Associations between childhood biomedical factors,maternal smoking,personality traits,Body and Mass Index and the prevalence of asthma in adulthood

Objective: The study set out to investigate socio-economic, biomedical, health and behavioural and psychological factors in childhood and adulthood associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood, drawing data from The National Child Development Studies (NCDS), a birth cohort in the UK.

Design: The National Child Development Study, a nationally representative sample of 17,415 babies born in Great Britain in 1958 and followed up at 7, 11, 33 and 50 years was used.

Main Outcome Measure: The prevalence of asthma at age 50 was the outcome measure. The analytic sample consists of 5118 participants with complete data on a set of measures at birth, at ages 7, 11, 33 and 50 years.

Results: Using logistic regression analyses, results showed that childhood asthma (OR = 6.77: 4.38–10.48, p < .001) and respiratory symptoms (OR = 1.83: 1.18–2.86, p < .01), maternal smoking during pregnancy (OR = 1.26: 1.00–1.59, p < .05), Body and Mass Index (BMI) (OR = 1.03: 1.02–1.05, p < .001), traits Neuroticism (OR = 1.13: 1.01–1.21, p < .05) and Conscientiousness (OR = 0.76: 0.76–0.96, p < .01), as well as sex (OR = 1.49: 1.15–1.94, p < .001) were all significantly associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood.

Conclusion: The study shows that both childhood and adulthood psychological and sociological factors are significantly associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood, though more work need to be done in this area.     

Which Are the Genuine Properties?

This article considers three views about which properties are genuine. According to the first view, we should look to successful commonsense and scientific explanations in determining which properties are genuine. On this view, predicates that figure in such explanations thereby pick out genuine properties. According to the second view, the only predicates that pick out genuine properties are those that figure in our best scientific explanations. On this view, predicates that figure in commonsense explanations pick out genuine properties only if such explanations are vindicated by the sciences. According to the third view, the only genuine properties are the fundamental, microphysical ones. On this view, although there are “higher‐level” predicates that figure in true commonsense and scientific explanations, there are no “higher‐level” properties corresponding to such predicates. The article argues that the third view is superior to the others.     

Including Both Voices: A New Bidirectional Framework for Understanding and Improving Intergroup Relations

Methods: If successful intergroup harmony is to be achieved between two groups, then both groups' voices must be heard. Despite this, 60 years of social psychological “intergroup” prejudice research has tended to adopt a solely majority‐centric perspective, with the majority group portrayed as the active agent of prejudice, and the minority group as passive targets. Objective: This paper critically reviews relevant literature, highlighting this unidirectional imbalance, and proposes a new, two‐stage bidirectional framework, where we encourage researchers and educators to first understand how minority and majority groups' intergroup attitudes and emotions impact intergroup dynamics, before tailoring and implementing contact and recategorisation strategies to improve intergroup relations, nationally and internationally. Conclusion: We argue that the interactive nature of the intergroup dynamic needs to be better understood, and each group's voice heard, before prejudice can be effectively reduced. Lastly, we describe an Australian study, the Dual Identity and Electronic‐contact (DIEC) programme, that has been conducted and has successfully applied this bidirectional framework.     

Choice between single and multiple reinforcers in concurrent-chains schedules

Pigeons responded on concurrent-chains schedules with equal variable-interval schedules as initial links. One terminal link delivered a single reinforcer after a fixed delay, and the other terminal link delivered either three or five reinforcers, each preceded by a fixed delay. Some conditions included a postreinforcer delay after the single reinforcer to equate the total durations of the two terminal links, but other conditions did not include such a postreinforcer delay. With short initial links, preference for the single-reinforcer alternative decreased when a postreinforcer delay was present, but with long initial links, the postreinforcer delays had no significant effect on preference. In conditions with a postreinforcer delay, preference for the single-reinforcer alternative frequently switched from above 50% to below 50% as the initial links were lengthened. This pattern of results was consistent with delay-reduction theory (Squires & Fantino, 1971), but not with the contextual-choice model (Grace, 1994) or the hyperbolic value-added model (Mazur, 2001) as they have usually been applied. However, the hyperbolic value-added model could account for the results if its calculations were expanded to include reinforcers delivered in later terminal links. The implications of these findings for models of concurrent-chains performance are discussed.     

Remuneration disparities in Oceania: Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

This paper explores the impact of remuneration differences on workers in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. In these countries remunerative differences are linked to government policy (in Papua New Guinea) and job contracts (in the Solomon Islands), and have impacted on industrial relations in both settings (strike action). A total of N = 350 professionals (n = 60 expatriates) from 54 organizations in aid, government, higher education and industry (mean response rate = 36%) responded to an organizational survey form. Remuneration ratios between international and local respondents based on the World Bank's index of purchasing power parity approached 9:1. In both sites staff compared pay and benefits (remuneration) packages: Internationally remunerated staff rated their ability higher than their local counterparts did; locally remunerated groups reported more injustice in remuneration, were more demotivated by the gaps, and were more likely to be thinking about leaving the organization. In-country workshops of N = 40 largely local stakeholders from aid and community organizations plus government ministries considered the survey's findings and recommended: in Solomon Islands, (a) introducing a policy of localization, (b) establishing a remuneration commission (already existent in Papua New Guinea), and (c) reducing the remunerative gap; in Papua New Guinea, (d) reversing the post-Independence "dual pay system" (currently official policy), (e) instituting pay-for-performance, and (f) ensuring the existent localization policy is applied to recruitment, selection, and staff career planning and management.     

Revisiting the role of bad news in maintaining human observing behavior

Results from studies of observing responses have suggested that stimuli maintain observing owing to their special relationship to primary reinforcement (the conditioned-reinforcement hypothesis), and not because they predict the availability and nonavailability of reinforcement (the information hypothesis). The present article first reviews a study that challenges that conclusion and then reports a series of five brief experiments that provide further support for the conditioned-reinforcement view. In Experiments 1 through 3, participants preferred occasional good news (a stimulus correlated with reinforcement) or no news (a stimulus uncorrelated with reinforcement) to occasional bad news (a stimulus negatively correlated with reinforcement). In Experiment 4 bad news was preferred to no news when the absence of stimulus change following a response to the bad-news option was reliably associated with good news. When this association was weakened in Experiment 5 the results were intermediate. The results support the conclusion that information is reinforcing only when it is positive or useful. As required by the conditioned-reinforcement hypothesis, useless information does not maintain observing.     

Consider the situation: Reducing automatic stereotyping through Situational Attribution Training

The present research investigated the effectiveness of a new technique for reducing automatic biases rooted in attribution theory - the Situational Attribution Training Technique. The goal of this strategy extends previous work by targeting the fundamental attributional pillars underlying automatic stereotyping. We aimed to circumvent the well-documented tendency for individuals to be overly reliant on dispositional attributions when perceiving negative stereotype-consistent behaviors performed by outgroup members. By teaching participants to consider situational attributions for such behaviors, we expected a reduction in outgroup stereotyping. Specifically, White participants were trained extensively to choose situational over dispositional explanations for negative stereotype-consistent behaviors performed by Black men. Across two experiments, participants who completed Situational Attribution Training demonstrated reduced automatic racial stereotyping on a person categorization task, relative to control participants who exhibited substantial automatic stereotyping. The implications of these findings for the nature and reduction of intergroup biases are discussed.     

中国控烟状况与干预对策

目前国内控烟文献从人群吸烟状况及吸烟影响因素、控烟干预策略及其效果、控烟能力等多角度,探讨了我国的烟草控制问题.在综合已有有效地控烟策略基础上,提出加强控烟教育和宣传、发挥医务人员在控烟中的表率作用、综合使用各种措施控烟等针对性建议,对中国长期有效的控烟具有深远意义.     

Study of a Cognitive Dissonance Intervention to Address High School Students' Cheating Attitudes and Behaviors

This study examined academic dishonesty (AD) of 586 Taiwanese graduate students, the relationship between students' AD and their perceptions of AD of their peers, and their judgments regarding the seriousness of AD. Results showed that female students were more critical of AD than their male counterparts were in the areas of fraudulence, plagiarism, and falsification. Male students demonstrated more awareness of peer involvement in AD in the area of falsification than did female students. Master's students confessed to greater involvement in AD compared with the PhD students. Doctoral students were more judgmental with respect to unethical acts of fraudulence, plagiarism, and falsification.     

A Cerebral Hyperventilation Index for Electroencephalography

This study was an attempt to determine the effect of drive on probability learning. Each of two groups of Ss was divided into high- and low-drive groups on the basis of MAS scores. Each S was given 200 trials on a probability learning task, with 70 per cent reinforcement on one side and 30 per cent reinforcement on the other. At the .05 level, there was no difference between groups in probability choices, and neither group differed from the objective probability scores. The results are discussed in terms of the number of trials involved, the introduction of emotional arousal, and Hullian theory. On the basis of a comparison with the results of previous studies, it was suggested that investigators be cautious in generalizing probability learning results from one species to another.