Applying the Schlossberg 4S Transition Model to Retired University Faculty: Does It Fit?

The authors surveyed university faculty to investigate whether the Schlossberg 4S Transition Model was a useful way to look at retirement adjustment. Participants were asked questions regarding aspects of situation, self, support, and strategies before and after retirement. Results are described in relation to overall retirement satisfaction.     

Using the Interactive Systems Framework to Support a Quality Improvement Approach to Dissemination of Evidence-Based Strategies to Promote Early Detection of Breast Cancer: Planning a Comprehensive Dynamic Trial

Dissemination efforts must optimize interventions for new settings and populations. As such, dissemination research should incorporate principles of quality improvement. Comprehensive Dynamic Trial (CDT) designs examine how information gained during dissemination may be used to modify interventions and improve performance. Although CDT may offer distinct advantages over static designs, organizing the many necessary roles and activities is a significant challenge. In this article, we discuss use of the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation to systematically implement a CDT. Specifically, we describe “Bronx ACCESS”, a program designed to disseminate evidence‐based strategies to promote adherence to mammography guidelines. In Bronx ACCESS, the Intervention Delivery System will elicit information needed to adapt strategies to specific settings and circumstances. The Intervention Synthesis and Translation System will use this information to test changes to strategies through “embedded experiments”. The Intervention Support System will build local capacities found to be necessary for intervention institutionalization. Simulation modeling will be used to integrate findings across systems. Results will inform on‐going policy debate about interventions needed to promote population‐level screening. More generally, this project is intended to advance understanding of research paradigms necessary to study dissemination. Special Issue: Advances in Bridging Research and Practice Using the Interactive System Framework for Dissemination and Implementation; Guest Editors: Abraham Wandersman, Paul Flaspohler, Catherine A. Lesesne, Richard Puddy; Action Editor: Emilie Phillips Smith     

Theory learning as stochastic search in the language of thought

We present an algorithmic model for the development of children's intuitive theories within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, where theories are described as sets of logical laws generated by a probabilistic context-free grammar. We contrast our approach with connectionist and other emergentist approaches to modeling cognitive development. While their subsymbolic representations provide a smooth error surface that supports efficient gradient-based learning, our symbolic representations are better suited to capturing children's intuitive theories but give rise to a harder learning problem, which can only be solved by exploratory search. Our algorithm attempts to discover the theory that best explains a set of observed data by performing stochastic search at two levels of abstraction: an outer loop in the space of theories and an inner loop in the space of explanations or models generated by each theory given a particular dataset. We show that this stochastic search is capable of learning appropriate theories in several everyday domains and discuss its dynamics in the context of empirical studies of children's learning.     

Practicing Safe Text: the Impact of Texting on Walking Behavior

Sending and receiving text messages on cell phones is increasingly common. Texting while walking or driving, however, increases the likelihood of accidents. One possible cause is that distracted individuals are unable to detect safe opportunities for action. To investigate this, we asked participants to walk through doorways of differing widths while holding or texting on their phone. We measured walking speed, doorway‐to‐shoulder‐width ratio, and the number of bumps into the doorframes. Our results revealed that texters were more cautious than non‐texters; they walked slower and rotated their body through doorways they could have safely walked straight through. There were no significant differences, however, in the number of bumps into the doorframes. If texters in the real world behave like those in our laboratory, then the number of texting‐related accidents reported in other studies might suggest that being overcautious while texting does not actually decrease the likelihood of accidents. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inexact Knowledge without Improbable Knowing

Abstract

In a series of recent papers, Timothy Williamson has argued for the surprising conclusion that there are cases in which you know a proposition in spite of its being overwhelmingly improbable given what you know that you know it. His argument relies on certain formal models of our imprecise knowledge of the values of perceptible and measurable magnitudes. This paper suggests an alternative class of models that do not predict this sort of improbable knowing. I show that such models are motivated by independently plausible principles in the epistemology of perception, the epistemology of estimation, and concerning the connection between knowledge and justified belief.     

Books Received

Abstract

Early childhood deprivation, attachment chaos, repeated medical traumata, and abuse set up neural networks of dread, shame, worthlessness, and hopelessness: the phenomenology of abject experience that resides in implicit memory. Abject interactions with others condense yearning and despair into complex enactments of abject suffering. Working in abject subgroups dilutes the intensity of abject material as ownership of toxic affects is broadened. Affective engagement and a relational perspective facilitate the management and transformation of self-abjection into more optimal relatedness in combined group and individual treatment.     

Advantages of Rhythmic Movements at Resonance: Minimal Active Degrees of Freedom,Minimal Noise,and Maximal Predictability

Using time delay embedding, the authors applied phase space reconstruction to the time series of rhythmic movements of a hand-held pendulum. Subjects (N = 6) produced the manual oscillations about the wrist at the pendulum's resonant frequency and at a higher and a lower frequency. The number of active degrees of freedom required to capture the dynamics of the rhythmic behavior was 3 for the resonant frequency and 4 for each of the nonresonant frequencies. The residual high-dimensional noise was similarly lowest for the resonant frequency. Whereas 33% and 20%, respectively, of the vectors in the phase spaces of the dynamics higher and lower than resonance were unpredictable, only 12% were unpredictable at resonance. Finally, the predictability of the evolving dynamics extended farther into the future for oscillations at the resonant frequency. At resonance, the prediction horizon was 5 times farther than the prediction horizon for the higher than resonance behavior and 2.5 times farther than that for the lower than resonance behavior. The results suggest that, in pendular oscillations of a limb or limb segment, attunement of the central nervous system to the resonant frequency minimizes the variables to be controlled and maximizes the predictability of the rhythmic movement's chaotic dynamics.