社会阶层分化视角下医患信息行为对医患关系的影响

目前社会阶层分化进程中的医患关系比较紧张,医患信息行为起了很大作用.由于历史原因多数医师未能认识到医患信息行为对医患沟通及医患关系的影响.患者作为医疗信息掌握的弱势群体,其对从医师处获得信息的依赖将长期存在,医师与患者信息行为必然相互影响.针对信息行为建立相应的培训及评价机制是十分必要的.     

Feature synchrony-asynchrony and rate of change in visual search

ABSTRACT

Attention is known to be sensitive to the temporal structure of scenes. We initially tested whether feature synchrony, an attribute with potential special status because of its association with objecthood, is something which draws attention. Search items were surrounded by colours which periodically changed either in synchrony or out-of synchrony with periodic changes in their shape. Search for a target was notably faster when the target location contained a unique synchronous feature change amongst asynchronous changes. However, the reverse situation produced no search advantage. A second experiment showed that this effect of unique synchrony was actually a consequence of the lower rate of perceived flicker in the synchronous compared to the asynchronous items, not the synchrony itself. In our displays it seems that attention is drawn towards a location which has a relatively low rate of change. Overall, the pattern of results suggested the attentional bias we find is for relative temporal stability. Results stand in contrast to other work which has found high and low flicker rates to both draw attention equally [Cass, J., Van der Burg, E., & Alais, D. (2011). Finding flicker: Critical differences in temporal frequency capture attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 320]. Further work needs to determine the exact conditions under which this bias is and is not found when searching in complex dynamically-changing displays.     

Differential activation of a central inhibition system by motion and colour distractors

ABSTRACT

The selection of relevant stimuli is partially achieved through inhibition of irrelevant distractors. Using the distractor induced blindness (DIB) paradigm, we investigated whether these inhibitory processes depend on the feature dimension that is used to define distractors. Following a pilot study that found motion and colour targets to be comparably salient, we analysed distractor effects of those two feature dimensions. In both feature dimensions, an inhibition effect depended on the number of distractors. Colour, however, was more sensitive to distractor episodes as compared to motion: The level of inhibition was more pronounced, and its activation required less distractors. The results of a control experiment provided further evidence that, in fact, the feature dimension -instead of design differences between tasks- is responsible for this observation. The dimension-sensitive bias in the activation of a central inhibition system may be attributed to a differential processing of visual signals, depending on their behavioural relevance.     

Dissociations in Visual Attention Deficits among Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment

ABSTRACT

Impairments in visual attention and visual information processing have been identified as part of the neuropsychological features of Alzheimer's disease (AD), even in its earliest stages. There is increasing recognition that these deficits may be selective rather than global, with some attentional subtypes being more vulnerable than others. The few studies that have investigated attentional deficits in mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a putatively prodromal phase of AD, have not satisfactorily addressed the possible selectivity in attentional deficits in MCI. This study examined potential dissociations in visual attention deficits in MCI using a measure that assesses simple, divided, and selective attention. The results indicated a hierarchy of attentional impairments, with divided attention being the most affected and simple attention the least. Among participants with MCI, 53% showed evidence of impairment in divided attention compared to 19% of controls (OR = 4.81, p < .001). Poorer visual attention was also associated with poorer overall cognitive status. The implications of these findings for early identification of MCI, prevention of functional decline in MCI, and delay/reversal of cognitive degradation in MCI are discussed.     

A tutorial on adaptive design optimization

Experimentation is ubiquitous in the field of psychology and fundamental to the advancement of its science, and one of the biggest challenges for researchers is designing experiments that can conclusively discriminate the theoretical hypotheses or models under investigation. The recognition of this challenge has led to the development of sophisticated statistical methods that aid in the design of experiments and that are within the reach of everyday experimental scientists. This tutorial paper introduces the reader to an implementable experimentation methodology, dubbed Adaptive Design Optimization, that can help scientists to conduct “smart” experiments that are maximally informative and highly efficient, which in turn should accelerate scientific discovery in psychology and beyond.     

Sex Roles in Management: The Impact of Varying Power of Speech Style on Union Members' Perception of Satisfaction and Effectiveness

Effective management has traditionally been associated with men and masculine characteristics. In this study, I focused on manager communication, specifically the perceived effects of stereotypical gender/power speech styles. Union members viewed and rated a male and a female manager on videotape using three gender/power speech styles: stereotypical masculine (powerful), stereotypical feminine (powerless), and mixed gender/power. Union respondents judged both the male and female manager using the mixed gender/power speech style as most effective and as being associated with the most satisfied employees.     

Infostorms

It has become a truism that we live in so‐called information societies where new information technologies have made information abundant. At the same time, information science has made us aware of many phenomena tied to the way we process information. This article explores a series of socio‐epistemic information phenomena resulting from processes that track truth imperfectly: pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, and belief polarization. It then couples these phenomena with the hypothesis that modern information technologies may lead to their amplification so as to give rise to what are called “infostorms.” This points to the need for studying further the exact relations between information technologies and such infostorms, as well as the ways we may design technologies to avoid being misled away from what we have good reasons to believe.     

Addressing Item-Level Missing Data: A Comparison of Proration and Full Information Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Often when participants have missing scores on one or more of the items comprising a scale, researchers compute prorated scale scores by averaging the available items. Methodologists have cautioned that proration may make strict assumptions about the mean and covariance structures of the items comprising the scale (Schafer &; Graham, 2002 Schafer, J.L., &; Graham, J.W. (2002). Missing data: Our view of the state of the art. Psychological Methods, 7, 147–177.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Graham, 2009 Graham, J.W. (2009). Missing data analysis: Making it work in the real world. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 549–576.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Enders, 2010 Enders, C.K. (2010). Applied missing data analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press. [Google Scholar]). We investigated proration empirically and found that it resulted in bias even under a missing completely at random (MCAR) mechanism. To encourage researchers to forgo proration, we describe a full information maximum likelihood (FIML) approach to item-level missing data handling that mitigates the loss in power due to missing scale scores and utilizes the available item-level data without altering the substantive analysis. Specifically, we propose treating the scale score as missing whenever one or more of the items are missing and incorporating items as auxiliary variables. Our simulations suggest that item-level missing data handling drastically increases power relative to scale-level missing data handling. These results have important practical implications, especially when recruiting more participants is prohibitively difficult or expensive. Finally, we illustrate the proposed method with data from an online chronic pain management program.     

Organisms,machines, and societies: From the vertical structure of adaptability to the management of information

The adaptability of organisms and human societies depends on the synergistic orchestration of processing modes at many different levels of organization, each with unique informational characteristics. Digital information technology is a narrow transect of this spectrum. Adaptability theory provides a tool for analyzing the interactions between these fundamentally different modes of processing and for delineating the factors that can lead to either positive or negative consequences for human life.