Folk psychology of mental activities

A central aspect of people's beliefs about the mind is that mental activities--for example, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving-- are interrelated, with some activities being kinds or parts of others. In common-sense psychology, reasoning is a kind of thinking and reasoning is part of problem solving. People's conceptions of these mental kinds and parts can furnish clues to the ordinary meaning of these terms and to the differences between folk and scientific psychology. In this article, we use a new technique for deriving partial orders to analyze subjects' decisions about whether one mental activity is a kind or part of another. The resulting taxonomies and partonomies differ from those of common object categories in exhibiting a converse relation in this domain: One mental activity is a part of another if the second is a kind of the first. The derived taxonomies and partonomies also allow us to predict results from further experiments that examine subjects' memory for these activities, their ratings of the activities' importance, and their judgements about whether there could be "possible minds" that possess some of the activities but not others.     

The role of the interpolated task in short-term retention

It has been proposed that a single set of operations based on classical interference theory is adequate to describe the phenomena of both short- and long-term memory. An article by Keppel and Underwood (1962) argues that short-term forgetting is due to proactive interference and, by implication, not a result of trace decay. An experiment which varied retention interval and the nature of the interpolated task, gave results which indicate that when the amount forgotten and the nature of errors are considered, a decay model is supported, the proactive interference suggestion being untenable.     

Predicting engaging in cosmetic surgery: A test of the role of doing and not doing cognitions

The decision-making process underlying cosmetic surgery for esthetic purposes has been rarely investigated. To fill in this gap, we examined the determinants of undergoing plastic surgery among women within a framework that considers that the intentions to undergo and to not undergo surgery are related to different motivational systems that could both contribute to behavior. To do so, we assessed the goals underlying both options and theory of planned behavior constructs (Attitude, Perceived Behavioral Control, Subjective norms) related to undergoing and not undergoing plastic surgery as well as risk perception among a convenience sample of women (N = 265). Results confirmed that undergoing and not undergoing plastic surgery are related to different but not opposite goals. More importantly, both intentions predicted actual behavior but with the intention of not undergoing weighing more than the intention of undergoing plastic surgery. Finally, results supported previous research showing that risk perception does not add to predicting behavior. This contribution, therefore, supports the adoption of a decision-making framework to provide additional information to individual and social factors that can explain why women are undergoing plastic surgery for esthetic purposes or not.     

Performance of Faller and Nonfaller Older Adults on a Motor–Motor Interference Task

Typically, falls in older adults occur when 2 tasks are performed simultaneously, due to the increased motor demand required to maintain stability and attention to perform the other task. The authors' purpose was to investigate walking while grasping, transporting, and placing a dowel on a predetermined target while manipulating difficulty levels of the manual task. Faller and nonfaller older adults performed a walking block (manual tasks combined with gait) and a stationary block (upright stance combined with manual tasks). The manual task involved grasping, transporting, and placing the dowel over a target. The results showed that fallers underperformed when compared with nonfallers in the task of placing the dowel over the target. The main difference observed between the groups was found in the condition that required allocation of attention between tasks and greater accuracy in the final placement of the object. Fallers showed gait stability similar to the nonfallers, but fallers were less accurate than nonfallers in the object placement task, especially for the highest level of difficulty. Thus, fallers seem to use a stability-first strategy. Fallers had problems in executing the manual tasks, which suggests a more global change in motor behavior rather than specific changes to balance control.     

Workplace Violence Toward Hospital Staff and Volunteers: A Survey of an Italian Sample

Interest in the phenomenon of workplace violence has increased in recent years because such violence is evident in the healthcare sector. The prevalence and consequences of victimization among healthcare professionals have been well-investigated but not in volunteers who have direct and prolonged contact with patients and visitors. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of physical and psychological workplace violence, the psychological and emotional consequences for hospital staff and volunteers, and the coping strategies that they adopted. In the current study, both of these groups worked with patients suffering from chronic diseases in a hospital in northern Italy. The participants included 108 hospital staff and 96 volunteers in cardiology and oncology units. The results revealed that for the staff victims of physical or psychological violence, the increase in depressive and anxiety symptoms (both state and trait) corresponded to a greater use of coping strategies to avoid facing the event. For the volunteer victims of physical violence, an increase in state anxiety was associated with an attempt to cope with the discharge of emotion, whereas trait anxiety was associated with a coping strategy that represents a positive interpretation of life events. A worrisome finding was the number of staff and volunteer victims of physical and psychological violence who did not report these occurrences: only one third of staff and volunteers reported these events to management or to the police.     

Early Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) intervention in a disaster mental health care context

‘Early psychological intervention’ is defined as commencing treatment within three months of the traumatic event, with the aim to prevent or treat posttraumatic stress disorder, ongoing distress or acute stress disorder. In natural disaster situations, specific issues may limit the amount of time available for treatment and the possibility of interventions. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be used without regard to these limits. The aim of the study is to evaluate the effects of EMDR, Recent Traumatic Episode Protocol (R-TEP) provided within three months of the traumatic event to a large sample of individuals exposed to the earthquake that hit Emilia Romagna Region (Northern Italy) in 2012. This study is based on a retrospective review of medical records collected during the activities of psychological and psychosocial unit in the immediate aftermath of earthquake. In total, 529 participants completed the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R) (pre e post treatment). In order to provide a comparison similar to a waitlist-like control group, a method of cohort analysis was applied. In addition, possible time dependent effect was tested. ET (early-treated sample, participants treated within one month after the earthquake) and LT (late-treated sample, participants treated after the first month from the earthquake) reported at post-treatment an improvement to a level below the IES-R cutoff (65.8% of the ET sample and 64.02% of the LT sample). Control group analogue and time-outcome correlation suggest that positive changes in symptoms were likely due to the treatment provided and not merely to the time lapse from the traumatic event. The results of this study suggest that EMDR is a viable treatment option in response to a disaster crisis and in reducing psychological distress of acutely traumatized individuals within the context of a natural disaster.