Integrating haptic-tactile feedback into a video-capture-based virtual environment for rehabilitation.

Video-capture virtual reality (VR) systems are gaining popularity as intervention tools. To date, these platforms offer visual and audio feedback but do not provide haptic feedback. We contend that adding haptic feedback may enhance the quality of intervention for various theoretical and empirical reasons. This study aims to integrate haptic-tactile feedback into a video capture system (GX VR), which is currently applied for rehabilitation. The proposed multi-modal system can deliver audio-visual as well as vibrotactile feedback. The latter is provided via small vibratory discs attached to the patient's limbs. This paper describes the system, the guidelines of its design, and the ongoing usability study.     

Beyond genetic explanations for leadership: The moderating role of the social environment

Leadership role occupancy has recently been shown to have a genetic basis. We extend prior research by examining the moderating effects of the social environment during adolescence on the genetic influences on leadership role occupancy at work. Utilizing a sample of male twins (89 pairs of identical and 54 pairs of fraternal twins, with a mean age of 36.5 years), we found that genetic influences are weaker for those reared in enriched environments (i.e., higher family socioeconomic status, higher perceived parental support, and lower perceived conflict with parents). For those twins who had relatively poorer social environments, genetic influences on leadership role occupancy are significantly greater. These results have important implications for early interventions on leadership development inside and outside organizations.     

Truth or consequences: the role of philosophers in policy-making

Reflecting on his experiences as a staff philosopher on the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research and with other advisory bodies, Brock contends that there is a deep conflict between the goals and constraints of the public policy process and those of scholarly activity in general and philosophical activity in particular. Whereas unconstrained search for the truth is the central virtue of scholarly work, the first concern of policy makers is the impact of their actions on policies and people. The need to persuade policy makers and to maintain their own credibility leads philosophers to cut and trim their views. While the philosophers should be open to radical change if persuasive argument supports it, policy makers deal in incremental change. Philosophers can help widen the policy agenda, but their contribution should be limited and temporary and their primary base should remain an academic one.     

The madman theory of war: a possible application in therapy

In therapeutic work a systemic approach has characteristically focused on the family or marital system. In this paper the author focuses on the patient/health care system in a particular case and argues that chronic disability can be seen as a systemic feature rather than a characteristic of the individual patient. A strategy is taken from the field of international conflict and its therapeutic value is explored.     

Beyond homeostasis: toward a concept of coherence

The concept of homeostasis has served as a major building block, if not the cornerstone, of family theory and family therapy. Designed to account for the perceived stability of systems (and symptoms), homeostasis is an epistemologically flawed concept that has repetitively been used in the service of dualistic, animistic, and vitalistic interpretations of systems. Accordingly, homeostasis has led to quirky clinical formulations and a great deal of fuzzy theorizing. This paper contends that the notion of homeostasis is fundamentally inconsistent with systemic epistemology and should be replaced with the more compatible concept of coherence. Whereas homeostasis is a heuristic concept that is not part of a more encompassing theory, the concept of coherence is inseparable from the epistemology in which it is embedded.     

Contemporary Psychotherapy: Moving Beyond a Therapeutic Dialogue

Psychotherapy was developed as a means of using words to heal emotional pain. Although a therapeutic dialogue can be helpful to many clients, some people need a more action-based intervention. Psychotherapy may be enhanced by adapting several therapeutic procedures that have been found effective in physical therapy. Where physical therapy can help clients learn to manage chronic physical pain, psychotherapy can help clients learn to manage chronic emotional pain. Both physical therapy and psychotherapy can help to facilitate awareness, flexibility, strength and endurance in order to maximize the clients functional ability.     

Innocent bystanders: Young children in war

Basic theoretical paradigms and constructs are identified within the extant literature that may usefully contribute to comprehending the effect of war upon young children as well as the nature of personal, situational, and familial moderating factors. These concerns are illustrated with empirical data regarding infants and toddlers and their response to the recent Gulf War. Potential applications of these heuristic models are explicated for the study of war as well as for the design of preventive and remedial programming.     

Beyond discipline: Creating a culture for interdisciplinary research

Interdisciplinary research is not a common research paradigm. To venture from their customary disciplinary tenets and methods and risk new methodological approaches, or to compromise in order to accommodate the differences in the way disciplines approach research, requires the commitment of investigators. This paper discusses the interdisciplinary research paradigm, its culture, and how it differs from traditional research methods, and provides examples of successful and unsuccessful interdisciplinary research projects.     

Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception’ of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.     

Achieving productive synergy: Integrating departments into a company

Collaboration between departments and divisions is critical for companies to use their resources successfully. Many executives are experimenting with liaison officers, project teams, and matrix designs. However, groups must believe that their goals are cooperative to use these procedures. Common tasks, shared rewards, supportive attitudes, and shared values develop motivating cooperative goals for organizational units. Case studies illustrate how cooperative goals and coordination devices integrate departments into a company.The author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support.     

New models in research and design: New concepts of unity in planning and policy-making

Van Lohuizen’s ideal of unity, must above all be seen as a challenge to attain the necessary integration of planning, research, and design to meet the requirements of a changing society. Though Van Lohuizen's ideas were influenced strongly by the rational and technical principles of the CIAM, he saw technology as a means to an end in an approach that is primarily based on humans and culture. In the ideas of Van Lohuizen, different dimensions can be traced. New developments in these dimensions are discussed in the article. There is no lack of innovative ideas and methods. Nearly all the ideas and methods discussed were developed in the forties, fifties, or sixties. On the basis of the incubation period required for introduction on a wider scale, it is now time for them to find greater favor with society. Following the years of a no-nonsense policy, it seems that in many fields there is a new need for a wider, more qualitative approach. Ron van Eck studied architecture and management research at the University of Technology of Delft. He is working at the RIW—Research Institute of the Department of Architecture at the University of Technology of Delft, and at the Network for Spatial Organisation in Amsterdam.     

Beyond keeping active: concomitants of being a volunteer in old-old age

This study examines concomitants of volunteering in the context of other lifestyle activities. Investigating formal volunteering in old-old age, the authors analyzed data of 148 volunteers versus 1,195 nonvolunteers in a national sample of the Israeli Jewish population aged 75-94. As hypothesized, being a volunteer related (whether as a cause or effect) to more positive functioning on psychosocial markers and prospectively resulted in reduced mortality risk even when other activity outlets (physical activity, everyday activities, having a hobby) were controlled. These findings suggest that the benefits of volunteering in late life are not reducible to those of other activities.     

Beyond the Spearman-Brown: a structural approach to maximal reliability

The requirement of parallel parts has long been the cornerstone of classic reliability theory. By recasting reliability in a structural equation framework, items, raters, or judges no longer need to be treated as equivalent entities. Instead, unique reliability estimates can be determined for each and collectively used to assess the maximal reliability of a weighted composite, with the composite reliability submitted to inferential test. Procedures are shown to generalize from single to multifactor applications. Ramifications of a structural approach to reliability determination are probed, and the dilemma posed by possible falsification of the true score hypothesis presented for individual researcher consideration.