Working with Older Adults: Predictors of Attitudes Towards Ageing in Psychology and Social Work Students,Faculty, and Practitioners

The Australian population is experiencing a rapid ageing of the population, and as such, an increased need for gerontological practitioners in the helping professions will continue to grow. Terror management theory (TMT), which was used to frame this study, posits that because of the fact that humans are aware of their own mortality, they are compelled to avoid the anxiety associated with it. Personal ageing and interaction with older adults may be reminders of the unavoidable decline and death that faces us all. The purpose of this study is to examine comfort in spending time with older adults amongst students, academic teaching staff, and practitioners in the fields of psychology and social work. We sought to determine if TMT helped predict fear of being with older adults. Ageism, contact with older adults, and known demographic factors associated with attitudes towards older adults were also examined. Hierarchical multiple regression explained nearly 46% of the variance in comfort with older adults and indicated that fear of ageing, positive ageism, negative ageism, contact with older adults, and sex were significant predictors. Educational efforts aimed at addressing beliefs about ageing and older adults may contribute to further comfort in working with older adults.     

Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech + gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker’s preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients’ speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker’s message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.     

Eye contact elicits bodily self-awareness in human adults

Eye contact is a typical human behaviour known to impact concurrent or subsequent cognitive processing. In particular, it has been suggested that eye contact induces self-awareness, though this has never been formally proven. Here, we show that the perception of a face with a direct gaze (that establishes eye contact), as compared to either a face with averted gaze or a mere fixation cross, led adult participants to rate more accurately the intensity of their physiological reactions induced by emotional pictures. Our data support the view that bodily self-awareness becomes more acute when one is subjected to another’s gaze. Importantly, this effect was not related to a particular arousal state induced by eye contact perception. Rejecting the arousal hypothesis, we suggest that eye contact elicits a self-awareness process by enhancing self-focused attention in humans. We further discuss the implications of this proposal.     

Mr. Richie and the tourists

This paper tracks the affective intensity and emergent potential that is part of making contact with Richie, a local Creole villager from Walliceville, Belize. Tourists and expats are drawn to Richie and seduced by him, his colorful language and personality. My attention in this paper is directed to the spatialized force fields of contact between tourists, expats and local creole villagers, like Richie, by attending to the way these contact fields conjure forces of wild vitality that both agitate and fascinate social life in Belize. I focus on how Richie acts as a powerful representation of tropical “no worries” Creole life. But more than that, he carries a sensory charge, seducing tourists and expats into crazy moments of abandon, a “sensing beyond security” (Manning, 2007: 134–161), that exceeds the work of Caribbean tourist representations to become moments when forces are activated as impacts that provoke things, for better or for worse. I argue that such moments spawn worlds that build forms of attachment and become the vital fields of sensations that incite life as emergent forces coming into play in this postcolonial state of emergency taking shape as neo-liberal exception, on the edge of global empire, in Belize.     

Both fearful and happy expressions interact with gaze direction by 200 ms SOA to speed attention orienting

Attention orienting towards a gazed-at location is fundamental to social attention. Whether gaze cues can interact with emotional expressions other than those signalling environmental threat to modulate this gaze cueing, and whether this integration changes over time, remains unclear. With four experiments we demonstrate that, when perceived motion inherent to dynamic displays is controlled for, gaze cueing is enhanced by both fearful and happy faces compared to neutral faces. This enhancement is seen with stimulus-onset asynchronies ranging from 200–700?ms. Thus, gaze cueing can be reliably modulated by positive expressions, albeit to a smaller degree than fearful ones, and this gaze–emotion integration impacts behaviour as early as 200?ms post-cue onset.     

视觉信息呈现材料对视线突显技术的影响作用

本研究选取了基于视线追踪的视线突显技术作为研究对象,探究视觉信息呈现材料对不同视线突显技术的影响作用。结果表明：1）相比无突显,两种视线突显技术在搜索中均能提高操作绩效;2）视线矩阵突显技术在提高搜索速度上更优于视线单项突显技术;3）视线矩阵突显技术均能提高两种词频词组的搜索绩效,而低频词组搜索时,视线单项突显技术下的搜索正确率最优。本研究进一步考察了视线突显技术规律特点,为其实际应用提供理论依据和设计思路。     

群际接触减少偏见的机制：一项整合的研究

以321名少数民族大学生为被试,考察了民族接触（与汉族）、交往态度、民族认同、民族本质论、民族刻板印象和群际焦虑等变量,以整合的视角探讨了民族接触促进民族交往的机制问题。研究结果表明：民族接触通过降低群际焦虑和民族认同、减弱消极刻板印象和民族本质论而间接促进了民族交往,民族认同在民族接触和民族本质论之间、消极刻板印象在民族接触和群际焦虑之间存在中介作用。这项整合的研究理论上丰富了群际接触减少偏见的机制研究,发现了新的中介变量,对促进民族交往的实践具有指导意义。     

Transient Effects of Gaze Stability Exercises on Postural Stability in Patients With Posterior Circulation Stroke

The authors sought to investigate if short-term gaze stability exercises have an effect on postural stability of dynamic standing during neck movement in patients with posterior circulation stroke (PCS). Patients in both PCS and non-PCS groups were assigned to either an intervention or control group. The intervention group performed the gaze stability exercises for 10 min while the control group was merely resting. The center of pressure velocity was calculated to evaluate the postural stability. After intervention, PCS and non-PCS showed a significant reduction in center of pressure velocity during dynamic standing with eyes closed condition, and the PCS group showed a significant improvement in eye-opened condition. This study indicated that gaze stability exercises improve PCS patients' postural control, especially during dynamic standing.     

Does contact at work extend its influence beyond prejudice? Evidence from healthcare settings

This article reports on two studies investigating the role of intergroup contact on the reduction of prejudice against migrants and on organizational and health outcomes. Study 1 enrolled 624 native healthcare professionals and showed that frequent and positive contact with non-native co-workers was associated with a decrease in the professionals’ prejudice and an increase in the professionals’ perception of team functioning. These effects were mediated by reduced in-group threat perception. Study 2 enrolled 201 native patients and showed that frequent and positive contact with non-native healthcare providers was associated with a decrease in patients’ prejudice and an increase in patients’ satisfaction for the care received. These effects were mediated by reduced in-group threat perception. These novel findings showed that frequent and positive contact with non-native individuals can improve health and organizational outcomes along with facilitating positive intergroup relations.