Processing Illness Information: The Role of Disease Prototypes

Recently Bishop and Converse (1986) proposed that information about physical symptoms is interpreted by relating those symptoms to preexisting disease prototypes. The two present studies further examined this formulation by testing hypotheses concerning the speed of processing symptom information as well as associations made to sets of physical symptoms as a function of prototypicality. As predicted, Experiment 1 showed that response time to highly prototypical symptom sets was significantly shorter than that for symptom sets containing irrelevant symptoms. Also as predicted, the results of Experiment 2 showed significant differences in the associations made by experiment participants to symptom sets as a function of the prototypicality of the symptoms in those sets. Participants made more category-based associations to highly prototypical symptom sets than to those lower in prototypicality but made more associations to individual symptoms for symptom sets low in prototypicality. Implications for the prototype hypothesis and for understanding the processing of illness information are discussed.     

Temporal Aspects of Team Cognition: A Case Study on Concerns Sharing Within Basketball

This case study investigated team cognition in basketball. The focus was on how concerns in a real match situation were shared among teammates and how the sharedness evolved. The activity of five basketball players (M age = 17.60, SD = 0.89) was studied. The data were collected and processed according to a procedure defined for course-of-action analysis (Theureau, 2003). The results indicated that the instances when all the teammates shared the same typical concern were relatively rare, but temporal analysis revealed two kinds of convergence phenomena (simultaneous and progressive). In conclusion, shared understanding emerged within this team as essentially “local sharing of understanding.”     

Earliest Memories and Recent Memories of Highly Salient Events—Are They Similar?

Four- to 11-year-old children were interviewed about 2 different sorts of memories in the same home visit: recent memories of highly salient and stressful events—namely, injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment—and their earliest memories. Injury memories were scored for amount of unique information, completeness vis-à-vis a standardized injury prototype, and accuracy. Earliest memories were scored for amount of unique information, how old children had been at the time of their earliest memory, and time between their earliest memory and current age. Correlational and regression analyses showed that the 2 types of memory reports demonstrated considerable similarity in terms of unique information and completeness. Specifically, children with the most informative earliest memories had more informative as well as more complete free recalls of injury events. Such relationships between both sorts of memories suggest similar underlying processes at work when children produce memory reports, even when the length, structure, coherence, and content of those memories is about as divergent as one can imagine.     

Public Theologies of Love in the Civitas Dei and Civitas Terrena: Sexuality and the Transformation of Sydney,Australia 1960–2010

This article discusses the emergence of a public LGBTQI culture in Sydney that both challenged hetero-normative philosophies and praxes of love and sexuality, and engaged with Christian urban theologies to give voice to alternative, queer-affirming forms of eros, agape, and philia. This case study is situated in the context of the problematic relationship between Christianity and the urban throughout history; the ideal Civitas Dei negated the real Civitas Terrena, faithful Jerusalem triumphed over decadent Sodom. Public theologies, initially formulated by Christians, were hijacked to expose tensions resulting from notions of “proper” and “improper” love being mapped onto urban spaces. Churches and other “official” structures represented planning in the service of institutional religion and heterosexual married love (a Civitas Dei), and the clean, modern city as eschatological ideal (the heavenly Jerusalem). The existence of ruins and “undesirable” places, temporary heterotopias where “unnatural” acts of love and sex took place, challenged this order (a Civitas Terrena or Sodom). We argue that public theologies, mainstream and fringe, play a vital creative role in the planning, regulation, and lived experience of the modern city of Sydney.     

When promoting positive feelings pays: Aggregate job satisfaction,work design features,and innovation in manufacturing organizations

This study investigates the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and organizational innovation. In a sample of manufacturing companies, data were gathered from 3717 employees in 28 UK manufacturing organizations about their job satisfaction and aggregated to the organizational level. Data on innovation in technology/processes were gathered from multiple respondents in the same organizations 24 months later. The results revealed that aggregate job satisfaction was a significant predictor of subsequent organizational innovation, even after controlling for prior organizational innovation and profitability. Moreover the data indicated that the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and innovation in production technology/processes was moderated by two factors: job variety and a commitment to “single status”. Unlike previous studies, we conceptualize job satisfaction at the aggregate rather than the individual level and examine innovation rather than creativity. We propose that where the majority of employees experience job satisfaction, they will endorse rather than resist innovation and work collaboratively to implement as well as to generate creative ideas.     

“Sacred Moments”: Social anxiety in a larger perspective

A treatment protocol was developed and piloted to examine whether perception of the sacred dimensions of their lives can be enhanced for people with social anxiety, and if so, whether that has therapeutic benefit. A 10-session manualized group treatment was developed to increase perception of sacredness in various domains of daily life. The treatment is described, as are preliminary results from two pilot groups. The small sample size limits quantitative analysis, but qualitative follow-up interviews, single-case analysis, and case material indicate decreased anxiety over time. Enhanced sense of sacredness appeared useful in broadening attentional focus, interrupting dysfunctional thought patterns, and generating behaviors incompatible with social anxiety. Focusing on sacredness instead of symptoms allowed participants to form supportive interpersonal relationships within the group, providing a corrective experience of social interaction. Although health professionals rarely discuss religion and spirituality with their clients, participants in these pilot groups welcomed the opportunity to do so.     

Genetic testing for hereditary cancer: effects of alexithymia and coping strategies on variations in anxiety before and after result disclosure

This study assessed the impact of the results of genetic testing for hereditary cancer from a multifactorial health psychology perspective, considering that emotional expression plays a key role in psychological adjustment. Measures of dispositional and transactional coping strategies, anxiety and alexithymia were filled out by 77 participants in a longitudinal study design. Statistical analyses were performed using general linear models and partial least squares path modelling, low-constraint methods that are particularly useful in the behavioural sciences. While anxiety levels prior to the result announcement were predictive of the distress experienced by noncarriers, considerable variability was observed for mutation carriers. Some subjects who had lower anxiety levels before the test displayed greater anxiety afterwards, but others seemed to anticipate the distress they would experience with the result that they showed a decrease in anxiety. The mutation carriers behaved as though their adaptive functioning were reshaped by the test result, independent of their disposition and previous emotional state, except in the case of alexithymia. Difficulty expressing emotions prior to genetic testing contributed to a similar difficulty after receiving the result, adding to the latter's emotional impact by promoting emotion-focused coping strategies and increasing distress.     

The Arguments of the Tombs of the Unknown: Relationality and National Legitimation

In the wake of the First World War, a new form of commemoration emerged internationally, but in each case focused upon a new kind of national “hero”—the unknown soldier or warrior. The first instances appeared in France and Britain in 1920, followed by the United States in 1921, and Belgium in 1922. Other nations followed suit over the years, with the most recent WWI Unknown Soldier monument dedicated in 2004, in New Zealand. The motivational calculus of these national tombs was, of course, the massive number of combatant dead whose remains could not be identified. This paper takes up the two very different arguments composed by these commemorative sites. The first argument was directed to surviving family members and was articulated most explicitly by the French as a hypothetical enthymeme “this could be your husband, your father, your brother,” etc. The second argument has been directed to national and international collectives as a constitutive proclamation of legitimated nation-state or Empire Although this argument is particularly explicit in postcolonial gestures of independence on the part of former dominions of old empires, it was evident in even the earliest cases of the tombs of the unknown.     

ASSESSING AND INCREASING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Increasing physical activity is a crucial component of any comprehensive approach to combat the growing obesity epidemic. This review summarizes recent behavioral research on the measurement of physical activity and interventions aimed at increasing physical activity and provides directions for future research.