The lived experience of disability

In this paper I reflect upon my personal experience of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis in order to provide a phenomenological account of the human experience of disability. In particular, I argue that the phenomenological notion of lived body provides important insights into the profound disruptions of space and time that are an integral element of changed physical capacities such as loss of mobility. In addition, phenomenology discloses the emotional dimension of physical disorder. The lived body disruption engendered by loss of mobility includes a change in the character of surrounding space, an alteration in one's taken-for-granted awareness of (and interaction with) objects, the disruption of corporeal identity, a disturbance in one's relations with others, and a change in the character of temporal experience. The loss of upright posture is of particular significance since it not only concretely diminishes autonomy but affects the way one is treated by others. Such a change in posture is, therefore, particularly disruptive in the social world of everyday life. An understanding of the lived body disruption engendered by disability has important applications for the clinical context in devising effective therapies, as well as for the social arena in determining how best to resolve the various challenges posed by chronic disabling disorders.I should like to thank Frances Chaput Waksler for her helpful comments on my work.     

The Gradual Deterioration of Syntax and Semantics in a Patient with Progressive Aphasia

FM is a progressive aphasic patient whose language comprehension we studied over a 4-year period. We developed a variety of implicit and explicit tasks to chart progressive changes in the representation of linguistic knowledge (in particular, syntax and semantics) and the automatic and controlled processes which operate on that knowledge. The representation of FM's semantic knowledge remained essentially intact over the years, but she became increasingly impaired at combining the meanings of words. She also showed progressive impairments in the processes of syntactic combination. Thus, FM's disease resulted in a progressive inability to engage in those combinatorial processes necessary for the normal comprehension of a spoken utterance. This is not a selective deficit in the traditional sense of the term, since aspects of both syntax and semantics are implicated; but it is selective in the sense that other aspects of language comprehension remain intact.     

Social approval and helping

An experiment was conducted to examine the role played by social approval as an incentive for helping behavior. After filling out the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, 95 female undergraduates were asked to make donations to a research fund under either public or private conditions. The following predictions, derived from social learning theory, were supported: (a) more money is donated under public conditions than under private conditions (p < .01), (b) more money is donated by individuals high in need for approval than those low in need for approval (p < .05), and (c) the effect of need for approval on donating is greater under public conditions than under private conditions (p < .05).     

The dimensionality of movement trajectories and the degrees of freedom problem: A tutorial

A framework for investigating the degrees of freedom problem (how the large number of degrees of freedom (dfs) at micro-levels of analysis are compressed to the smaller number of dfs at the macro-level of behavior) is discussed. The discussion centers around the use of dynamical systems as models of coordinative structures. Dimensionality analysis, a technique for assessing the dfs of an observable behavior, is explained both intuitively and in detail. By measuring the dfs being produced by actors, we can constrain our dynamical models of how actors produce coordinated behavior.     

Teaching gender-related material: The effect of group sex composition on perceptions of a female instructor

This study investigated how group sex composition affects female and male students' perceptions of female instructors who teach in the area of counseling women. Three components of person perception were assessed: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The cognitive domain included evaluations of the instructor and the subject matter presented; the affective domain included emotional responses to the instructor and the subject matter; and the behavioral domain included actions in response to the instructor, operationalized as the number of questions asked by students. Students with some interest in a career in the helping professions viewed one of two videotapes either with a group of same-sex peers or in a group in which they were the only male or female. One tape described a gender-neutral topic (psychology and the law) and the other described a female gender-related topic (sex bias in counseling women). The same female instructor made both presentations. Students then completed the measures. As predicted, the sex composition of the student group affected person perception, especially in the affective and behavior domains. Recommendations are made for future research.This study was supported by a small grant from the University Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin. Appreciation is expressed to Sherry Fowler, Bob Haverstick, and Kathy Thomas for help with data collection and to Carolyn Bates and Ken Wilgus for coding the open-ended responses. A paper based on this research was presented at the meetings of the American Psychological Association, August 1987.     

Illness and the paradigm of lived body

This paper suggests that the paradigm of lived body (as it is developed in the works of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Zaner) provides important insights into the experience of illness. In particular it is noted that, as embodied persons, we experience illness primarily as a disruption of lived body rather than as a dysfunction of biological body. An account is given of the manner in which such fundamental features of embodiment as bodily intentionality, primary meaning, contextural organization, body image, gestural display, lived spatiality and temporality, are disrupted in illness causing a concurrent disorganization of the patient's self and world. The paradigm of lived body has important applications for medical practice. It provides a fuller account of illness than does the prevailing reductionist Cartesian paradigm of body, more directly addresses the existential predicament of illness, and orients the clinical focus around the personhood of the patient.     

Space-time behavior of single and bimanual rhythmical movements: data and limit cycle model

How do space and time relate in rhythmical tasks that require the limbs to move singly or together in various modes of coordination? And what kind of minimal theoretical model could account for the observed data? Earlier findings for human cyclical movements were consistent with a nonlinear, limit cycle oscillator model (Kelso, Holt, Rubin, & Kugler, 1981) although no detailed modeling was performed at that time. In the present study, kinematic data were sampled at 200 samples/second, and a detailed analysis of movement amplitude, frequency, peak velocity, and relative phase (for the bimanual modes, in phase and antiphase) was performed. As frequency was scaled from 1 to 6 Hz (in steps of 1 Hz) using a pacing metronome, amplitude dropped inversely and peak velocity increased. Within a frequency condition, the movement's amplitude scaled directly with its peak velocity. These diverse kinematic behaviors were modeled explicitly in terms of low-dimensional (nonlinear) dissipative dynamics, with linear stiffness as the only control parameter. Data and model are shown to compare favorably. The abstract, dynamical model offers a unified treatment of a number of fundamental aspects of movement coordination and control.     

TRAINING COUNSELING SKILLS: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL VALIDATION

A community development perspective suggests the value of using local resources to solve local problems. Two low-income staff of a community service center served as nonprofessional counselors after receiving a training program consisting of written instructions, practice, and performance feedback. The effects of the 40-hour training program were positive for both counseling and problem-solving skills. There was also evidence of generalization of counseling performance across clients, problems, and time. In addition, expert judges' ratings of performance were obtained as a measure of social validity. These findings suggest that the training procedures are effective in enhancing the counseling and problem-solving skills of low-income nonprofessionals.