Substitutes for leadership in anaesthesia teams and their impact on leadership effectiveness

In this study we aim to increase our understanding of leadership in anaesthesia teams by investigating the relationship between substitutes for leadership, leadership behaviour, and team performance in situations with varying levels of routine and standardization. The present study relied on video recordings of 12 anaesthesia teams in a simulated setting with the occurrence of a nonroutine event. Clinical team performance was measured by the speed of adequate team reaction to this event. The leadership behaviours observed were coded either as content oriented (e.g., information transmission) or structuring (e.g., assigning tasks). Results showed that leadership behaviour changed depending upon the level of routine of a situation, the degree of standardization, and, to some extent, on the experience of team members. Leadership tends to be positively related to team performance during nonroutine and low standardized situations but negatively related to team performance in routine and highly standardized situations. Furthermore, leadership is only slightly related to team member experience. This study improves our understanding of influences of substitutes for leadership on successful leadership behaviour in anaesthesia teams. The findings also lead to suggestions for both further research and the enhancement of team leadership in critical care.     

The Distillation of “VISCI”: Towards a Better Identification of Suicidal Inmates

The “Viennese Instrument for Suicidality in Correctional Institutions” (VISCI) presented here is based on the results of a large case‐control study and on research on literature examining suicide prevention in general and in the prison population in particular. The aim of this study was to validate the properties of the VISCI to differentiate between suicides and nonsuicides. The sensitivity and specificity of the VISCI was tested in the files of 55 correctional suicides, and 110 controls. VISCI differentiated well between suicides and nonsuicides. The routine administration of the VISCI may help to direct the existing professional attention to inmates with the highest need.     

Following logical realism where it leads

Philosophical Studies - Logical realism is the view that there is logical structure in the world. I argue that, if logical realism is true, then we are deeply ignorant of that logical structure:...     

Screening for Specific Language Impairment in Preschool Children: Evaluating a Screening Procedure Including the Token Test

Specific language impairment (SLI) comprises impairments in receptive and/or expressive language. Aim of this study was to evaluate a screening for SLI. 61 children with SLI (SLI-children, age-range 4–6 years) and 61 matched typically developing controls were tested for receptive language ability (Token Test—TT) and for intelligence (Wechsler Preschool-and-Primary-Scale-of-Intelligence—WPPSI). Group differences were analyzed using t tests, as well as direct and stepwise discriminant analyses. The predictive value of the WPPSI with respect to TT performance was analyzed using regression analyses. SLI-children performed significantly worse on both TT and WPPSI (\(p \le .0001\)). The TT alone yielded an overall classification rate of 79%, the TT and the WPPSI together yielded an overall classification rate of 80%. TT performance was significantly predicted by verbal intelligence in SLI-children and nonverbal intelligence in controls whilst WPPSI subtest arithmetic was predictive in both groups. Without further research, the Token Test cannot be seen as a valid and sufficient tool for the screening of SLI in preschool children but rather as a tool for the assessment of more general intellectual capacities. SLI-children at this age already show impairments typically associated with SLI which indicates the necessity of early developmental support or training. Token Test performance is possibly an indicator for a more general developmental factor rather than an exclusive indicator for language difficulties.     

A Tale of Two Standards: An Examination of Young Adults�� Endorsement of Gendered and Ageist Sexual Double Standards

Current North American sexual standards allow women to be sexual within committed relationships but may still restrict women??s sexuality to a greater extent than men??s. We investigated whether these gender double standards interact with an age double standard that describes the elderly as less sexual than the young, to create particularly limiting sexual standards for older women. 305 Canadian undergraduates completed a 2 (target age) × 2 (target gender) × 2 (participant gender) within-subjects study measuring perceptions of younger (own age) and older (over 65 years old) men??s and women??s interest in traditional sex (e.g., cuddling, intercourse with main partner) and experimental sex (e.g., extra-relationship sex, viewing erotic materials). ANCOVAs controlling for ageist and sexist beliefs revealed the ageist double standard; the elderly were perceived to be less interested in sex overall than the young. There was also a sexual double standard; women were perceived to be more interested in traditional sex than men, and men more interested in experimental sex than women. For traditional sex, women perceived younger targets as more interested than the older targets, and women targets as more interested than men. For experimental sex, a three-way interaction showed the interplay between the sexual and ageist double standards. Elderly female targets were perceived as least interested, and young male targets as most interested. Results reinforce that the current sexual standards distinguish between sex for intimacy and sex for other reasons (e.g., pleasure) and that the standards are particularly restrictive for older women.     

Prospects behind bars: Analyzing decisions under risk in a prison population

Criminal activity often involves considerable risks. It is therefore not surprising that criminals have been speculated to differ from noncriminals in risk attitude. Yet, few data exist to support this assumption. Moreover, the psychological underpinnings of differences in risk attitude are currently little understood. We presented prisoners and controls with sets of risky decision tasks and modeled their responses using cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The two groups showed several differences. Prisoners were more risk seeking than nonprisoners in lotteries involving losses, but they were less risk seeking in lotteries involving high-probability gains. Bestfitting CPT parameters indicated a reduced sensitivity to outcomes, for both gains and losses, and a stronger loss aversion among prisoners. In addition, prisoners showed a diminished sensitivity to the probability of gains. Our results contribute to a better understanding of prisoners’ risk attitudes and the underlying mechanisms that distinguish prisoners from nonprisoners and may thus help improve interventions designed to prevent crime.     

The Reduced and Enhanced Impact of Shared Features on Individual Brand Evaluations

In 3 studies, consumers received information about products that had either positive or negative features in common. When they evaluated the products shortly afterward, the common features had little influence on their evaluations, and this was true regardless of whether they had made a preference rating, a similarity rating, or no rating at all before reporting these evaluations. In all cases, consumers apparently used one of the brands spontaneously as a standard of comparison for the other and, in doing so, discounted their common features. When their evaluation was delayed, however, shared features had greater impact. Two factors appear to be operating in the latter conditions. First, the alternative brand is less accessible and, therefore, is less likely to be used as a standard of comparison. Second, shared features are easier to recall than unique features, so they have a disproportional influence for this reason.