: e.g., evidence for B. Externalists with respect to epistemic justification (‘externalists’) deny this awareness requirement. Michael Bergmann has recently put this dilemma against internalism: awareness admits of a strong and a weak construal; given the strong construal, internalism is subject to debilitating regress troubles; given the weak construal, internalism is unmotivated; either way, internalism is in serious trouble. I argue for two claims in this article. First, Bergmann’s dilemma argument is unmotivated: he’s given no good reason for accepting one of its crucial premises. And second, Bergmann’s dilemma argument is unsound: the crucial premise in question is false.     

A Puzzle for Particulars?

In this paper we examine a puzzle recently posed by Aaron Preston for the traditional realist assay of property (quality) instances. Consider Socrates (a red round spot) and red₁—Socrates’ redness. For the traditional realist, both of these entities are concrete particulars. Further, both involve redness being `tied to’ the same bare individuator. But then it appears that red₁ is duplicated in its ‘thicker’ particular (Socrates), so that it can’t be predicated of Socrates without redundancy. According to Preston, this suggests that a concrete particular and its property instances aren’t genuinely related. We argue that Preston’s proffered solution here—to treat property instances as “mental constructs”—is fraught with difficulty. We then go on to show how, by fine-tuning the nature of bare particulars, treating them as abstract modes of things rather than concrete particulars, the traditional realist can neatly evade Preston’s puzzle.