Professional burnout and work stress among Israeli dental assistants

Professional burnout and work-related stress are known problems that have been the subject of in-depth examination among dentists. Nevertheless, these issues have not been widely studied among dental assistants. The aims of this study were threefold: to confirm the structure of a Work Stress Inventory (WSI) for Dental Assistants which was originally developed for Jordanian dental assistants (factor analysis); to evaluate work stress and burnout among Israeli dental assistants and to discover the factors predicting Israeli assistants’ burnout (regression analyses). The Maslach Burnout Inventory and the WSI were distributed by mail and in person. Varimax factor analysis revealed that the items which contribute to different aspects of work stress are similar among both Jordanian and Israeli populations. Among the 299 Israeli dental assistants who completed the questionnaires, the most stressful work-related factors were income, workload, and work hazards. Eighteen percent of the participants exhibited a high to very high level of burnout. Participants exhibited a moderate level of emotional exhaustion (EE), low level of depersonalization (DP), and high level of personal accomplishment (PA). Most WSI factors were found to correlate positively with EE and DP. Linear stepwise regression analyses revealed that the best predictor of EE was the dentist?assistant relationship, followed by workload, patient type, and salary. The best predictor of DP was patient suffering followed by dentist?assistant relationship, years of professional experience, and work hazards. Professional stress and burnout among dental assistants are important factors that can possibly affect the wellbeing of both dental personnel and their patients. Further studies are necessary to better understand these factors in addition to the effects of personal relationships on burnout among dentists and their assistants.     

What do we know about what we cannot remember? Accessing the semantic attributes of words that cannot be recalled

Two experiments examined access to the semantic attributes of words that participants failed to retrieve. The results indicated access to all 3 dimensions of the semantic differential--evaluation, potency, and activity, as revealed by attribute judgments and by the nature of the commission errors made. There was no evidence for superior access to the emotional-evaluative dimension, inconsistent with what may be expected from the claimed primacy of emotion. In comparison with complete recall, partial recall exhibited a slower rate of forgetting and a stronger tendency to elicit know rather than remember responses. The results were discussed in terms of the processes that lead to partial recall and in terms of the possibility that the affective primacy hypothesis does not apply to memory retrieval.     

People with Chronic Pain and Caregivers: Experiencing Loneliness and Coping with It

The present study examined the experience of loneliness and the ways of coping with its pain as utilized by people with chronic pain and caregivers. Specifically, a large sample (N = 827) recruited in two major pain clinics in Israel, completed the Loneliness and the Coping with loneliness questionnaires. Results indicated that patients had higher scores than caregivers in Emotional distress, Social inadequacy and alienation, Interpersonal isolation, and in Self-alienation. There was no significant difference between the groups in the Growth and discovery subscale. Comparing patients and caregivers on coping with loneliness, patients had higher scores than caregivers in Reflection and acceptance, and in Self-development and understanding. No significant difference between the groups was found in Social support, Distancing and denial, Religion and faith, and on Increased activity.     

Mindfulness and False-Memories: The Impact of Mindfulness Practice on the DRM Paradigm

Mindfulness practice is the cultivation of awareness to the present moment and has been shown in recent years to have beneficial effects on cognition. However, to date, the data regarding the impact of mindfulness on memory—and specifically on memory distortions—is scarce and incomplete. The present study was aimed to examine whether mindfulness practice would have an effect on true and false memories. To this end, the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on memory performance was examined in two experiments in which false memories were provoked using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, college students were randomly divided into either a 5-week mindfulness-practice group (n = 29) or a waitlist control group (n = 22). In Experiment 2, college students were randomly divided into either a brief mindfulness session (n = 21) or a mind-wandering control group (n = 19). The results indicated that mindfulness increased the recognition of true memories with no effect on spontaneous false-memories, yet increased the rate of provoked false-memories. These findings are discussed in terms of memory sensitivity and response bias, and it is argued that mindfulness may have a lesser effect on encoding processes than previously suggested.     

Evaluating the reliance on past choices in adaptive learning models

Adaptive learning models are used to predict behavior in repeated choice tasks. Predictions can be based on previous payoffs or previous choices of the player. The current paper proposes a new method for evaluating the degree of reliance on past choices, called equal payoff series extraction (EPSE). Under this method a simulated player has the same exact choices as the player but receives equal constant payoffs from all of the alternatives. Success in predicting the next choice ahead for this simulated player therefore relies strictly on mimicry of previous choices of the actual player. This allows determining the marginal fit of predictions that are not based on the actual task payoffs. To evaluate the reliance on past choices under different models, an experiment was conducted in which 48 participants completed a three-alternative choice task in four task conditions. Two different learning rules were evaluated: an interference rule and a decay rule. The results showed that while the predictions of the decay rule relied more on past choices, only the reliance on past payoffs was associated with improved parameter generality. Moreover, we show that the Equal Payoff Series can be used as a criterion for optimizing parameters resulting in better parameter generalizability.     

When values matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future

It was predicted that because of their abstract nature, values will have greater impact on how individuals plan their distant future than their near future. Experiments 1 and 2 found that values better predict behavioral intentions for distant future situations than near future situations. Experiment 3 found that whereas high-level values predict behavioral intentions for more distant future situations, low-level feasibility considerations predict behavioral intentions for more proximate situation. Finally, Experiment 4 found that the temporal changes in the relationship between values and behavioral intentions depended on how the behavior was construed. Higher correspondence is found when behaviors are construed on a higher level and when behavior is planned for the more distant future than when the same behavior is construed on a lower level or is planned for the more proximal future. The implications of these findings for self-consistency and value conflicts are discussed.     

Preattentive guidance of eye movements during triple conjunction search tasks: The effects of feature discriminability and saccadic amplitude

Eye movements were monitored during the performance of triple conjunction search tasks. Stimuli varied in color, shape, and orientation. Across trials, the target was either present or absent, and displays consisted of 6, 12, or 24 stimuli. Stimulus discriminability was manipulated for the shape dimension, with half of the participants seeing displays of Es and Fs (low-discriminability [LD] condition) and half seeing displays of Cs and Ts (high-discriminability [HD] condition). Participants in both conditions performed two search tasks. In the single-feature (SF) task, the target stimulus shared one feature with each of the distractors, whereas in the two-feature (TF) task, it shared two features with each distractor. An examination of saccadic endpoints revealed that participants were more likely to fixate on distractor stimuli sharing color (SF task) or color and shape (TF task) with the target. This was a robust finding, being observed across participants, saccades of different amplitudes and sequential position, and following short and long latencies to move. The extent to which participants made use of shape information increased with discriminability.     

Status conferral in intergroup social dilemmas: behavioral antecedents and consequences of prestige and dominance

Bridging the literatures on social dilemmas, intergroup conflict, and social hierarchy, the authors systematically varied the intergroup context in which social dilemmas were embedded to investigate how costly contributions to public goods influence status conferral. They predicted that contribution behavior would have opposite effects on 2 forms of status-prestige and dominance-depending on its consequences for the self, in-group and out-group members. When the only way to benefit in-group members was by harming out-group members (Study 1), contributions increased prestige and decreased dominance, compared with free-riding. Adding the option of benefitting in-group members without harming out-group members (Study 2) decreased the prestige and increased the dominance of those who chose to benefit in-group members via intergroup competition. Finally, sharing resources with both in-group and out-group members decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance, compared with sharing them with in-group members only (Study 3). Prestige and dominance differentially mediated the effects of contribution behavior on leader election, exclusion from the group, and choices of a group representative for an intergroup competition. Taken together, these findings show that the well-established relationship between contribution and status is moderated by both the intergroup context and the conceptualization of status.