A preliminary study of an online pain management programme for patients with ankylosing spondylitis

This study was a preliminary attempt to develop and examine an online pain management programme incorporating mindfulness‐informed exercises (i.e. breathing and body scanning exercises) and CBT elements for ankylosing spondylitis patients. Thirty patients diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis participated in a five‐week online pain management programme, which was delivered primarily through a website. The materials covered by the website included breathing and body scanning exercises, mindful walking exercise, positive thinking and management of dysfunctional thinking. Each participant received instructions and reminders from a counselling psychologist through electronic communications each week. They completed the Brief Pain Inventory, Ryff's Psychological Well‐being Scale, Pain Self‐Efficacy Questionnaire, Pain Catastrophizing Scale and Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale‐Revised before and after the treatment programme. In addition, four face‐to‐face focus groups were conducted to yield supplementary qualitative findings. The overall results indicate that this online pain management programme can improve sleep quality and reduce pain interference and catastrophic responses to pain in ankylosing spondylitis patients, albeit being not very effective for mitigating the intensity of pain. Moreover, male and female patients can benefit equally from the online programme. Findings from the focus groups revealed some challenges faced by local patients when practising mindfulness‐informed exercises. Some solutions to those challenges were put forward in accordance with patients’ feedback.     

Information seeking behavior on Facebook: The role of censorship endorsement and personality

Current Psychology - Facebook started as a platform intended for connecting people but it has developed into a rich information source. Based on the uses-and-gratification approach, we examined to...     

Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy

With the recent revival of moral intuitionism, the work of W. D. Ross has grown in stature. But if we look at some recent well-regarded histories, anthologies and companions of analytic philosophy, Ross is noticeably absent. This discrepancy of assessments raises the question of Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy. Hans-Johann Glock has recently claimed that Ross is not an analytic philosopher at all, but is instead a ‘traditional philosopher’. In this article, I will identify several undeniable features of analytic philosophy that Ross’s work bears: a focus on linguistic analysis, great respect for pre-theoretical thoughts, the conviction that philosophy is a collaborative, piecemeal enterprise and so on. Such an investigation, I claim, reveals two historically significant results: Ross was the first ethicist to fully draw from commonsense beliefs about morality in light of characteristic analytic considerations to secure his theory. Two, concerning the matter of whether the notions ‘right’ and ‘good’ are reducible to other notions, Ross appears to have been right: ‘right’ and ‘good’ are irreducible notions. The classical analytic metaethicists, who based their entire research programme on the promise of finding suitable reductive semantic analyses of ‘right’ and ‘good’, were wrong. These results, I believe, suffice to secure W. D. Ross a high place in the history of analytic philosophy.     

Wandering eyes: Eye movements during mind wandering in video lectures

Video lectures are increasingly prevalent, but they present challenges to learners. Students' minds often wander, yet we know little about how mind wandering affects attention during video lectures. This paper presents two studies that examined eye movement patterns of mind wandering during video lectures. In the studies, mind wandering reports were collected by either self-caught reports or thought probes. Results were similar across the studies: mind wandering was associated with an increased allocation of fixations to the instructor's image. For fixations on the slides, the average duration increased but the dispersion decreased. Moreover, preliminary evidence suggested that fixation duration and dispersion can diminish soon after self-caught reports of mind wandering. Overall, these findings help advance our understanding of how learners' attention is affected during mind wandering and may facilitate efforts in objectively identifying mind wandering. Future research is needed to determine if these findings can extend to other instructional formats.     

社会主义核心价值体系的心理建设思路探析

本文提出了社会主义核心价值体系的心理建设思路,指出社会主义核心价值体系在促进心理和谐中具有认知主导、情绪调控、情感培育、意志锤炼、人格塑造的功能,并探讨了运用社会主义核心价值体系创新思想政治教育、创新心理健康教育与心理咨询的内容与方法、完善人文关怀和心理疏导机制及优化客观环境以促进心理和谐的途径.     

African Philosophy of Education: The Price of Unchallengeability

In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the constitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the revisioned, ‘typically African’ philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it claims to replace. More substantially still (and this is a feature that has wider ramifications for philosophy of education internationally), African Philosophy of Education, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly ‘African’, runs the risk of insulating itself not only from interaction with the wider (i.e. non-African) world but also from any critical interrogation.

Predictors of Cancer Worry in Unaffected Women from High Risk Breast Cancer Families: Risk Perception is not the Primary Issue

Some women at increased familial risk of breast cancer experience elevated levels of cancer-specific worry, which can possibly act as a barrier to screening, and may be a significant factor in decisions regarding risk-reducing surgery. The aim of this study was to comprehensively examine predictors of cancer-specific worry in high risk women and to test a model which proposes that perceived breast cancer risk mediates the impact of other factors on worry. 1,437 unaffected women from high risk breast cancer families completed questionnaires and interviews. Path analysis was used to test the model of potential predictors of cancer worry, including familial, personal and psychological variables, mediated via perceived cancer risk. Levels of cancer-specific worry were generally low despite an average perceived risk of 50.3%. The goodness-of-fit of the proposed model was poor, explaining only 9% of the variance for perceived risk and 10% of the variance for cancer specific worry. An alternative model of a direct relationship between all of the predictor variables and cancer worry, explained 24% of the variation in cancer worry. General anxiety, perceived risk, the stressful impact of recent cancer related events, a relative risk greater than 10, being closer in age to the youngest breast cancer diagnosis in family, and knowledge of personal mutation status, all independently contributed to cancer worry. Addressing general affective responses, experiences of recent cancer related events, in addition to education about personal risk, should be considered in counselling women with elevated cancer worry. Risk perception appears to act independently of other factors in its formulation and impact on cancer worry. Further research on the way in which women come to perceive their risk is indicated. The kConFab Psychosocial Group are (in alphabetical order of institution): Brain and Mind Institute, University of Sydney, Australia (I Hickie) Department of Haematology and Medical Oncology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia (K-A Phillips) Department of Medical Oncology, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Australia (B Bennett, B Meiser, K Tucker) Department of Oncology, St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, Australia (S-A MaLachlan) Department of Psychological Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, Australia (C Tennant); Medical Psychology Research Unit, University of Sydney, Australia (P Butow, M Price).     

Why some groups just feel better: the regulatory fit of group power

The current research applied the regulatory fit hypothesis (E. T. Higgins, 2000) to the evaluation of groups, suggesting that individuals' group appraisal depends on how well the groups fit their regulatory needs. Specifically, it was predicted that higher power groups would fit and be more valued by those individuals with a promotion focus because these groups provide a better opportunity to sustain nurturance and achievement needs. Alternatively, lower power groups were predicted to fit and be more valued by those individuals with a prevention focus because these groups necessitate (and thus sustain) a focus on safety and security. Five studies found support for these predictions by both assessing and manipulating regulatory focus and group power and by using explicit and implicit measures of group attraction. Moreover, these regulatory fit effects occurred specifically for group power and not for general differences in group status.     

Don't ignore the other half: the impact of ingroup identification on implicit measures of prejudice

Recently several implicit measures of prejudice have been developed. Prejudice indices based on these measures are computed from response differences to positive and negative targets resulting from outgroup compared to ingroup stimuli. Up to now the focus of research involving these measures has mainly been on attitudes and relations to outgroups (i.e. negative attitudes towards the outgroup). It is suggested here that implicit measures of prejudice are also influenced by one's relation towards the ingroup (i.e. ingroup identification), because they involve ingroup as well as outgroup stimuli. A correlational study and an experiment were conducted that supported this prediction. Implications for the application of implicit measures are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.