Mobilizing the Sense of “Fat”: A Phenomenological Materialist Approach

Human Studies - This paper aims to mobilize the way we think and write about fat bodies while drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy of the body. I introduce Nancy’s approach to the...     

The Mediated Breast: Technology,Agency, and Breast Cancer

Women intimately interact with various medical technologies and prosthetic artifacts in the context of breast cancer. While extensive work has been done on the agency of technological artifacts and how they affect users’ perceptions and experiences, the agency of users is largely taken for granted hitherto. In this article, we explore the agency of four women who engage with breast cancer technologies and artifacts by analyzing their narrative accounts of such engagements. This empirical discussion is framed within the tradition of science and technology studies, philosophy of technological mediation and phenomenology of embodied agency as ‘I can/not’. This approach leads to the conclusions that women’s technologically mediated agencies range from being restricted to extended, take place on different bodily levels, within complex temporal structures, and are determined by certain socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, it reveals that such agency shaping does not imply a one-way conditioning relationship between technologies and users, but rather involves a reciprocal relationship in which both subject and object are co-constituted. We therefore suggest that the ‘material turn’ in philosophy of technology also needs to take into account technologically mediated, material human beings in order to gain a better understanding of human existence.     

Problems in relating theory to practice

Two kinds of difficulties, which should be made explicit, face a researcher undertaking empirical work in an institution. First, he must explain how he chooses his theoretical framework, in so far as what he sees and the information he obtains will depend far more than is often admitted on the type of questions he asks. Secondly, he must try to clarify the way in which he adapts his original intentions in the light of the practical difficulties that occur in the actual research situation, and how he interprets the evidence he finally decides is relevant. These points are illustrated by the study of an ‘open’ Borstal for girls. The aim of the study was to try to understand the workings of the institution, to outline the process which led to the Borstal sentence, and to attempt to discover the way the girls looked at the situation. The research was motivated by Matza's guiding principle, ‘to be true to the phenomena’, but even this, as this paper tries to show, does not lead to an unambiguous body of facts which can be presented unequivocally as ‘findings’.     

A Case Study Exploring the Influence of a Gardening Therapy Group on Well-Being

In a climate of improving health-care quality and understanding, this study explored how participation in a gardening group, facilitated through a mental health service in Ireland, influenced well-being. A case study used semi-structured interviews and participant observation to explore explicit and tacit aspects of group participation. Thematic analysis clarified that gardening group participation had a positive influence on well-being for all gardeners and group facilitators. This was through promoting coping, facilitating change, and developing skills. The setting, site ethos and tasks were important in assisting people to make lifestyle changes and to develop skills in order to experience well-being.     

The Development of Sustained Attention in Children: The Effect of Age and Task Load

This study explored how children's sustained attention develops and the effect of manipulating task parameters on sustained attention. The sample comprised 57 children (5–12 years) who completed CogState and Score! (Test of Everyday Attention for Children). Novel variability and traditional indices indicated rapid development from 5–6 to 8–9 years on all measures and a developmental plateau from 8–9 to 11–12, with growth evident on some measures. Findings suggest that sustained attention improves to age 10, then plateaus with only minor improvements. Further, performance was generally poorer on high load tasks compared to low load, with the same developmental pattern uncovered.     

A Quantitative Analysis of Athletes’ Voluntary Use of Slow Motion,Real Time,and Fast Motion Images

The current study examined athletes’ reported intentional use of slow-motion, real-time, and fast-motion images. Athletes (N = 604; 298 males and 306 females; M_age = 21.73 years, SD = 4.54) completed the Image Speed Questionnaire, an instrument created to assess the frequency with which athletes reported employing the three image speeds. Despite the applied sport psychology guideline of imaging only at real time speed, athletes reported employing all three image speeds to varying degrees depending on the function of imagery being employed and the stage of learning of the athlete. Gender and competitive level were found not to influence athletes’ reported voluntary image speed use. Athletes reported employing slow-motion images most often when learning or developing a skill or strategy. Real-time images were consistently used most often by athletes regardless of imagery function or stage of learning, and fast-motion images were used most often when imaging skills or strategies that had been mastered. Findings are discussed within the context of the stages of learning (Fitts & Posner, 1967 Fitts, P. M. and Posner, M. I. 1967. Human performance, Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.  [Google Scholar]) and the PETTLEP (Physical; Environmental; Task; Timing; Learning; Emotional, and Perspective) approach to motor imagery (Holmes & Collins, 2001 Holmes, P. S. and Collins, D. J. 2001. The PETTLEP approach to motor imagery: A functional equivalence model for sport psychologists. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 13: 60–83. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Implications for imagery practitioners and future directions for image speed research are also offered.     

Religious Commitment,Skepticism, and Struggle Among U.S. College Students: The Impact of Majority/Minority Religious Affiliation and Institutional Type

Using a longitudinal sample of over 14,000 undergraduate students, this study explores whether and how students’ religious transformations during the college years are associated with their religious affiliation, religious experiences, and the institutional characteristics of their college or university. Hierarchical linear modeling reveals that students from religious majority groups (i.e., mainline and evangelical Protestants) generally experience increased religious commitment and decreased religious skepticism as compared with students from religious minority groups. Interestingly, though, students from these majority groups also report greater levels of religious struggle compared to minority group students. Moreover, institutional religious affiliation and an inclusive campus religious climate often attenuate the relationship between students’ religious affiliation and their religious transformation. Environments at both the macro (campus) and micro (friendship groups) levels contribute critically to young adults’ religious commitment.     

Improving general intelligence with a nutrient-based pharmacological intervention

Cognitive enhancing substances such as amphetamine and modafinil have become popular in recent years to improve acute cognitive performance particularly in environments in which enhanced cognition or intelligence is required. Nutraceutical nootropics, which are natural substances that have the ability to bring about acute or chronic changes in cognition have also been gaining popularity in a range of settings and applications including the workplace, driving and in the amelioration of age related cognitive decline. Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Acetyl-l-carnitine, Rhodiola Rosea and Alpha-lipoic Acid are popular nutritional supplements that have shown promising benefits in improving a range of biological (e.g., blood flow, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and direct neurotransmitter effects) and cognitive processes from in vitro, animal and human clinical research. We report here the first human randomized clinical trial for cognition in which we administer a combination of Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Acetyl-l-carnitine, R. Rosea and Alpha-lipoic acid (called Ceretrophin) vs placebo. Sixty participants (40 females and 20 males, with a mean age of 45.4 years, SD = 12.6) completed either the odd or even items from the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) at baseline and the opposite odd or even items at week 4 after consuming either the combination nootropic or placebo. A significant study visit (time) × treatment condition interaction was found: F (1, 57) = 7.279, p = 0.009, partial η² = .113, with paired samples t-tests revealing a significant improvement in mean APM score from baseline to retest (week 4) (t(34) = ? 4.045, p < .001) for the Ceretrophin? group. Improvements in APM scores could be attributed to the active intervention over the placebo, indicating that the treatment improved general intelligence. Implications for improving our understanding of the biological basis of intelligence and pharmacologically improving human cognition are discussed.     

Drawings as memory aids: Optimising the drawing method to facilitate young children's recall

There has been supportive evidence of drawing facilitating young children's event recall. The present study investigated whether additional event details are recalled if the interviewer uses interactive questions in response to information children have spontaneously drawn or verbally reported. Eighty 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds were shown a video clip of a novel event and were interviewed the following day. The children were randomly allocated to one of four recall conditions: tell‐only, draw‐and‐tell, interactive draw‐and‐tell and interactive tell‐only. The children's verbal reports were transcribed and scored on four different categories of recall: items (objects and people), actions, colours and sayings. The interactive draw‐and‐tell group recalled more correct information for items compared to the other three recall groups, without any accompanying increase in errors. We propose that drawing increases the opportunity for the interviewer to ask interactive questions, which in turn facilitates children's accurate recall of item information. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.