Psychiatric disorders among employment requiring firearms

Individuals who carry guns as a requirement of employment frequently experience hazards that can be stress inducing, violent, traumatizing, or cause personal injury. This study used data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiological Surveys (CPES; n = 20,013), to examine mental health diagnoses of individuals that ever worked at a job requiring a firearm. Consistent with existing literature, the findings indicated that those who worked in professions requiring a firearm showed similar risk of mental health diagnoses as law enforcement officers which includes symptoms of trauma, mood disorders, and alcohol use. Further, race/ethnic differences emerged in patterns of mental health diagnoses, suggesting sociocultural differences influence diagnoses. These findings indicate the necessity for further investigation of the understudied area of mental health of those within employment positions that require firearms.     

Cultural influence on COVID-19 cognitions and growth speed: The role of collectivism

Major challenges faced by humans often require large-scale cooperation for communal benefits. We examined what motivates such cooperation in the context of social distancing and mask wearing to reduce the transmission intensity of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). We hypothesized that collectivism, a cultural variable characterizing the extent that individuals see themselves in relation to others, contributes to people's willingness to engage in these behaviors. Consistent with preregistered predictions, across three studies (n = 2864), including a U.S. nationally representative sample, collectivist orientation was positively associated with intentions, positive beliefs, norm perceptions, and policy support for the preventive behaviors. Further, at a country level, more collectivist countries showed lower growth rates in both COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths. Together, these studies demonstrate the role of collectivism in reducing COVID-19 transmission, and highlight the value of considering culture in public health policies and communications.     

A reevaluation of the effect of velocity on induced motion

Induced motion (IM) was measured as a function of the temporal frequency of inducer oscillation. IM magnitude decreased as frequency increased above 5 Hz. Increasing the amplitude of inducer motion, and thereby its velocity, did not influence the temporal frequency dependence of IM. This suggests that it is the duration of inducer motion, rather than its velocity, that is the critical stimulus feature in studies that report decreased IM with higher frequencies of inducer oscillation. In a separate experiment, the optokinetic nystagmus elicited by the inducing stimulus in the absence of a fixation target displayed frequency-response characteristics similar to those of IM. This finding supports the hypothesis that IM magnitude is proportional to the voluntary effort required to suppress reflexive eye movements while maintaining stable fixation.     

Nous avons l'art pour vivre dans la vérité

The paper aims at sketching the outline of a phenomenology of the artwork on the basis of the short analyses devoted to the topic by Hannah Arendt in a few texts. In order to overcome the mostly allusive and even superficial character of these texts, the paper refers to Kant's teaching in theCritique of Judgment and to Arendt's interpretation of it in several essays. We have tried to pursue as far as possible, in the direction of a philosophy of art, the path opened by her political interpretation of the thirdCritique. We have also endeavoured to develop, beyond what she writes explicitly but in an attempt to make her thought as consistent as possible, the marginal suggestions provided by the book onThinking about the relations between judgment and thought and the theses stated byThe Human Condition about the work of art as a reified thought. Accordingly, the artwork appears to be, in the realm of artefacts, what is the best, appropriated to provide to a human world its stability; since the artwork is the most enduring product of thehomo faber, while escaping the means-end categories as well as any usefulness. Hence the artwork is able to display within the realm of human artefacts the meaning of a human world; namely, a home on the earth, a dwelling to be shared in their being-together. While being useless and merely appearing in the world, the work is also what calls for a judgment of taste such as Kant describes it. This means a judgment of common sense based upon a sharing of the world by fellowpeople, and aiming at a standard which is the sensus communis as the very condition of possibility of such a sharing. Moreover, the artwork is a thought made into a thing. Again, as a thought which appears in the world, it calls for judging; for a judgment is a thought which renouncing solitude comes back to the human community. Therefore it turns out that the artwork unifies the human community in its sharing of a common world. Indeed, by requesting that we judge it, the artwork appeals in ourselves to asensus communis through which our thought takes into account the point of view of the others. Moreover, as a thought embodied in a hand-made thing, the artwork makes meaning present and publicly appearing in the sensible world.     

Distracted Driving Among College Students: Perceived Risk Versus Reality

Although the rate of alcohol-impaired driving among adolescents has declined in the past two decades, distracted driving has become a major public safety concern. The present study compared perceptions of accident risk and social norms related to cell phone use while driving (CPWD), as well as alcohol-impaired driving, with self-reported behavior among a sample of 726 college students. Results indicated that although participants perceived sending text messages while driving as posing a similar accident risk as driving while legally intoxicated, they were much more likely to text behind the wheel. Furthermore, participants perceived their peers as being more accepting of and having more liberal views toward CPWD than their own, suggesting that one factor underlying the discrepancy between perceived risk and risk exposure may be the level of social acceptability attributed to texting while driving. Future interventions may benefit from focusing not only on risk perception, but on social norms, legal consequences, and adaptive alternatives.     

Cognitive-Behavioral Body-Image Therapy: Extended Evidence of the Efficacy of a Self-Directed Program

Scientific investigations support the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in the treatment of body dissatisfaction across a range of populations. Grant and Cash (1995) used CBT with 23 extremely body-dissatisfied women and found equivalent and successful outcomes for body-image CBT administered in group therapy versus a self-directed format with only modest therapist contact. The present study compared Grant and Cash's data with those of an equally body-dissatisfied sample (n = 12) treated via Cash's (1995) CBT self-help book administered with minimal professional contact. The latter program produced significant improvements in body image and adjustment, without changes in body weight. Outcomes and levels of compliance were equivalent to those that Grant and Cash had found under conditions involving greater degrees of professional contact. The study's limitations and its scientific, clinical, and ethical implications for the use of body-image CBT are discussed.     

Acoustic Markers of Political Power

The effect of political power on acoustic variables was examined in three political speeches given by François Mitterrand at different periods of his career. F ₀ data were not found to reflect the extent of Mitterrand's power. On the other hand, temporal organization appeared to mirror the politician's distance from power. When Mitterrand was both a challenger and an opponent, articulation rate was more rapid, while in the two Presidential speeches, he showed a slower articulation rate, which seems to be a feature of power. The pause structure appeared to reflect the place of the politician within the social hierarchy in such a way that, the higher the status, the longer and the more frequent the pauses. There seems to be a balance between what is being said and what is left unsaid: Silence becomes a power symbol.     

Developing Measures of Basic Job-Relevant English Proficiency for the Prediction of Job Performance and Promotability

The present study is an attempt to devise reliable and valid measures of job-relevant basic English proficiency to be applied in the prediction of job performance and promotability in an entry-level manual labor job dominated by workers whose native language is not English. An audio test and a reading test were developed to assess the ability to understand spoken English and written English respectively using job relevant material. Results showed that both tests demonstrated high predictive validity for the criteria of supervisory assessments of incumbents' English proficiency on the job, overall job performance, and promotability. In predicting ratings of overall job performance and promotability, each test provided incremental validity over the predictability provided by the other test. In addition, the tests also provided incremental validity in predicting promotability over the predictability provided by overall job performance.     

Acoustic correlates of subjective pauses

This study investigates the perception of subjective pauses, i.e., pauses that do not correspond to silent pauses. Experiment I used stimuli which were excerpts from spontaneous speech which were presented in two versions: spectrally normal and spectrally inverted. Experiment II used stimuli which were generated by first cross-splicing the two halves of two sentences; they were further manipulated for fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration of the vowel just preceding the splice point. The task in both experiments was to press a button when a speech interruption was heard. The purpose of the experiments was to identify the grammatical and acoustic correlates of the subjective pauses thus reported. The results of Experiment I show, for the inverted speech condition, but not for the normal speech condition, an increase in pause reports as the duration of the prepausal vowel increased. The results of Experiment II show an increase in pause reports with increasing vowel duration. The implications of increased prepausal duration functioning as a pause signal are discussed.     

Adolescent depressed mood and young adult functioning: A longitudinal study

The present study examined two aspects of depressed mood in adolescence: (1) stability across the adolescent years and (2) ability to predict functioning in young adulthood. Participants included 82 Caucasian individuals (46 females and 36 males) who were assessed one time per year for 4 consecutive years during adolescence (mean age at initial assessment = 13.5 years) and again during young adulthood (mean age = 19). The results indicated that depressed mood, as measured by the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), remained relatively stable across at least 3 consecutive years of data collection during adolescence. In addition, adolescent CDI scores predicted young adult functioning in each of four areas: prosocial competence, self-esteem, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems.This study was supported, in part, by the William T. Grant Foundation and the University of Georgia's Institute for Behavioral Research.