Coping variables as predictors of perioperative emotional states and adjustment

Abstract

Surgery, regardless of its kind and severity, can be regarded as a major stress situation for any patient. High preoperative emotional arousal may negatively influence adaptation during surgery and, consequently, rate of postoperative recovery. In a series of previous studies, our research group analyzed the influence of dispositional and actual coping on subjective and objective stress indicators before, during, and after surgery. The present study investigates the influence of the dispositional coping variables vigilance and cognitive avoidance on actual surgery-related coping, state anxiety, and indicators of intra- and postoperative adjustment. The sample consisted of 42 male and 42 female patients undergoing elective maxillofacial surgery under general anaesthesia. Dispositional coping was measured on the dimensions vigilance and cognitive avoidance with the Mainz Coping Inventory. Actual surgery-related coping was assessed by means of a newly constructed inventory containing items to measure the four dimensions avoidance, vigilance, positive restructuring, and seeking social support.

Self-reported state anxiety was differentiated according to the cognitive, affective, and somatic components. The patients' adaptation was assessed by measuring doses of the narcotic agents used for induction of anaesthesia, the intraoperative status, and the amount of postoperative (analgesic and psychotropic) medication. Significant effects of coping mode, gender, and time of measurement were observed on the cognitive, affective and somatic component of state anxiety, the indicators of intraoperative adaptation and on postoperative medication. Also, patients' actual coping behavior could partly be predicted by dispositional coping. Results indicate that actual coping behavior and gender should be taken into account when trying to predict adaptation and developing psychological preparatory intervention programs.     

Measuring Team Performance in Complex and Dynamic Military Environments: The SPOTLITE Method

The Scenario-based Performance Observation Tool for Learning In Team Environments (SPOTLITE) provides a systematic method for developing team performance measurement instruments comprised of behaviorally anchored rating scales that are tied to observable behaviors that tap critical knowledge and skills and can be assessed at specific intervals during a training scenario. We developed a measurement instrument for four-person teams of F-16 pilots training for air-to-air combat in a high-fidelity simulation environment and implemented it in a handheld computer to support fast and accurate data entry as a team executes a scenario. An experiment demonstrated the sensitivity, reliability, and validity of the instrument.     

Public Entrepreneurship as Social Creativity

The article begins with an overview of the innovation process and the entrepreneurial process, each treated as separate but interrelated phenomena. The innovation process tracks the evolution of a new idea through time, whereas the entrepreneurial process tracks the activities that entrepreneurs develop to promote and defend the idea against its detractors. The model of innovation and entrepreneurship introduced distinguishes between individual and collective entrepreneurship and identifies two types of collective entrepreneurship: team entrepreneurship and functional entrepreneurship. A Minnesota case study demonstrates the power of both team and functional entrepreneurship. It also illustrates how important the linkages are between the entrepreneurs and their larger community. An innovative idea's development and survival depends on an “ecology of organizations” that provide “venture” capital for analysis and experimentation. The vast networks of contacts and associations represent a form of social capital just as important as the community's economic capital. In this case, both aspects of social creativity—the community resources and the network of social relations—were found to be instrumental in passing and implementing the first public school choice program in the country.     

The Memory of Micro-Organisms: An Essay on the Experience of Environmental Alterations by Bacteria

Using a generalized conception of experience, from which all features characteristic for higher animals (such as consciousness and thought) have been removed, allowed relating experience to adaptive processes in lower organisms. The temporal vector character of every current experience, containing as well memories of past experiences as intentions for future activities, can then be found in the adaptive response of cyanobacteria to alterations in phosphate supply, particularly in energetic manifestations of this phenomenon. A possible analogy between adaptive events as the “atomic units” of physiological adaptation and Whitehead's actual occasion of experience is discussed.     

Children First

Abstract

Investigations and prosecutions involving murdered and physically abused children are among the most serious and most complex faced by law enforcement professionals. These cases are complicated on legal, factual, medical, and scientific levels. Oftentimes, the evidence against the suspected perpetrator is solely circumstantial. Many of the problems inherent in these investigations can be overcome by prioritizing these cases. The local prosecutor's office can take the lead in ensuring justice by direct participation in the investigative phase and by ensuring continuity in the prosecution. In this article, I outline a model to ensure that this happens.     

Lecturers' faces fatigue their students: Face identity aftereffects for dynamic and static faces

Face adaptation has been used as a tool to probe our representations for facial identity. It has also been claimed to play a functional role in face processing, perhaps calibrating the visual system towards encountered faces. However, for this to be so, face aftereffects must be observable following adaptation to ecologically valid moving stimuli, not just after prolonged viewing of static images. We adapted our participants to videos, static image sequences or single images of the faces of lecturers who were personally familiar to them. All three stimulus types produced significant, and equivalent, face identity aftereffects, demonstrating that aftereffects are not confined to static images but can occur after exposure to more naturalistic stimuli. It is also further evidence against explanations of face adaptation effects solely in terms of low-level visual processing.     

Stress,Coping, and Emotions on the World Stage: The Experience of Participating in a Major Soccer Tournament Penalty Shootout

This study was designed to capture the first-hand experiences of stressors, coping, and emotions that elite professional soccer players have during a major soccer penalty shootout. Eight players who each took part in an important European Championships penalty shootout were interviewed. The results showed that the experience of stressors, coping, and emotions changed extensively throughout the event. Moreover, the participants experienced a series of different stressors, some of which were specific to the penalty shootout, and they employed a variety of coping strategies. Anxiety was the most common emotion. Practitioners can use these results to help design valid simulation protocols.     

The Effects of Time and Distance on Accuracy of Target-Directed Locomotion

Dual adaptation to different amounts or directions of prismatic displacement, or both, can be acquired and maintained with little mutual interference. Associative recalibration of the regional task- or workspace, contingent on differentiation of distinguishing sensory information, can explain such adaptation. In contrast, nonassociative realignment restores dimensional mapping among spatial representations. Methods for measuring the separate contributions of those 2 kinds of prism adaptation are identified in the present article. On the basis of a critique of dual-adaptation studies, the authors suggest that recalibration can explain the data but that the method used in those experiments confounded realignment and might have obscured the effectiveness of dual-calibration training.     

Visuokinesthetic Realignment in a Video-Controlled Reaching Task

The authors investigated the accuracy of horizontal pointing movements toward a visual target viewed on a vertical video monitor; the view included a directional distortion between perceptual and action spaces. Although accurate coding of the movement vector in a relative (visual) system of coordinates has been found to occur when there is a prismatic perturbation, provided that the hand and the target are continuously visible, such accurate performance has never been reported for video-controlled situations with larger deviations. To evaluate whether visual relative coding is task specific or depends on the magnitude of the induced misalignment, the authors manipulated the intensity of directional perturbation (10° or 40°) in a video-controlled task. Whatever the directional bias, participants (N = 40) were initially inaccurate but adapted quickly within a few trial rehearsals, with a concomitant recalibration of segmental proprioception. In contrast with prism studies, relative coding of the hand-to-target vector seemed not to be operative in video-controlled situations, suggesting that target location is specified in an egocentric system of reference that includes hand-related proprioceptive signals, despite the presence of a (consciously) detected misalignment between visual and kinesthetic systems.     

The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Ego Defense Mechanisms

The author examined the relationship between the components of emotional intelligence (perception of emotion, affect regulation, and emotional knowledge) and personality factors associated with adaptation, represented by the hierarchical model of defense mechanisms (M. Bond, S. Gardner, J. Christian. & J. Sigal, 1983). Bivariate correlation analyses yielded mixed results; the adaptive defense styles were correlated with overall emotional intelligence but not with the emotional perception and regulation components, as was hypothesized. Emotional knowledge was correlated with both adaptive and maladaptive defense styles and with general intelligence, as was expected. Implications for counseling and psychoeducational interventions are suggested.