Irrational/Rational Beliefs,Procrastination, and Life Satisfaction: An Empirical Assessment of REBT Models of Psychological Distress and Psychological Health Model

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The current cross-sectional study investigates the relationships between irrational/rational beliefs, procrastination, and life...     

Are modern health worries associated with somatosensory amplification,environmental attribution style,and commitment to complementary and alternative medicine?

Relationship among modern health worries (MHWs), somatosensory amplification (SSA), and attributional styles was investigated in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. A total of 99 university students, 104 patients visiting their General Practitioners, and 102 future alternative therapists completed questionnaires assessing MHWs, SSA, negative affect (NA), and psychological, somatic and normalizing (environmental) attribution styles. Significant correlation between SSA and MHWs was found in all three samples. MHWs and psychological attribution style were significantly associated with Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)-orientation in the regression equation even after controlling for SSA, NA, and sociodemographic variables. MHWs were independent from any attribution styles in the student and patient samples, while significant correlations with all three styles were found in the CAM group. Previously described association between MHWs and SSA was replicated in three different samples. The connection between MHWs and CAM preference seems to be independent from SSA, NA or any particular attribution style.     

Is There Any Good Reason to Say Goodbye to “Ethnomethodology”?

This paper is an essay about Harold Garfinkel??s heritage. It outlines a response to Eric Livingston??s proposal to say goodbye to ethnomethodology as pertaining to the sociological tradition; and it rejects part of Melvin Pollner??s diagnosis about the changes occurred in ethnomethodological working. If it agrees with Pollner about the idea that something of the initial ethnomethodology??s program has been left aside after the ??work studies?? turn, it asserts that such a turn has nonetheless made possible authentic discoveries. So the paper speaks for a better integration of the two versions of ethnomethodology separated by Pollner.     

The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility.     

Relation between perceived scholastic competence and social comparison mechanisms among elementary school children

According to the literature, among social comparison mechanisms, identification with an upward target would be the most frequent mechanism that students report to use. However, it remains unclear how the identification and the contrast mechanisms contribute to the construction of pupils’ scholastic perceived competence. The aim of this study was to test the two following hypotheses: (1) the more pupils report using downward identification and upward contrast, the lower their perceived scholastic competence; (2) the more pupils report using upward identification and downward contrast, the higher their perceived scholastic competence will be. Three hundred and eighty French-speaking pupils (147 fourth graders and 233 fifth graders) from public elementary schools in the district of Grenoble (France) were met in their school. Pupils responded to a standardized mental ability test and to a questionnaire about their perceived scholastic competence and their utilization of social comparison mechanisms: upward and downward identification and upward and downward contrast. Boys and girls differed on some of the social comparison mechanisms. However, the two hypotheses were confirmed and hold true for both boys and girls. Findings show that beyond the contribution of cognitive abilities, pupils’ responsiveness to these mechanisms contributed to the development of their perceived scholastic competence. One educational implication is the usefulness of analyzing the processes of social comparison as strategies to allow pupils to maintain a positive perception of their scholastic competence.     

Understanding team coordination in doubles table tennis: Joint analysis of first- and third-person data

ObjectivesThis study sought to determine whether combining first- and third-person methodologies would provide insight into team coordination.Design and methodsWe studied the activity of a table tennis doubles team during an official match. We collected and processed the verbal data according to a procedure defined for course-of-experience analysis, but we also included a video-based field study of the partners' interactions during the breaks between points. We then conducted a joint analysis of the two players' lived experience and behaviors during these short breaks.ResultsThe results showed both the difficulties and the empirical richness of this approach. For example, the joint analysis of first- and third-person data on doubles table tennis revealed how the players' behaviors during the short breaks between points had a key role in shaping the understanding shared by the two partners.ConclusionsThe combination of first- and third-person data seems to be a promising approach for improving our understanding of the coordination processes in sports teams. In our study, the joint analysis of these data enabled us to describe in great detail how the respective behaviors of the partners contributed to the dynamics of constructing/deconstructing shared understanding between them.     

Neurobıology of Repressıon: A Hypothetıcal Interpretatıon

Freud lived in a time when technology was incapable of explaining the biological correlates of the mental processes he described in psychoanalytic theory. During the last two decades, advances in neuroimaging methods and neuroscience have provided new insights for understanding mind-brain collaboration. Neurobiological underpinnings of psychoanalytical concepts have been an area of interest in recent years. This paper will suggest a new hypothesis for neurobiology of repression. This hypothesis will be discussed with the help of our knowledge about neurobiological mechanisms underlying perception of the emotional significance of an event, memory formation of an emotionally arousing stimulus, role of prefrontal cortex in modulation of subcortical information, neural mechanisms of suppression and molecular mechanisms of memory erasure. We suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and especially its caudal part plays a major role for repression of childhood traumatic events. Possible molecular mechanism of memory erasure in repression is long term depression of glutamatergic neurotransmission between prefrontal cortex- thalamus- limbic system.     

Effect of visuomotor calibration and uncertainty on the perception of peripersonal space

Target selection for action depends not only on the egocentric location of objects estimated from retinal and extraretinal variables, but also on the assessment of current action possibilities. In the present study, we investigated the effect of altering sensorimotor anticipation processes on subsequent perceptual estimates of reachability. To do so, we conducted two experiments in which we changed the relation between visual distance and movement amplitude. Experiment 1 showed that iterative visuomotor adaptation to distorted visual feedback (in steps of ±15?mm, up to a total adaptation of ±75?mm) led to a congruent variation of perceived reachable space, although the first introduction of the shifted visual feedback produced a reduction of perceived reachable space whatever the direction of the feedback shift. Experiment 2 showed that increasing uncertainty about visuomotor performances, by providing a visual feedback randomly shifted in depth (±7.5?mm), produced the same reduction of perceived reachable space in the absence of visuomotor adaptation. Taken together, these data suggest that the visual perception of reachable space depends on a motor-related perceptual system, which is affected by both visuomotor recalibration and reliability of the visuomotor system.     

The relationships between Internet addiction, subjective vitality, and subjective happiness

The aim of the present study is to examine the relationships between Internet addiction, subjective vitality, and subjective happiness. The participants were 328 university students who completed a questionnaire package that included the Online Cognition Scale, the Subjective Vitality Scale, and the Subjective Happiness Scale. According to the results, subjective vitality and subjective happiness were negatively predicted by Internet addiction. On the other hand, subjective happiness was positively predicted by subjective vitality. In addition, subjective vitality mediated the relationship between Internet addiction and subjective happiness. Results were discussed in light of the literature.     

Eliciting cues to deception and truth: What matters are the questions asked

In this paper we argue that there is little need for more of the traditional deception detection research in which observers assess short video clips in which there are few (if any) cues to deception and truth. We argue that a change in direction is needed and that researchers should focus on the questions the interviewer needs to ask in order to elicit and enhance cues to deception. We discuss three strands of research into this new ‘interviewing to detect deception’ approach. We encourage practitioners to use the proposed techniques and encourage other researchers to join us in conducting more research in this area. We offer some guidelines for what researchers need to keep in mind when carrying out research in this new paradigm.