Monitoring: a dual-function coping style

Monitoring (Miller, 1991) is defined as a cognitive coping style characterized by the tendency to seek information about threats. This study found that information seeking in stressful situations is perceived by individuals as related to the emotion-focused more than the problem-focused function of coping and that there is considerable variance among individuals in the perceived functions of information seeking and the relationships among information-seeking reactions and their perceived functions. Information-seeking preferences in a natural stressful situation (a final course examination) were predicted by individual differences in perceived functions of information seeking rather than by generalized behavioral coping styles (monitoring). The results were interpreted in relation to the cognitive-affective system theory (Mischel & Shoda, 1995), and implications for the measurement of coping dispositions were discussed.     

胡塞尔先验哲学的交互主体性转折

在本世纪,语言哲学对古典心智哲学的批评常常被理解为哲学范式一个不可逆的决定性转向,即从主体哲学转向了交互主体性哲学。这一转向在阿佩尔和哈贝马斯的著作中不断得到认同。因此,阿佩尔鲜明地倡导先验哲学向交互主体性哲学的转折。不是单个的、自我-意识自我,而是语言共同体,即交互主体性,才应被看作为基本的先验框架。阿佩尔和哈贝马斯都认为,哲学范式的这一转变对现象学提出了一个决定性的挑战,并且,从他们的立场出发,讨论的结果经常是否定性的。他们把胡塞尔的现象学看成是古典主体哲学最后一次也许是最有力的尝试,并竭力揭示其唯我论的荒谬和困境,希望借此来显示他们自己的倾向的合理性。简而言之,他们声称,胡塞尔所运用的真理和意义概念无视其内在的交互主体性特征;胡塞尔的理论不能解释那种表征交互主体性的特定的主体-主体的对称性关联,它完全受制于一种唯我论的、定位于主体-客体的意向性概念;并且最后,胡塞尔自主的主体性概念也是不可接受的,因为自我-意识和个体性远非自我一般(sui generis),而只是那个更为基础的社会化过程的产物。     

Empathy and Other-Directed Intentionality

The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models.     

Mediation and moderation of the effects of watching the angiography screen on patients

It has been reported that allowing patients to watch the coronary angiography screen during the procedure results in psychological benefits. This study aimed to investigate the roles of illness perceptions as mediators of this outcome and to examine whether individual differences in monitoring coping style moderated these effects. The experiment compared patients who were instructed to watch the monitor screen (n = 57) with those who were not (n = 51). Questionnaires were used to measure the research variables at one day and one month after the procedure. Results showed that watching the angiography screen increased patients’ personal and treatment control perceptions that mediated changes in self-assessed health, risk perceptions, negative affect, general and diet outcome expectancies, and diet and physical activity intentions. The behavior-related outcomes were moderated by monitoring coping style. These findings illustrate the significance of illness perceptions, perceived control and monitoring coping style in achieving desirable outcomes among patients undergoing coronary angiography, and reveal opportunities for interventions using medical imaging technologies.     

The Effect of Rehabilitation on Positive Interpretations of Illness

Postoperative patients received one of the three, alternative pain-management treatments: patient-controlled analgesia (PCA); perceived PCA (PPCA without actual control) and continuous intravenous infusion of analgesics (CII). Pain reports, morphine consumption and satisfaction of the groups were compared, and influences of individual differences in preferences for control and trait anxiety were tested. The main findings were: (1) PCA patients consumed less morphine and reported more pain and somewhat higher satisfaction; (2) PPCA patients were intermediate between the other two groups in pain reports and morphine consumption and lowest in satisfaction and (3) individual differences did not moderate the effects of PCA. The findings were interpreted as indicating that the main effect of PCA is increased pain tolerance, and that a bio-psycho-social framework is most appropriate to explain these effects.     

The role of centrality to self-concept in moderating the associations between injury perceptions and outcomes

Abstract

Objectives: To test the centrality of injury to self-concept as a moderator of the associations between injury perceptions and outcomes.

Methods: Two concurrent studies on samples of injured individuals.

Measures: The centrality of injury to one’s self concept was measured by the degree of self-injury separation (PRISM); injury perceptions were measured by the injury perception questionnaire; and outcomes by standard scales of self-assessed health, physical, emotional and social functioning, vitality, depression, anxiety and somatisation. Regression analyses examined the significance of adding the interactions between injury centrality and injury perceptions to explained outcome variance, beyond their separate contributions.

Results: Both injury centrality and injury perceptions significantly explained variance in patients’ functioning and well-being. Injury centrality moderated the associations between various injury perceptions and outcomes, especially pronounced for emotional representations of the injury. As hypothesised, the effects of injury perceptions on outcomes were stronger among patients for whom the injury was central to their self-concept compared to patients who perceived the injury as peripheral to their self-concept.

Conclusions: ‘Centrality to the self’ is a moderator of the impact of perceptions on outcomes of injuries. The findings suggest ways to tailor interventions to sub-groups of injured patients based on injury centrality to their self-concept.     

Creative Interpretations of Novel Conceptual Combinations in Aging

Conceptual combinations may be interpreted by 3 main strategies: by attributing a feature of the modifying (head) noun into the modified noun (property interpretation); by establishing a relation between the 2 concepts (relational interpretation); or by combining properties of both nouns into a concept with new identity (hybridization). There exists limited evidence regarding the quality of interpretations older adults provide to novel conceptual combinations, and especially to novel metaphoric phrases. This study aimed to evaluate and compare age differences in strategies adopted for comprehending conceptual (noun noun) combinations. The aim of this study was, therefore, to examine the impact of aging on the ability to generate novel and creative semantic interpretations to unfamiliar word pairs. Participants included 41 healthy younger (mean age = 25.1) and 40 healthy older adults (mean age = 75.3). Participants were asked to write interpretations to novel metaphoric and meaningless noun-noun phrases. Relative to young adults, older participants generated more creative (hybridization) interpretations to novel metaphor and meaningless combinations. The second finding indicated that older adults generated fewer relational interpretations to the meaningless compounds. The results suggest that, relative to young adults, older adults generate more creative and highly integrative interpretations to conceptual combinations.     

Individual and Environmental Predictors of College Adjustment: Prevention and Intervention

In this study, an ecological model was used to expand the current understanding of what contributes to college adjustment. Individual and environmental variables, and their relative contributions to college adjustment, were explored. This study also included the additional feature of the examination of environmental variables as possible mediators between the individual variables and college adjustment. The sample included 240 college freshmen at a large urban university. As predicted, both groups of variables accounted for significant proportions of variance in college adjustment. Further, the combination of both groups explained a greater proportion of variance than did either group alone. Maladaptive coping and perceived university environment were the most essential to college adjustment. Surprisingly, social support and gender were not essential for college adjustment. However, the environmental variables proved to be significant partial mediators between the individual variables and college adjustment. Finally, possible interventions and suggestions for future research are outlined.