The role of partners for employees' recovery during the weekend

We examined the effects of positive and negative experiences with the partner (absorption in joint activities and conflict with the partner) during the weekend on affective states at the beginning of the following work week and tested whether recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, and mastery experiences) mediated these effects. In total, 269 university faculty members completed online surveys before and after the weekend. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that absorption in joint activities with the partner predicted recovery experiences during the weekend and increased positive affective states (vigor, joviality, serenity) at the beginning of the following work week. Relaxation mediated the effects of absorption in joint activities on positive affective states. Conflict with the partner increased negative affective states (negative activation, fatigue), but was unrelated to recovery experiences. Our findings emphasize the importance of experiences with the partner for employees' recovery and show that the social environment of employees matters for their recovery.     

Teachers' conflict management styles: The role of attachment styles and classroom management efficacy

Constructive conflict management strategies are important in maintaining a positive classroom environment yet little is known about interpersonal or school variables associated with teachers' use of such strategies with students. Teachers high in self-reported classroom management efficacy (CMEFF) and security of attachment (low on avoidance, anxiety) were predicted to endorse use of positive classroom management strategies (e.g., integrating, compromising) more than insecure teachers and those low in CMEFF. Teachers (N = 283) from eleven schools (seven elementary), largely female and white, responded to a questionnaire in their boxes (29.4% response rate). School and teacher demographic variables were included in a multivariate regression after preliminary analysis suggested that ignoring the multilevel structure of the data made little difference in results; school variances were small compared with teacher variances. CMEFF and years teaching had positive, significant effects on use of integrating and compromising strategies, while avoidance had negative effects on both and anxiety on integrating strategies. Implications for teacher development are discussed.     

Psychiatric care in Leipzig--10 years' regionalized care in a large city by 3 major clinics

The paper deals with experience gained in the town of Leipzig in the course of the implementation of the regionalized organisation of psychiatric care. The idea behind the organisational structure is that of a complete psychiatric system of treatment, covering hospitalised, partially hospitalised, and out-patient treatment, supported by ancillary services, to provide continued care. The organisational structure has proved effective for basic psychiatric care in a large town.     

What's happening on Music Television? A gender role content analysis

This study analyzed 40 Music Television (MTV) music videos across gender role based content categories. Videos were rated at 30-second intervals by four trained raters using a consensus model. Results included the following: (a) men appeared nearly twice as often as women; (b) men engaged in significantly more aggressive and dominant behavior; (c) women engaged in significantly more implicitly sexual and subservient behavior; and (d) women were more frequently the object of explicit, implicit, and aggressive sexual advances. Overall, MTV video content primarily included implicit sexuality, objectification, dominance, and implicit aggression. Implications of these findings with respect to sex role stereotyping and the development of negative attitudes toward women were discussed.     

Scale structure: processing minimum standard and maximum standard scalar adjectives

Gradable adjectives denote a function that takes an object and returns a measure of the degree to which the object possesses some gradable property [Kennedy, C. (1999). Projecting the adjective: The syntax and semantics of gradability and comparison. New York: Garland]. Scales, ordered sets of degrees, have begun to be studied systematically in semantics [Kennedy, C. (to appear). Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable predicates. Linguistics and Philosophy; Kennedy, C. and McNally, L. (2005). Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language, 81, 345-381; Rotstein, C., and Winter, Y. (2004). Total adjectives vs. partial adjectives: scale structure and higher order modifiers. Natural Language Semantics, 12, 259-288.]. We report four experiments designed to investigate the processing of absolute adjectives with a maximum standard (e.g., clean) and their minimum standard antonyms (dirty). The central hypothesis is that the denotation of an absolute adjective introduces a 'standard value' on a scale as part of the normal comprehension of a sentence containing the adjective (the "Obligatory Scale" hypothesis). In line with the predictions of Kennedy and McNally (2005) and Rotstein and Winter (2004), maximum standard adjectives and minimum standard adjectives systematically differ from each other when they are combined with minimizing modifiers like slightly, as indicated by speeded acceptability judgments. An eye movement recording study shows that, as predicted by the Obligatory Scale hypothesis, the penalty due to combining slightly with a maximum standard adjective can be observed during the processing of the sentence; the penalty is not the result of some after-the-fact inferencing mechanism. Further, a type of 'quantificational variability effect' may be observed when a quantificational adverb (mostly) is combined with a minimum standard adjective in sentences like "The dishes are mostly dirty", which may receive either a degree interpretation (e.g., 80% dirty) or a quantity interpretation (e.g., 80% of the dishes are dirty). The quantificational variability results provide suggestive support for the Obligatory Scale hypothesis by showing that the standard of a scalar adjective influences the preferred interpretation of other constituents in the sentence.     

Health-Related Quality of Life in a National Sample of Caregivers: Findings from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

Purpose Recent national public health agendas, such as Healthy People 2010, call for improved public health surveillance and health promotion programs for people with disabilities and their caregivers. The goal of this study was to understand the public health impact of caregiving on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using population-level data. Design & Methods A cross-sectional study design was used. 184,450 adults surveyed during the 2000 national Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey formed the sample. Binary logistic regression models ascertained differences between caregivers and non-caregivers in reporting reduced (“fair” or “poor”) health. Ordinary least squares regression (OLS) and multinomial logistic regression models examined the influence of caregiving status on HRQoL, measured as categories of healthy days reported in the last 30 days and the number of days reported as physical and mental health not good in the last 30 days. Results Sixteen percent (16%) of the survey respondents were caregivers. There was an interaction effect between caregiving status and age of the caregiver. In the fully adjusted models, caregivers <55 years old had a 35% increased risk of having fair or poor health (odds ratio [OR] = 1.35, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.28, 1.43) as compared to non-caregivers in that age group, while caregivers 55 years and older had a 3% decreased risk in having fair or poor health (OR = 0.97, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.92, 1.03) compared to non-caregivers of the same age. In the adjusted models that examined the association of caregiving and healthy days, younger caregivers similarly showed larger deficits in both mental and physical HRQoL compared to older caregivers. For example combining mental and physical days, caregivers <55 had 1.44 fewer healthy days (β = −1.44, standard error (SE) = 0.07), while caregivers 55+ had 0.55 fewer days *β = −0.55, standard error (SE) = 0.13 (compared to non-caregivers in their respective age groups). Implications With increasing population age and the projected increase in caregivers, it is important that we understand the social and public health burden of caregiving and begin to identify interventions to sustain the HRQoL of caregivers. We found that caregivers have a slight to modest decline in HRQoL compared to non-caregivers, and that caregiving affects the HRQoL of younger adults more than older adults. Further research at the population level as to the type and level of burden of caregiving is needed.     

Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task

This study explored how domestic cats perform in a horizontal string-pulling task to determine whether they understand this case of physical causality. Fifteen cats were tested on their ability to retrieve an unreachable food treat in three different set-ups: (a) a single baited string, (b) two parallel strings where only one was baited and (c) two crossed strings where only one was baited. All cats succeeded at pulling a single string to obtain a treat, but none consistently chose the correct string when two strings were parallel. When tested with two crossed strings one cat chose the wrong string consistently and all others performed at chance level. There was no evidence that cats understand the function of the strings or their physical causality.     

The Burden of Proof and Its Role in Argumentation

The notion of “the burden of proof” plays an important role in real-world argumentation contexts, in particular in law. It has also been given a central role in normative accounts of argumentation, and has been used to explain a range of classic argumentation fallacies. We argue that in law the goal is to make practical decisions whereas in critical discussion the goal is frequently simply to increase or decrease degree of belief in a proposition. In the latter case, it is not necessarily important whether that degree of belief exceeds a particular threshold (e.g., ‘reasonable doubt’). We explore the consequences of this distinction for the role that the “burden of proof” has played in argumentation and in theories of fallacy.