The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire in the Norwegian Context: Relations to Mental Health,Quality of Life,and Self-Efficacy

The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe) offers dimensional measures of meaningfulness, crisis of meaning, and 26 sources of meaning. It allows for a clearer understanding of the variety of existential orientations, which are known to be linked to both mental and physical health. The Norwegian version of the SoMe was validated by testing 925 randomly selected individuals who were representative for the Norwegian population. Reliability scores were satisfactory; factor analyses suggested a 6-factor structure of the sources of meaning scales. Expected patterns of associations with mental health and quality-of-life factors attested the instrument’s construct validity: Meaningfulness showed positive relationships to all quality-of-life factors. There was no relationship with anxiety but negative relationships with depression and distress. Crisis of meaning established a strong positive relationship with anxiety, depression, and distress and a negative relationship with quality-of-life factors. Criterion validity was documented by expected differences in meaningfulness and crisis of meaning between groups with and without presence of depression disorder. Self-efficacy correlated strongly with sources of meaning from the dimension “accomplishment” and moderately negatively with sources of meaning from the dimension “vertical selftranscendence.”     

Are the Natural Numbers Fundamentally Ordinals?

There are two ways of thinking about the natural numbers: as ordinal numbers or as cardinal numbers. It is, moreover, well‐known that the cardinal numbers can be defined in terms of the ordinal numbers. Some philosophies of mathematics have taken this as a reason to hold the ordinal numbers as (metaphysically) fundamental. By discussing structuralism and neo‐logicism we argue that one can empirically distinguish between accounts that endorse this fundamentality claim and those that do not. In particular, we argue that if the ordinal numbers are metaphysically fundamental then it follows that one cannot acquire cardinal number concepts without appeal to ordinal notions. On the other hand, without this fundamentality thesis that would be possible. This allows for an empirical test to see which account best describes our actual mathematical practices. We then, finally, discuss some empirical data that suggests that we can acquire cardinal number concepts without using ordinal notions. However, there are some important gaps left open by this data that we point to as areas for future empirical research.     

Productive conflict in group decision making: genuine and contrived dissent as strategies to counteract biased information seeking

Decision-making groups in organizations are often expected to function as a “think tank” and to perform “reality testing” to detect the best alternative. A biased search for information supporting the group's favored alternative impairs a group's ability to fulfill these requirements. In a two-factorial experiment with 201 employees and managers from various economic and public organizations, genuine and contrived dissent were investigated as counterstrategies to biased information seeking. Genuine dissent was manipulated by forming three-person groups whose members either all favored the same alternative individually (homogeneous groups) or consisted of a minority and a majority faction with regard to their favored alternative (heterogeneous groups). Contrived dissent was varied by the use or nonuse of the “devil's advocacy” technique. The results demonstrate that heterogeneity was more effective in preventing a confirmatory information-seeking bias than devil's advocacy was. Confidence was identified as an important mediator. Implications for the design of interventions aimed at facilitating reality testing in group decision making are discussed.     

The usefulness of self‐reported psychopathy‐like traits in the study of antisocial behaviour among non‐referred adolescents

The present study addresses the question of whether it is possible to use a self‐report measure of psychopathic traits on non‐referred youth samples to identify a subgroup of problematic youths who are particularly problematic and different from other problem youths. A large sample of eighth‐grade, non‐referred adolescents, and their parents were assessed. Results showed that the adolescents exhibiting a low‐socialized psychopathy‐like personality constellation had a more frequent, violent, and versatile conduct‐problem profile than other low‐socialized and well socialized adolescents. The psychopathy‐like adolescents also differed from other poorly socialized adolescents in ways that suggested that their etiological background was different from adolescents with non‐psychopathy‐like conduct problems. We conclude that self‐report measures can indeed be useful for research purposes in subtyping youths with conduct problems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Musiktherapie bei Kindern mit Migräne

Migraine in childhood is a serious health problem with a tendency for chronification. According to the bio-psycho-social model migraine is considered as a disorder generated by multiple factors and requiring an interdisciplinary treatment concept consisting of both medical and psychotherapeutic interventions. Music therapy as a nonverbal, creative arts therapy is especially apt for the treatment of children. A specific treatment concept in music therapy for children with migraine, to be applied within a multidisciplinary framework, and its theoretical background are presented in this article. Music therapy is firmly established within the context of stationary infant psychiatric care. Also, it is presently used as a method of outpatient psychotherapy mainly for children and adolescents. Additionally, music therapy finds frequent use in medical care, special needs education and curative education for children. This article will be limited to the presentation of music therapy as artistic psychotherapy.     

Correlation between tests of attention and performance on grooved and Purdue pegboards in normal subjects

This study investigated the relation between tests of manual dexterity and attentional functions with 49 normal, right-handed medical students (26 women, 23 men, ages 19-30 years) who were assessed with a Purdue Pegboard Test, Grooved Pegboard Test, and a Test for Attentional Performance, comprising measures of tonic and phasic alertness and divided attention. Weak to moderately high partial correlations controlling for finger size were obtained between pegboard test performance of the left hand and phasic alertness (r = .31-.50). Purdue Pegboard Assembly subtest scores were weakly correlated with divided attention (r = -.39). These findings suggest that attention is an important determinant of performance for manual dexterity tests of the nondominant hand.