Thinking about thinking

BACKGROUND: The nursing leadership at a 900-bed tertiary-care facility in the southeast believed an opportunity existed to improve the critical thinking abilities of the professional nursing staff. METHOD: A team, consisting of a diversified group of nurse educators and managers, had the opportunity to gain understanding of the critical thinking process of the nursing staff as well as to develop a plan designed to improve critical thinking skills. RESULTS: Outputs of the team included development of a critical thinking model and process as well as an action plan that specifically outlined how it would implement the model within the organization using a preceptor-based educational process. CONCLUSION: Nursing leadership within this facility believes that nurturing critical thinking in the staff will have a positive impact on care delivery outcomes. Creating shared visions through the assumptions that the staff and organization hold is important to improving care provided. Assisting staff with using a critical thinking process in order to construct, tear down, and then reconstruct clinical incidents as encouraged by this model is one key to problem-solving.     

New thoughts about thinking.

Reviews the book, The Nature of Thought: Essays in Honor of D.O. Hebb edited by P.W. Jusczyk and R.M. Klein (1980). The phenomenon of thinking, the topic to which this important collection of essays is addressed, is one of the principal perennial concerns of psychology. It is as fundamental and as unsolved a problem today as at the time of experimental psychology's introspectionist beginnings and, through the ensuing decades, has never ceased to stimulate, fascinate, baffle, and bewilder the serious student of psychological phenomena. The present volume appropriately reflects a wide spectrum of specific concerns and approaches to this topic. Appropriate, as well, is its dedication in honour of D.O. Hebb, whose own approach to the study of thought is especially broad and encompassing. The book resulted from a recent series of lectures, in Hebb's honour, at Dalhousie University. This is not, however, a volume primarily addressed to Hebb's ideas. Rather, it is a collection of progress reports by a number of distinguished researchers in the fields of human and animal cognition on recent approaches to topics such as consciousness, mental imagery, problem solving, representation, attention, and skilled performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advance thinking about advance directives

Stilboestrol tablets (20 x 1 mg) were given to 4 ostriches. Urine was collected over a period of 8 days and stored frozen at-20 degrees C pending analysis. Analyses were performed on a gas chromatograph-mass selective detector for the presence of parent compound and/or metabolites. Diethylstilbestrol and its metabolite, dienestrol, were detected in urine; dienestrol only for 1 day but diethylstilbestrol for 8 days after administration. Residue analysis for the use of diethylstilbestrol as growth promoter can be performed on the urine of ostriches by scanning for parent compound only since it can be detected longer than the metabolite.     

Counterfactual thinking about actions and failures to act.

When people think counterfactually about how a situation could have turned out differently, they mentally undo events in regular ways (e.g., they focus on actions not failures to act). Four experiments examine the recent discovery that the focus on actions in the short term switches to inactions in the long term. The experiments show that this temporal switch occurs only for particular sorts of situations. Experiment I showed no temporal pattern to the agency effect when 112 participants judged emotional impact and frequency of "if-only" thoughts from both short- and long-term perspectives for an investment scenario. Experiment 2 showed no temporal pattern when 190 participants considered a college choice scenario with a good outcome. Experiment 3 showed no temporal pattern when 131 participants considered an investment scenario even when the situation for the actor and nonactor was bad from the outset. Experiment 4, with 113 participants, showed a focus on actions even when the investment loss was equal for both the actor and nonactor. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of what is explicitly available in the mental representation of actions and inactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of recursive and nonrecursive thinking about persons.

Studied 2 levels of the spontaneous inference of thinking in others: (a) Level I, in which the child infers that another person has thoughts about the concrete world, such as objects and actions; and (b) Level II, in which the child infers that another person has thoughts about thinking. Approximately 20 children each at ages 10, 12, 14, and 16 were asked to talk about 3 different persons whom they knew well. A statistically significant increase in the use of Level I thinking occurred between the 10- and 12-yr-old groups, while such an increase in the use of Level II occurred between the 14- and 16-yr-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recent thinking about the concept of alcohol dependence

This paper reviews past definitions of alcohol dependence as well as that presently adopted in the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The role of alcohol consumption in diagnostic criteria and the measurement of various dimensions of drinking (frequency, usual quantity per occasion, overall volume) are also discussed. Reliable criteria for identifying both alcohol abuse and dependence are available. Methodology for assessment of different dimensions of drinking behavior also exists. Epidemiologists examining the role of alcohol in health problems should consider the diagnostic category and the dimensions of drinking behavior that are important to their study. Measurements should be adopted in accordance with this assessment.     

Dialectical responses to questions about dialectical thinking.

Responds to comments by S. F. Chan (see record 2000-05933-017), D. Y. F. Ho (see record 2000-05933-018), and Y.-T. Lee (see record 2000-05933-019) on the article by K. Peng and R. E. Nisbett (see record 1999-11125-001) that made a number of assertions that reveal problems in logic and argumentation. In their studies, Peng and Nisbett found that Chinese tended to like dialectical proverbs and social resolution better than did Americans, and Chinese tended to prefer dialectical arguments over classic Western logical arguments. In the current article, Peng and Nisbett defend their work against criticisms made by the aforementioned authors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Talking about interpersonal violence: Cultural influences on Latinas' identification and disclosure of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.

Low rates of disclosure among Latina survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence may be related to cultural influences that stigmatize disclosure and make identifying instances of sexual assault and intimate partner violence difficult. In an effort to add to existing literature, the current study conducted a series of 10 focus groups with Spanish-speaking Latinas of varying educational, immigration, and generational statuses to identify the range of cultural influences that affect Latinas' ability to identify and disclose instances of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Results suggested that gender role ideologies, traditional beliefs about marriage, familism, taboos against talking about sex, respect for authority, lack of community resources, and fear of violence operate in different ways to obscure and justify acts of sexual assault and intimate partner violence and to maintain silence when such acts do occur. Yet, most participants also felt that other people, particularly Latinos living abroad and the older generation of Latinas living in the United States, held far more conservative and traditional beliefs than the participants themselves did, suggesting that important differences exist in both the acceptance of cultural beliefs and the mechanisms through which these beliefs affect Latinas' ability to identify and disclose instances of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing predictions of violence: Being accurate about accuracy.

The prediction of violence occupies a prominent and controversial place in public mental health practice. Productive debate about the validity of violence predictions has been hampered by the use of methods for quantifying accuracy that do not control for base rates or biases in favor of certain outcomes. This article describes these problems and shows how receiver-operating characteristic analysis can be used to solve them. The article also reanalyzes 58 data sets from 44 published studies of violence prediction. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that mental health professionals' violence predictions are substantially more accurate than chance. Short-term (1–7 day) clinical predictions seem no more accurate than long-term (>1 yr) predictions. Past behavior alone appears to be a better long-term predictor of future behavior than clinical judgments and may also be a better indicator than cross-validated actuarial techniques. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transforming schools into communities of thinking and learning about serious matters.

In this article, a program of research known as Fostering Communities of Learners is described. This program is in place in several schools and classrooms serving inner-city students from 6 to 12 years of age. Based on theoretical advances in cognitive and developmental psychology, the program is successful at improving both literacy skills and domain-area subject matter knowledge (e.g., environmental science and biology). Building on young children's emergent strategic and metacognitive knowledge, together with their skeletal biological theories, the program leads children to discover the deep principles of the domain and to develop flexible learning and inquiry strategies of wide applicability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitatory effect of thinking about movement on magnetic motor-evoked potentials

BACKGROUND: The plasma level of endothelin-1 is locally increased during cooling but the net vasoconstrictor effect will be dependent on temperature effects on the vascular smooth muscle reactivity in response to the polypeptide. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cooling on the vascular smooth muscle response to endothelin-1 in human and rat veins. METHODS: Registration of vascular smooth muscle activity in vitro in vessel preparations from normal subjects. SETTING: Laboratory. PATIENTS AND ANIMALS: Superficial hand veins from 14 patients undergoing hand surgery and external jugular veins from 14 rats. INTERVENTIONS: Effects of endothelin-1, after denudation of the endothelium and during cooling, were compared with controls without these interventions. RESULTS: At 37 degrees C, endothelin-1 induced a concentration-dependent contraction in the human hand and rat jugular veins. The sensitivity to endothelin-1 was enhanced in segments without endothelium. At 37 degrees C, no relaxation in response to endothelin-1 was observed. Cooling to 10 degrees C did not alter precontraction achieved by endothelin-1 at 37 degrees C in the human hand veins, while it depressed the precontraction in the rat jugular vein. The effect of cold was reversible. Removal of the endothelium did not alter the response to cooling. CONCLUSIONS: The maintained reactivity in response to endothelin-1 during cooling of the human vessels suggests that the reported increase in endothelin-1 levels due to local cooling could contribute in the pathophysiology of peripheral vasospasm in humans.     

Negative affective consequences of thinking about disease detection behaviors.

It was proposed that thinking about disease-detection behavior would lead to more negative moods than thinking about health-promotion behavior. Detection behaviors produce more negative moods because they can threaten perceptions of good health. In a laboratory study, the initial mood states of 121 participants recruited from undergraduates and the general community were measured using a neutral-words rating procedure. Then participants were randomly assigned to think about performing a disease-detection behavior or a health-promotion behavior. Subsequently, they wrote down their responses to the behavior and evaluated these 35 either positive, negative, or neutral. Finally, the participant's mood was remeasured using both a neutral words-rating procedure and a more traditional bipolar rating measure. Results indicated that thought about disease-detection behavior produced more negative affective responses and more negative mood change than did thought about health-promotion behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The gender debate about intimate partner violence: Solutions and dead ends.

The debate on gender continues to define much scholarship on partner violence. No other single issue is as important to identifying one's theoretical and political position among those who are concerned about intimate partner violence (IPV). At this point in time, several well-documented conclusions can be drawn. First, two common estimates—under 10% female-perpetrated and 50% or more female-perpetrated—are quite discrepant from virtually all other data on physical violence. Second, several key definitional and measurement issues explain a large part of this discrepancy. Third, a number of commonly mentioned possibilities for measurement artifacts are unlikely sources of the gender parity found in many studies of IPV. This article will review each of these issues and suggest a third approach, the moderate asymmetry approach. The moderate asymmetry hypothesis for IPV is currently best-supported by the data, and it should be emphasized until a better alternative is found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

钢铁产业实现转变发展方式战略的思考

我国钢铁产业在金融危机后面临更复杂的发展环境,面临转变经济发展方式的严峻挑战。钢铁产业快速发展,必需是可持续发展,表现为给国家大幅度增加税收和提升钢铁从业人员的生活水平,实现对资源、市场、环境的优化配置,高投入高产出,提高效率。钢铁产业要实现发展方式转变,必须解决提高生产效率、通过增加附加值来扩大盈利能力和水平、增加新价值并将这种新价值增效周期延长、将节能减排融入产品品牌等难题。     

Children's, adolescents', and young adults' thinking about different types of disagreements.

Individuals' thinking about different types of disagreements was examined. Ninety-six participants in third grade (mean age?=?8 years 9 months), seventh grade (mean age?=?13 years 2 months), and college (mean age?=?21 years 10 months) judged the acceptability of believing and acting on different types of beliefs with which they disagree, the attributes of the persons with whom they disagree, and the relative importance of cultural uniformity or diversity of belief. Findings indicated that participants' thinking did not simply become more tolerant with age; their thinking at all ages was constrained by both the realm over which there was disagreement and the form of the disagreement. At all ages, participants judged that some disagreements were acceptable and some unacceptable, described disagreeing others in terms of different (more or less positive) attributes, and judged that diversity of belief was important in some realms but uniformity was preferable in others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)