Workers' Compensation and Respondeat Superior Liability Legal Cases Involving Salespersons' Misuse of Alcohol

Legal cases where salespersons' misuse of alcohol resulted in either workers' compensation or respondeat superior liability cases are reviewed. Three main areas emerged which may require corporate attention: (1) salesperson travel including use of a home office, (2) condoning of alcohol use by corporations, and (3) the use of a company car. Corporation policy issues are discussed, as well as appropriate training suggested at the corporate and collegiate levels.     

Differentiating core and co-opted mechanisms in calculation: The neuroimaging of calculation in aphasia

The role of language in exact calculation is the subject of debate. Some behavioral and functional neuroimaging investigations of healthy participants suggest that calculation requires language resources. However, there are also reports of individuals with severe aphasic language impairment who retain calculation ability. One possibility in resolving these discordant findings is that the neural basis of calculation has undergone significant reorganization in aphasic calculators. Using fMRI, we examined brain activations associated with exact addition and subtraction in two patients with severe agrammatic aphasia and retained calculation ability. Behavior and brain activations during two-digit addition and subtraction were compared to those of a group of 11 healthy, age-matched controls. Behavioral results confirmed that both patients retained calculation ability. Imaging findings revealed individual differences in processing, but also a similar activation pattern across patients and controls in bilateral parietal cortices. Patients differed from controls in small areas of increased activation in peri-lesional regions, a shift from left fronto-temporal activation to the contralateral region, and increased activations in bilateral superior parietal regions. Our results suggest that bilateral parietal cortex represents the core of the calculation network and, while healthy controls may recruit language resources to support calculation, these mechanisms are not mandatory in adult cognition.     

“There's a deeper level of meaning as to what suffering's all about”: experiences of religious and spiritual growth following trauma

Some survivors of trauma report experiencing beneficial changes in self-perception, relationships, and philosophy of life, and positive changes in the realm of existential, spiritual, or religious matters. The purpose of the present study was to examine participants’ phenomenological experiences of spiritual and religious posttraumatic growth (PTG). Transcribed data from semi-structured interviews with 10 women, self-identified as Christian, who had experienced spiritual or religious growth following various trauma were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results indicated how religion provided a framework that assisted participants to incorporate life changes, and to find meaning in their suffering. The most salient themes identified in relation to religious and spiritual PTG included: process of spiritual and religious growth, strengthening of religious and spiritual beliefs, and personal and spiritual growth and healing. Participants’ trauma and associated distress prompted a process of questioning and meaning-making that facilitated deeply experienced personal and spiritual growth, and was related to intrinsic religiosity.     

Everyday Cognitive Functioning in Cardiac Patients: Relationships Between Self-report,Report of a Significant Other and Cognitive Test Performance

ABSTRACT

Candidates for cardiac bypass surgery often experience cognitive decline. Such decline is likely to affect their everyday cognitive functioning. The aim of the present study was to compare cardiac patients' ratings of their everyday cognitive functioning against significant others' ratings and selected neuropsychological tests. Sixty-nine patients completed a battery of standardised cognitive tests. Patients and significant others also completed the Everyday Function Questionnaire independently of each other. Patient and significant other ratings of patients' everyday cognitive difficulties were found to be similar. Despite the similarities in ratings of difficulties, some everyday cognitive tasks were attributed to different processes. Patients' and significant others' ratings were most closely associated with the neuropsychological test of visual memory. Tests of the patients' verbal memory and fluency were only related to significant others' ratings. Test scores of attention and planning were largely unrelated to ratings by either patients or their significant others.     

Mother–infant interaction improves with a developmental intervention for mother–preterm infant dyads

While premature infants have a high need for positive interactions, both infants and their mothers are challenged by the infant‘s biological immaturity. This randomized clinical trial of 198 premature infants born at 29–34 weeks gestation and their mothers examined the impact of the H-HOPE (Hospital to Home: Optimizing the Infant's Environment) intervention on mother–premature infant interaction patterns at 6-weeks corrected age (CA). Mothers had at least 2 social environmental risk factors such as minority status or less than high school education. Mother–infant dyads were randomly assigned to the H-HOPE intervention group or an attention control group. H-HOPE is an integrated intervention that included (1) twice-daily infant stimulation using the ATVV (auditory, tactile, visual, and vestibular-rocking stimulation) and (2) four maternal participatory guidance sessions plus two telephone calls by a nurse-community advocate team. Mother–infant interaction was assessed at 6-weeks CA using the Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training–Feeding Scale (NCAST, 76 items) and the Dyadic Mutuality Code (DMC, 6-item contingency scale during a 5-min play session). NCAST and DMC scores for the Control and H-HOPE groups were compared using t-tests, chi-square tests and multivariable analysis. Compared with the Control group (n = 76), the H-HOPE group (n = 66) had higher overall NCAST scores and higher maternal Social-Emotional Growth Fostering Subscale scores. The H-HOPE group also had significantly higher scores for the overall infant subscale and the Infant Clarity of Cues Subscale (p < 0.05). H-HOPE dyads were also more likely to have high responsiveness during play as measured by the DMC (67.6% versus 58.1% of controls). After adjustment for significant maternal and infant characteristics, H-HOPE dyads had marginally higher scores during feeding on overall mother–infant interaction (β = 2.03, p = 0.06) and significantly higher scores on the infant subscale (β = 0.75, p = 0.05) when compared to controls. In the adjusted analysis, H-HOPE dyads had increased odds of high versus low mutual responsiveness during play (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 0.97, 5.80). Intervening with both mother and infant is a promising approach to help premature infants achieve the social interaction patterns essential for optimal development.     

The mental functioning axis of the psychodynamic diagnostic manual: an adolescent case study

We describe the assessment of a troubled adolescent boy to demonstrate the use of the Shedler-Westen Assessment Profile for Adolescents (Westen, Dutra, & Shedler, 2005) and the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global (Westen, 1995) to formulate the Mental Functioning for Children and Adolescents Axis (MCA) of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM Task Force, 2006). The assessment made possible a meaningful psychodynamic therapy.     

Individual behavior in learning of an artificial grammar

Artificial grammar learning (AGL) is a widely used experimental paradigm that investigates how syntactic structures are processed. After a familiarization phase, participants have to distinguish strings consistent with a set of grammatical rules from strings that violate these rules. Many experiments report performance solely at a group level and as the total number of correct judgments. This report describes a systematic approach for investigating individual performance and a range of different behaviors. Participants were exposed to strings of the nonfinite grammar A ⁿ B ⁿ . To distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings, participants had to pay attention to local dependencies while comparing the number of stimuli from each class. Individual participants showed substantially different behavioral patterns despite exposure to the same stimuli. The results were replicated across auditory and visual sensory modalities. It is suggested that an analysis that looks at individual differences grants new insights into the processes involved in AGL. It also provides a solid basis from which to investigate sequence-processing abilities in special populations, such as patients with neurological lesions.     

Why Do Men Need the Goddess?Male Creation of Female Religious Symbols

Abstract :  It is not safe to assume that feminine religious symbols are intrinsically empowering to women. Indeed, it is often the case that the explicit use of divine female imagery in religious traditions such as Judaism and Christianity serves to reinforce the restrictive structures of patriarchy. In light of this we must seek ways to theologically and socially reconstruct such systems of religious symbolism so that neither gender is valued above the other.