Quality of management by objectives,task-related stressors,and non-task-related stressors as predictors of stress and job satisfaction among teleworkers

This study examined the effects of management behaviour together with jobrelated and non-job-related stressors on stress experience and job satisfaction among teleworkers. Fifty-four participants were full- or part-time teleworkers, and eighteen participants were members of a nonteleworking control group with comparable working tasks recruited from the same companies. Self-report measures of quality of MBO, task-related stressors, and non-job-related stressors (predictors) were collected, together with measures of participants' stress experience and job satisfaction (criteria). The three predictor variables represented rather independent stress factors. Consistent with expectations, non-job-related stressors were higher for teleworkers working predominantly at home compared to office-centred teleworkers and nonteleworking controls. Moreover, regression analyses indicated significant effects of quality of MBO and non-job-related stressors on teleworkers' stress experience and job satisfaction. Occupational health and management implications of these results for preventive and prospective aspects of telework design are discussed.     

Time and defeasibility in FIPA ACL semantics

Inferences about speech acts are often conditional, non-monotonic, and involve the issue of time. Most agent communication languages, however, ignore these issues, due to the difficulty to combine them in a single formalism. This paper addresses such issues in defeasible logic, and shows how to express a semantics for ACLs in order to make non-monotonic inferences on the basis of speech acts.     

The Semantics of Freedom in Agoraphobic Patients: An Empirical Study

This study aimed to empirically test the clinical theory, common to constructivist and constructionist psychotherapeutic approaches, that the semantics of freedom (i.e., bipolar constructs regarding the dimension of meaning “free/constrained”) are psychologically linked to agoraphobia. Repertory grid technique was used to elicit constructs from 30 agoraphobic patients and from a matched control group of patients suffering from other psychological disorders, and the two sets of constructs were compared in terms of their semantic content. Results confirm the hypothesis, suggesting that freedom semantics seem to be prevalent in agoraphobia in terms of both frequency and importance. These results and their limitations are discussed in relation to their clinical applications and in light of the methodological issues arising from the study.     

Spatial multiple-choice matching in a harbour seal (Phoca vitulina): differential encoding of landscape versus local feature information?

The nature of spatial information used for memorizing and recalling places is largely unclear. Earlier studies tested integration of geometric and feature information mostly during reorientation in artificial environments without including time as a memory-critical component. Here, we tested a harbour seal in a delayed matching-to-sample task (DMTS) in a familiar environment under two spatial multiple-choice conditions. The feature condition consisted of a DMTS task with four comparison stimuli presented on fixed positions in a classic matching apparatus and was designed to make stimulus features the most prominent information. The landscape condition consisted of a DMTS task in a familiar environment with four places marked by comparison stimuli and allowed the use of all available spatial information including geometrical and feature information. The seal's performance was impaired by delays of 3, 6, 9 or 12 s only in the feature condition; a delay of 12 s resulted in chance level performance. Replacing the comparison stimuli at the apparatus with identical spheres resulted in impaired performance. Performance in the landscape condition was impaired neither by delays nor by replacing comparison stimuli with spheres. Landscape information obviously was encoded redundantly and could be recalled more reliably and longer than feature information, which reveals feature information to be a less valuable type of spatial information for memorizing and recalling places.     

The effectiveness and ethical justification of psychiatric outpatient commitment

Studies link involuntary outpatient commitment with improved patient outcomes, fueling debate on its ethical justification. This study compares inpatient utilization for committed outpatients in the 1990s with those who were not under outpatient civil commitment orders. Findings reveal committed outpatients had higher utilization of inpatient services and restraint episodes prior to their commitment compared with a control group. Committed outpatients also were more likely to have been on discharge status at the time of admission, have been admitted involuntarily under emergency legal procedures, and have had a greater number of admissions and hospital days prior to their commitment. Following commitment, patients had fewer hospitalizations, shorter lengths of stay, fewer seclusion episodes and hours, and fewer restraint episodes and hours. Findings are discussed within the context of parens patriae and therapeutic jurisprudence, and support medical and public policy justifications for ethical uses of outpatient civil commitment laws for seriously mentally ill patients.     

Computational models for the combination of advice and individual learning

Decision making often takes place in social environments where other actors influence individuals' decisions. The present article examines how advice affects individual learning. Five social learning models combining advice and individual learning-four based on reinforcement learning and one on Bayesian learning-and one individual learning model are tested against each other. In two experiments, some participants received good or bad advice prior to a repeated multioption choice task. Receivers of advice adhered to the advice, so that good advice improved performance. The social learning models described the observed learning processes better than the individual learning model. Of the models tested, the best social learning model assumes that outcomes from recommended options are more positively evaluated than outcomes from nonrecommended options. This model correctly predicted that receivers first adhere to advice, then explore other options, and finally return to the recommended option. The model also predicted accurately that good advice has a stronger impact on learning than bad advice. One-time advice can have a long-lasting influence on learning by changing the subjective evaluation of outcomes of recommended options.     

On the biomedicalization of alcoholism

The shift in the prevailing view of alcoholism from a moral paradigm towards a biomedical paradigm is often characterized as a form of biomedicalization. We will examine and critique three reasons offered for the claim that viewing alcoholism as a disease is morally problematic. The first is that the new conceptualization of alcoholism as a chronic brain disease will lead to individualization, e.g., a too narrow focus on the individual person, excluding cultural and social dimensions of alcoholism. The second claim is that biomedicalization will lead to stigmatization and discrimination for both alcoholics and people who are at risk of becoming alcoholics. The third claim is that as a result of the biomedical point of view, the autonomy and responsibility of alcoholics and possibly even persons at risk may be unjustly restricted. Our conclusion is that the claims against the biomedical conceptualization of alcoholism as a chronic brain disease are neither specific nor convincing. Not only do some of these concerns also apply to the traditional moral model; above that they are not strong enough to justify the rejection of the new biomedical model altogether. The focus in the scientific and public debate should not be on some massive “biomedicalization objection” but on the various concerns underlying what is framed in terms of the biomedicalization of alcoholism.     

Sensitivity,safety, and impossible worlds

Philosophical Studies - Modal knowledge accounts that are based on standards possible-worlds semantics face well-known problems when it comes to knowledge of necessities. Beliefs in necessities are...