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Biomedical subjects

M W Morris

Publications and source records attributed to M W Morris.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Multicultural minds. A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition.

The authors present a new approach to culture and cognition, which focuses on the dynamics through which specific pieces of cultural knowledge (implicit theories) become operative in guiding the construction of meaning from a stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in a perceiver's mind depends on the extent to which the construct is highly accessible (because of recent exposure). In a series of cognitive priming experiments, the authors simulated the experience of bicultural individuals (people who have internalized two cultures) of switching between different cultural frames in response to culturally laden symbols. The authors discuss how this dynamic, constructivist approach illuminates (a) when cultural constructs are potent drivers of behavior and (b) how bicultural individuals may control the cognitive effects of culture.

Acculturation↗
PubMed2000

Motivated cultural cognition: the impact of implicit cultural theories on dispositional attribution varies as a function of need for closure.

The authors propose that need for closure (NFC) leads attributors to respond to an ambiguous social event by increasing reliance on implicit theories received from acculturation. Hence, the influence of NFC should be shaped by chronically accessible knowledge structures in a culture, and, likewise, the influence of culture should be moderated by epistemic motives such as NFC. The specific hypotheses drew on past findings that North American and Chinese attributors possess differing implicit social theories, North Americans conceiving of individuals as autonomous agents and Chinese conceiving of groups as autonomous. The present studies found the predicted pattern that among North American participants, NFC increased attributions to personal but not group dispositions. Among Chinese participants, NFC increased attributions to group but not personal dispositions. The findings are discussed in light of an emerging dynamic account of culture and cognition.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Evaluation of infants with subdural hematoma who lack external evidence of abuse.

OBJECTIVE: Advances in radiologic technique have increased the recognition of subdural hematoma. No study to date has addressed the role of child protective investigation into the cause and management of subdural hematoma in children who lack other indicators of abuse. METHODS: Medical records, radiology studies, and social service notes for all infants and children referred for child abuse investigation who had any form of intracranial hemorrhage were reviewed. The study covered the 12 months of 1997. All referrals were to the Suncoast Child Protection Team (St Petersburg, FL). RESULTS: There were 19 investigations because of subdural hematoma. Eight children had retinal hemorrhage as well as other major findings of trauma, such as bruises and/or fractures; all 8 were victims of child abuse. Two infants had tiny subdurals adjacent to accidental linear skull fractures. Nine infants were investigated for the possibility of abuse that had no findings of trauma apart from the subdural hematoma. These 9 cases form the basis for this study. The age range was 11 days to 15 months. Inflicted cerebral trauma was the medical diagnosis in 8 of the 9 cases; 1 case had a final diagnosis of possible inflicted injury in a high-risk setting. CONCLUSIONS: Infants with subdural hematoma but no other findings of abuse present a difficult challenge to child protection workers. Investigation by a medically oriented team can uncover the circumstances of the trauma in most instances and can usefully direct protective efforts. The high incidence of severe sequelae in infants with inflicted cerebral trauma warrants a vigorous approach.

Battered Child Syndrome↗
PubMed1999

Impression valence constrains social explanations: the case of discounting versus conjunction effects.

Discounting refers to a reduction in explanation plausibility in light of another explanation, whereas conjunction effects refer to an increase in plausibility of explanations judged in combination rather than in isolation. Explanation compatibility moderates these effects, such that discounting is greater for incompatible explanations and conjunction effects are greater for compatible explanations. Three experiments examined whether this effect reflects perceptions regarding (a) the prior statistical association of causal factors, (b) the sharing of common causal mechanisms, or (c) coherence with regard to global impressions. Results indicated that impression valence predicts and also directly influences discounting and conjunction effects independent of covariation and mechanism, underscoring the pervasive impact of impressions on attributions.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Choosing remedies after accidents: counterfactual thoughts and the focus on fixing "human error".

The present research is motivated by an interest in why organizational decision makers so often respond to accidents with remedy plans that focus narrowly on correcting human error rather than more environment-focused plans or more encompassing plans. We investigated the role of counterfactual thinking in the decision-making tendency toward human-focused plans. Our experiments indicated that even in a domain where human-focused remedies were not otherwise appealing, many participants decided on human-focused remedies after they had generated an "if only" conjecture about the accident. This reflects that human actions are often selected as the focus of "if only" conjectures and, importantly, that this focus "locks in" and carries through to subsequent remedy decisions. Our hypothesis that remedy plans are produced from "if only" thoughts was supported over several alternative interpretations. We discuss implications for research on the relation between counterfactual thinking and adaptive learning.

Accident Prevention↗
PubMed1993

Liability issues for occupational health nurses: an overview.

Occupational health nurses need to be familiar with the Nurse Practice Act within their states. Most malpractice suits against nurses are based on negligence. The occupational health nurse should also be aware of potential liability for intentional torts, such as assault and battery, breach of patient confidentiality, and informed consent. The elements of a malpractice case are: a) the duty to conform to standard of care (which is usually established by expert testimony); b) breach of that duty, or the failure to conform to the standard of care; c) a causal connection between the breach of duty and the resulting injuries; and d) actual damages suffered by the patient-plaintiff.

Humans↗
PubMed1991

Perception of circular heading from optical flow.

Observers viewed random-dot optical flow displays that simulated self-motion on a circular path and judged whether they would pass to the right or left of a target at 16 m. Two dots in two frames are theoretically sufficient to specify circular heading if the orientation of the rotation axis is known. Heading accuracies were better than 1.5 degrees with a ground surface, wall surface, and 3D cloud of dots, and were constant over densities down to 2 dots, consistent with the theory. However, there was an inverse relation between the radius of the observer's path and constant heading error, such that at small radii observers reported heading 3 degrees to the outside of the actual path with the ground and to the inside with the wall and cloud. This may be an artifact of a small display screen.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Converging operations on a basic level in event taxonomies.

Research on object concepts has identified one level of abstraction as "basic" in cognition and communication. We investigated whether concepts for routine social events have a basic level by replicating the converging operations used to investigate object concepts. In Experiment 1, subjects were presented with event names from a taxonomy and were asked to list the actions comprising the event. Many more actions were listed at the middle than at the highest taxonomic level, without a further increase at the most specific level, paralleling the pattern of superordinate-, basic-, and subordinate-level object concepts. From these action lists, brief stories were composed for each event. In Experiment 2, subjects made pairwise similarity judgments on the stories. The mean similarity of events increased with specificity, as expected. But differentiation of categories (within-category similarity compared to between-category similarity) was highest for super-ordinates, contrary to results with object categories. In Experiment 3, subjects were fastest in recognizing actions as belonging to events named at the basic level. In Experiment 4, subjects predominantly chose basic-level terms to name stories. We conclude that event taxonomies do show basic-level structure, albeit a less sharply defined and less stable structure than in object taxonomies. The benefits and hazards of extending models of object concepts to other entities, such as social events, are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Age differences in perceiving the direction of self-motion from optical flow.

Patterns of optical flow produced at the eye of a moving observer are important for the guidance of locomotion. This study examined age-related changes in the ability to perceive one's direction of self-motion, or heading, from optical flow, using computer displays that simulate translational or curvilinear movement parallel to a random-dot ground surface. We found small but significant decrements in performance with age, such that the mean heading threshold rises from 1.1 degrees in younger observers to 1.9 degrees in older observers for translation, and from 1.4 degrees to 2.9 degrees for curvilinear movement, under comparable dot density and speed conditions. The absence of an age by dot density interaction indicates that there is no age-related shift in strategy, but rather a general decline in the ability to detect and localize global optical flow patterns. The decrement appears to be due to higher level losses in the visual system rather than ocular or low-level sensory losses. The results may have implications for the control of high-speed locomotion and falls in older adults.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Perception of translational heading from optical flow.

Radial patterns of optical flow produced by observer translation could be used to perceive the direction of self-movement during locomotion, and a number of formal analyses of such patterns have recently appeared. However, there is comparatively little empirical research on the perception of heading from optical flow, and what data there are indicate surprisingly poor performance, with heading errors on the order of 5 degrees-10 degrees. We examined heading judgments during translation parallel, perpendicular, and at oblique angles to a random-dot plane, varying observer speed and dot density. Using a discrimination task, we found that heading accuracy improved by an order of magnitude, with 75%-correct thresholds of 0.66 degrees in the highest speed and density condition and 1.2 degrees generally. Performance remained high with displays of 63-10 dots, but it dropped significantly with only 2 dots; there was no consistent speed effect and no effect of angle of approach to the surface. The results are inconsistent with theories based on the local focus of outflow, local motion parallax, multiple fixations, differential motion parallax, and the local maximum of divergence. But they are consistent with Gibson's (1950) original global radial outflow hypothesis for perception of heading during translation.

Eye Movements↗
PubMed1977

The zeta sedimentation ratio (ZSR) and activity of disease in rheumatoid arthritis.

Zeta sedimentation ratios (ZSR) and modified Westergren erythrocyte sedimentation rates (ESR) were compared with an independent clinical assessment of disease activity in 100 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The correlation between ZSR and ESR was good. Both methods correlated well with disease activity. The ZSR was more frequently elevated than the ESR in each category of disease activity, but the differences were slight. In addition to its practical advantages, the ZSR appears to be a satisfactory method for monitoring the activity of rheumatoid arthritis.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Immunologic and cytochemical properties of histiocytic and mixed histiocytic-lymphocytic lymphomas.

Lymph nodes were biopsied from seven patients with the presumptive clinical diagnosis of lymphoma and studied for their ability to form spontaneous rosettes with sheep erythrocytes (T cell marker), for surface immunoglobulins (B cell marker), for cytochemical reactivity with peroxidase, alpha-naphthyl acetate and butyrate esterases, naphthol ASD chloroacetate esterase, acid phosphatase, periodic acid-Schiff, Sudan black B, and Wright-Giemsa on touch preparations, as well as in hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections. Lymph nodes from patients without hematologic malignancy served as control. Diagnoses of diffuse histiocytic lymphoma were made in five cases and diffuse mixed histiocytic-lymphocytic lymphoma in 2 cases. The cytochemical staining of the lymphoma cells were typical of lymphoid cells rather than macrophages. In five cases neoplastic cells contained surface immunoglobulins, suggesting a B cell origin, and in one case a paucity of cell surface markers was found. Cells from uninvolved nodes of lymphoma patients could not be differentiated from those of the control group.

Animals↗
PubMed1975

Zeta sedimentation ratio (ZSR), a replacement for the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR).

The zeta sedimentation ratio (ZRS) was evaluated and found to have advantages over the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). The normal range for the ZSR proved to be 41 to 54%. Elevated ESR's obtained with the modified Westergren technic were also associated with an increased ZSR, except when amenia spuriously elevated the ESR. Reproducibility after storage was slightly better for the ZSR than for the ESR, But for optimal results the test should be performed within two hours of phlebotomy. Increased concentrations od EDTA anticoagulant may falsely elevate the ZSR, especially if the ZSR is initially elevated.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Creating and implementing a chemical hygiene plan.

January 31, 1991 was the deadline for laboratories to have developed and implemented their chemical hygiene plans (CHPs). OSHA may fine laboratories that do no comply--up to $2,500 per day. Managers have a responsibility to their employees to ensure a safe working environment, and the CHP is a useful tool for reducing risks and for informing employees about possible health hazards. Preparing a CHP does not have to be an arduous task--especially if you work from a model plan. This month's As We See It should help you refine (or develop) your CHP.

Costs and Cost Analysis↗