‘You're the doctor,Doctor!’: is social constructionism a helpful stance in general practice consultations?

This paper considers the advantages and limitations of using a social constructionist stance in general practice, and is illustrated with two case examples. An approach is suggested for clinical practice using social constructionism and biomedical knowledge dialectically, each as a commentary on the limitations of the other.     

Stress and work performance: The role of trait anxiety

Employees high in Trait Anxiety (TA) were found to exert greater work effort than those low in TA, which resulted in better sales performance. There was no relation between TA and work efficiency, measured by sales performance relative to work effort. Employees high in TA also reported greater levels of stress and more adverse effects of work on non-work relationships. Using multiple regression, both stress and interference with relationships were found to be better predicted by TA than work effort. The results are discussed in terms of laboratory-based theories about relations between TA and efficiency and intervention strategies for managing stress at work.     

Effects of diagnostic classification systems on clinical hypothesis-generation

In this study it was determined whether (a) classification as opposed to absence of classification has an effect on the quality of clinical hypotheses (b) the DSM-III-R and the CBCL have a different effect on the quality of clinical hypotheses, and (c) the potential difference between the DSM-III-R and the CBCL is moderated by the different number of syndromes identified by these systems. To investigate these questions, an experiment was conducted in which 86 clinicians generated hypotheses for six cases. The clinicians were divided into a DSM-III-R, a CBCL, and a control group. Of the six cases, two were classified by both classification systems as one syndrome, two were classified as one syndrome by the DSM-III-R but as two syndromes by the CBCL, and two were classified as two syndromes by the DSM-III-R but as one syndrome by the CBCL. The quality of the hypotheses was determined by means of four dependent variables selected from an overview of qualitative criteria: explanatory value, redundancy, possibility of operationalization, and specificity. No differences between the CBCL and the control groups were found. The DSM group performed better than the control group regarding explanatory value and redundancy. The DSM-III-R group also scored better than the CBCL group regarding explanatory value, particularly when the number of identified syndromes was two for the CBCL and one for the DSM-III-R.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Comparison of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction in teaching science vocabulary words to high school students with mild disabilities

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction during daily probe sessions in teaching science vocabulary words. The teacher presented the vocabulary word definitions as instructive feedback during training sessions. Five 16–17 year old students with disabilities participated in an adapted alternating treatments design that evaluated the simultaneous prompting strategy, error correction and instructive feedback. Instruction occurred in a group format using choral responding. The results indicate that (a) all students learned to read the vocabulary words, (b) simultaneous prompting with error correction was slightly more efficient for three of the five subjects in learning the targeted words, and four of the five students made fewer errors in this condition, (c) all students preferred simultaneous prompting with error correction over simultaneous prompting without error correction, (d) words mastered in both conditions generalized equally, (e) there were minimal differences between the two conditions in the collected maintenance data, and (e) students experienced only minimal improvement in their ability to define vocabulary words (instructive feedback). Discussion focuses on issues for further research and implications for instructional practice with simultaneous prompting, error correction and instructive feedback.     

Health, fortune, and moral authority in medicine.

The Christian conviction about Divine Providence encourages a novel account of the moral content of health and authority in the health care context. While health can be understood as the disposition of a living body to be able to proceed in the world well, as a species of freedom it is informed by the particular projects and concerns that Christians hold deepest. This is due to the fact that health acquires content, and thus becomes desirable as a particular type of good, only in relation to judgments about the good life. Aquinas' reflections concerning the good of health and its partial slavery to fortune reveal a Christian past that dwelt on the intrinsic and instrumental good of health. A rich Christian tradition in which health as intrinsically good, a good of the body, is ordained to the interests of right Christian virtue. Each of these factors affects the character of the health to be pursued and the authority of the physician as determining the ends and means of medicine.     

The World-Wide Web as a medium for psychoacoustical demonstrations and experiments: Experience and results

The World-Wide Web provides an inviting opportunity to reach large numbers of people, both as an audience for psychoacoustical discussions and demonstrations and as subjects for psychoacoustical experiments. Such use of the Web poses a unique set of challenges. We present the methodologies used to prepare a multimedia primer in auditory perception at McGill University. As well as instructional material, this primer includes acoustical experiments conducted over the Web. We discuss the response and experiences with this site in general and in a particular class situation at Hanover College.     

Objects and attributes in divided attention: Surface and boundary systems

A series of experiments investigated concurrent discriminations of surface and nonsurface attributes, including color, brightness, texture, length, location, and motion. In all cases but one, results matched those previously reported: Interference occurred when two discriminations concerned different objects, but not when they concerned the same one. In the two-object case, interference was the same whether discriminations were similar (e.g., two surface discriminations) or different (e.g., one surface, one boundary). Such results support a model of visual attention in which separate visual subsystems are coordinated, converging to work on surface and boundary properties of the same selected object. A partial exception is color: For reasons that are unclear, color escapes twoobject interference except from other, concurrent surface discriminations     

The making of the group therapist: The role of experiential learning

The purpose of this paper is to review the necessary components of a comprehensive group therapy program. The balancing between the didactic and the experiential portions, and an analysis of the selection criteria, along with the rationale for a particular sequencing of elements in the curriculum, are discussed. A line between supervision and personal therapy is drawn. The author describes the milieu necessary for a successful training program to evolve and makes suggestions for improvements. The various experiential aspects of training are presented and critically evaluated. The training situation is examined from the point of view of the faculty, the trainee and the patients involved. The author marshalls evidence indicating that personal group psychotherapy in a patient group is the preferred form for most trainees for the experiential part of the program. The paper concludes that the sharing and cohesiveness of training philosophies and methods by the faculty is a prerequisite to the success of any training program.     

THE PHYSICS OF DAVID BOHM AND ITS RELEVANCE TO PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to analyze David Bohm's work in terms of physics, philosophy, and theology. First, I discuss the development of Bohm's thought since 1951. Then, using the methodology of Imre Lakatos, I evaluate the scientific status of his research program. Next, I explore the philosophical dimensions of Bohm's views in which realist and idealist, monist and dualist, contingent and determinist outlooks occur in creative tension. Finally, I suggest ways in which Bohm's ideas are relevant to theology through concepts of God and cosmos, beauty and purpose, grace and free will, church, self and evil.

The entire universe is basically a single, indivisible…but flexible and ever changing, unit (Bohm 1951, 140).