Generalised Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain as a Rational Reaction to a Life Situation?

While the biomedical model is still theleading paradigm within modern medicine and healthcare, and people with generalised chronicmusculoskeletal pain are frequent users of health careservices, their diagnoses are rated as having thelowest prestige among health care personnel. Anepistemological framework for understanding relationsbetween body, emotions, mind and meaning is presented.An approach based on a phenomenological epistemologyis discussed as a supplement to actions based on thebiomedical model.Within the phenomenological frame of understanding,the body is viewed as a subject and carrier ofmeaning, and therefore chronic pain can be interpretedas a rational reaction to the totality of a person'slife situation. Search for possible hidden individualmeanings in painful muscles presupposes meeting healthpersonnel who view the person within a holistic frameof reference.     

Size scaling in visual pattern recognition

Human visual recognition on the basis of shape but regardless of size was investigated by reaction time methods. For successive matching of random figures, reaction time increased linearly with the linear size ratio of stimulus pairs. For single-character classification, reaction time increased with divergence between cued size format and stimulus format such that for character nonrepetitions, the increment in latency was approximately proportional to the logarithm of the linear size ratio of the two formats. However, when reactions to character repetitions were faster than those to nonrepetitions, the repetition reaction time function was similar to that for successive matching of random figures. The results suggested two processes of size scaling: mental-image transformation and perceptual-scale transformation. Image transformation accounted for matching performance based on visual short-term memory, whereas scale transformation accounted for size invariance in recognition based on comparison against visual representations in long-term memory.     

Do people's self-views matter? Self-concept and self-esteem in everyday life

Recent scholars have dismissed the utility of self-esteem as well as programs designed to improve it. The authors challenge these contentions on conceptual, methodological, and empirical grounds. They begin by proposing that the scope of recent analyses has been overly narrow and should be broadened to include specific as well as global self-views. Using this conceptualization, the authors place recent critiques in historical context, recalling that similarly skeptical commentaries on global attitudes and traits inspired theorizing and empirical research that subsequently restored faith in the value of both constructs. Specifically, they point to 3 strategies for attaining more optimistic assessments of the predictive validity of self-views: recognizing the utility of incorporating additional variables in predictive schemes, matching the specificity of predictors and criteria, and using theoretically informed standards for evaluating predictor- criterion relationships. The authors conclude that self-views do matter and that it is worthwhile and important to develop and implement theoretically informed programs to improve them.     

The role of adolescent IQ and gender in the use of cognitive support for remembering in aging

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent IQ (AIQ) and gender in older adults' ability to use cognitive support to enhance memory. Subjects were 269 mid-1940s graduates of the same high school. Adolescent IQ scores were gathered from archives, and subjects' memory for words was tested with tasks that provided increasing cognitive support. Overall, subjects benefited from support; women recalled more words than men; and persons with a high AIQ remembered more words than persons with a lower AIQ. However, while all subjects showed gains from cognitive support, men with a lower AIQ performed worse than men with a high AIQ. Women's performance was not dependent on their AIQ. Analysis of qualitative memory indicators suggested that women and persons with a high AIQ had better encoding and retrieval operations. Men with a lower AIQ appear to be particularly vulnerable to memory deficits in aging. This may be due to low "cognitive reserve" or generally poorer episodic memory function.     

Does Quality of Work Life Affect Men and Women’s Retirement Planning Differently?

Population ageing in most western countries involves an increase in public expenditures and the risk of labour shortage. One way to meet these challenges is to retain older workers in the labour market by improving their work life. This article assesses whether quality of work life measures differ in importance for male and female workers in their retirement planning. This study applies samples of workers and retirees born in 1940 and 1945 drawn from Danish panel surveys in 1997 and 2002 and merged with longitudinal register data. Results suggest that male and female workers’ retirement plans are affected differently by various aspects of the job. Indeed, job demands lower planned retirement age, while increases in earnings, work hour satisfaction, and the opportunity to use skills on the job increase this age for men and women. Nevertheless, the impact of earnings is largest for men, and only male workers attach importance to job control and job security. These gender differences suggest, first, that men are more influenced than women by the quality of job dimensions in their retirement planning and, second, that an employer-initiated effort directed towards retaining older workers at the workplace will not necessarily be as effective for female as for male workers.

Cognitive bias in dizziness: emotional Stroop and autobiographical memories

Dizziness is commonly associated with anxiety, and is often caused by a dysfunction of the balance system. While a link between dizziness and both anxiety disorders and depression has been established, less is known about information processing in dizziness. In the first experiment we tested whether 15 patients with dizziness would display an emotional Stroop effect for panic-related words. Also included was a control group of 15 persons. The Stroop task was preceded by ratings of personal relevance of the Stroop words and followed by a surprise free recall of the words. Results showed a Stroop effect for panic-related words in the dizziness group, but the interaction did not reach significance (p = 0.08). Separate analysis of dizziness-related panic words however resulted in a significant group x condition interaction. In the free recall of Stroop words a main effect of word category was found, with more panic-related words being recalled. The second experiment investigated autobiographical memories in 14 patients with dizziness and 14 matched controls. Results showed a group x condition interaction with less specific memories being recalled following positive cue-words in the dizziness group. The overall pattern of results suggests that dizziness is related to deficits in information processing, which could be targeted in treatment.     

Tempting today, troubling tomorrow: the roots of the precarious couple effect

The precarious couple effect occurs when men pair with women who are both critical and more verbally disinhibited than them. Evidence that dissatisfaction runs high in such relationships makes one ask why people enter them in the first place. In Study 1, respondents recalled that past partners who were verbally disinhibited were relatively active in initiating the relationship. In Study 2, verbally inhibited men evidenced ambivalence in that they disliked disinhibited women more than inhibited ones but these feelings of disliking did not translate into expectations of feeling tense during the interaction. Study 3 revealed that initial interactions between inhibited men and disinhibited women go smoothly unless (a) the women are critical and (b) the pair discusses a stressful topic. The authors suggest that members of precarious couples are drawn to one another because, in initial encounters, their communication styles are relatively symbiotic. Alas, this initial chemistry does not always endure.     

Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments

Validity of the emotional Stroop task hinges on equivalence between the emotion and the control words in terms of lexical features related to word recognition. The authors evaluated the lexical features of 1,033 words used in 32 published emotional Stroop studies. Emotion words were significantly lower in frequency of use, longer in length, and had smaller orthographic neighborhoods than words used as controls. These lexical features contribute to slower word recognition and hence are likely to contribute to delayed latencies in color naming. The often-replicated slowdown in color naming of emotion words may be due, in part, to lexical differences between the emotion and control words used in the majority of such studies to date.     

Inner speech and bilingual autobiographical memory: a Polish-Danish cross-cultural study.

Thirty years after fleeing from Poland to Denmark, 20 immigrants were enlisted in a study of bilingual autobiographical memory. Ten "early immigrators" averaged 24 years old at the time of immigration, and ten "late immigrators" averaged 34 years old at immigration. Although all 20 had spent 30 years in Denmark, early immigrators reported more current inner speech behaviours in Danish, whereas late immigrators showed more use of Polish. Both groups displayed proportionally more numerous autobiographical retrievals that were reported as coming to them internally in Polish (vs Danish) for the decades prior to immigration and more in Danish (vs Polish) after immigration. We propose a culture- and language-specific shaping of semantic and conceptual stores that underpins autobiographical and world knowledge.