A new typology of health behaviours for personality-health predictions: The case of locus of control

Psychological investigations of the impact of personality on health behaviours have tended to emphasize fine distinctions among personality variables while failing to distinguish among different kinds of behaviours. For example, theoretical treatments of perceived personal control are quite sophisticated; in contrast, only one well-known analysis of health behaviours exists. We propose four categories of health-enhancing behaviours, which take into account contemporary views of the shift in health care from acute and physician-directed actions to long-term and patient-directed efforts. In addition, we suggest that perceived control (we emphasize locus of control because of its generality and parsimony) is an important predictor variable when combined with other factors common to current models of health behaviour.     

Functionalism and type-type identity theories

Conclusion Token-token identity theorists do not and need not deny that it may frequently be the same (kind of) brain state which on different occasions fills the functional rôle definitive of a given mental state. That is not at issue. What is at issue is whether functionally-oriented identity theorists should make two claims or three claims.The two claims they customarily make are, first, that each instance of a mental state is an instance of a brain state, and, secondly, that being in a mental state is having in one a state filling the relevant functional rôle. But to be in a mental state is to have that state in one. To be in pain is to have pain, to desire water is to have desire for water, and so on; just as to be poisoned is to have poison in you. (It is to have what is poison for you at the time, of course; and likewise for pain, desire and so on.)Our paper has been about a third sort of claim — relating particularly not to being in a mental state, nor to instances of that state, but to the mental state itself. We have argued that functionally-oriented identity theorists can and should make, in addition to the first two claims, the third type-type identity claim that mental states are brain states. Consequently a token brain state is a token of pain in a derivative sense. What makes it a token of pain is that it is a token of the type of brain state which realizes the pain-rôle for the organism at the time.     

Mental shock can produce retrograde amnesia

Subjects in three experiments saw a short film of a mentally shocking event in which a young boy is violently shot in the face. Compared to other subjects who saw a nonviolent version of the same film, those who saw the mentally shocking version showed poorer retention of the details of the film. Retention was poorer whether measured by recognition or recall. Furthermore, impaired memory occurred only when the event was mentally upsetting, and not when it was merely unexpected but not upsetting. These results suggest that mentally shocking episodes may disrupt the lingering processing necessary for full storage of information in memory.     

The fractionation of arithmetical skills: A single case study

A single case study of a patient with a selective impairment of arithmetical calculation is reported. DRC became severely acalculic after sustaining a left parietal intra-cerebral haematoma. His numeracy skills were documented as fully as possible. It was found that his knowledge of the significance of individual numbers and his concept of quantity appeared to be intact, but simple addition, subtraction and multiplication were all performed laboriously and inaccurately and his performance was inconsistent from trial to trial. Further it was shown that it was his knowledge of arithmetical facts not his knowledge of arithmetical operations which was impaired. The findings are discussed in relation to models of arithmetical calculation and it is concluded that for DRC there was a deficit in accessing one category of verbal semantic knowledge systems, namely arithmetical facts.     

A prescriptive paradigm for sequencing instruction in physical education

Recent advances in the understanding of the neurological basis of motor control have made possible an explanation of motor skill acquisition in terms of the notion of programs of muscle synergies. The progressive development of an individual's capacity to control these synergies may be presented as a kind of hierarchical organization of processing levels based upon changes in the neurological location of motor control and the ability of the individual to make adjustments in the programs. This paper is an attempt to apply this information about the processing levels of motor control to the problem of the identification of a paradigm to assist practitioners in the design of sequences of motor skill learning experiences. Such a paradigm is proposed as a reformulation of Jewett's Movement Process Category System, a model originally created for use in curriculum decision-making.The proposed reformulation identifies three subphases of adaptive skill acquisition: skill construction, where a program of synergies is first automated; skill stabilization, where that program is then schematized; and skill differentiation, where that program is finally modularized. Within each of the subphases, processing levels are defined to enable the practitioner to give directions and design learning environments which will focus upon the students' gaining progressive control of the program of synergies selected for acquisition. Comments made throughout this presentation are intended to bridge the gap between motor control research and the teaching of skills, as well as encourage researchers in the motor learning/motor development areas to consider the notion of programs of muscle synergies as the fundamental explanatory unit for motor skill acquisition.     

Religious faith and adjustment to long-term hemodialysis

This study examines religious faith as associated with adjustment to end-stage renal failure and its treatment regimen of maintenance hemodialysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected initially and after a three-year interval in order to observe changes over time. The variable of the patient's perception of the import of religious faith was found to be positively related to interactional behavior and sick role behavior and to be inversely associated with alienation. Content analysis of qualitative responses for the item of perceived import of religious faith revealed a pattern of increasingly more positive patient attitudes occurring over time.     

Classifying pictures and words: Implications for the dual-coding hypothesis

In deciding that two items come from the same category, subjects were delayed if the items were presented as a word and a picture, as compared with two words or two pictures. Subjects were not delayed if the items were not to be compared. Hence, the delay appears to occur during the retrieval and comparison of know ledge about the items, not during their perceptual analysis. The results suggest that there are two distinct codes involved in the categorization of words and pictures, rather than a single code.     

The development of attitudes toward dialect in Italian children

In the Italian public school system, local dialects are explicitly discouraged and children are pressured to master standard Italian. In this study, 95 southern Italian children were given a series of tasks to determine their level of dialect production and their attitudes toward their local dialect. Production of dialect decreases sharply from the first to the third grade, but then tends to stabilize, with a slight increase in dialect use by fourth and fifth grade boys. Hence the schools have not been entirely successful in eradicating dialect. However, attitude measures indicate that by the third grade children prefer Italian over the dialect at close to the 100% level. The schools have placed many children in a conflict situation, in which they have learned negative attitudes toward their own code but cannot completely master standard Italian. Sex differences may be related to a tendency to view dialect as more masculine. Implications of this study for bidialectical school programs in Italy and the United States are discussed.     

The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children

An experiment on the role of the language of instruction in mediating responses to social pressure was conducted with a sample of 41 Russian-born adolescents who had recently immigrated to Israel. The subjects were asked to respond to a series of conflict situations in which they were told that either the experimenters, their own parents, or their peers would see their answers. Instructions were given once in Russian and once in Hebrew. Contrary to the principal hypothesis, when subjected to pressure from adults the children gave more conventional moral responses under Hebrew than under Russian instructions. The result was interpreted as reflecting the tendency to respond more moralistically to the language of authority, which, for the emigréchildren, shifted from Russian to Hebrew. Regardless of the language of administration, the scores for the emigréchildren fell between those for Soviet and Israeli youngsters, but they were closer to the latter. Within the sample, the longer a child lived in one or the other society, the more his response to social pressure resembled the modal reaction of children in that society. Children from families who had or had not spoken Yiddish in the home showed marked differences in response, with the former resembling the Israeli and the latter the typical Soviet reaction. The results were interpreted as reflecting the capacity of children to adapt to conflicting socialization settings both within and across cultures.