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The Gregorc Style Delineator was administered to 26 full-time, professional engineers, all women. Participants preferred concrete thinking styles. This tendency is similar to scores on other measures in much larger samples of engineers for whom sex was not specified.
Previous research has shown inferential confusion as measured by the Inferential Confusion Questionnaire to be related to obsessive-compulsive symptoms. A total of 108 participants (41 men and 66 women) from a normal population in The Netherlands (M age = 46 yr., SD = 15.5) completed a package of questionnaires measuring inferential confusion, schizotypal symptoms, and obsessive-compulsive behaviour. As expected, scores for both inferential confusion and schizotypal symptoms were significantly related to those for obsessive-compulsive behaviour. In addition, analysis showed that inferential confusion and schizotypal symptoms shared common variance, but both predicted an independent portion of the variance in obsessive-compulsive behaviour while controlling for neuroticism. The present results call for further inquiry into the role of inferential confusion and schizotypal thinking in obsessive-compulsive behaviour.
INTRODUCTION: Leptospirosis is a complex zoonotic disease requiring high-resolution surveillance. A systems-thinking framework was used to connect genomic and ecological data and map the geographic and host-based structuring of co-circulating pathogenic Leptospira lineages in Puerto Rico. METHODS: Forty-four core genomes of L. interrogans, L. borgpetersenii, and L. kirschneri from human, domestic, and wildlife hosts were analyzed. Spatiotemporal and landscape metadata were integrated using root-to-tip regression, isolation-by-distance profiling and calibrated single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) thresholds (≤1, ≤5, and ≤10 SNPs) to define transmission clusters. RESULTS: Leptospira species exhibited distinct ecological pathways partitioned by geography, explaining 56% of genomic variance for L. interrogans and 91% for L. borgpetersenii (PERMANOVA). L. interrogans displayed high landscape connectivity across multiple hosts, forming localized networks (≤1 to ≤10 SNPs) that capture active spillovers (human-to-rat linkages at ≤1 SNP) and resolved into rodent host-specific lineages (R2 = 0.34). Conversely, L. borgpetersenii showed spatial and temporal genomic homogeneity and a lack of host-associated structure within an unpartitioned transmission pool dominated by Mus musculus. As a result, fixed genomic thresholds yielded disparate outcomes: L. interrogans resolved into 4 to 5 discrete, expanding clusters, whereas L. borgpetersenii grouped into a single uniform population at the ≤10-SNP threshold. CONCLUSION: Co-circulating pathogenic leptospires occupy distinct ecological niches shaped by varying host restriction and environmental persistence. Fixed genomic thresholds lack universal applicability; effective genomic epidemiological surveillance must employ species-specific threshold calibration to accurately map transmission pathways.
Most nurse educators claim that ability to critique one's clinical practice is a skill which must be acquired if nursing students are to continue to learn and develop as practitioners after they have graduated. This skill is of particular relevance for nurses who will be working independently in the community. The author reviews recent literature on critical thinking and reflective learning and identifies the results of one baccalaureate nursing school's use of reflective journals.
Dispositional differences among several university majors and across gender were examined in this exploratory study, using Facione's California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. Participants were 334 baccalaureate undergraduates (121 males, 213 females) enrolled in majors classified as practice disciplines (i.e., nursing, education, business) and nonpractice disciplines (i.e., English, history, psychology). A MANCOVA with grade point average as a covariate was conducted for majors, indicating significant main effects for major. Highest scores generally were found in English, psychology, and nursing. When majors were grouped into practice and nonpractice disciplines, nonpractice had generally higher disposition scores, and female scores in both practice and nonpractice disciplines were higher than males on Open-Mindedness and Maturity.
Journal writing is one of many strategies that can help promote learning in a process-oriented curriculum. This article explores the experience of implementing journal writing as an expectation of second-year baccalaureate nursing students in a clinical practicum. Faculty had a vital role in facilitating this experience. The journals provided a medium within which students explored in depth significant events that occurred in their practicum. Their analysis of these events included application of theoretical frameworks and concepts that supported and strengthened the arguments made in the journals. Students responded very favorably to their experiences in journal writing. In the evaluation of this experience, students reported increased abilities in critical thinking and self-directed learning. These two important concepts complement each other in the students' learning processes.
1. Nursing faculty of Tel Aviv University developed a tool to improve care in geropsychiatric units. This resulted in the establishment of a national "forum" of geropsychiatric nurse practitioners, administrators, and educators. The forum conducts study days, publishes a journal, and encourages research activities. 2. A major achievement of the forum was the organization of more than 15 mini-research groups of grass-roots nurses guided by an academic adviser. The groups examined nursing interventions, such as dolls as therapy, and specific patient care problems, such as violence, interpersonal relationships among patients, and needs of families. 3. The meetings and mini-research have had a positive impact on quality of patient care, increased family involvement, enhanced self-image of personnel, new ways of thinking, and a model for cooperation between service and academia.
The quantitative evaluation of creative responses in TCT (Test for Creative Thinking) has elucidated various problems. In order to evaluate responses qualitatively, four basic categories were set up. They were constructed according to the degree of freedom of responses from the task-setting. The category, Td (Task-dependence) refers to responses that are entirely influenced by the task-setting. Tm (Task-modification) is for responses which are produced more flexibly than Td, but still influenced by the task-setting. Responses which are made by attending to only a part of the task-setting and neglecting the rest are judged Ho (Homomorphosis). Moreover, responses which are quite free from the task-setting are called He (Heteromorphosis). This He is thought to be the most creative response, and if it appears rarely. When 123 junior high-school students were tested using TCT, He responses appeared least, in four (only 20.3% of the subjects), while Td's were produced by 99.2% of the subjects. Ho's were lower than Tm's and Td's in frequency. However, the validity of these categories is still to be pursued.
This study examined when children are able to solve conditional reasoning problems correctly using the thinking strategy that spontaneously retrieves alternatives based on the inclusive/hierarchical relations of categories and how the strategy changes with aging. In the experiment, a total of 210 3-, 4-, 5-, 8-, 10-, 12-years-old, and adults were given the conditional reasoning problems and were also asked to justify their judgments. The result showed that 5-year-old children could solve the problems as well as the adults and they used the strategy similar to the adults, but the strategy did not necessarily continue to be used from children to adults.
For reflection to become a transferable skill that is used in practice, practitioners need to learn how to combine this skill with critical thinking. This article provides practical guidance to mentors, clinical supervisors and preceptors on how this might be encouraged.
Nursing leaders in critical care can use strategies such as questioning, clinical scenarios, conferences, and context-dependent test items to assess and improve their staff's critical thinking skills.
If we take on board the assumption that social realities are perceived through filters of experience, social position, personality and emotion, then we accept that 'facts' can be differently construed or constructed Compassion cannot be taught as a competency, but we can be made aware through reflexive thinking that the closest we can ever get to a shared truth is through listening to and understanding the other. This paper is a modest attempt to provide some tools for community health workers and nurses who are concerned about the quality of their practice and wish to find creative solutions.
A pilot study in which faculty from nursing and English departments at two universities in different states shared a common evaluation tool and collaborated through e-mail to evaluate the evidence of critical thinking in writing portfolios of baccalaureate and masters' nursing students. Loxley's (1997) four processes--assessment, building, managing the process, and evaluating--are used as a framework for describing collaboration among the disciplines in the two universities. Social exchange theory was used to explain the collaboration between participants. All six professors learned a great deal from studying and scoring the writings, but they learned most from each other through their e-mail dialogue.
On the basis of exploratory exposition of semi-bionic extraction, the method is further discussed in the light of mode of thinking.
In recent years, considerable research has addressed psychological predictors of pain, emotional distress, and avoidance in relation to dental treatment. Our work has focused on how "pain catastrophizing" impacts on the physical and emotional distress experienced during dental procedures. Pain catastrophizing refers to individuals' tendency to focus excessively on pain sensations and exaggerate their threat value, and to feel helpless in their efforts to reduce or manage their pain. Several studies reveal that pain catastrophizers report extreme pain even in response to dental procedures not typically considered to be painful. In this paper, we also discuss how practitioners who foster the disclosure of dental worries and concerns can significantly reduce the physical and emotional distress of patients who engage in catastrophic thinking.
Racism influences the conceptualization of motherhood and the practice of mothering. Narrative analysis was completed on 246 stories collected through five focus groups. Twenty-five African American women participated in the study. The results indicate that living in a racist society profoundly impacts the maternal thinking and practice of African American women in relation to protecting their daughters. Protection of children was viewed as a communal responsibility. Issues related to the provision of safe and nurturing physical, aesthetic, and spiritual environments are addressed. The influence that maternal responsibilities have on women's own health is also discussed. Suggestions are provided for mental health providers who wish to work more effectively with African American women.
This Monograph aims to contribute to the information processing, the differential, and the developmental modeling of the mind, and to work these into an integrated theory. Toward this aim, a longitudinal study is presented that investigates the relations between processing efficiency, working memory, and problem solving from the age of 8 years to to the age of 16 years. The study involved 113 participants, about equally drawn among 8-, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-olds at the first testing; these participants were tested two more times spaced one year apart. Participants were tested with a large array of tasks addressed to processing efficiency (i.e., speed of processing and inhibition), working memory (in terms of Baddeley's model, phonological storage, visual storage, and the central executive of working memory), and problem solving (quantitative, spatial, and verbal reasoning). Confirmatory factor analysis validated the presence of each of the above dimensions and indicated that they are organized in a three-stratum hierarchy. The first stratum includes all of the individual dimensions mentioned above. These dimensions are organized, at the second stratum, in three constructs: processing efficiency, working memory, and problem solving. Finally, all second-order constructs are strongly related to a third-order general factor. This structure was stable in time. Structural equation modeling indicated that the various dimensions are interrelated in a cascade fashion so that more fundamental dimensions are part of more complex dimensions. That is, speed of processing is the most important aspect of processing efficiency, and it perfectly relates to the condition of inhibition, indicating that the more efficient one is in stimulus encoding and identification, the more efficient one is in inhibition. In turn, processing efficiency is strongly related to the condition of executive processes in working memory, which, in turn, is related to the condition of the two modality-specific stores (phonological and visual). Finally, problem solving is related to processing efficiency and working memory, the central executive in particular. All dimensions appear to change systematically with time. Growth modeling suggested that there are significant individual differences in attainment in each of the three aspects of the mind investigated. Moreover, each of the three aspects of the mind as well as their interrelations change differently during development. Mixture growth modeling suggested that there are four types of developing persons, each defined by a different combination of performance in these aspects of the mind. Some types are more efficient and stable developers than others. These analyses indicated that processing efficiency is a factor closely associated with developmental differences in problem solving, whereas working memory is associated with individual differences. Modeling by logistic equations uncovered the rates and form of change in the various dimensions and their reciprocal interactions during development. These findings are discussed from the point of view of information processing, differential, and developmental models of thinking, and an integrative model is proposed.
Two forms of thinking about the future are distinguished: expectations versus fantasies. Positive expectations (judging a desired future as likely) predicted high effort and successful performance, but the reverse was true for positive fantasies (experiencing one's thoughts and mental images about a desired future positively). Participants were graduates looking for a job (Study 1), students with a crush on a peer of the opposite sex (Study 2), undergraduates anticipating an exam (Study 3), and patients undergoing hip-replacement surgery (Study 4). Effort and performance were measured weeks or months (up to 2 years) after expectations and fantasies had been assessed. Implications for the self-regulation of effort and performance are discussed.