Level of Education and Category Fluency Task among Spanish Speaking Elders: Number of Words,Clustering, and Switching Strategies

ABSTRACT

It has been well documented that education influences the individual's performance on category fluency tasks but it is still unclear how this effect may differ across the different types of category tasks (i.e., animals, fruits, vegetables and clothing). This study aims (1) to analyze the effect of the level of education on four different types of category fluency tasks among elder Hispanic Americans and (2) to provide normative information on a population with different education levels that was previously screened for neurological and psychiatric conditions. In addition this study examines the semantic strategies used by these individuals to complete the fluency tasks. The sample included 105 healthy Hispanic individuals (age 55–98; 29 males and 76 females) divided into three education groups (<6, 6–11 and >11 years of education). Results showed that after controlling for age and gender, education has a main effect and is a strong predictor of performance in verbal fluency for the categories animals and clothing with increasing educational attainment being associated with higher category fluency scores and with more switches between categories. These findings suggest that the category fruit is less influenced by level of education than the other three semantic categories and may be a more appropriate test across different educational groups. Results from this study provide a reference for clinicians assessing verbal fluency in Spanish speaking populations.     

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment.     

Richelieu in Arabic: The Catholic Printed Message to the Orient in the Seventeenth Century1

Throughout most of the seventeenth century, the printer and publisher Antoine Vitré dominated the printing of Arabic in Paris. He produced mainly religious texts, intended for use by missionaries in the Orient. One of these books was the Arabic translation of Cardinal Richelieu's famous catechism Instruction du Chrétien. This article looks at the story behind the preparation of the Arabic edition, its printing, and its use by missionaries. It explores the role written texts played in conveying a religious message to an essentially illiterate society. In addition, it uses the story of Richelieu's text in Arabic to attempt to explain why Middle Eastern societies declined to adopt mass printing before the nineteenth century, even though there were apparently no interdictions against its implementation.     

The relationship of work stressors and emotional support to strain in police officers

This study tested whether quantity and quality of social support and two sources of work stress (organizational stressors and job risk) predicted work strain in police officers, a high-risk occupational group. The participants were 135 police officers from a large metropolitan law enforcement agency who responded to questionnaires for assessing work stress, social support, exhaustion, and other strain symptoms. Emotional support and work stressors accounted directly for significant variance in emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and symptom frequency. Conflicted relationships, which are a source of both work stress and support, also contributed to strain. In contrast to previous findings, a reverse buffering effect for social support did not contribute to predicting strain. Stress management programs for police and other high-stress occupations should target increasing emotional support from supervisors and peers, and reducing conflict in job and family relationships.     

Being the same and different: A model explaining new product adoption

• The study suggests an alternative conceptualization for understanding adoption behavior over time, based on Optimal Distinctiveness Theory. This theory states that social identity derives from a fundamental tension between human needs for validation and similarity to others—the need for assimilation—and a countervailing need for uniqueness and individuation—the need for differentiation. The present study proposes that the effect of the size of the group of consumers who have already adopted a new product on an individual consumer's decision to adopt this product is contingent upon the consumer's two predispositions: the need for assimilation and the need for distinctiveness. Results of empirical research suggested that differently perceived subgroup sizes fulfill consumers' dual needs for distinctiveness and assimilation differently. The influence of the adopters' group size on a consumer's decision to adopt a new product varied among individuals with different levels of needs for distinctiveness and assimilation: when need for distinctiveness was low, the higher was the need for assimilation and the larger was the perceived group size, the higher was the probability of adopting the product. When the need for distinctiveness was high, the lower was the need for assimilation and the larger was the perceived group size, the lower was the probability of adopting the product. In addition, when the need for both distinctiveness and assimilation were high, the probability of adopting the product rose as the perceived group size increased. Implications for product variation, marketing communication, and target groups are discussed.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Value‐related goals and vocational choice: The effect of temporal distance

This field study examines the importance that people assign to value‐related goals in their vocational decisions. We focused on the interactive effects of temporal distance from the vocational decision and the level of abstraction of the goal. Soldiers rated the importance of value‐related goals for their vocational choice following their release from military service. They were presented with value‐driven, abstract, decontextualized goals and with value‐driven, concrete, job‐related goals. For half, vocational choice was temporally close, and for the rest, it was temporally distant. Temporal distance from the vocational decision interacted with the level of abstraction of the goals in predicting their importance: When construed in the abstract, the goals were deemed more important if the vocational decision was distant. When construed concretely, the goals were deemed more important if the vocational decision was proximate.     

Association between Terror Attacks and Suicide Attempts

Based on Durkheim's ‘Control theory,’ we explored the association between frequency of terror attacks in Israel and the frequency of suicide attempts admitted to the Emergency Room of a major general hospital in Tel‐Aviv (1999–2004). Analysis of the six‐year study period as a whole revealed no significant correlation between the variables, with the exception of one 11‐month segment within it (December 2000–October 2001) that did show a statistically significant positive correlation, and in opposition to Durkeim's hypothesis. It is suggested that suicide attempts as a phenomena should be seen as a product of a multivariate model, in which the social context plays a role as well.