Separating academic and social experience as potential factors in epistemological development

Education has been regarded as the major factor in epistemological development. However, academic and other aspects of educational experience are difficult to disentangle. In the present study, 86 Israeli students in the same selective department differed by whether they had done mandatory army service before the university or would do it after. This difference allowed a comparison between epistemological levels of students with different social experiences but with similar academic experiences. Those with the socially diverse army experience were less likely to have absolutist thinking about everyday knowledge contexts. Those with more years of education had more sophisticated academic-context epistemological beliefs in their discipline only.     

Is Blindness a Handicap?

Michael J. Tobin, Professor of Special Education at The University of Birmingham, argues that the handicapping effects of blindness are specific to certain educational and social contexts. These situations can be identified: the most substantive difficulties being the availability of convergent and complementary information through the various sensory channels, and the depressed speeds of information processing.     

Effects of arousal on organization of positive and negative affect and cognitions: Application to attitude theory

This study explores the impact of arousal on key relations in attitude theory. Specifically, arousal was hypothesized and found to (a) increase the association between positive cognitions about the consequences of an act and attitudes toward the act and (b) decrease the association between negative cognitions and attitudes, thereby producing positive‐negative asymmetries. No positive‐negative asymmetries were predicted and found, however, for the association between positive or negative affective reactions toward the consequences of the act and attitudes. Finally, arousal was hypothesized and also found to induce a unitization in general affective and cognitive evaluations. High arousal and low arousal were manipulated through the controlled viewing of slides in a fully randomized, two‐group design with measurement error taken into account and electrodermal activity monitored to demonstrate changes in arousal. Subjects were 220 male students who provided judgments, evaluations, and attitudes toward the act of giving blood. Knowledge‐assembly theory and the semantic network theory of memory were used to frame hypotheses that, in turn, are based on a cognitive social learning theory of the self‐regulation of one's emotional states.     

Geriatric Training Needs of Nursing-Home Physicians

Medical care in nursing homes is not provided by board-licensed geriatricians; it mainly comes from physicians in need of educational programs in the field of geriatrics. Such programs, based on curriculum guidelines, should be developed. The purpose of this study was to seek input from nursing home physicians on their perceived needs for training in geriatrics. A mail questionnaire survey was sent to nursing home physicians regarding their opinion on the most needed subjects and preferred training methods. Of the 210 surveys mailed, 132 (63%) were returned. More than a quarter of the respondents had not had any kind of geriatric medical education. A desire for geriatric training was evident, preferably in the form of courses and periodic seminars. Use of medications, infectious diseases, depression, dementia and cardiac disorders were the most important topics indicated by the respondents. These data can be of help in preparing the curriculum for a continuous medical education program in geriatrics, preferably in the form of courses and periodic seminars.