Spirituality in Occupational Therapy: Do We Practice What We Teach?

This mixed-method study examined the responses of 97 occupational therapists on the subject of spirituality in occupational therapy practice. The inclusion of spirituality into the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (2008) implies that clinicians address spirituality as a component of client-centered practice. This research revealed a gap between education, theory, and practice as evidenced in the quantitative and qualitative data. Although occupational therapy is intended to be holistic, therapists require a more complete understanding of what spirituality is and what the role of the occupational therapist is when addressing spirituality in evaluation or treatment. The discussion of this research provides information for future occupational therapy educators and educational programs as they seek to incorporate the construct of spirituality into curricula.     

Religiosity and Exposure to Users in Explaining Illicit Drug Use among Emerging Adults

Religiosity is a protective factor against illicit drug use, but further investigation is needed to delineate which components of religiosity are protective against use. A racially diverse sample (N = 962) was surveyed about religiosity, exposure to users, and recent use of marijuana, powder cocaine, ecstasy, and nonmedical use of opioids and amphetamine. Results suggest that identifying as Agnostic increased odds of use for each of the five drugs; however, this effect disappeared when controlling for religious importance and attendance. High levels of religious attendance were protective against recent use of marijuana and cocaine, but protective effects diminished when controlling for exposure to users, which was a robust predictor of use of every drug. Religion is a protective mechanism against drug use, but this effect may diminish in light of exposure to users. Alternative preventative methods need to be directed toward individuals who are not religious or are highly exposed to users.     

She Looks Sad,But He Looks Mad: The Effects of Age,Gender, and Ambiguity on Emotion Perception

This study investigated how target sex, target age, and expressive ambiguity influence emotion perception. Undergraduate participants (N = 192) watched morphed video clips of eight child and eight adult facial expressions shifting from neutral to either sadness or anger. Participants were asked to stop the video clip when they first saw an emotion appear (perceptual sensitivity) and were asked to identify the emotion that they saw (accuracy). Results indicate that female participants identified sad expressions sooner in female targets than in male targets. Participants were also more accurate identifying angry facial expressions by male children than by female children. Findings are discussed in terms of the effects of ambiguity, gender, and age on the perception of emotional expressions.     

Rotating With Rotated Text: A Natural Behavior Approach to Investigating Cognitive Offloading

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy.     

A Clinical Intervention in Chronic Pain and Insomnia with a Combined Model of Treatment: A Test of Concept

Co-occurring chronic pain and insomnia are common in a clinical setting. Cognitive–behavioral theoretical (CBT) frameworks exist for both conditions independently. The purpose of this study was to address the problem of co-occurring chronic pain and insomnia with an integrated CBT model based on empirical support. One-hundred eleven individuals (age range 21–65 years) meeting the general criteria for chronic pain and insomnia were included in this study. Participants completed a demographic form, the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep—16-item version, Insomnia Severity Index, Sleep Hygiene Index, Sleep Associated Monitoring Index, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, Pain Disability Questionnaire, Modified Somatic Perceptions Questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Significant positive bivariate relationships were observed for pain catastrophizing (PC) and dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep (DBAS), as well as somatic awareness and sleep-associated monitoring. Two backward stepwise regression models were utilized to determine a model for predicting insomnia severity and pain disability respectively using a combination of sleep and pain-associated measures. Insomnia severity was predicted by DBAS, PC, and somatic awareness. Pain disability was predicted by PC, DBAS, depression, and social support. Maladaptive thought patterns related to pain and insomnia and associated features appear to have a synergistic effect on both insomnia severity and pain disability and support a combined cognitive–behavioral model.     

Differences in Emotional Labor Across Cultures: A Comparison of Chinese and U.S. Service Workers

Purpose

In the global economy, the need for understanding cross-cultural differences and the customer service-related processes involved in emotional labor is evident. The current study attempts to examine this issue by developing and testing hypotheses pertaining to cross-cultural differences between U.S. and Chinese service workers on the levels of display rule perceptions, emotion regulation, and burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization) as well as the relationships among these variables.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data was collected from service workers in the U.S. (n = 280) and China (n = 231). We tested for measurement differences, mean differences, and differences in the relationships among emotional labor variables between the two samples using a variety of analyses.

Findings

It was found that the relatively robust sequence of display rules to surface acting to burnout was observed in a U.S. sample but was not observed in a Chinese sample, with some relationships being significantly weaker in the Chinese sample (e.g., surface acting to burnout dimensions) and others exhibiting relationships with the opposite sign (e.g., display rules were negatively related to surface acting in the Chinese sample).

Implications

The results of this study suggest that many of the relationships among emotional labor variables vary as a function of the cultural context under consideration.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to directly compare emotional labor across samples from Eastern and Western cultures. Additionally, this study begins to answer questions concerning why models of emotional labor generated in a Western culture may not apply in other cultures.     

Association and dissociation between detection and discrimination of objects of expertise: Evidence from visual search

Expertise in face recognition is characterized by high proficiency in distinguishing between individual faces. However, faces also enjoy an advantage at the early stage of basic-level detection, as demonstrated by efficient visual search for faces among nonface objects. In the present study, we asked (1) whether the face advantage in detection is a unique signature of face expertise, or whether it generalizes to other objects of expertise, and (2) whether expertise in face detection is intrinsically linked to expertise in face individuation. We compared how groups with varying degrees of object and face expertise (typical adults, developmental prosopagnosics [DP], and car experts) search for objects within and outside their domains of expertise (faces, cars, airplanes, and butterflies) among a variable set of object distractors. Across all three groups, search efficiency (indexed by reaction time slopes) was higher for faces and airplanes than for cars and butterflies. Notably, the search slope for car targets was considerably shallower in the car experts than in nonexperts. Although the mean face slope was slightly steeper among the DPs than in the other two groups, most of the DPs’ search slopes were well within the normative range. This pattern of results suggests that expertise in object detection is indeed associated with expertise at the subordinate level, that it is not specific to faces, and that the two types of expertise are distinct facilities. We discuss the potential role of experience in bridging between low-level discriminative features and high-level naturalistic categories.