Unconscious reasons: Habermas,Foucault, and psychoanalysis

Continental Philosophy Review - The Habermas–Foucault debate, despite the excellent commentary it has generated, has the standing of an ‘unfinished project’ precisely because it...     

Perceived stress,recurrent pain,and aggregate salivary cortisol measures in mid‐adolescent girls and boys

Measures of perceived stress have been criticized for theoretical inconsistency. However, the validated pressure activation stress scale has been suggested as a theoretically sound alternative. But it is unclear how pressure and activation stress relate to objective and subjective measures including commonly used aggregate cortisol measures and health complaints respectively. Specifically, this study aimed at investigating how pressure and activation stress were related to aggregate salivary cortisol measures and recurrent pain in mid‐adolescent girls and boys. Mid‐adolescents (119 girls and 56 boys) provided self‐reports in questionnaires on activation and pressure stress and recurrent pain (headache, stomach ache, neck/shoulder and back pain). Additionally, adolescents sampled saliva during an ordinary school day: (1) immediately at awakening; (2) 30 minutes after waking up; (3) 60 minutes after waking up, and (4) at 8 p.m. These samples were analyzed for cortisol. Hierarchical regressions showed no statistically significant associations between activation and pressure stress and cortisol, neither for girls nor for boys. However, activation and pressure stress were significantly associated with recurrent pain but only for girls. The findings may relate to subjective and objective measures reflecting distinct aspects of stress‐related functioning. However, the study participants included mid‐adolescents whose bodily systems are flexible and still relatively unaffected by the strain of their daily stress perceptions. To conclude, the non‐significant relationships between activation and pressure stress and commonly used aggregate measures of cortisol adds to the understanding of how perceived stress may relate to physiological functioning in the daily life of adolescents when using such aggregate measures.     

Clinical Validation of the Swedish Version of the Quality of Life Inventory in Crime Victims with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and a Nonclinical Sample

The Swedish version of the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI) was cross-culturally validated with a crime victim sample (N = 53) with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a nonclinical group (N = 100) with no lifetime and current psychiatric disorder from the general population in the Stockholm county of Sweden. The QOLI showed excellent internal consistencies in the clinical and the nonclinical sample. In addition, PTSD participants displayed a significantly lower self-perceived quality of life in 13 out of 16 domains of life than the nonclinical individuals. Furthermore, the QOLI was inversely correlated with interview and self-report measures of PTSD symptoms, depression, and anxiety. Overall, the results support the utility of the Swedish QOLI version as a potentially useful measure of self-perceived quality of life in Swedish clinical and nonclinical samples. The results are discussed in relation to the Swedish cross-cultural validation of the QOLI, methodological limitations and future directions.     

An Intentional Model of Emotional Well-Being: The Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Subjective Well-Being

The major problem with the current emotional well-being scales is that they lack intentionality (being about something), which makes them incongruent with the definition of subjective well-being. A new emotional well-being scale with new affect adjectives has been developed by addressing intentionality. It focuses on individuals’ affective evaluations of their life and has showed good psychometric quality. In the first and second studies, the factor structure of the scale, the Emotional Well-Being Scale, was determined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Study 3 showed that the scores on the scale were stable in time. The fourth and fifth studies indicated that this new construct did not overlap with personality dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism, with impressive predictive and incremental validity estimates.     

Effects of Illness Representation,Perceived Quality of Information Provided by the Health-Care Professional,and Perceived Social Support on Depressive Symptoms of the Caregivers of Children with Leukemia

The present study examined the effects of illness representation, perceived quality of information provided by the health-care professional, and perceived social support on the depressive symptoms of the caregivers of children with leukemia. The sample was composed of 71 caregivers of children with leukemia living in Turkey. The obtained data were analyzed by path analysis. The results show that caregivers of children with leukemia experience higher levels of depressive symptoms when they have negative illness representation and lower levels of depressive symptoms when they perceive higher levels of social support. Moreover, they perceive higher social support when they perceive high quality of information provided by health-care professionals. It can be suggested that intervention programs which aim to increase caregivers’ social support and change their illness representation in a positive way would be helpful for the caregivers showing depressive symptoms.     

Sex differences in language first appear in gesture

Children differ in how quickly they reach linguistic milestones. Boys typically produce their first multi‐word sentences later than girls do. We ask here whether there are sex differences in children’s gestures that precede, and presage, these sex differences in speech. To explore this question, we observed 22 girls and 18 boys every 4 months as they progressed from one‐word speech to multi‐word speech. We found that boys not only produced speech + speech (S+S) combinations (‘drink juice’) 3 months later than girls, but they also produced gesture + speech (G+S) combinations expressing the same types of semantic relations (‘eat’ + point at cookie) 3 months later than girls. Because G+S combinations are produced earlier than S+S combinations, children’s gestures provide the first sign that boys are likely to lag behind girls in the onset of sentence constructions.     

Drivers’ propensity to have different types of intelligent speed adaptation installed in their cars

The aim of the present study was to examine if there are differences in drivers’ propensity to have different types of intelligent speed adaptation installed in their cars depending on the sample of drivers (i.e. Swedish or Turkish), their aberrant driving behaviours (i.e. violations and errors), and/or the technical solution used (i.e. speed limit information, advisory, supportive and intervening systems). A sample of 224 Swedish and 316 Turkish drivers completed a questionnaire including questions based on the driver behaviour questionnaire (DBQ) as well as questions about the drivers’ propensity to have different types of intelligent speed adaptation installed in their cars. The results showed that the Swedish sample of drivers was less positive than the Turkish sample of drivers towards having the advisory, supportive and intervening systems installed. Furthermore, drivers who frequently commit violations were less positive towards having any of these systems installed than were drivers who commit violations less frequently, while drivers who frequently make errors were more positive towards having the systems installed than were drivers who make errors less frequently. Both the Swedish and the Turkish sample of drivers were most positive towards having the speed limit information system installed, followed by the advisory system on second place, the supportive system on third place and lastly the intervening system on fourth place.     

Distributed rereading can hurt the spacing effect in text memory

The spacing effect refers to the commonly observed phenomenon that memory for spaced repetitions is better than for massed repetitions. In the present study, we examined this effect in students' memory for a lengthy expository text. Participants read the text twice, either in immediate succession (massed repetition), with a 4‐day interstudy interval (spaced short), or with a 3.5‐weeks interstudy interval (spaced long). Two days after the second study trial, all participants were tested. The results demonstrated that students in the spaced‐short condition remembered more of the content than those in the massed condition. By contrast, students in the spaced‐long condition remembered as much as students in the massed condition. These results were interpreted in terms of a theoretical framework, which combines mechanisms of encoding variability and study‐phase retrieval to account for the spacing effect. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of Applicant Pregnancy on Hiring Decisions and Interview Ratings

The effects of pregnancy on hiring decisions during employment interviews are examined in a United States sample of 210 undergraduate business school students at a Midwestern university. A pregnant applicant was compared to a non-pregnant applicant with identical credentials and interview performance to explore any differences in interviewer ratings of qualifications and hiring by having participants view videotaped interviews. Results show that in spite of being viewed as equally qualified and well-suited for the job, the pregnant applicant received significantly lower hiring recommendation ratings. The pregnant applicant was also rated as more likely to need time off, miss work and quit compared to the non-pregnant applicant, indicating a concern about absenteeism regarding the pregnant applicant.