Effects of physical fatigue and cognitive challenges on the potential for low back injury

There is no question that the motor control system will adapt under fatiguing conditions; however, there is documented evidence showing that when fatigued or challenged, the motor control system will, on occasion, perform inappropriate muscle sequencing, increasing the risk of injury, or directly causing injury. Knowing that inappropriate muscle activations can lead to injury, the purpose of this study was to investigate motor patterns during cognitive and physical challenges. Rather than ensure change with severe challenges, milder challenges were purposefully chosen. Eight male subjects performed a low external load task performed near end ROM while in an unchallenged state, and while in three challenged states: passive tissue creep, muscle fatigue and cognitive distraction. Data were collected using EMG of the trunk muscles and angular displacement of the lumbar spine. Comparison of motor control patterns between the unchallenged state and each of the three challenged conditions showed no systematic differences. However, several random anomalies were observed. A case study of a single subject was chosen to show inappropriate motor control during one trial under the cognitive distraction conditions. The response of the motor control system is very individualized and does on occasion produce inappropriate motor patterns. This supports the notion that injury may also occur as the result of random motor control errors as well as predictable, systematic changes.     

Book Review The Journey Home: What Near-Death Experiences and Mysticism Teach Us about the Gift of Life,by Phillip L. Berman. New York,NY: Pocket Books, 1996, 207pp + xiv, $14.00 pb

Journal of Near-Death Studies -     

Escalation in groups: Focus on information sampling

The purpose of this experiment was to examine if groups escalate more than individuals when information is not distributed to all group members. The experiment also attempted to replicate Bazerman, Beekun, and Schoorman's (1992) findings, that participants with high responsibility escalate more than participants with low responsibility. The task was a modified version of the Heeley Store Case (Bazerman et al., 1992). The dependent measures fell into three categories: rewards, appropriateness of layoff/demotion, and forecasted future performance. The results showed little support for the hypotheses. First, high responsibility participants escalated significantly more than low responsibility candidates for only one of the six measures. This may have been due to the fact that all participants felt responsible for their decisions. For the other dependent variables, the effect was either not significant or in the wrong direction. Second, no significant interaction was found between responsibility and decision-making context (individual, groups with all shared information, and groups with shared and unshared information). We then analyzed the data using a measure of felt responsibility as a covariate. The interaction between felt responsibility and decision-making context was significant only for layoff decision. For all of the other measures, no significant interaction was found. One possible reason why our hypotheses were not supported may have been that the groups felt a diffusion of responsibility. Larger groups may have also demonstrated the effects of group processes more effectively. No clear conclusions can be made regarding the influence of information sampling on escalation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1998 meetings of the American Psychological Society.     

A simple procedure for accurately manipulating face-voice synchrony when dubbing speech onto videotape

A system is described involving an audio-video tape recorder, a control device, and a delay timer that dubs speech sounds onto prerecorded lip movements on videotape. Accuracy of synchrony or measured asynchrony between the sound and lip movements is a few milliseconds.     

Suicide-related behavior after psychiatric hospital discharge: Implications for risk assessment and management

Suicide-related behavior (SRB), including suicide attempts and instrumental SRB, occurs far more often than completed suicide and exacts a toll on patients, their loved ones, and society. Nevertheless, few prospective studies of SRB have been conducted. In this study, 954 patients were interviewed in a psychiatric hospital and then followed for one year after discharge. During this one-year period, nearly one-quarter of patients (23%) engaged in SRB, with the rate of suicide attempts (18%) three times greater than the rate of instrumental SRB (5%). Risk factors for SRB were demographic (White ethnicity, female gender), clinical (past SRB, depression, impaired functioning), and contextual (unemployment, large social networks). In contrast with other studies, there was no "peak" in the risk of SRB shortly after hospital discharge. Instead, patients' rate of SRB was relatively constant over the one-year follow-up. Implications for risk assessment and management in acute inpatient settings are discussed.     

Xenophobia, ethnic community, and immigrant youths' friendship network formation

Immigrant youth often rebuild their friendships and other social networks after arriving in a new country. The difficulties involved can threaten their psychosocial development. Formation of social networks needs to be understood within the macro sociocultural context that shapes the experience. Nonetheless, the current literature on social network formation rarely captures that context. Knowledge about immigrant youths' social network, for example, is often embedded in assimilation, ethnic identity, and adaptation literature. This paper examines how the sociocultural context enables immigrant youth to rebuild their friendship networks. A critical ethnography was conducted in the northwest region of the United States. Sixteen Taiwanese immigrant youth and their parents (N = 13) participated in the study. Data collection consisted of semi-structured in-depth interviews, a demographic questionnaire, and participant observations. The findings showed that because of limited English proficiency, the youth kept at a distance from American peers to avoid nervousness and embarassment. Further analysis, derived from xenophobia, found that limited English proficiency increases segregation between American peers ("we") and immigrant youth ("the other"). The English as a Second Language program inadvertently perpetuates the immigrants' sense of "otherness" and increases the odds of their becoming targets of discrimination. A protective factor for these youths is living near an ethnic community because the inclusion of coethnics increases new friendship networks. Knowledge about the teen culture in coethnics' countries of origin (China, Hong Kong, or the United States), also influences their selection of friends.     

Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: evidence from Japan's "Northern frontier"

The authors hypothesized that economically motivated voluntary settlement in the frontier fosters independent agency. While illuminating the historical origin of American individualism, this hypothesis can be most powerfully tested in a region that is embedded in a broader culture of interdependence and yet has undergone a recent history of such settlement. The authors therefore examined residents of Japan's northern island (Hokkaido). Hokkaido was extensively settled by ethnic Japanese beginning in the 1870s and for several decades thereafter. Many of the current residents of Hokkaido are the descendents of the original settlers from this period. As predicted, Japanese socialized and/or immersed in Hokkaido were nearly as likely as European Americans in North America to associate happiness with personal achievement (Study 1), to show a personal dissonance effect wherein self-justification is motivated by a threat to personal self-images (Study 2), and to commit a dispositional bias in causal attribution (Study 3). In contrast, these marker effects of independent agency were largely absent for non-Hokkaido residents in Japan. Implications for theories of cultural change and persistence are discussed.     

Random fluctuations of response rate

A simple model for fluctuating interresponse times is developed and studied. It involves a mechanism that generates regularly spaced excitations, each of which can trigger off a response after a random delay. The excitations are not observable, but their periodicity is reflected in a regular patterning of responses. The probability distribution of the time between responses is derived and its properties are analyzed. Several limiting cases are also examined.This paper was completed while the writer was a visiting summer scientist at the Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Mass.     

In a no-win situation: The employment–health dilemma

Work and organizational psychology (WOP) research has to date mostly focused on people privileged to have the choice between several attractive job options and less on people who are restricted in their job choice (e.g., due to their qualification or personal contingencies) and have to choose from fewer and often less-than-optimal jobs. Often, the jobs available to the latter are characterized by precarious employment and hazardous working conditions which can put them in the difficult situation of having to choose between a health-threatening job and possible unemployment. Building on interdisciplinary literature, we propose the employment–health dilemma (E-H dilemma) as a framework for analyzing this intrapersonal conflict of having to choose between employment (incurring health threats) and health (incurring economic threats) and discuss potential antecedents and consequences of the E-H dilemma at the societal, organizational, and individual level. We outline the implications of the E-H dilemma and make a case for examining the full spectrum of job choice situations in WOP research. In doing so, we demonstrate what WOP can gain by embracing a more inclusive and multidisciplinary approach: uncovering processes in their entirety (e.g., job choice decisions of all people) and strengthening the role and legitimacy of WOP in society.