Domain specific attentional impairments in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

One of the defining cognitive characteristics of the chromosome 22q deletion syndrome (DS22q11.2) is visuospatial processing impairments. The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend the specific attentional profile of children with this disorder using both an object-based attention task and an inhibition of return task. A group of children with the disorder was compared in these tasks with a group of age-matched typically developing children. The children with DS22q11.2 demonstrated impaired spatially based orienting which is consistent with previous findings in this group. Strikingly, the children with DS22q11.2 also demonstrated an improved ability to use object-based cues, relative to the typically developing group. Finally, the children with DS22q11.2 demonstrated an intact inhibition of return system, however, it appears to be delayed developmentally.     

Perceived Stress in Young Carers: Development of a Measure

We report the development of a 5-factor, 31-item, Young Carers Perceived Stress Scale (YCPSS) from an initial 50-item pool. The scale was developed and tested on 108 young carers aged between 12–18 years, and acceptable Cronbach Alpha values were obtained for the individual factors and the overall scale. In addition, both the overall scale and individual factors produced a pattern of correlations with social support, burden of care, psychological distress, and coping, supporting the initial validity and utility of the scale.     

Competence to make treatment decisions in anorexia nervosa: thinking processes and values

This paper explores the ethical and conceptual implications of the findings from an empirical study of decision-making capacity in anorexia nervosa. In the study, ten female patients aged 13 to 21 years with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, and eight sets of parents, took part in semi-structured interviews. The purpose of the interviews was to identify aspects of thinking that might be relevant to the issue of competence to refuse treatment. All the patient participants were also tested using the MacCAT-T test of competence. This is a formalised, structured interviewer-administered test of competence, which is a widely accepted clinical tool for determining capacity. The young women also completed five brief self-administered questionnaires to assess their levels of psychopathology.The issues identified from the interviews are described under two headings: difficulties with thought processing, and changes in values. The results suggest that competence to refuse treatment may be compromised in people with anorexia nervosa in ways that are not captured by traditional legal approaches or current standardised tests of competence.     

Organizational Attractiveness of Foreign‐Based Companies: A country of origin perspective

Attracting high‐quality applicants is a crucial activity for the success of an organization. In today's globalized world, multinational enterprises need to attract talent not only in the domestic market but also in overseas markets. This exploratory study introduces the country of origin image framework from marketing literature to the context of recruitment in order to examine why foreign companies are (not) attractive to local job seekers, exemplified by the case of Japanese and US companies in Vietnam. Survey results of more than 300 participants confirmed the robustness of our postulated framework. Symbolic images such as the technological development and images of people of a country predicted the attractiveness of foreign companies above and beyond instrumental images of job characteristics. Detailed explanations and practical implications are provided.     

Heidegger's Generative Thesis

Abstract: For William Blattner, Heidegger's phenomenology fails to demonstrate how a nonsuccessive temporal manifold can ‘generate’ the appropriate sequence of world‐time Nows. Without this he cannot explain the ‘derivative’ status of ordinary time. In this article I show that it is only Blattner's reconstruction that makes failure inevitable. Specifically, Blattner is wrong in the way he sets out the explanatory burden, arguing that the structure of world‐time must meet the traditional requirements of ordinary time logic if the derivation is to succeed. He takes this to mean: mundane ‘tasks’, the contents of world‐time nows, must form a transitive series, importing back into world‐time the very structure that Heidegger says is derived by its levelling‐off. I argue, instead, that world‐time nows, seen at the level of lived content, can be quite ‘irrational’ but this is perfectly consistent with the generative thesis. Adapting Blattner's useful suggestion that temporality is sequence building or ‘iterative’ I show that iteration does not manifest itself at the level of tasks but at the ‘existential’ level of my involvement in a task. Depriving that involvement of its expressive content is what accounts for the levelling‐off of the world‐time now and thus the derivation of the ordinary concept of time.