A qualitative study of citizens' experience of participating in health counseling

Individual health counseling is a form of intervention designed to minimize the effects of chronic health disease and to offer a path towards good health practices. The aim of the present study was to explore the experiences of those persons who participated in health counseling in order to assess the psychosocial significance of the counseling upon their health behavior. In addition the study was concerned with the factors which underlay peoples' decision to sign up for health counseling. The research involved 11 semi‐structured interviews with individuals who had participated in a municipality based health counseling program. Data was analyzed using Malterud's systemic text condensation and a theoretical framework around Bandura's social cognitive theory. Analysis revealed that an approach tailored to each individual with minor short‐term goals accompanied by feeling supported by the counselor produced the greatest impact on behavior. Receiving feedback from the counselor and feeling positive about the relationship were seen as essential. These aspects were also crucial in the decision to undertake health counseling. The study indicates that whether individual's sign up on their own initiative or conversely are invited to join the program has no influence upon their motivation to change their behavior. Overall the respondents demonstrated improvement in their behavior and attitudes towards their health. However, the study also indicates that this form of intervention is less or even ineffective without the support of the individual's immediate family.     

Expert athletes activate somatosensory and motor planning regions of the brain when passively listening to familiar sports sounds

The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural response to familiar and unfamiliar, sport and non-sport environmental sounds in expert and novice athletes. Results revealed differential neural responses dependent on sports expertise. Experts had greater neural activation than novices in focal sensorimotor areas such as the supplementary motor area, and pre- and postcentral gyri. Novices showed greater activation than experts in widespread areas involved in perception (i.e. supramarginal, middle occipital, and calcarine gyri; precuneus; inferior and superior parietal lobules), and motor planning and processing (i.e. inferior frontal, middle frontal, and middle temporal gyri). These between-group neural differences also appeared as an expertise effect within specific conditions. Experts showed greater activation than novices during the sport familiar condition in regions responsible for auditory and motor planning, including the inferior frontal gyrus and the parietal operculum. Novices only showed greater activation than experts in the supramarginal gyrus and pons during the non-sport unfamiliar condition, and in the middle frontal gyrus during the sport unfamiliar condition. These results are consistent with the view that expert athletes are attuned to only the most familiar, highly relevant sounds and tune out unfamiliar, irrelevant sounds. Furthermore, these findings that athletes show activation in areas known to be involved in action planning when passively listening to sounds suggests that auditory perception of action can lead to the re-instantiation of neural areas involved in producing these actions, especially if someone has expertise performing the actions.     

Disturbances of spontaneous empathic processing relate with the severity of the negative symptoms in patients with schizophrenia: A behavioural pilot-study using virtual reality technology

Behavioural and neuroimaging data have recently pointed out that empathy (feeling into someone else) is associated with mental imagery and transformation related to one’s and other’s visuo-spatial perspectives. Impairments of both empathic and visuo-spatial abilities have been observed in patients with schizophrenia. Especially, it has been suggested that schizophrenics are altered in spontaneously simulating another individual’s first-person experience. However, there is so far only little evidence regarding the relationship between deficits in empathy and disturbances in spontaneous heterocentered coding in schizophrenia. In the present pilot-study, we tested with schizophrenic patients our behavioural paradigm that enables to measure from the bodily postures and movements whether individuals in ecologically more valid conditions are interacting with another individual by using egocentered – as in sympathy (feeling with someone else) – or heterocentered – as in empathy – visuo-spatial mechanisms. For that, ten patients and ten controls, standing and moving, interacted with a virtual tightrope walker, displayed life-sized, standing and moving as well. We show that patients with higher negative symptoms had, in most cases, deficits in spontaneously using heterocentered visuo-spatial mechanisms and employed preferentially an egocentered referencing to interact with the avatar. In contrast, preserved spontaneous heterocentered visuo-spatial strategies were not linked to a prevailing negative or positive symptomatology. Our data suggest that the severity of the negative symptoms in schizophrenia relates with disturbances of spontaneous (“on-line”) empathic processing in association with lower scoring self-reported trait cognitive empathy.     

From early markers to neuro-developmental mechanisms of autism

A fast growing field, the study of infants at risk because of having an older sibling with autism (i.e. infant sibs) aims to identify the earliest signs of this disorder, which would allow for earlier diagnosis and intervention. More importantly, we argue, these studies offer the opportunity to validate existing neuro-developmental models of autism against experimental evidence. Although autism is mainly seen as a disorder of social interaction and communication, emerging early markers do not exclusively reflect impairments of the “social brain”. Evidence for atypical development of sensory and attentional systems highlight the need to move away from localized deficits to models suggesting brain-wide involvement in autism pathology. We discuss the implications infant sibs findings have for future work into the biology of autism and the development of interventions.     

RELIGION IS EASY,BUT SCIENCE IS HARD … UNDERSTANDING McCAULEY'S THESIS

Robert N. McCauley's new book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (2011) presents a new paradigm for investigating the relationship between science and religion by exploring the cognitive foundations of religious belief and scientific knowledge. McCauley's contention is that many of the differences and disagreements regarding religion and science are the product of distinct features of human cognition that process these two domains of knowledge very differently. McCauley's thesis provides valuable insights into this relationship while not necessarily leading to a dismissive view of theology or religious belief. His paradigm allows the research lens to focus on cognitive differences in processing scientific versus religious information and the important role of automatic, unconscious, and intuitive cognitive processes in understanding both the natural and supernatural worlds.     

DEFINING “RELIGION” AS NATURAL: A CRITICAL INVITATION TO ROBERT McCAULEY

Previous critics have argued that Robert McCauley defines religion and science selectively and arbitrarily, cutting them to fit his model in Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. McCauley has responded that final definitions are “overrated” and that artificial distinctions can serve an important role in naturalistic investigation. I agree with this position but argue that a genealogy of the category of religion is crucial to the methodology that McCauley describes. Since the inherent ambiguity of religion will undermine any essential claims about its cognitive naturalness, I invite McCauley to consider how his research might investigate scientific and religious cognition in new terms.     

EXPLANATORY MODESTY

Although I certainly have differences with some of my commentators, I am grateful for the time, effort, and attention that each has devoted to my book, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. They have helpfully pointed out features of my positions that need clarification and elaboration. I am also grateful to the editor of Zygon, Willem Drees, for this opportunity to undertake that task here.     

组织型插图对不同认知方式个体说明性文本阅读的影响

采用图文相继呈现、文本逐句阅读的范式,通过反应时技术与出声思维的方法考察了组织型插图对不同认知方式个体说明性文本阅读过程与阅读结果的影响,结果发现,与单一文本相比,场独立个体在有插图条件下的阅读成绩显著提高,而阅读时间没有增加,并产生了更多的推理、细化和提问策略;而场依存个体在有插图条件下的阅读成绩显著提高,阅读时间也显著增多,而理解策略没有变化。这说明组织型插图对两种认知方式个体说明性文本的阅读均起到促进作用,但场独立个体没有因为增加组织型插图而付出更多的加工努力,而是通过调整理解策略的方式来提高阅读效果;而场依存个体在阅读过程中没有根据组织型插图调整理解策略,阅读效果的提高是以付出更多的加工努力为代价的。     

On the Decision to Explore New Alternatives: The Coexistence of Under‐ and Over‐exploration

The decision whether to explore new alternatives or to choose from familiar ones is implicit in many of our daily activities. How is this decision made? When will deviation from optimal exploration be observed? The current paper examines exploration decisions in the context of a multi‐alternative “decisions from experience” task. In each trial, participants could choose a familiar option (the status quo) or a new alternative (risky exploration). The observed exploration rates were more sensitive to the frequent outcome from choosing new alternatives than to the average outcome. That is, the implicit decision whether to explore a new alternative reflects underweighting of rare events: Over‐exploration was documented in “Rare Disasters” environments, and insufficient exploration was evident in “Rare Treasures” environments. In addition, the results reveal a decrease in exploration of new alternatives over time even when it is always optimal and some exploration even when it is never reinforcing. These results can be captured with models that share a distinction between “data collection” and “outcome‐driven” decision modes. Under the data collection mode, the decision maker collects information about the environment, to be used in future choices. Under the outcome‐driven mode, the decision maker relies on small samples of previous experiences with familiar versus unfamiliar alternatives, before the selection of a specific alternative. The predictive value of a two‐parameter “explorative sampler” quantification of these assumptions is demonstrated. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.