Illness representations and psychological distress in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery

Preoperative psychological distress has been shown to predict both postoperative distress and subsequent cardiac morbidity in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. This study assessed the associations between illness perceptions and psychological well-being among 56 patients awaiting CABG surgery using the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R). Patient perceptions of their illness as chronic were associated with reduced beliefs in both personal control over illness and efficacy of treatment, and increased perceived consequences of illness in terms of life functioning. In addition, psychological distress regarding illness was significantly correlated with psychological distress in general. Reduced illness coherence was also associated with increased psychological distress. Preoperative psycho-education aimed at helping patients better understand their illness, treatment, and its effects may reduce psychological distress, and perhaps improve future well-being as a result.     

The Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale: Turkish Validation and Relationship to Academic Major

One common self-assessment of creativity is the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS). This article provides support for a Turkish translation of the instrument, offering exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to determine whether the factors were consistent across cultures. The participants consisted of two groups. The first group consisted of 1,260 undergraduate students (912 females, 348 males) at a public university in Turkey and was utilized for the principal axis factoring analysis. Horn's parallel analysis, a robust statistical technique, was employed to determine the number of factors to be extracted from a scale. The second group consisted of 1,215 participants (885 females and 330 males) who were utilized for confirmatory factor analysis. Results supported a nine-factor solution as a better fit for this sample than the five-solution originally used by Kaufman. Of the original five factors, four factors were divided into two sub-factors, which were distinct although moderately correlated. Finally, we determined the relationship between K-DOCS factors and college major. We also found good evidence for the construct, discriminant, and convergent validity of the scale. Relationships between K-DOCS factors and college major were largely consistent with predictions, providing additional evidence for the construct validity of the scale.     

Smoking Behaviors and Viewpoints of Smoking by Erciyes University,Faculty of Theology Students

Journal of Religion and Health - Religious beliefs and attitudes contribute to a healthy life by helping individuals avoiding negative behaviors that can affect health. In this respect, clergymen...     

Differential context effects between sweet tastes and smells

"Sweet" smells and tastes are perceptually similar, and physiological data indicate some commonality of central processing. However, sweet tastes and sweet smells do not provide interchangeable contexts in psychophysical experiments. The same sweet tastes are perceived as less intense when stronger sweet tastes are present, and they are perceived as more intense when weaker sweet tastes are present, as with sweet smells. However, complementary sets of sweet tastes and smells (e.g., weak sweet tastes, strong sweet smells) do not eliminate these differential context effects (DCEs). The present experiments examined, first, whether DCEs between sweet tastes and smells arise because of differences between odors and tastes in the way that sweetness scales with intensity as concentration rises, and, second, whether DCEs may be smaller for sweet tastes and smells, when contrasted with sweet tastes and nonsweet smells. The findings were clear: DCEs were consistently present, suggesting they are independent of perceptual similarity. These results imply that DCEs are probably not psychological in origin or centrally based; rather, they may have a subcortical locus.     

Left-handed wrestlers are more successful

It has been reported that there is a high proportion of left-handers among top athletes in different sports. In this study, the goal was to examine the rate of left-handedness in the top wrestlers at the world championships for achievement by left-handed wrestlers. The rate of left-handedness was higher in wrestlers with medal honors compared to wrestlers without medals for both men and women. The winning numbers and match degrees were higher in the left-handed wrestlers than in both right- and mixed-handed wrestlers among top international wrestlers.     

Akrasia and conflict in the Nicomachean Ethics

In Nicomachean Ethics VII, Aristotle offers an account of akrasia that purports to salvage the kernel of truth in the Socratic paradox that people act against what is best only through ignorance. Despite Aristotle’s apparent confidence in having identified the sense in which Socrates was right about akrasia, we are left puzzling over Aristotle’s own account, and the extent to which he agrees with Socrates. The most fundamental interpretive question concerns the sense in which Aristotle takes the akratic to be ignorant. The received view in the literature has been the intellectualist interpretation, which takes akratic agents to be so ignorant of the wrongness of what they do as to be unaware of it. In recent decades, many scholars have identified serious problems in this interpretation and have moved towards the non-intellectualist reading, the strong version of which takes clearheaded akrasia to be possible. There is, however, a glaring shortage of discussion of the difficulties facing the strong non-intellectualist reading. In this paper, I present what I take to be the most salient reasons for rejecting strong non-intellectualism, and argue that Aristotle’s text supports a moderate non-intellectualism, according to which clearheaded akrasia is impossible.     

Basing Science Ethics on Respect for Human Dignity

A “no ethics” principle has long been prevalent in science and has demotivated deliberation on scientific ethics. This paper argues the following: (1) An understanding of a scientific “ethos” based on actual “value preferences” and “value repugnances” prevalent in the scientific community permits and demands critical accounts of the “no ethics” principle in science. (2) The roots of this principle may be traced to a repugnance of human dignity, which was instilled at a historical breaking point in the interrelation between science and ethics. This breaking point involved granting science the exclusive mandate to pass judgment on the life worth living. (3) By contrast, respect for human dignity, in its Kantian definition as “the absolute inner worth of being human,” should be adopted as the basis to ground science ethics. (4) The pathway from this foundation to the articulation of an ethical duty specific to scientific practice, i.e., respect for objective truth, is charted by Karl Popper’s discussion of the ethical principles that form the basis of science. This also permits an integrated account of the “external” and “internal” ethical problems in science. (5) Principles of the respect for human dignity and the respect for objective truth are also safeguards of epistemic integrity. Plain defiance of human dignity by genetic determinism has compromised integrity of claims to knowledge in behavioral genetics and other behavioral sciences. Disregard of the ethical principles that form the basis of science threatens epistemic integrity.     

Lesion-symptom mapping of language impairments in people with brain tumours: The influence of linguistic stimuli

People with tumours in specific brain sites might face difficulties in tasks with different linguistic material. Previous lesion-symptom mapping studies (VLSM) demonstrated that people with tumours in posterior temporal regions have more severe linguistic impairments. However, to the best of our knowledge, preoperative performance and lesion location on tasks with different linguistic stimuli have not been examined. In the present study, we performed VLSM on 52 people with left gliomas to examine whether tumour distribution differs depending on the tasks of the Aachen Aphasia Test. The VLSM analysis revealed that single-word production (e.g. object naming) was associated with the inferior parietal lobe and that compound and sentence production were additionally associated with posterior temporal gyri. Word repetition was affected in people with tumours in inferior parietal areas, whereas sentence repetition was the only task to be associated with frontal regions. Subcortically, word and sentence production were found to be affected in people with tumours reaching the arcuate fasciculus, and compound production was primarily associated with tumours affecting the inferior longitudinal and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Our work shows that tasks with linguistic stimuli other than single-word naming (e.g. compound and sentence production) relate to additional cortical and subcortical brain areas. At a clinical level, we show that tasks that target the same processes (e.g. repetition) can have different neural correlates depending on the linguistic stimuli used. Also, we highlight the importance of left temporoparietal areas.     

Culture and Social Structure: Identity in Turkey

Using a historical and biographical perspective, this paper examines the structural elements and cultural signs of contemporary social events and problems in Turkey in order to understand their basic features. Hermeneutics is used in order to understand contemporary Turkey by way of its historical background and prominent biographies. Two basic epic texts were interpreted using Gadamarian hermeneutics with the help of key concepts such as gaza¹ and gaza cult. Semiotics is used to examine key concepts as binary opposites. Dialectics is used to understand these concepts as the unity of binary opposites coexisting at the same time and place. It is concluded that the contemporary cultural values and biographies explored are linked to their historical past and Islam seems to be more influential on hybrid identities than on ethnic status.     

Self‐Regulation: Relations with Theory of Mind and Social Behaviour

It is argued that self‐regulation skill is necessary both for displaying constructive behaviour and for controlling negative social behaviour, and self‐regulation might affect social behaviours by increasing the ability to understand others' minds. In this research, in order to examine different aspects of self‐regulation and their similarities and differences in terms of their relations with other constructs, we focused on both effortful control and executive function and investigated their concurrent associations with socially competent and aggressive behaviours and theory of mind (ToM). The participants were 212 preschool children in Turkey. We assessed executive functions with behavioural measures and effortful control with mother reports. We used six tasks for comprehensive assessment of mental state understanding. Children's social competency and aggressive behaviour were assessed with teacher reports. Structural equation modelling results showed that when age and receptive language were controlled, ToM was significantly associated with social competence but not aggressive behaviour. Both effortful control and executive functions were significantly related to social competency and ToM; the pathways from each self‐regulation skill were similar in strength. ToM was linked with social competence, but it did not have a mediating role in the relations of self‐regulation with social competence. The findings highlighted the importance of self‐regulation for socio‐cognitive and social development in the preschool years. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.