Simulating demand for cigarettes among pregnant women: A Low‐Risk method for studying vulnerable populations

A substantive obstacle to experimentally studying cigarette smoking and use of other tobacco products in pregnant women is the risk of adverse effects on mother and fetus from experimenter administration of the product of interest. The purpose of this study is to investigate bypassing that obstacle by using behavioral economic simulation tasks. In the present study we used the Cigarette Purchase Task (CPT) to simulate changes in demand for hypothetical cigarettes as a function of varying cigarette prices. Participants were 95 pregnant women who completed the CPT prior to participation in a smoking‐cessation trial. Aggregate and individual participant demand varied as an orderly function of price and those changes were well fitted by an exponential equation. Demand also varied in correspondence to two well‐validated predictors of individual differences in smoking cessation among pregnant women (cigarettes smoked per day, pre‐pregnancy quit attempts). Moreover, CPT indices were more effective than these two conventional variables in predicting individual differences in whether women made a quit attempt during the current pregnancy. Overall, these results represent a promising step in demonstrating the validity and utility of the CPT for experimentally examining demand for cigarettes, and potentially other tobacco and nicotine delivery products, among pregnant women.     

Resisting Gendered Smoking Pressures: Critical Consciousness as a Correlate of Women's Smoking Status

Gender is one of the social structures, along with social class and ethnicity, that shapes women's smoking behaviors. We examined how different responses to gender pressures (internalization and resistance) relate to smoking. We analyzed data from a national random digit dial survey of 945 women and found that never smokers scored high on resistance to gender pressure (indicated by high scores on feminist consciousness) and on education and Body Mass Index; current smokers had the reverse pattern. Ex-smokers scored high on one measure of resistance (advertising skepticism) and on two measures of internalization (embodied femininity and weight concern); they were also likely to have high household income and to be European American. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for smoking cessation programs and antismoking campaigns.     

Multiple Realizability Intuitions and the Functionalist Conception of the Mind

A popular argument supporting functionalism has been what is commonly called the “multiple realizability” argument. One version of this argument uses thought experiments designed to show that minds could be composed of different types of material. This article offers a metaphilosophical analysis of this argument and shows that it fails to provide a strong case for functionalism. The multiple realizability argument is best understood as an inference‐to‐the‐best‐explanation argument, whereby a functionalist account of our mental concepts serves to explain our multiple realizability intuitions. I show that the argument is inadequate because alternative accounts of our mental concepts exist that provide equally plausible explanations for these intuitions. Moreover, in the case of our qualia concepts, a nonfunctionalist account explains several other intuitions that functionalism cannot explain. Thus, despite its popularity, the intuition‐based version of the multiple realizability argument is a poor reason for accepting functionalism.     

What is Classical and Non-Classical Knowledge?

Mamardašvili’s ‘classical’ paradigm of knowledge is seen to be minimally based on extrapolations from Descartes’ classical philosophy to which Mamardašvili attributes features that rather anticipate his own post-classical ontology. The latter is oriented towards the primacy of perception as a subjective process, in which the self-conscious subject constructs the world, not as illusion, but as a ‘picture’ or ‘model’ (Wittgenstein’s Bild). By examining Mamardašvili’s definition of the ‘phenomenon’ against the␣background of Husserl’s ‘reduction’, Wittgenstein’s ‘object’ and the Freudian and post-structuralist psychoanalytic model of subjectivity, the paper arrives at the inference that Mamardašvili is essentially a post-Structuralist thinker who appropriates concepts from various critical and philosophical disciplines to construct his own multi-disciplinary theory of consciousness and perception.     

After-School Supervision, Psychosocial Impact, and Adolescent Smoking and Alcohol Use in China

We examined effects of self-care after school hours and psychosocial factors on cigarette smoking and alcohol use among adolescents in China. Survey data were obtained from 4734 7th and 11th grade students from seven cities across China. Students were queried about the frequency and quantity of unsupervised self-care after school in an average week. Tobacco and alcohol usage were also obtained. Odds ratios were calculated to determine the strength of association between unsupervised self-care after school and substance use. Results indicated that the amount of self-care after-school (how many days and how many hours per week) was significantly associated with increased risk for smoking and alcohol use among Chinese adolescents. These associations remained significant even after controlling for anxiety, depressive symptoms, and peer influence. The interaction between unsupervised self-care after school and peer influence indicated that unsupervised self-care after school is a stronger risk factor for smoking among adolescents with pro-smoking friends. The findings suggest that substance use prevention programs for youth in China should try to enhance parental monitoring. As it may not be feasible for families to revert to a lifestyle that includes supervision by relatives, other approaches such as organized after-school care are worthy of consideration.     

Cigarette Smoking, Anxiety, and Depression

This review provides a detailed analysis of anxiety and depression as they relate to each stage of the cigarette smoking cycle: initiation, maintenance, and cessation with an emphasis on nicotine withdrawal. An analysis of the literature confirms that cigarette smoking is highly comorbid with anxiety disorders and clinical depression, and that this relationship appears to be moderated by factors such as age of the smoker, type of disorder, and level of nicotine dependence. Studies also offer evidence to suggest a relationship between smoking and both subclinical anxiety and depression. Research findings have not revealed whether common factors influence the development of anxiety, depression, and smoking, whether anxiety and depression lead to smoking, or whether the reverse is true. Nevertheless, a current understanding of the links among smoking, anxiety, and depression confirms current prevention and cessation techniques, as well as suggests new directions for research and clinical practice.     

Pharmacologic and Behavioral Withdrawal From Addictive Drugs

ABSTRACT— Recent theories suggest that drug withdrawal does not motivate drug use and relapse. However, data now show that withdrawal produces complex changes over time in at least two symptoms (i.e., negative affect and urges) that are highly predictive of relapse. Evidence suggests that falling levels of the drug in the blood and interruption of the drug self-administration ritual both affect these symptoms. Both of these forms of withdrawal motivate renewed drug use in addicted individuals.     

Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on prenatal stress,anxiety and depression

Low well-being is common among Chinese pregnant women but few effective interventions currently exist to improve prenatal stress and negative emotions. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has been proved to be effective in reducing stress and rarely studies were focused on Chinese pregnant women. The aim of the current paper is to investigate the effects of 8-week MBSR on prenatal stress, anxiety and depression among Chinese pregnant women. A sample of 66 pregnant women randomly allocated into either the MBSR group (n=34) or the control group (n=32). Participants in the MBSR group received a group 8-week, 90-min each time intervention. The results found a significant interaction between time and condition for prenatal stress (F=45.51, p<0.001, η ²=0.427), anxiety (F=19.30, p<0.001, η ²=0.240), while depression showed no time-by-group interaction (F=0.29, p=0.589, η ²=0.005). As for the sub-scale of state anxiety, while there was only no time effect (F=3.68, p=0.060, η ²=0.057). The findings of this study preliminary indicated effects of the MBSR intervention on self-reported prenatal stress and anxiety in comparison to a treatment-as-usual control. Effect on depression was not observed may due to the low level of depression of participants. This study provides preliminary evidence that MBSR is suitable for Chinese pregnant women and be effective in decreasing prenatal stress, anxiety.     

On Reduction Rules,Meaning-as-use,and Proof-theoretic Semantics

The intention here is that of giving a formal underpinning to the idea of ‘meaning-is-use’ which, even if based on proofs, it is rather different from proof-theoretic semantics as in the Dummett–Prawitz tradition. Instead, it is based on the idea that the meaning of logical constants are given by the explanation of immediate consequences, which in formalistic terms means the effect of elimination rules on the result of introduction rules, i.e. the so-called reduction rules. For that we suggest an extension to the Curry– Howard interpretation which draws on the idea of labelled deduction, and brings back Frege’s device of variable-abstraction to operate on the labels (i.e., proof-terms) alongside formulas of predicate logic. Presented by Heinrich Wansing