Stigma and the delegitimation experience: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of people living with chronic fatigue syndrome

Individual in-depth interviews with 14 people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) were conducted, focusing on the experience of living with CFS. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and were analysed for recurrent themes using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Here we present two inter-related themes: “Negotiating a diagnosis” and “Negotiating CFS with loved ones”. Participants reported delay, negotiation and debate over diagnosis: further, they perceived their GPs to be sceptical, disrespectful and to be lacking in knowledge and interpersonal skills. However, participants found delegitimising encounters with their partners more difficult to deal with. Participants viewed such delegitimation as a form of personal rejection; they were hurt by their loved ones’ reactions and subsequently pondered the price of love, respect and friendship. The findings are discussed in relation to extant literature, and recommendations for future research are suggested.     

Using Corticomuscular and Intermuscular Coherence to Assess Cortical Contribution to Ankle Plantar Flexor Activity During Gait

The present study used coherence and directionality analyses to explore whether the motor cortex contributes to plantar flexor muscle activity during the stance phase and push-off phase during gait. Subjects walked on a treadmill, while EEG over the leg motorcortex area and EMG from the medial gastrocnemius and soleus muscles was recorded. Corticomuscular and intermuscular coherence were calculated from pair-wise recordings. Significant EEG–EMG and EMG–EMG coherence in the beta and gamma frequency bands was found throughout the stance phase with the largest coherence towards push-off. Analysis of directionality revealed that EEG activity preceded EMG activity throughout the stance phase until the time of push-off. These findings suggest that the motor cortex contributes to ankle plantar flexor muscle activity and forward propulsion during gait.     

The Panel Study on American Religion and Ethnicity: Background, Methods, and Selected Results

Surveying 2,610 respondents, the Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity is a nationally representative in-home survey of the noninstitutionalized U.S. adult population. The survey is designed to (a) focus primarily on religion and spirituality (with over 200 questions on these topics), (b) include multiple other modules (such as health, family relationships, and social ties), (c) oversample African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics, and (d) follow the same respondents over time. We describe the main design features of the survey, present some characteristics of the sample, and provide basic findings. It is our hope that these data will foster more research and contribute to a better understanding of the role and meaning of religion in the contemporary United States .     

Immediate source-monitoring, self-focused attention and the positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Previous research suggests that tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source, as assessed by an immediate source-monitoring test, are associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). However, recent research suggests that such tendencies are associated instead with symptoms of thought interference. The main aim of the present study was to examine whether such tendencies are differentially associated with different types of thought interference, with AVHs, or with both. It has also been suggested that external misattributions are especially likely to occur with emotionally salient material and if the individual's focus is on the self. These suggestions were also tested. The positive psychotic symptoms of 57 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed and they then completed the Self-Focus Sentence Completion blank. Immediately after completing each sentence they were asked to indicate to what extent the sentence was their own. The number of sentences that were not rated as completely their own served as their externalisation score. Externalisation scores correlated significantly with the severity of three symptoms: voices commenting, delusions of being controlled, and thought insertion. In a logistic regression analysis, all three of these symptoms were significantly and independently related to externalisation. Externalisation was not associated with either a negative or a neutral self-focus. Thus tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source are associated with AVHs and some, but not all, symptoms of thought interference. The importance for externalisation of self-focused attention and of the emotional salience of the elicited thoughts was not supported.     

SELF-MONITORING AND WORK PRODUCTIVITY WITH MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS

We examined the use of self-monitoring to increase the productivity of five mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop. Data were collected daily during a 30-minute intervention and 30-minute generalization period. Following baseline, verbal praise, prompts, and physical encouragement were administered contingent on productive behavior on a specific task during the intervention period. In the next phase, self-monitoring was trained during the intervention period. During both phases, baseline conditions prevailed in the generalization periods. In the final phase, self-monitoring was extended across the intervention and generalization periods. Results showed that increased productivity levels, evident when praise and prompting were being administered, maintained with self-monitoring alone. Minimal generalization across time was observed until self-monitoring was begun in the generalization period.     

Conflict and the Stochastic-Dominance Principle of Decision Making

One of the key principles underlying rational models of decision making is the idea that the decision maker should never choose an action that is stochastically dominated by another action. In the study reported in this article, violations of stochastic dominance frequently occurred when the payoffs produced by two actions were negatively correlated (in conflict), but no violations occurred when the payoffs were positively correlated (no conflict). This finding is contrary to models which assume that choice probability depends on the utility of each action, and the utility for an action depends solely on its own payoffs and probabilities. This article also reports, for the first time ever, the distribution of response times observed in a risky decision task. Both the violations of stochastic dominance and the response time distributions are explained in terms of a dynamic theory of decision making called multiattribute decision field theory.