A Comprehensive Decision Approach for Rubber Tree Planting Management in Africa

The main objective of this study is to settle a rigorous field of decision analysis for rubber tree clones selection. Nowadays, there does not exist any process based upon a rigorous method to select the best clone to be plant in order to get the highest return on investment. The only known selection method is to use the experience of different protagonists acting in the plantation. So, we need a tool that takes into account very important criteria in order to achieve the main objective. This goal is achieved by using multicriterion analysis methods to the clone selection. The ranking procedure uses Elimination and Choice Expressing the Reality (ELECTRE III). For each criterion, indifference and preference thresholds are determined after establishing the relative importance of each criterion including rubber tapping, cumulative production during 15 years, cumulative production between 15 and 25 years, wind resistance, disease resistance, physiological resistance, grafting and quality of the rubber. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional reactions to scandals: When does moral character make a difference?

A scandal can evoke public outrage when it is widely publicized and involves an individual who is perceived to have a high level of cultural representativeness. Two experiments showed that when the scandalous target's moral character was highlighted, emotional responses towards the target were least negative when the scandal was widely circulated and when the target was seen as a representative of his culture. These results suggest that when a cultural symbol is implicated in a widely‐circulated scandal, the negative emotions directed towards the scandalous individual can be alleviated when the public remains confident in his or her commitment to morality.     

Neural and behavioral effects of interference resolution in depression and rumination

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) often ruminate about their depression and their life situations, impairing their concentration and performance on daily tasks. We examined whether rumination might be due to a deficit in the ability to expel negative information from short-term memory (STM), and fMRI was used to examine the neural structures involved in this ability. MDD and healthy control (HC) participants were tested using a directed-forgetting procedure in a short-term item recognition task. As predicted, MDD participants had more difficulty than did HCs in expelling negative, but not positive, words from STM. Overall, the neural networks involved in directed forgetting were similar for both groups, but the MDDs exhibited more spatial variability in activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region critical for inhibiting irrelevant information), which may contribute to their relative inability to inhibit negative information.     

Awakening: Career Opportunities After the Storm

Immediately following natural disasters, basic needs are provided; however, the long‐term needs of individuals are neglected. The narrative approach (Brott, 2001; Cochran, 1997) to career counseling is offered as a method to assist survivors of natural disasters to tell their story and create new meaning related to their career paths.     

Embodied Cultural Cognition: Situating the Study of Embodied Cognition in Socio‐Cultural Contexts

Embodiment research has demonstrated that cognition is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment and that abstract concepts are tied to the body’s sensory and motor systems. Building upon this embodiment perspective and advancing our understanding, we discuss the extension of embodied cultural cognition. We propose that some associations between bodily experiences and abstract concepts are not randomly formed; rather, the development of such associations is situated in a socio‐cultural context, informed by cultural imperatives, values, and habits. We draw evidence supporting this view of embodied cultural cognition in body–mind linkages manifested in construal of emotions, time perception, person perception, social power, and moral reasoning. To further extend this research avenue that synthesizes the studies of embodied cognition and culture, we also suggest potential future research directions inspired by this view. This embodied cultural cognition account is useful in understanding and organizing accumulating discoveries of cultural variations in embodiments; it also highlights the social situatedness of embodied cognition and is, therefore, highly compatible with theorizing and research in social and cultural psychology.     

The role of encoding strategies in the verbal memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

Background. Verbal learning and memory is often compromised in patients with schizophrenia who prefer encoding words in order of their presentation (serial clustering) rather than using semantic categories (semantic clustering). Method. One hundred and four in‐patients with schizophrenia were assessed twice with the California Verbal Learning Test. Results. Patients showed significantly less semantic than serial clustering at both assessment times. Usage of encoding strategies were not stable over time. An increase in semantic clustering improved recall and recognition performance. Conclusions. Patients with schizophrenia should be taught to use the more effective encoding strategy of semantic clustering in order to improve their memory performance.     

Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Book reviews

Abstract

Boff, K. R., Kaufmann, L., &; Thomas, J. P. (Eds) (1986). Handbook of perception and human performance, Vols 1 and 2. Chichester: John Wiley. ISBN 0-471-88544-4 and 0-471-82957-9. £85.00 and £77.50.

Garnham, A. (1988). Artificial intelligence: An introduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pp. 277. ISBN 0-7102-1416-2. £8.95.     

Posture recognition in Alzheimer's disease

BACKGROUND: Apraxia is neurologically induced deficit in the ability perform purposeful skilled movements. One of the most common forms is ideomotor apraxia (IMA) where spatial and temporal production errors are most prevalent. IMA can be associated Alzheimer's disease (AD), even early in its course, but is often not identified possibly because the evaluation of IMA by inexperienced judges using performance tests is unreliable. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to learn if the Postural Knowledge Test (PKT), a praxis discrimination test that assesses knowledge of transitive (PKT-T subtest) and intransitive (PKT-I subtest) postures and does not require extensive training, is as sensitive and specific as the praxis performance tests. METHODS: We studied 15 subjects with probable AD as well as 18 age-matched controls by having them perform transitive and intransitive gestures to command and imitation, as well as having them discriminate between correct and incorrect transitive and intransitive postures. RESULTS: Overall on all tests, the control subjects performed better than those with AD. In addition all subjects had more trouble with transitive than intransitive gestures. Using a stepwise discriminative analysis, 81.8% of the subjects could be classified according to Group (94.4% of Controls, 66.7% of AD subjects). In this analysis, the PKT-T (transitive posture subtest) was the only measure that contributed to the discrimination of subjects. CONCLUSION: We found that having subjects select the correct transitive hand postures in this "booklet test" was more sensitive than grading their praxis performances even when using judges with extensive training. This suggests that this discrimination test might be an excellent means for diagnosing and screening patients for AD. The reason why recognition of transitive postures is relatively more difficult for our AD subjects is not known. Two possibilities are that the representations for intransitive movements are stronger than those for transitive movements, and hence, more resistant to degradation, or that intransitive acts are stored in parts of the brain not affected by AD.     

Parental Preference for Sex of Newborn as Reflected in Positive Affect in Birth Announcements

Content analysis of birth announcements was used as a method to investigate parental preference for the sex of newborns in Canada. The expression of positive affect (happiness and pride) in birth announcements was examined to determine whether parents express these emotions differently as a function of the sex of newborn. The findings suggest that parents express relatively more pride at the birth of boys than girls, whereas the opposite results were found for happiness. Parents seem unconsciously to categorize boys and girls into two distinct motivational systems: status and attachment, which are related to pride and happiness, respectively. This distinction may influence parents perception of their childs worth and their subsequent investment in their childs development.