Personnel exposure to violence in hospital emergency wards: a routine activity approach

This study analyzes violence against personnel in the emergency wards of all 25 general hospitals in Israel using a self-report questionnaire (N=2,356). Informed by the routine activity theory, the hypotheses related to the major concepts of this approach: exposure, target suitability, guarding and proximity to offenders. A General Exposure to Violence Index (GEVI) was constructed, based on the participants' reports about type and frequency of their victimization to violence during the preceding year. The multiple regression analysis for explaining the GEVI was composed of 15 independent variables relating to participants' professional and personal characteristics as well as to structural features of hospitals. As predicted, higher exposure to violence was related to security or nursing staff and positions of authority; high weekly workload; working in a profession other than that of training; inability of coping with verbal violence; having no access to an emergency button, and working in settings restricting the number of accompanying persons to one only. Unexpectedly, previous training in coping with violence was related to higher victimization. Younger age, male gender and being of European/American origin (mainly from the former Soviet Union) was also related to higher risk of victimization. The results support the utility of the routine activities approach in explaining differences in emergency ward personnel victimization. The findings also indicate, however, the need to add domain-specific contextual analyses to this approach to reach a fuller understanding of the behaviors under discussion. Implications of the finding to coping with violence against emergency ward personnel are discussed, and suggestions are put forward for further study in this field.     

Attentional and perceptual factors affecting the attentional blink for faces and objects

When 2 different visual targets presented among different distracters in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) are separated by 400 ms or less, detection and identification of the 2nd targets are reduced relative to longer time intervals. This phenomenon, termed the attentional blink (AB), is attributed to the temporary engagement of a limited-capacity attentional system by the 1st target, which reduces resources available for processing the 2nd target. Although AB has been reliably obtained with many stimulus types, it has not been found for faces (E. Awh et al., 2004). In the present study, the authors investigate the underpinnings of this immunity. Unveiling circumstances in which AB occurs within and across faces and other categories, the authors demonstrate that a multichannel model cannot account for the absence of AB effects on faces. The authors suggest instead that perceptual salience of the face within the distracters' series as well as the available resources determine whether or not faces are blinked in RSVP.     

Sense of coherence and adjustment to divorce among Muslim Arab citizens of Israel

This study examined the distinctiveness and causal relationships of Antonovsky's (1979) Sense of Coherence Scale and the Mental Health Index of Veit and Ware (1983) in a sample of 306 divorced Muslim Arab men and women in Israel. The findings, based on confirmatory factor analysis and latent‐variable structural modelling, suggest that in the present sample sense of coherence (SOC) and mental health are two independent but correlated constructs. They also suggest that, consistent with Antonovsky's theory, SOC may be better viewed as a mediator between stress and mental health than as a concurrent outcome of stress, although the latter possibility is not ruled out. Finally, the findings indicate that the SOC of the sample was relatively low in comparison with other groups. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Objectivism,Hybridism, and Meaning in Life: Reply to Evers and van Smeden

In a recent article in this journal, Daan Evers and Gerlinde Emma van Smeden ( 2016 ) defend Wolf's hybridism against objectivist counterexamples advanced by Metz, Smuts, and Bramble. They also offer their own new hybridism, which they take to be even less vulnerable to such counterexamples. In this paper, I argue that Evers and van Smeden's defense of their and Wolf's hybridizing from objectivist counterexamples is problematic and that they do not, in fact, succeed in meeting the challenge the objectivist counterexamples pose. Evers and van Smeden do not read the counterexamples charitably and, hence, are not coping with the strongest challenges the counterexamples have to offer. I conclude that Metz's, Smuts's and Bramble's objectivist counterexamples continue to pose serious challenges to hybridism, both in Wolf's and in Evers and van Smeden's versions.     

From Eyewitness to Academic Contexts: Examining the Effect of Misinformation in First and Second Languages

The present study adapts the typical eyewitness misinformation paradigm into an academic context. Unbalanced English–Spanish bilinguals (N = 81) listened to a lecture in English (L1) or Spanish (L2), read notes in L1 or L2, and completed a forced‐choice recognition test in the lecture language. Unlike prior studies with proficient bilinguals, unbalanced English‐dominant participants showed greater recognition memory accuracy for material presented in English only than did material presented in Spanish only. English misinformation had a greater impact on memory for the Spanish lecture than vice versa. Most importantly, the modified misinformation paradigm is an effective tool to investigate academic misinformation effects and could be used in bilingual and monolingual research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring metaphor's epistemic function: Uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects on social perceptions

Consistent with conceptual metaphor theory's claim that metaphors operate at a conceptual, and not just linguistic, level, prior research shows that priming perceptions related to concrete concepts influences perceptions related to dissimilar, more abstract concepts in metaphor-consistent ways. However, the theory's claim that metaphors function to reduce uncertainty about abstract concepts has yet to be experimentally assessed. Two studies tested whether situational variation in uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects. Study 1 focused on the metaphor life is a path and showed that priming path perceptions (vs. literal representations) increased perceived autobiographical continuity only if uncertainty about personal identity was salient. Study 2 focused on verticality metaphors and showed that vertical orientation primes influenced satisfaction with the decision to attend one's current university in both directions (up is good, bad is down) only if uncertainty about the value of the college experience was salient.     

Immorality and the Meaning of Life

The Journal of Value Inquiry -     

Assessment of Social Competence of Boys with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Problematic Peer Entry,Host Responses,and Evaluations

Anecdotally and empirically, there is clear evidence that children with the Combined subtype of Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience disturbed peer relations, yet the field has not clearly established the origin of these difficulties. This is the first known investigation to examine the role of peer entry as a means to determine the social competence of boys with ADHD as they joined lab-based games played by age-mates who were good friends but unfamiliar with entry boys. Observational data of entry boys and their hosts, plus coders’ ratings, indicate that 7- to 12-year-old boys with and without ADHD did not differ in the use of competent entry strategies known to lead to acceptance from peers. However, boys with ADHD relied more heavily on incompetent entry strategies (e.g., disruptive attention-getting) known to exacerbate negative peer reputation. In addition, they failed to apply a frame-of-reference that was relevant to host boys’ ongoing activity. As such, host boys considered boys with ADHD less likeable as they spent more time with them. This pattern of findings has theoretical implications and informs the foci of social skills interventions for children with ADHD.     

Forming a stable spatial representation

The visual system sometimes fails, partially or completely, to encode and/or retrieve spatial relations among parts of an object. For example, targets can easily be confused with their mirror images, especially when they must be retained in memory. In the current experiments we ask whether our representations of spatial relations can be amended by information from different cognitive domains. Specifically, we ask whether failure to form a stable representation of spatial relations among parts can be overcome by the use of linguistic information. Four year-olds saw squares split by color and matched them after delay. In Experiment 1, children saw the target and were told either “Look, this is a blicket” (Label Condition) or “Look!” (NoLabel Condition). Then, three choices appeared: the target (e.g. vertical split with red left, green right), its mirror image, and another square that had a different internal split (e.g. horizontal). Overall, children performed better than chance. However, their errors were almost exclusively mirror image confusions, suggesting that children failed to bind color and location (e.g. red left, green right). There was no difference between the NoLabel and Label conditions, suggesting the whole-object novel label did not help children form a stable representation of the spatial relation among the parts. Experiment 2 tested whether color–location binding can be improved by providing language that might bind these features. Children were shown a target and were told, e.g. “The red is on the left.” Performance was reliably better than in Experiment 1, suggesting language did help children bind color and location. Experiments 3 and 4 explored whether the same performance improvement could be accomplished by increasing non-linguistic attention to the target (i.e. flashing the red part, Experiment 3) or by using neutral relational language (e.g. “The red is touching the green”). Neither experiment showed enhanced performance, suggesting that language can augment visual–spatial representations only if it conveys very specific information (e.g. direction). Generally, the results suggest that specific linguistic information can help form a stable representation of spatial relationship and that this effect is not attributable to general attentional effects.