The associations of illness perceptions and self-efficacy with psychological well-being of patients in preparation for joint replacement surgery

Patient well-being on referral to surgery likely affects their surgical experience yet few studies examine pre-surgical correlates of well-being. Guided by the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation and Social Cognitive theory, this study examined whether illness and emotional representations, general and domain self-efficacy were associated with pre-surgical well-being. The pre-surgical assessment of a three-wave prospective study is reported. Fifty-four hip and knee replacements patients (mean age = 69.33; SD = 8.57) were recruited in the pre-surgery educational clinic at a UK general hospital. Patients completed a questionnaire-pack including the Revised Illness Perceptions Questionnaire, the General Self-Efficacy Scale, the Self-Efficacy for Rehabilitation Outcome Scale, the Falls-Efficacy Scale, and the Short Form of Psychological Well-Being Index. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses showed that above and beyond demographic and clinical characteristics, negative emotional representations were associated with lower psychological well-being while strong general self-efficacy beliefs were positively related to psychological well-being. Independent of demographic and clinical characteristics, joint replacement patients’ psychological well-being was associated with their cognitions and emotional reactions to their condition before surgery. Early interventions could potentially target these modifiable factors to improve pre-surgical well-being in this group of patients, with potential for additional post-surgical benefit.     

Partners’ representations of diabetes as mediators between patients’ representations and adherence to self-care behaviors,in type 2 diabetes

The purpose of this study was to analyze partners’ representations of diabetes as mediators between patients’ illness representations and adherence to all self-care behaviors, in recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes (T2DM) patients. The sample included 340 patients and their respective partners. The instruments used were: Revised Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities (RSDSCA); Medication Adherence Report Scale (MARS); and the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Brief-IPQ). A mediational effect of partners’ representation of diabetes consequences was found between the same patients’ representations and exercise, foot care, and self-monitoring of blood glucose. Partners’ representations of personal and treatment control, were mediators between the same partners’ representations and self-monitoring of blood glucose. No partners’ representations mediated patients’ representation and adherence to medication or diet . This study emphasized partners’ representations on patient’s adherence to exercise, foot care and monitoring of blood glucose, in recent diagnosed T2DM patients. Interventions to promote adherence in T2DM should promote convergence between patients and partners’ diabetes representations. This study provides some evidence for the need to treat T2DM within the dyad to improve adherence, starting after the diagnosis.     

Perceived control over the medical procedure and its association with adjustment to a low-control situation: the case of infertility

Illness perceptions were shown to be related to emotional and physical outcomes, as proposed by Leventhal’s self-regulation model. These perceptions include the illness identity, its timeline, consequences, causes, and controllability, which later research found to include self-control and treatment control. The current study aimed to examine the role of a third type of perceived control: Control over the treatment procedures. We hypothesized that this type of control would be important for women undergoing infertility treatments, which are characterized by high uncertainty and low personal control. The sample included 194 Israeli women who were undergoing infertility treatments, 70% recruited in hospitals and the remainder in a fertility counseling center and website. All participants were married religious Jewish women, which added to the stress inherent in infertility. Study measures included the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R), adapted to infertility, with an additional subscale assessing control over the procedure, and infertility-specific distress and well-being scales. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure, including the distinct new subscale. A structural equations model showed that perceived consequences were most strongly related to distress and well-being. The three types of control were positively intercorrelated but differed in their associations with distress and well-being: Self-control over the problem and treatment control were unrelated to either measure while self-control over the procedure was related to greater well-being. These findings suggest that when control over the condition or the treatment outcomes is impossible, individuals may still benefit from control over external factors such as their health care. Healthcare providers can support them by seeking ways to increase their control over their treatment procedures, which may contribute to better psychological adjustment. Future studies should examine the role of perceived control over the procedures in other low-control situations (e.g., newly diagnosed cancer; aging-related declines).     

Research in the Psychological Laboratory: Truth or Triviality?

This article examines the truism that studies from psychological laboratories are low in external validity. Past rational and empirical explorations of this truism found little support for it. A broader empirical approach was taken for the study reported here; correspondence between lab and field was compared across a broad range of domains, including aggression, helping, leadership style, social loafing, self-efficacy, depression, and memory, among others. Correspondence between lab- and field-based effect sizes of conceptually similar independent and dependent variables was considerable. In brief, the psychological laboratory has generally produced psychological truths, rather than trivialities. These same data suggest that a companion truism about field studies in psychology—that they are generally low on internal validity—is also false.     

Debating drunk driving: The construction of causal explanations in television discussion programmes

The mass media are an important source of social understandings and representations. The growing genre of audience discussion programmes functions as a public forum for airing opinions on issues of social concern. The genre is structured so as to involve viewers, to validate ordinary experiences and to express opinion. Four programmes on drunk driving were analysed for the causal explanations they offer viewers. The causes, effects and causal interconnections used within each programme were analysed, and networks of the overall representations of drunk driving were constructed. These showed a broad consensus of causes and effects across programmes, but different explanations in terms of locus, stability and controllability. Programmes typically offered lists of important factors, rather than structured arguments, despite the debating framework. There was an emphasis on external, stable, controllable causes in the programmes.     

Phonological representations in deaf children: the importance of early linguistic experience

It is argued that the development of phonological representations in deaf children does not necessarily depend on auditory speech experience, neither at the perception nor at the production level. Instead, this development depends upon early experience of an input in which all phonological contrasts are well specified, independently of input modality. This is argued on the basis of the studies investigating phonological and morpho-phonological abilities of profoundly deaf children early exposed to Cued Speech. The paper is concluded with some speculations about the effect of early exposure to CS on the development of language specific processes housed in the left-hemisphere.     

Shades of Awareness on the Mechanisms Underlying the Quality of Conscious Representations: A Commentary to Fazekas and Overgaard ()

Fazekas and Overgaard ( 2018 ) present a novel, multidimensional model that explains different ways in which conscious representations can be degraded. Moreover, the authors discuss possible mechanisms that underlie different kinds of degradation, primarily those related to attentional processing. In this letter, we argue that the proposed mechanisms are not sufficient. We propose that (1) attentional mechanisms work differently at various processing stages; and (2) factors that are independent of attentional ones, such as expectation, previous experience, and context, should be accounted for if we are aiming to construct a comprehensive model of conscious visual perception.     

工作记忆表征的激活与抑制状态对注意引导效应的影响

本研究采用双任务范式, 通过定向遗忘任务操纵工作记忆表征状态, 分别在目标无关和目标相关条件下考察工作记忆激活与抑制状态对视觉搜索早期注意引导效应的影响。实验1与实验2发现当工作记忆表征只可能与视觉搜索分心物匹配时(目标无关条件), 处于激活状态的工作记忆表征会引导视觉注意偏向到与之匹配的分心物, 表现出注意引导效应, 而处于抑制状态的工作记忆表征则没有观察到注意引导效应。实验3与实验4发现, 当工作记忆表征有可能与视觉搜索目标匹配时(目标相关条件), 处于激活状态的工作记忆表征能捕获注意, 而处于抑制状态的工作记忆表征只有与视觉搜索目标匹配时, 才表现出对该搜索目标反应的延迟。这些研究的结果表明(1)处于激活状态的工作记忆表征能有效地引导注意偏向到与之匹配的搜索目标或分心物, 并且这种注意引导效应并未受到抑制动机的影响而被消除或反转; (2)处于抑制状态的工作记忆表征能将抑制状态传递到视觉搜索阶段, 并延迟对与之匹配的搜索目标的反应。     

Is a Single‐Bladed Knife Enough to Dissect Human Cognition? Commentary on Griffiths et al.

Griffiths, Christian, and Kalish (this issue) present an iterative-learning paradigm applying a Bayesian model to understand inductive biases in categorization. The authors argue that the paradigm is useful as an exploratory tool to understand inductive biases in situations where little is known about the task. It is argued that a theory developed only at the computational level is much like a single-bladed knife that is only useful in highly idealized situations. To be useful as a general tool that cuts through the complex fabric of cognition, we need at least two-bladed scissors that combine both computational and psychological constraints to characterize human behavior. To temper its sometimes expansive claims, it is time to show what a Bayesian model cannot explain. Insight as to how human reality may differ from the Bayesian predictions may shed more light on human cognition than the simpler focus on what the Bayesian approach can explain. There remains much to be done in terms of integrating Bayesian approaches and other approaches in modeling human cognition.     

Group information elaboration and group decision making: The role of shared task representations

Decision making groups often exchange and integrate distributed information to a lesser extent than is desirable for high-quality decisions. We propose that group members’ shared task representations play an important role in this respect, because groups are often insufficiently attuned to the task’s information elaboration requirements. Task representations emphasizing elaboration of decision-relevant information should therefore enhance decision-making performance. This should hold especially when group members realize that they share these task representations, because this realization removes psychological barriers to introducing new insights. Testing these hypotheses, we compared information elaboration and decision-making performance of control groups and groups receiving instructions emphasizing information elaboration in two experiments. Half of the experimental groups were also made to realize that they shared the elaboration instructions. As predicted, groups with task representations emphasizing information elaboration and the realization they shared these representations outperformed groups in the other conditions. This effect was mediated by information elaboration.