Excess use of general practitioners by obese adults: does health-related quality of life account for the association?

As general practitioners (GP) are seeing, and are likely to continue to see, increasing numbers of obese patients in their practices, it is relevant to know with which needs these patients enter general practice. The present study aims to determine whether besides physical comorbidities, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) accounts for associations of obesity with GP use. In a general population survey in Augsburg, Germany (KORA-Survey S4 1999/2001), anthropometric body mass (BMI in kg/(m(2))), physical comorbidities, HRQOL (the 12-item Short Form; SF-12), and visits to GP were assessed, and analyzed by logistic and zero-truncated negative binomial regressions (two-part model). Gender, age, socio-economic status, marital status, health insurance, and place of residence were adjusted for. The sample consisted of N = 942 residents aged 25 - 74, who had been randomly sampled from 17 cluster-sampled communities, and were either normal-weight, overweight, moderately obese, or severely obese. The moderately obese group had higher odds than the normal-weight to report any GP use; however, while being predictive, neither physical comorbidity nor HRQOL mediated this. In contrast, with regard to number of GP visits among users, the severely obese group (BMI >/= 35) reported significantly more visits than the normal-weight group, and both physical comorbidity and physical (but not mental) HRQOL accounted for this. In conclusion, physical comorbidity and HRQOL mediate excess use of GP by severely obese users in terms of number of visits. Thus, for this group, subjective physical health seems to be important besides physical comorbidities, suggesting for general practice to focus both on evaluated and perceived needs of these patients.     

What do eye movements reveal about the role of memory in visual search?

Horowitz and Wolfe (1998, 2003) have challenged the view that serial visual search involves memory processes that keep track of already inspected locations. The present study used a search paradigm similar to Horowitz and Wolfe's (1998), comparing a standard static search condition with a dynamic condition in which display elements changed locations randomly every 111 ms. In addition to measuring search reaction times, observers' eye movements were recorded. For target-present trials, the search rates were near-identical in the two search conditions, replicating Horowitz and Wolfe's findings. However, the number of fixations and saccade amplitude were larger in the static than in the dynamic condition, whereas fixation duration and the latency of the first saccade were longer in the dynamic condition. These results indicate that an active, memory-guided search strategy was adopted in the static condition, and a passive “sit-and-wait” strategy in the dynamic condition.     

Employment counseling and life stressors: coping through expressive writing

Job loss can be one of life's most traumatic experiences, especially if the unemployment is extended. In addition to more common interventions used by employment counselors and others dedicated to assisting clients in the search for work, it can be helpful to assist clients in expressing their negative feelings through writing. Expressive writing is a powerful technique used successfully to confront traumatic life events. Beneficial effects of expressive writing include understanding why feelings occur. Factors that favorably influence expressive writing and specific procedures for implementation in the employment counseling context are discussed.     

The control of switching into blackout during extinction

During the extinction component of a multiple variable-interval extinction schedule, four pigeons learned to peck a second key that switched off the keylights. Two experiments attempted to isolate the events that control this behavior. In the first experiment, switching into blackout was equally maintained when switches were restricted to the first minute as when they were restricted to the last minute of the extinction component. When switches could be emitted in the first and last minutes, they occurred more frequently in the first. Restricting switching to the first minute of each component and eliminating the blackout between components had no effect on switching. In the second experiment, when the stimulus correlated with extinction was omitted, switching decreased slightly. Omission of both multiple schedule stimuli decreased the switching rate, but switching was still maintained. Food reinforcement was then omitted and switching by two birds increased. Switching ceased when blackout was no longer the consequence of pecking the switching key. It was concluded that switching was not controlled by the similarity of the blackouts produced by the switching key and those that occurred between components; nor was it maintained by the temporal proximity of switching responses to the onset of the reinforced component. Finally, switching did not appear to be controlled by the main-key stimuli correlated with the components of the multiple schedule.     

Understanding quantified categorical expressions

A model of categorical inference (Revlis, 1975b) claims that a conversion operation participates in the encoding of quantified, categorical expressions. As a consequence, a reasoner is said to interpret such sentences as “All A are B” in a way that permits it to also be the case that “All B are A.” The present study examines this conception of encoding using a sentence-picture verification task. In two experiments, students were asked to judge whether one of five possible Euler diagrams was true or false of a categorical expression (e.g., All A are B, No A are B, Some A are B, Some A are not B). Verification errors support a three-stage verification model whose major component is access to a “meaning stack” representing the progressive analysis of categorical relations; at the top of that stack is a converted reading of the input sentence. These findings have implications for current conceptions of categorical inference and semantic retrieval.     

Proximal velocity change as a determinant of space perception

How and to what degree does proximal velocity change determine perceived translatory motion in depth? This question was studied with a stimulus consisting of a single dot, moving in a straight horizontal path in a frontoparallel plane. Its motion corresponded to distai depth motion with constant speed. Ss reported verbally what they perceived. The results show that proximal velocity changes of this kind are, within certain limits, utilized by the visual system for the perception of translatory motion in depth. The limits were found to be determined by the absolute rate of change in proximal velocity. Further, it was found that the perceived motion track was usually bent, although all stimuli simulated depth motions along straight paths.     

Multidisciplinarity and cognitive science

The aim of Schunn, Crowley and Okada's (1998) study is to address the question of whether the current state of cognitive science, as represented by Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society, “reflects the multidisciplinary ideals of its foundation.” To properly interpret and respond to their results, we need to ask a prior question: What is cognitive science's multidisciplinary ideal? There are at least two conceptions—a “localist” conception, which seems to be implicit in Schunn, Crowley and Okada's discussion, and a “holist” conception. I argue that while both have been endorsed by some cognitive scientists, there are reasons for preferring the holist conception. I then consider what Schunn, Crowley and Okada's findings tell us about the state of cognitive science in light of a holist approach and report on an analysis of the journal's contents which looks at the domain, subdomain, and cognitive capacity investigated.     

Victim blaming and exoneration of the perpetrator in domestic violence: the role of beliefs in a just world and ambivalent sexism

The existence of domestic violence is closely linked to several ideological factors that include sexism and other beliefs about society in general, namely the belief in a just world. In this study, which involved 485 people of both sexes aged between 18 and 70 years, we analyzed the influence of these ideological variables of the perceivers and characteristics of the situation on judgments of a gender aggression--blaming the victim and exonerating the perpetrator. Results showed differences in the reactions of observers depending on the cause that triggered the aggression. Participants blamed the victim and exonerated the aggressor more when no cause of the aggression was mentioned than when a cause was mentioned (the woman wanted to separate, to see an old male friend, or simply to take a trip with her female friends). We also found clear effects of hostile sexism and just world beliefs on the dependent variables. Results showed that the influence of just world beliefs depended on the fact of mention or not a cause for the aggression.     

On the likelihood ratio test in structural equation modeling when parameters are subject to boundary constraints

The authors show how the use of inequality constraints on parameters in structural equation models may affect the distribution of the likelihood ratio test. Inequality constraints are implicitly used in the testing of commonly applied structural equation models, such as the common factor model, the autoregressive model, and the latent growth curve model, although this is not commonly acknowledged. Such constraints are the result of the null hypothesis in which the parameter value or values are placed on the boundary of the parameter space. For instance, this occurs in testing whether the variance of a growth parameter is significantly different from 0. It is shown that in these cases, the asymptotic distribution of the chi-square difference cannot be treated as that of a central chi-square-distributed random variable with degrees of freedom equal to the number of constraints. The correct distribution for testing 1 or a few parameters at a time is inferred for the 3 structural equation models mentioned above. Subsequently, the authors describe and illustrate the steps that one should take to obtain this distribution. An important message is that using the correct distribution may lead to appreciably greater statistical power.     

Individuation,ego development and the quality of conflict negotiation in the family of adolescent girls

Individuation, ego development and family negotiation of conflict were studied in 27 Norwegian families with an adolescent daughter, 16–19 years, drawn from a larger sample to represent a rectangular distribution of ego development. Individuality and Connectedness (individuation) as conceptualized and scored by Condonet al. (1984) was modified and adapted to a Norwegian material. Four factors were extracted, one related to individuality (self-assertion and separateness) and two to connectedness (clarification and acceptance). Ego development, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) was related to connectedness between mother and daughter and between father and daughter, but not to individuality. Maturity of conflict negotiation was positively related to connectedness between mother and daughter and negatively to individuality between father and daughter. It was argued that for women, individuality may not be a singular goal in ego development or in individuation and that self-other differentiation of identity and interests may develop within a close relationship and not only through separation.