Marital Relationship,Body Image and Psychological Quality of Life among Breast Cancer Patients: The Moderating Role of the Disease’s Phases

In this cross-sectional study we analyzed the links between marital quality and intimacy, body image, and psychological quality of life (PQoL) of breast cancer patients, as well as the moderating role of cancer phase (treatment, survivorship) on the aforementioned links. We also evaluated whether body image mediated the associations between marital relationship variables and PQoL. An analysis of the data from 128 patients (66 undergoing treatment, 62 survivors) indicated that the majority of links between variables were significant only during the treatment phase. Mediating effect of body image on the associations between relationship variables and PQoL was found only at the treatment phase.     

Exploring the basis and boundary conditions of SenseCam-facilitated recollection

SenseCam review has been shown to promote and sustain subsequent access to memories that might otherwise remain inaccessible. While SenseCam review facilitates recollection for personally experienced events, we know little about the boundary conditions under which this operates and about how underlying processing mechanisms can be optimally recruited to offset memory impairments of the sort that occur in dementia. This paper considers some of these issues with a view to targeting future research that not only clarifies our evolving body of theory about how memory works, but also informs about how memory-assistive technologies for patients might be employed to maximal effect. We begin by outlining key factors that are known to influence recollection. We then examine variability in the decline of memory function both in normal ageing and in dementia. Attention is drawn to similarities in the recollection deficits associated with depression and dementia, and we suggest that this may reflect shared underlying mechanisms. We conclude by discussing how one particular theoretical rationale can be intersected with key SenseCam capabilities to define priorities for ongoing and future SenseCam research.     

Epistemic akrasia and the fallibility of critical reasoning

There is widespread disagreement about whether epistemic akrasia is possible. This paper argues that the possibility of epistemic akrasia follows from a traditional rationalist conception of epistemic critical reasoning, together with considerations about the fallibility of our capacities for reasoning. In addition to defending the view that epistemic akrasia is possible, we aim to shed light on why it is possible. By focusing on critical epistemic reasoning, we show how traditional rationalist assumptions about our core cognitive capacities help to explain the possibility of epistemic akrasia.     

When deserving translates into causing: The effect of cognitive load on immanent justice reasoning

In immanent justice reasoning, negative events are attributed to some prior moral failing, even in the absence of a physically plausible causal link between them. Drawing on just-world theory, we examined immanent justice reasoning as an intuitive, deservingness-guided form of causal judgment. Participants were exposed to a story about a man who either did or did not cheat on his wife and who was subsequently injured in a car accident. Under either high or low cognitive load, participants rated the extent to which they believed the accident was the result of the man's prior moral failings. The results showed that participants causally attributed the man's accident to his prior conduct when he was immoral (vs. not immoral) more strongly under high cognitive load. Further, moderated mediation analyses showed that perceived deservingness of the accident mediated the effect of the man's prior immoral behavior on immanent justice attributions more strongly under high cognitive load. These results offer support for the notion that immanent justice attributions reflect an automatic tendency to assume that people get what they deserve.     

Women's reactions to ingroup members who protest discriminatory treatment: The importance of beliefs about inequality and response appropriateness

Our goal was to identify factors that shape women's responses to ingroup members who protest gender discrimination. We predicted and found that women who perceived gender discrimination as pervasive regarded a protest response as being more appropriate than a no protest response and expressed greater liking and less anger towards a female lawyer who protested rather than did not protest an unfair promotion decision. Further, beliefs about the appropriateness of the response to discrimination contributed to evaluations of the protesting lawyer. Perceptions that the complaint was an appropriate response to the promotion decision led to more positive evaluations of an ingroup discrimination protester. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recognition memory for pictorial material in subclinical depression

Depression has been associated with impaired recollection of episodic details in tests of recognition memory that use verbal material. In two experiments, the remember/know procedure was employed to investigate the effects of dysphoric mood on recognition memory for pictorial materials that may not be subject to the same processing limitations found for verbal materials in depression. In Experiment 1, where the recognition test took place two weeks after encoding, subclinically depressed participants reported fewer know judgements which were likely to be at least partly due to a remember-to-know shift. Although pictures were accompanied by negative or neutral captions at encoding, no effect of captions on recognition memory was observed. In Experiment 2, where the recognition test occurred soon after viewing the pictures, subclinically depressed participants reported fewer remember judgements. All participants reported more remember judgements for pictures of emotionally negative content than pictures of neutral content. Together, these findings demonstrate that recognition memory for pictorial stimuli is compromised in dysphoric individuals in a way that is consistent with a recollection deficit for episodic detail and also reminiscent of that previously reported for verbal materials. These findings contribute to our developing understanding of how mood and memory interact.     

Longitudinal effects of egoistic and fraternal relative deprivation on well-being and protest

According to the social justice literature, fraternal relative deprivation causes protest, but has little impact on well-being. We consider this view incomplete and predict that fraternal relative deprivation can impair well-being if it is enduring and difficult to ameliorate. As part of a longitudinal study of the German unification process, measures of egoistic relative deprivation, fraternal relative deprivation, life satisfaction, mental health, and protest were obtained on three occasions of measurement (1996, 1998, 2000) from a demographically heterogeneous sample of 1276 East German citizens. Model tests and parameter estimation were performed with LISREL. In line with our predictions, unique longitudinal effects of fraternal relative deprivation on well-being were identified. No longitudinal effect of fraternal relative deprivation on protest was identified.     

Reasoning about XML with temporal logics and automata

We show that problems arising in static analysis of XML specifications and transformations can be dealt with using techniques similar to those developed for static analysis of programs. Many properties of interest in the XML context are related to navigation, and can be formulated in temporal logics for trees. We choose a logic that admits a simple single-exponential translation into unranked tree automata, in the spirit of the classical LTL-to-Büchi automata translation. Automata arising from this translation have a number of additional properties; in particular, they are convenient for reasoning about unary node-selecting queries, which are important in the XML context. We give two applications of such reasoning: one deals with a classical XML problem of reasoning about navigation in the presence of schemas, and the other relates to verifying security properties of XML views.