Teaching social perspective taking: how educators might learn from the Army

Frequently and accurately discerning others’ thoughts and feelings is associated with multiple valued educational outcomes across an array of settings. Despite its foundational role in social interactions, it is unclear whether individuals can be taught to improve their social perspective taking capacities. This experiment assesses whether a curriculum taught to US Army personnel (N?=?116) improved their social perspective taking prior to deployment. Results showed that participants improved their social perspective taking in three ways: through more accurately detecting biases in others, by generating more initial hypotheses to explain others’ behaviours, and by adapting their hypotheses in the face of new evidence. The curriculum did not affect participants’ perspective taking accuracy on a video measure. We discuss these findings with respect to their implications for other learning environments.     

A Survey of Opinions and Attitudes Toward Exercise Following a 12-month Maintenance Exercise Program for People with COPD

Purpose

To determine the opinions and attitudes toward exercise in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who had completed a randomised controlled trial of 12-months maintenance exercise.

Methods

Participants were eligible for recruitment to the maintenance exercise study if they had COPD and had completed an 8-week pulmonary rehabilitation program. They were randomized into an Intervention Group (IG) that consisted of once weekly, supervised hospital-based maintenance exercise plus home exercise for 12 months or a Control Group that undertook unsupervised home maintenance exercise for 12 months. At the end of the 12 months, participants completed a survey consisting of 23 questions using a visual analogue scale (VAS) of 100 mm.

Results

Forty-eight participants completed the 12 month study and 36 participants (75%) completed the survey [IG mean (SD): age 65 (8) years, FEV₁ 58 (20) % predicted; CG: age 66 (8) years, FEV₁ 67 (17) % predicted]. No between group difference was found for the importance of exercise, the benefits of the program or the importance of support from the physiotherapist. However, the IG reported exercising more regularly, having more enjoyment of being involved in the maintenance exercise program, greater benefit in general well-being, and better physical fitness.

Conclusions

At the completion of the 12 month exercise study, the survey results showed that all participants reported positive attitudes towards both supervised and unsupervised maintenance exercise programs, with the IG reporting greater benefits.Key Words: COPD, survey, maintenance exercise program