Psychology Research April

Psychology Research

Volume 3, Number 4, April 2013 (Serial Number 22)

David Publishing

David Publishing Company www.davidpublishing.com

Publication Information: Psychology Research is published monthly in hard copy (ISSN 2159-5542) and online (ISSN 2159-5550) by David Publishing Company located at 9460 Telstar Ave Suite 5, EL Monte, CA 91731, USA. Aims and Scope: Psychology Research, a monthly professional academic journal, has three main columns: General Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Applied Psychology, which cover all sorts of psychology researches on Biopsychology, Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics, Child Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology, Community Psychology, Comparative Psychology, Experimental Psychology, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Personality Psychology, Physiological Psychology/Psychobiology, Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology, Social Psychology, Psychological Statistics, Psychology of Human Resource Management, Psychometrics, Counseling Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Interpersonal Relation Psychology, Culture Psychology, Philosophical Psychology, Management Psychology, Psychology Research Methods, Advertising and Transmitting Psychology, Public Psychology, Consumption Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Group Psychology, Literary Psychology, Labor Psychology, Aerospace Psychology, Traveling Psychology, Medico-Psychology, Color Psychology, Decision-making Psychology, Love Psychology, Positive Psychology, Criminal Psychology, as well as other issues. Editorial Board Members: Hanna Brycz Sharma Basu Elena Fabiola Ruiz Ledesma Lim Wee Hun Stephen Ungsoo Samuel Kim

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David Publishing Company www.davidpublishing.com

Psychology Research Volume 3, Number 4, April 2013 (Serial Number 22)

Contents General Psychology Is Modeling the Primary Activity of the Human Brain?

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Serge Gelalian The Use of ACT-R to Develop an Attention Model for Simple Driving Tasks

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Kerstin Sophie Haring, Katsumi Watanabe, Marco Ragni, Lars Konieczny Constructive Cognition as Positive Behaviour

199

Lipi Mukhopadhyay

Applied Psychology Experience of Neuropsychological Treatment of a Patient With Aphasia

206

Luis Quintanar Rojas, Yulia Solovieva, Arturo López Cortés Emotional Costs, Social Influence, Sense of Coherence, and Coping in the Situation of Reemployment

220

Katarzyna Ślebarska, Agata Chudzicka-Czupała

Developmental and Educational Psychology Evaluation of Differential Item Functioning of the Center of Epidemiological Scale Depression Revisited for Gender in Mexican Adolescents Jesús Rafael Osorno Munguía, Herminia Beatriz Segura Celis Ochoa, Alma Gloria Vallejo Casarín, Patricia Andrade Palos

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Psychology Research, ISSN 2159-5542 April 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, 175-188

DAVID

PUBLISHING

Is Modeling the Primary Activity of the Human Brain? Serge Gelalian Universite Saint Joseph, Beirut, Lebanon The question we concern ourselves with is how novelists, painters, musicians, sculptors, etc. imagine their surrounding world reality before (and even during) “creating” their work which represents a piece of this reality. In this article, the author focuses on fiction but the reasoning works for all kinds of artistic creations. “We reason only on models”, says Paul Valéry. “We communicate only by models”, echoes Gregory Bateson. We know that there is one major way of modeling in science, which is mathematical modeling. There is also nowadays computer modeling (simulation) for highly complex problems. The modeling that constitutes the frame of this article ties with systems thinking modeling. It is Da Vinci’s “Disegno”, Vico’s “Ingenium: It is an art by which the modeler expresses his vision of reality” (AFSCET (Association Française des Systèmes Cybernétiques, Cognitifs et Techniques) (French Association of Cybernetic, Cognitive, and Technical Systems)). Thus, the author believes that, whatever the definition, modeling is the main cognitive process of the human brain. It allows him to represent reality in a certain “code” or “language”, be it mathematical equations, graphs, novels, poems, paintings, music, sculptures, etc.. If the author focuses here on fiction, it is because it all began most probably with the narrative. The human being, although provided with a powerful tool—the brain, fictionalizes in order to understand reality, which escapes him. So he created myths, legends, tales, sagas, etc., after having drawn wonderful paintings in caves. Fiction is a way of modeling reality in order to acquire knowledge. This way of modeling follows the complex process of schematizing, i.e., producing schemes, i.e., minimal mental models, which are pre-conceptual structured sketches of intuition. This schematizing is based on a mixed complex process of: (1) abduction, which, according to Peirce and others, is the natural way of human reasoning (children use it to acquire language); and (2) simplexity, a way of simplifying complexity without its characteristics being lost. All this cognitive complex process leads to conceptualization (then to categorization). Keywords: modeling, fiction, narrative function, schema, abduction, simplexity

Introduction The question first arose after having thought about how novelists imagine their surrounding world reality before (and during) “creating” their work which represents a piece of this reality. This question was then extended to other “producers of art works” such as painters, musicians, sculptors, etc.. Simply put, the question is: What happens in a creator’s mind before and during the process of creation, be he a novelist, a musician, a painter, etc.. To the following question: “How do you make the shape of your piece of work appear from within the stone”? Michelangelo used to answer: “It’s already in there”. It is while thinking about the novel as a process of representation of reality that the following idea surfaced: Modeling could well be the main process of thought of the human brain. “We reason only on models”, says 

Serge Gelalian, Ph.D., Universite Saint Joseph.

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Paul Valéry. “We communicate only by models”, echoes Gregory Bateson. What could this mean besides that there exist many kinds of modeling on the cognitive level: mathematical, schematic, graphical, etc.. Could this mean that there is a modeling prototype, hence a modeling archetype? The answer to this question is far from simple. The author suggests in this article a way of opening the subject with an attempt to find an answer based mainly on human oral and textual productions, without neglecting other productions such as the graphical or the schematic ones. The major objective is to: (1) Examine the various types of narrative ranging from myth to advertising including tale, saga, legend, etc.; (2) Examine the various types of scientific representation such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry, but also computer languages, by focusing primarily on the concept of algorithm which is common to all; (3) Examine artistic works such as music, paintings, sculptures, and sketches. But examining all those topics would constitute a large program and cannot be tackled in a short article. The author will thus examine briefly some of the examples mentioned above within the general frame of modeling.

What Is Modeling? The modeling the author is referring to is akin to the systems’ thinking modeling, thus to that of complexity science1. It is a technical process leading to a construct (in Levy-Strauss’ sense)—the “model”, i.e., the matching counterpart of complex reality—that is designed to reproduce the perceived reality in order to better understand it, or even to act upon it. Nowadays, a model can be studied on computers (elaboration and simulation) and does not need to be the object of a mathematical demonstration since it just reflects reality or its best possible rough copy. Here is a personal definition of a system: “A system is an organized whole, composed of interacting components that generates emergent properties that cannot be predicted from the properties of the components of that system”2. Let us recall here that a system is often complex because it is composed of many autonomous components related by non-linear relations. These interrelations make the system’s behavior unpredictable as it is not the result of the sum of each component’s behavior, hence the phenomenon of emergence in a complex system. A simple example would be water: The result of combining two gases—hydrogen and oxygen—is not a gas but a liquid. Let us keep in mind that systems do not exist in our surrounding reality. Systems are mental constructs that we design to better understand aspects of our environment (nature, society, politics, economy, etc.) that we perceive as being highly complex—but not complicated—and not easily grasped by way of the analytical method3, even if this method led to great progress in science. This is why system’s thinking came into being: to help one grasp complex systems. Its core method is modeling. The construct mentioned above is a model of a piece of reality. It is a kind of reduced dummy of reality used to better understand and predict the evolution of a system one is studying. Thus, modeling is first and 1

The reader may consult many books on this topic written by authors such as: Jay Forrester, Peter Checkland, Peter Senge, etc.. It is the author’s own definition translated from his doctoral dissertation on language change in French: Modélisation de l’évolution des langues: Une approche synergique (p. 58). 3 Some scholars, such as Leibniz and others, had put forward reservations about the Descartes’ method. G. B. Vico said about it: “If we apply it with rigor, it forbids invention; it only allows reproduction”. 2

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foremost a scientific method. But, the author believes that, as do Paul Valéry, H. A. Simon, P. N. Laird-Johnson, and many others, that modeling is in fact the main cognitive process of the human brain and that it comes in many shapes, its main one being mathematical modeling. Scientific theories are usually expressed by means of mathematics. Ivar Ekeland, a Norse mathematician, defines modeling as follows: “(an) intellectual construct of a mathematical model, i.e., a network of equations supposedly intended to describe reality”. It is of course a definition of mathematical modeling. But there are other definitions of modeling. The definition of the group AFSCET4 says: “Modeling is an art by which the modeler expresses his vision of reality”. It is a constructivist way. J. L. Le Moigne, in his article “La modélisation est désormais notre mot-clé” 5 , defined modeling as “a process of intentional construction which represents, by means of a system of symbols, a perception of an experience of reality perceived by the modeler”6. Finally, in a book on the implementation of modeling (Le Moigne, 2004), Le Moigne said: “Modeling is constructed as a point of view matched on reality” (p. 118). This way of modeling mentioned here is that of Leonardo da Vinci, the “Disegno”, or that of G. B. Vico, the “Ingenium”. It makes the poet, the scientist, the musician, the painter, the architect, the novelist, the sculptor, realize that they all proceed in the same way to represent phenomena and events, or to build, design, and elaborate projects. We cannot call it a rigorous method but rather a train of thought that leaves room for intuition, fuzziness, and uncertainty. When we think, ideas “collide” in disorder as we do not think in a linear way but in a non-linear one: We think in a complex manner, in a networked manner. This is why we need to write down our ideas. Modeling helps us manage this complexity. It cannot be represented linearly or as a tree-like diagram, it can only be represented as a network in which the relations between components are more important than the components themselves, but without the components’ importance being neglected. A good example of this method would be Tony Buzzan’s mind-mapping, which teaches us to draw up a heuristic map of our thoughts. Karl Marx said: “A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality”7. However, the definition of modeling that best appeals to me that of Henri Planchon in his account “La Modélisation”8: Developing a model is akin to writing a poem where, to better express our emotions, we infringe on some rules in order to bring out an aesthetic that will help us get closer to the unspeakable, to this almost uncovered world that the poet fully lives in while trying hard to share it with others. The poet tries to build what can be shown but cannot be said. Consequently, to read a poem is not only to be in an attentive and listening mood, but it is to penetrate the thought of the poet through ourselves. A poem, like a model, is not grasped as an object: It is shared.

Whatever the definition given, the author believes that the process of modeling is a mental characteristic allowing humans to imagine and to represent reality in a given “language”, be it equations, diagrams, a narrative, a code, etc.. There is thus a mental process (thinking and/or imagining, often both), before the 4

AFSCET (Association Française des Systèmes Cybernétiques, Cognitifs et Techniques) (French Association of Cybernetic, Cognitive, and Technical Systems). 5 “Modeling is henceforth our keyword”, in Edil 26, retrieved from http://www.mcxapc.org. 6 Let us keep in mind the word “symbol” which, in itself, is a kind of synthetic modeling. 7 In Das Kapital, Buch 1,Vol. I, Ch. 7, p. 198 (retrieved from http://en.wikiquote.org). 8 Retrieved from http://acim.ouvaton.org.

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production of a model, which can take the form of equations, a novel, or a symphony. The author will suggest a little further a diagram of this mental process. But first the author will examine briefly some kinds of modeling.

Kinds of Modeling The author uses the word “kind” instead of “type” in order not to confuse with the classification set by the scientific community, which distinguishes types of modeling although without setting visible borders between them (conceptual type, notional type, etc.). The author distinguishes four kinds of modeling: (1) Mathematical modeling covering the scientific areas (physics, chemistry, etc.) where modeling is expressed in mathematical language, i.e., equations; (2) Narrative modeling—which matters most here—expressed in natural languages in various narrative forms (myth, legend, saga, tale, poem, etc.); (3) Graphical modeling expressed usually in the form of diagrams or drawings (painting, sketch, sculpture, caricature, chart, graph, etc.); (4) Musical modeling represented by music: This kind of modeling can also belong to the narrative kind as songs are (roughly) words grafted on a melody. In order to be consistent with himself, the author ought to begin with the graphical kind, because in the beginning there is reality, the physical world surrounding us. Human beings will create for themselves a pictorial representation of this reality—the image, a model of reality—which, for example, can be found in prehistoric caves. But this presupposes that humans had already sketched these pictures in their minds in some certain form(s). After the graphical kind of modeling, the author ought to continue with the narrative kind because if we go back far in the history of mankind, we encounter myths, legends, fables, etc., which are ways of representing reality. But this chronology would force the author to develop his ideas in a more detailed manner that will overstep the limits of such an article. The author will thus begin with the mathematical kind in order to better set up the concept of modeling reality.

The Mathematical Kind





Figure 1. Mathematical modelling.

The author will not tackle mathematical modeling which is too specific a field. In the view of this article, mathematics does not constitute a way of modeling reality, since mathematical objects are idealized mental abstractions. As these objects are not really perceived by our five senses, there is thus no cognitive

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perception-to-conceptualization course9. Concepts such as infinity or a mathematical point, do not exist as such in reality. Thus we cannot really talk of modeling reality in this case. Mathematics is a field of abstract knowledge built upon concepts such as numbers, shapes, structures, transformations, etc., with the help of logical reasoning. But let us not forget that calculation, the ancestor of mathematics, dealing with real problems such as trade, population, distances, angles, planets, etc.. In the Classical Age, mathematics was a science of order and measure. This does not mean that there is no place for imagination or creation within mathematics. Great mathematicians such as H. Poincaré, or great physicists such as A. Einstein, assigned a large importance to imagination, i.e., visualizing a problem-situation (for example, Einstein’s cosmic elevator, Maxwell’s demon, etc.). Henri Poincaré’s mathematical method consisted of four steps: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification (following the act of creating of G. Wallas). It was during the periods of incubation and illumination that imagination played the biggest role. The mathematician Wendelin Werner said about his work (Werner, 2010), Of course, I handle abstract objects, but they strike a chord within my imagination. We associate them to something lived in real life, a bit less abstract than other mathematical objects. … I love to deal with these objects. I find in them something personal, not completely untied from me.

So, when mathematics says: ∞ ∑ Sn1 = lim k ∞ Sn (1) n=0 it describes the behavior of Sn by saying that the sum Sn gets nearer to the limit 1 as n moves toward infinity; and by writing: 1 = 1/2 + 1/2² + 1/2³ + …+ 1/2ⁿ, we are in the presence of a mathematical modeling regarding real numbers which are pure mathematical objects, i.e., abstract, imaginary objects. But, other scientific fields use mathematical modeling, i.e., a description procedure (a “technique”) of reality by way of mathematical language. Thus, when physics says: (2) it is a modeling that is nearer to our sense of modeling, since it is an equation representing the trajectory of a particle of mass m in a field of potential, knowing its coordinates in space with respect to time. We could thus say that modeling requires identifying and selecting relevant aspects of a situation of the real world. Also, when chemistry says: 2KClO3 2KCl + 3O2, it is modeling a chemical reaction where “2 molecules of potassium chlorate break down into 2 molecules of potassium chloride and 3 molecules of dioxygen”. We have here a modeling similar to that of physics: A chemical equation is a language allowing us to describe the reshuffling of atoms in a chemical reaction. This short explanation of mathematical modeling was a way to show the means invented by man to represent and describe his surrounding environment, i.e., reality. But it took him a bit of time before he reaches this kind of modeling since the Hellenistic Era. Before this era, man uses a way of modeling which is characteristic of his nature and which distinguishes him from animal: language. 9 According to J. L. Krivine, mathematicians decipher the mechanisms of their own thought by using unconsciously the lambda-calculus which could be our “mentalese”, our brain’s machine language as defined by J. Fodor. By thinking, they just “reproduce calculations that have been brewing since millions of years”. In Science & Vie, No. 1013, février 2002.

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The Narrative Kind: In Principio Erat Narratio

 Figure 2. Storytelling as a mean of knowledge.

When man lacks the tools allowing him to understand the world, he invents ways of explaining reality (see Figure 2). Even if he possesses the most powerful tool—the brain, which is the key of his development, evolution, and progress in many fields, man chooses a specific way of explaining reality that is particular to human kind: stories, such as tales or myths. He thus calls for this or that imaginary entity or force or power to explain phenomena whose meaning escapes him. In order to understand his environment—or rather to make others understand what he has understood—man began most probably to “tell stories” (and before or afterwards he probably engraved them on the walls of caves, which means in both cases that the story was already “carved” in his mind in some form). Man probably began to represent his surrounding environment—to model reality—with the help of fiction because it is a vehicle of knowledge. What does it mean “to know”—anything—other than having of that “anything” an iconic representation, i.e., a more or less precise and multisensory image, or, at higher levels of complexity, a more abstract model. Why fiction? By borrowing this title from J. M. Schaeffer’s book Pourquoi la Fiction (Seuil, 1999), the author intends to say that man, in order to understand the world, imagined, invented, created fictions that later developed and evolved progressively into myths, legends, tales, Eddas, etc., until nowadays advertising without forgetting mathematics10. This vision follows from Bernard Victorri’s Narrative Function (Victorri, 2006) concerning the origin—or rather the emergence—of human language11. According to this hypothesis, the emergence of natural language resulted probably from and during crisis situations in the ancient Hominidae (archaic Homo Sapiens); and language could have been developed—by way of a progressive complexifying process—in order to avoid that the crisis be repeated within the society. This favored social cohesion and the group’s survival. From there to the birth of myths, there is a fine line. And the rest followed. Protolanguage and language coexisted during a period of time until the extinction of the former. Protolanguage was probably some sort of a functional language with a rudimentary Tarzan-like syntax but with a rich lexis. Language, by borrowing lexis from protolanguage, developed specific features allowing it to become a full-fledged tongue by way of a complexifying process (and sometimes by a simplexifying process, as we will see it later with the modeling process): aspect in expressing temporality, modal verbs, demonstratives (which could be used as diacritics), syntax, polysemy, metaphor, metonymy, etc., many features that protolanguage lacked, which allowed language “to mention past or imaginary events that were not the immediate focus of the speakers”. 10

Please excuse this shortcut. In fact, it concerns the passage from protolanguage to language, the protolanguage being a utilitarian system of communication much more rudimentary than language.

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An answer to the question asked above could be the following extract from Victorri’s article: Telling a story means most of the time to pull oneself out of the present situation in order to introduce another spatio-temporal frame, to conjure up real or imaginary characters, make them live, act, think, talk on some kind of a “verbal stage” set in front of an audience by unfolding, more or less quickly according to the needs, the course of a temporality that is fully mastered and that is used to serve the dynamic process of the events that succeed one another on this stage. This latter could in turn move to follow a character or a plot to the ends of the earth if need be. In short, the narrative function needs imperatively the use of all the complexity of languages which turn out to be astonishingly adapted to this exercise, …. But, beyond this fact, the narrative function has many other uses: from the first myths to children’s tales to dreams’ stories to science-fiction novels, it “informs” in a totally other way12: by shaping and educating the minds to exercise our imagination, … the narrative played and continue to play an essential role in setting up and permanently renewing the cultural world that characterizes all human societies. Storytelling, far from being an anecdotal activity restrained to leisure, lies at the very heart of these societies’ structuring as it lies on the sharing of common cultural values.

This narrative vision is corroborated by Jean-Guy Meunier in his article “Narration et Cognition” (Meunier, 1993) where he said: “Narration appears to be a representational way by which individuals, as society, organize and interpret their own stature in their environment”. According to Meunier (1993), we can find, on the level of the narrative act, identical features to the general cognitive functions: (1) perceptive functions; (2) praxiological functions; (3) control functions; (4) epitomical functions; (5) ipseical functions; and (6) didactical functions. Concerning the perceptive functions, Meunier (1993) said, Narration could be a way among others to set the individual or collective memory of the including and integrative representations of complex perceptions. The narrative could thus be, for the speaker, a way of representing his own perception of the world.

In view of the functions mentioned above—“cognitive models”13, according to Catherine Grall (2007), narration appears to Meunier (1993) as, A process by which a cognitive agent sets her perceptions, develops them in action templates, marks/tags them with norms, weighs up their validity and sets herself as unity; it constitutes thus an original symbolic modality for the adaptation and insertion of a subject in the world vis-à-vis the others and the self.

Grall (2007) added that the cognitive agent whose various representational functions are all activated by his/her narrative performance, shapes simulation valued perceptions. We could thus say that humans “fictionalize” not only for the sake of fun but above all to learn and know. The little girl who plays with dolls while pretending to be a mother, or the little boy playing cops and robbers, already possesses the faculty of creating a fictional world via her or his imagination, which remains linked to entities and objects of the real world. The child models in her mind—by simplifying unconsciously as she does for language—her future adult world, in order to learn to know and understand it better and hence to adapt to it. In the same way, the author who invents a story creates a fictional world based on real entities. She is just modeling what the world could be (or could have been or has been) according to her own point of view. “Fiction is an essential process for thought once it tends to free itself from raw perception”, said H. Wallon14. 12 13 14

Its first way of informing is factual, i.e., factual information, the ground zero of information. The French word is “grille” (grid). In De l’acte à la pensée (From Deed to Thought), Flammarion, Champs, Paris, 1970, p. 142.

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IS MODELING THE PRIMARY ACTIVITY OF THE HUMAN BRAIN Modeling can hence take various forms by relying on a code as is summarized in Figure 3: { symbolic  mathematical equations Modeling Code { language  narrative { graphical  drawings, pictures { acoustic  music (+ lyrics) Figure 3. Various forms of modeling.

Which Kind of Modeling? After having briefly stated two kinds of modeling, the mathematical and the narrative, the author will try to define the nature of the process of modeling in the case of artists and authors, and the cognitive process(es) that is/are at stake. In systemic modeling, the observer (the modeler) is part of the system; her modeling is thus subjective as it is her point of view. Let us take as an example the numerous books on geopolitics on a given topic (say, oil): the points of view (the models) diverge or converge depending on the authors, but they all have a common basis, i.e., modeling. It is not quite the same in mathematics: The results (models) have to converge but the ways leading to the results (modeling) can be different. Concerning modeling, Henri Planchon said the following15: Any perception, any idea creates a mental representation which, if it is thought and “made aware”, can be expressed, conveyed by a modeling. The very fact of wishing to have a written trace of this mental image is part of the process of modeling. Wanting to project our thoughts makes our mind organize itself and model. This progress from fuzzyness, i.e., the “flared” shape of our mental modeling, towards clearer ideas through an image whose architecture appears more clearly, is facilitated and done by way of a written and/or an oral production. At this level, the elements are tested, corrected, adapted and above all linked to each other in a way that they form together a coherent whole that is perceptible and that can be grasped globally.

The author believes that the entire process revolves around this “flared shape”, as modeling presupposes that the cognitive agent/subject has already developed a mental representation during the stage of conceptualization. The author thinks that this stage consists of a complex process called “schematizing”, in which the cognitive subject develops quickly and subconsciously two kinds of schemas16. To reach this stage, it seems that the cognitive subject uses a natural cognitive process already “implemented” since her early childhood in order to learn her mother tongue: abduction. It is the philosopher-logician C. S. Peirce who first discovered this type of reasoning, saying that it is a “weak” kind of reasoning as it lacks the rigor of the other two “strong” types of reasoning which are “deduction” and “induction”. However, Peirce recommended studying abduction as, according to him, it could well be the basis of human perception and because it could be the only type of reasoning allowing new ideas to crop up, thus allowing creation. According to Peirce, abduction is a type of reasoning where a person, instead of following a logical method (as in deduction by “modus ponens”), infers a previous stage by means of a heuristical process from a 15

Retrieved from http://acim.ouvaton.org. The author will explain this word further as it is used with various meanings; but it possesses a common sense from Kant to Piaget to Revault d’Allones and many others even if there are nuances.

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present case. Let us briefly present these three types of reason in17, beginning with deduction (or hypothetical-deductive reasoning) which is the most familiar one (Sherlock Holmes is its most perfect representative): Given a law: All humans are mortal; And a case: Socrates is a human; We deduce a result: Socrates is mortal. In induction, we go on from a case and a result to infer a law: Case: Socrates is a human, as are B. Obama, the Dalaï Lama, you, me; Result: Socrates is mortal; Law: All humans are mortal. In abduction, we infer the case from the law and the result: Result: Socrates is dead; Law: All humans are mortal; Case: Socrates was probably a human.

Abductive reasoning is not as rigorous as the other two types of reasoning, as we can infer a wrong case: If Socrates is dead (result) and given that all cats are mortal (law), we can “abduct” the following case: “Socrates was probably a cat”. But, deductive reasoning, with all its rigor, can also lead to absurdities even more mindless than the probabilities resulting from abduction. For example: Law: A rare horse is expensive; Case: Yet, a horse of little value is rare; Result: Thus, a horse of little value is expensive.

Abduction allows us to make a general prediction without guaranteeing a clear result. It starts from an observed result, invokes a law, and infers that something could have been the case. It is the kind of reasoning used by speakers of a tongue when they proceed by assumptions based on the data of other grammars and by inferring from these. This is why Henning Andersen says that the acquisition of a language by a child involves the three types of reasoning mentioned above, the most important of them being abduction as it is used the most on the subconscious level. In the course of acquiring a language, the child builds the grammar of the language she hears around her. In so doing, she interprets it as a result and makes assumptions—by way of heuristics—concerning the structure of this grammar by relying on linguistic rules supposed to be innate; this is the abductive stage18. The grammar that the child builds progressively is tested in two ways: (1) The child can hear new structures and check whether the grammar she has built so far can reproduce them; this is the inductive stage. If this fails, the child will proceed with other abductive innovations; (2) The child reproduces the structures heard, checking thus the grammar she has built with the other speakers; this is the deductive stage. If the speakers do not understand her or if they correct her, the child will rectify her grammar. Abduction can thus be the basis, the grounding, and the substructure of human reasoning. Moreover, abduction possesses a specific feature, an asset that the other two types lack. Indeed, vis-à-vis the rigor—thus 17

According to some logicians, there exists a fourth type of reasoning, transduction, where we have the possibility to transfer a reasoning from one domain to another provided some degree of homomorphism. 18 It is well known that if a child does not hear a language spoken in her environment, her faculty of language is not activated and she will not acquire any language.

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the rigidity19—of deduction and induction, abduction refines with time and experience. Not only the heuristics implement themselves more easily, but they can be easily transferred to another domain. This is called “transduction” (more commonly known as “analogy” 20 ). “What the scientist does as explicitly and as completely as possible by reasoning, the active thought does spontaneously, implicitly, and incompletely, yet with partial success” (Piaget visité par la didactique, Vergnaud, 2001/2002). It thus seems that logical deduction is not the strong point of humans, as it is a method created, developed, and used on a large scale long ago, especially since the 19th century. What we humans are good at is jumping to conclusions after having gathered some bits of proof in order to pull out some fuzzy rule (a schema), which makes us feel that we are on the right track. The schema conveniently allows us to bypass our way of dealing with the details of our surrounding reality, and this saves our energy for other matters. It seems that Zipf’s law works everywhere. This fuzzy rule—according to the author—seems to be a cognitive process somehow similar to “Ockham’s razor”: simplexity. It is a way of simplifying complexity while retaining its essence but without losing complexity. An approximate analogy to figure out this process would be data compression software: A huge volume of data is “reduced” (compressed, zipped) to save space, but the data is safe. In the simplexity process, volume is replaced with complexity. Simplexity is not simplicity; it is deeply linked to complexity. To begin with, both words share the same Latin root “plex-”: simplex (lat. “simplexus”) means “with one fold”; complex (lat. “cumplexus”) means “intertwined”. According to A. Berthoz (2009), simplexity is those solutions or mechanisms that Life developed to make its life easier: … Simplifying rules that reduce complexity and allow us to deal quickly with information or situations by taking into account past experiences and by anticipating the future; those rules make it easier to understand intentions without altering the complexity of reality.

This means that simplexity is in itself a complex process, since in order to deal with complexity, the means used—It is a principle in complexity science—must at least be as complex as the system under study21. The means, however, will have “compressed” the complexity. Here are some examples to better grasp this process: Some languages use affixes that express a lot at a time, e.g., the Turkish suffix “mIş” which expresses at the same time the past and some distance of the speaker towards an event (“It probably happened but I am not sure of it”). Some Amerindian languages, lacking verbal forms, possess nominal suffixes expressing at the same time the aspect, the place, and the time. While still on the topic of language, metaphor (not only the figure of speech but G. Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor) allows us to summarize in one sentence a complex situation that would otherwise need a longer explanation. Once again, in language, at the level of tropes, irony allows us to give our opinion in a quick way without expanding into diatribe. Finally, we return to the narrative function with the myth, which as a “detour through imagination, contains realities, synthesized complex relations despite their apparent complexity” (Berthoz, 2009, p. 223). We could say the same for the tale, the fable, the parable, advertising, propaganda, symbols, etc.. Human language seems to contain various 19 20 21

Usually those two go hand in hand. The author personally prefers the term “analogical metaphor”, but the author will not develop this concept further here. This concurs with Ashby’s law of requisite variety.

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mechanisms using simplexity to convey a message. Simplexity is thus the means used by the human mind to hold complex information concerning the surrounding world but also to express and convey this information. It is a cognitive process that compresses information and synthesizes it without losing its complexity. What mechanism implements this cognitive process? The author mentioned earlier Ockham’s razor. Taken from Aristotle (who himself cited Empedocles), Ockham’s razor is in fact a process involving simplexity. As Berthoz said: … Ockham’s idea is subtle: The abstract shapes of thought—concepts, intentions, similarities with the outside world, the “intellections”—are all mental signs that we have no reason to differentiate from the very act of intellecting. (Berthoz, 2009, p. 211)

The terms “abstract shapes”, “mental signs”, are, within the framework of this article, what Kant and many others name mental schemas, and what Johnson-Laird calls “mental models”. What Berthoz explains in the above-quoted sentence is the mental process called schematizing by R. Estivals (Fr. “schématisation”). It is a subconscious process used by the human mind to simplexify one’s perceptions of the surrounding world. We find, at the basis of this process, the schema (Gr. skεma). The author will proceed to a “simplexified” explanation of the word schema without developing the concept further, as there are various meanings depending on the philosopher, the logician, or the scientist using it. However, the main structure of all these various schemas is similar. The schema is a mental framework that can lead to other forms of expression. “The schema is a psychological representation intermediate between the concrete image and the abstract concept”, said M. Piéron22. E. Kant defined the schema as “a general process of the imagination to give an image to a concept” (Emmanuel Kant, Critique de la raison pure (Critique of pure reason), AK., A140). In his article, G. Vergnaud (2001/2002) said: Revault d’Allones developed the concept of schema many years before Piaget did, by introducing it mainly in a theory of perception and recognition; he even talks about glimpse23, i.e., a process of a quick information grasping, which is inevitably reducing. His idea, already very interesting, is that we organize perceived information in schematic scenes, in silhouettes; psychological phenomena and many other cultural products like proverbs, trade names/signs, logos, prove it.

R. Estivals (2003) believed that the schema is a structured intuition, a pre-conceptual object/phenomenon “which can appear in the consiousness without triggering a verbal expression”. This “pre-symbolic cognitive structure” of the connexionnists could be part of our mental language, the mentalese of J. Fodor. According to J. J. Wunenburger (2005), … the schema appears…as a sort of sensitive representation, which can be visualized, but which is reduced to an uncertain sketch, whose recourse allows us precisely to lead a concept towards perceptive exemplifications and, inversely, allows us to lead specific perceptions towards a unique categorical referent… The notion of schema thus selects and promotes a special type of representation that is not reduced to the reproduction of a referent, but conveys from it refined, simplified, generic and genetic information.

E. Manguelin (2005) claimed that, “The schema is a power of figuring, a figural matrix, which lies beyond 22 23

In Vocabulaire de la Psychologie, PUF (Presses Universitaires de France), 1963. The French text says “apperception”.

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the represented objects. It is creative because, contrary to the image, it exists at the state of pure tendency and can be constantly reactualized”24. B. Duborgel (2005) based his definition of the schema on Kant’s definition: This peculiar representation is neither the concept nor the image; the schema is not the specific detailed image, it is its status of possibility; it lies near the image but beyond it and it lies near the generality of the concept but already beyond it.

Commenting on Kant who said about the schema that it is “an art hidden deep in the human psyche and it will be very difficult to dig out its mechanism…”, Duborgel clarified that Kant’s metaphor of the monogram aiming at grasping the schema is important as “The monogram is indeed the condensed and abbreviated expression of a name, this latter being reduced to some main letters or to a non-scriptural graphical sign that can serve as a signature”. In view of the preceding, it can be said that the schema is a minimal mental mold implementing a quick simultaneous process of reduction-organization of information. It is creative, generative, and shaping, i.e., it gives shape to perceived information. It is probably the crucible, the generating matrix in which and by which the mixed abduction-simplexity process occurs. It is after this process that thinking (analysis, modeling25, etc.) takes place. In order to clarify the concept of schema, the author will give some examples from various fields: (1) To begin with, Chomsky’s universal grammar can be considered as a schema (even a megaschema) as it is supposed to be the matrix generating all the grammars of all natural languages. As a proof, we can consider Creole languages (born from pidgins) and sign languages as that of the deaf children of Nicaragua or that of Al-Sayyed Palestinian village in the Negev (Israël). In those two last cases, the generation that followed the one that created the pidgin or the sign language, developed this pidgin or the sign language into a fully-fledged language, i.e., a language possessing a syntax; the pidgin usually possesses a Tarzan-like arrangement of words. Also in linguistics, we have in Semitic languages the schema which is a pre-established mold giving birth to verbal and nominal forms; (2) In the computer field, the XML (eXtensible Markup Language), a kind of mold-format, can be translated into another format (doc, pdf, ect.) without losing its pre-established characteristics; (3) In the Hindu religious field, the mantra can be considered as a phonic schema (vibratory if it is only “thought” but not pronounced) and the mandala can be considered as a graphic-symbolic schema. Now, if the schema is the basis of human thought (“To think is to schematize”, said Goblot), this means that it is a cognitive invariant, some sort of a cognitive substructural framework. In fact, if we consider human thought, we notice the following: (1) Human beings have the power of abstraction, the most compelling proof being mathematics: One can think in the abstract, about the abstract, towards the abstract; (2) Human beings have the power of imagination, the most compelling proof being fiction created by man long ago, which gave birth to myths, legends, novels, etc.; (3) Human beings have the power of analysis, the most compelling proof being the huge progress in all fields of science. It goes without saying that these three powers can combine together to form a complex system that allows 24 25

Nowadays we would say “updated” but it is not the adequate word here. The author likes the porte-manteau word “modelyze” as he believes that analysis is part of the modeling process.

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modeling. Now, after looking more deeply into the schema, this is what the author deduces: If (1) it is pre-conceptual (or pre-symbolic); and (2) it is “a general process of the imagination to give an image to a concept”, this means that there are two kinds of schemas: (1) A first one, “schema i”, intuitive, pre-conceptual, and barely sketched, that leads to conceptualization; (2) A second one, “schema d”, post-conceptual, definite, and definitive, that sets itself into a shape, an image, a model, and that leads to categorization. In order to clarify all the above-mentioned ideas, the author suggests Figure 4, which translates what could be—in the author’s view—the representational system of the human being: Representation

Schema i

concept Schema d 

Modeling process

Representation => schematizing  conceptualizing  modeling  creation 

Figure 4. The process of representation.

Conclusion The author has tried in this article to show that the modeling process, as defined at the beginning, is the main cognitive activity of human beings used in the process of mental representation. The author’s starting point was: What is going on in the minds of artists, authors, and other creators? How do they represent to themselves their surrounding world? How do they imagine, invent, and create? Next, the author divided the modeling process into four kinds and the author looked briefly into two of them: the mathematical kind and the narrative kind. By developing this latter, the author showed that the narrative function was essential for human beings as it stands at the core of their understanding of the world: The human being “fictionalizes” in order to better understand her environment. Fiction is a vehicle for

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knowledge and it involves modeling. But there is at first another process that leads to this modeling process: The schematizing process, in which abduction and simplexity mix together and lead to the conceptualizing process. Scientific modeling is claimed to be objective, and systemic modeling is claimed to be subjective. What about “artistic” modeling, i.e., that of artists, writers, and designers? In view of the preceding, the author would say it is a mix of the first two modeling processes with the personal touch of the artist, and it results in a “modal” modeling process. Thus, the modeling process can take various aspects: Modeling could be envisaged under other aspects than that of the slaving mathematical models. Trying to model what is… specific to human situations… requires also building… another view to the model than that proposed by mathematics.… The transdisciplinarity invites us to experiment with various modelings producing meaning, being interpretative rather than explanatory, which tries hard to show the various plausibilities that these modelings contain. Henceforth, the power of a model can be revealed just as much by a parable, a story, a poem as by a diagram, a drawing, or equations. (L’Harmattan, 2004)

It goes without saying that this article only skimmed over the concerned topic at hand. But the author believes that this topic could be part of a new theory—or model—of information, containing itself a theory of knowledge that contains a theory of cognition which in turn includes a theory of representation.

References Berthoz, A. (2009). La simplexité (Simplexity). Odile Jacob. Duborgel, R. (2005). Un singulier masque-mosaïque (A peculiar mosaic-mask). In R. Renaud (Ed.), Miroirs fragments, mosaïques: Schèmes et création dans l’art du XXe siècle (Mirrors, snatches, mosaics: Schemas and creation in the art of the 20th century) (p. 100). Université Saint Etienne. Edil 26. (n. d.). Retrieved from http://www.mcxapc.org Estivals, R. (2003). Théorie générale de la schématisation (General theory of schematizing) (Vol. II). L’Harmattan. Grall, C. (2007). Rhétorique, narratologie et sciences cognitives (Rhetorics, narratology and cognitive science). In J. Bessière (Ed.), Fiction, représentation, cognition (Fiction, representation, cognition). Honoré Champion. Krivine, J. L. (2002). La vraie nature de l’intelligence (The real nature of intelligence). Science & Vie, 1013, (special report). Lehrer, J. (2008). Proust was a neuroscientist. New York: Mariner Books. Le Moigne, J. L. (2004). Expériences de la modélisation, modélisation de l’expérience (Experiences of modeling, modeling of experience). L’Harmattan. Manguelin, E. (2005). Schème, schématisation, schématisme (Schema, schematizing, schematism). In Miroirs fragments, mosaïques: Schèmes et création dans l’art du XXe siècle (Mirrors, snatches, mosaics: Schemas and creation in the art of the 20th century) (p. 22). Université Saint Etienne. Meunier, J. G. (1993). Narration et cognition (Narrative and cognition). In Duchet & S. Vachon (Eds.), La recherche littéraire, objets et méthodes (The literary research, objects and methods). Montréal: XYZ Publisher. Satinover, J. (2001). The quantum brain. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Schaeffer, J. M. (2002). De l'imagination à la fiction (From imagination to fiction). Retrieved October 12, 2002, from http://www.vox-poetica.org/t/fiction.htm Vergnaud, G. (2001/2002). Piaget revisited with didactics. Intellectica, 33. Victorri, B. (n. d.). Homo narrans: Le rôle de la narration dans l’émergence du langage (Homo narrans: The role of narrative. In The emergence of languages). Victorri, B. (2006). A la recherche de la langue originelle (In search of the mother tongue). In Les origines du langage (The origins of language). Le Pommier. Werner, W. (2010). Les mathématiciens sont des rêveurs (Mathematicians are dreamers). Sciences Humaines, 221 (dossier: Imaginer, créer, innover (special report: Imagining, creating, innovating)). Wunenburger, J. J. (2005). Piaget revisité par la didactique (Poïetic figures, schemas and intellectual creation). In Mirrors, snatches, mosaics: Schemas and creation in the art of the 20th century (p. 13). Université Saint Etienne.

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Psychology Research, ISSN 2159-5542 April 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, 189-198

DAVID

PUBLISHING

The Use of ACT-R to Develop an Attention Model for Simple Driving Tasks* Kerstin Sophie Haring, Katsumi Watanabe

Marco Ragni

Lars Konieczny

Akademischer Rat, Freiburg,

The University of Freiburg, Freiburg,

The University of Tokyo, Tokyo,

Germany

Germany

Japan

Driving a car is obviously a complex task and the construction of an ACT-R (adaptive control of thought—rational) model of human attention while performing this task is similarly complex along multiple dimensions and presents a challenge to architecture and modeler. This work is a first attempt to develop an integrated driver model of attention in the cognitive architecture ACT-R. The model is able to keep a traffic lane and identify traffic signs and crossroads in a sparse and simulated environment. Keywords: driver behavior model, cognitive architecture, ACT-R (adaptive control of thought—rational), attention

Introduction For most of us, driving a car is one of our everyday tasks. But even for experienced drivers, just the task itself is a cognitive challenging task involving a big range of human senses like sight, hearing, touch, and acceleration. And this is not yet considering secondary tasks like talking on the phone or visual distractions like city illuminations. Luckily, most driving tasks are not as challenging as the traffic light tree in Figure 1, an artificial scenario by the French sculptor Pierre Vivant. Current attempts to model human attention while driving a car is realized in a quite more simple environment, yet they are quite an important first step towards the modeling of these highly complex tasks. Vice versa, it can also provide an indication for the future development of a cognitive architecture by showing what cannot be realized yet. The simulation environment for this model was restricted to the components the cognitive architecture can recognize. Nevertheless, basic driving scenarios simulating human visual attention and driver behavior could be implemented. The screenshot form the driving environment, which was separately implemented in LISP for this work, shows from top-down another (blue) vehicle, the focus of attention (red circle), and the navigation point (N) to * Acknowledges: We are grateful for the kind advice and assistance of professor Bernhard Nebel, the support of professor Wolfram Burgard (University of Freiburg), and for intensive discussions with Dario Salvucci (University of Philadelphia). This work has been partially supported by a grant from the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) (Project R8-CSpace in the Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 8 “spatial cognition”). Kerstin Sophie Haring, Ph.D. candidate, The University of Tokyo. Katsumi Watanabe, associate professor, The University of Tokyo. Marco Ragni, Ph.D., Akademischer Rat. Lars Konieczny, professor, The University of Freiburg.

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keep the vehicle in the center of the road. This model focuses on basic reference points like the horizon, a leading car, the border and the center line of the road, crossroads, and traffic signs. For example, the model of a driver in the screenshot in Figure 2 sets the focus of visual attention on the outer border of the road which enables it to reevaluate the center for the N-point. In the next step, it will shift the focus of attention to the front and (hopefully) detect the car in front. If so, possible next steps could be the comparison of the distance to a (here fixed) safety distance or an overtaking procedure.

Figure 1. The (thankfully not on a crossroad) installed traffic light sculpture by Pierre Vivant.

Figure 2. Screenshot of the environment interaction with ACT-R (adaptive control of thought—rational). The circle at the roadside indicates the current visual focus of attention of the model.

The here presented cognitive model should simulate through ACT-R human attention while driving in a simplified environment and produce the behavior for scenarios with other cars, crossroads, and traffic signs.

The Cognitive Architecture The ACT-R (Anderson, 1993; 2007) cognitive architecture proposes artificial, computational processes that aim to act like a human cognitive system. Most of its basic assumptions are inspired by the progress of

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cognitive neuroscience. The tasks that humans can perform should, in theory, consist of a series of discrete operations. ACT-R is primarily used to model experimental psychological data. ACT-R compromises theories about the operation mode of human information processing and describes a comprehensive computer model of human cognition. The architecture is not only a proposed unified theory of cognition, it is also a programming environment, a production system with a development environment where it is for example possible to set parameters or run simulations. ACT-R is a framework in which the researcher can create models (programs) for different tasks. Running this model produces a simulation of human behavior. As many cognitive architectures, ACT-R contains a number of modules which can be accessed through their limited-size buffers. For each module, a dedicated buffer serves as an interface with that module. The state of ACT-R at a given time is the content of the buffers at that time. Buffers are connected to the modules and are changed by production rules. Every buffer and (nearly) every module can be allocated to a cortex region. This enables an interesting mapping between buffers and neural processes (Anderson, 2007). The main assumption of ACT-R is the representation of knowledge as either declarative or procedural knowledge. Declarative knowledge, consisting of facts, is represented in form of “chunks”, or small logical units which encode simple facts (e.g., the fact: “Sapporo is in Japan”). Procedural knowledge, representing knowledge about how we do things, is represented in form of “production rules”, condition-action rules that generate a specific action (e.g., manipulate declarative knowledge) if the conditions of this rule are fulfilled. In other words, ACT-R’s knowledge representation is split in two kinds of memory modules, perceptual-motor modules, and memory modules. The diagram in Figure 3 shows the ACT-R in action. For the visual attention, the environment provides screen objects to the vision module. The target of attention is put into the declarative memory in form of a chunk.

Figure 3. ACT-R system diagram (Byrne, 2001). The cognitive layer and each of the perceptual-motor modules run in parallel, but each component is itself serial.

We decided to choose ACT-R for this task because it has a visual search, is a well-accepted cognitive architecture, and was already used in the past to evaluate the attention during a driving task. A crucial advantage of the ACT-R architecture is that the three main components used in this model (control, monitoring, and decision-making) can be implemented directly. This takes into account human constraints and results in a cognitive adequate model of human attention.

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Previous Work Most developed approaches can be distinguished into two categories: task specific and generic approaches. “Task specific approaches” such as Cosmodrive (Bellet, Bailly, Mayenobe, & Georgeon, 2007) and Pelops (Benmimoun, 2004) reproduce the cognitive functions of a car driver. In contrast to task specific approaches, “generic approaches” can model various aspects of human behavior. Therefore, it is necessary for these architectures to include a theory of human information processing. Examples for such architectures in which driver models have been implemented are ACT-R (Anderson, 1993; Salvucci, 2006), Soar (Aasman, 1995), and QN-MHP (queuing network-model human processor) (Liu, Feyen, & Tsimhoni, 2006). Driver models were described by Aasman (1995) in the cognitive architecture SOAR and by Liu (1996) in QN-MHP. Although these models already exist in other cognitive architectures and the central ideas remain the same in any architecture, the ACT-R model of a driver shows a broader spectrum of application (Salvucci, 2001; 2006). Salvucci (2006) developed a first integrated cognitive model of human driving behavior in ACT-R. He showed in his work the generality and the applicability using the cognitive architecture ACT-R for the specific task of driving. His model is designed to keep a standard vehicle on a multi-lane highway with moderate traffic. The model is also able to recognize the distance to a vehicle ahead and to make the decision for overtaking. As driving is a highly complex task and not readily implementable, this model has some limitations. The model solely was meant to interact with a highway environment without recognition of traffic signs, crossings, or slip roads. An implementation limitation was the use of the previous version ACT-R 5.0 and its incompatibility to newer versions. It was also not possible to make the ACT-R model interact directly with a driving simulator. Regardless the challenges, Salvucci proposed to develop a driver model in the context of ETA (embodied cognition task and artifact) framework (Byrne, 2001), an idea which was adopted in this work.

Cognitive Model A driver model can be a powerful instrument with several possible fields of application, such as the development of intelligent driver assistant systems. The model is implemented by the newest version ACT-R 6 (Anderson, 2007) and using the standard ACT-R development environment running on an open source LISP, which not only guarantees support and accountability, but also enables the research community to use the developed model for further research. Driver Modeling We introduce a computational model of human attention in a car-driving task implemented in the ACT-R architecture. As described previously, this model aims to account for the ETA framework. The complex task of driving a car can be divided into basic subtasks. These must be integrated and interleaved to achieve the continuously changing parent task. Michon (1985) identified three levels of skills and control for the driving task: operational (control), tactical (maneuvering), and strategical (planning). He claimed that a comprehensive model should take into account the various levels. The independent subtasks of the (simplified) parent task “drive” (see Figure 4) were implemented as “control”, the operational process controlling the input, “monitoring”, the tactical process interacting with the environment, and “decision-making”, also analogous to the tactical level of Michon (1985), managing maneuvers like overtaking. These subtasks are processed serially. Every production of the top-level goal

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“drive” has sub-goals, which incorporates the three components. Development Environment The theory of ACT-R is embedded in the ACT-R software in form of common LISP functions. This model is implemented in the open source Clozure Common LISP 1.3 and the current version of ACT-R 6.0 under the operating system Ubuntu 9.04. In order to make the simulation environment interact with the ACT-R system, it was directly implemented in LISP with simple graphics and the extension with the LTK (LISP Toolkit). As it was not possible to make ACT-R directly interact with a driving simulator, we decided to use a LISP-implementation of a driving environment.

Figure 4. Schematic representation of the production rules of the driver model in a simple crossroad scenario. The title of a box indicates the current goal and the corresponding production rules. The arrows show the flow of control and the asteriks show the return to the parent goal.

Figure 5. UML-diagram of the driver model. To execute the task drive, the model runs through several states.

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Model Specification As mentioned earlier, human attention during a driving task is quite complex along with multiple dimensions. It is not yet possible to model every aspect of human attention within a cognitive architecture for such a complex task. To limit the scope of the project, model is held quite simple. The model focuses on simple visual perception and attention shifts how they might occur in a sparse, artificial environment. The first issue to address was to implement the three components control, monitoring, and decision-making as a loop of cognitive operations in the serial processor of the ACT-R architecture. The UML diagram in Figure 5 shows the behavior of the cognitive model. This diagram identifies one primary loop, (Unified Modeling Language) which corresponds largely to the control component in Figure 4. The primary loop implements the identification of the near and the far point, in other words, the points responsible for the stable navigation in the middle of the road. From the initial state, the model finds the road marks and sets the near point for stable navigation on the road. The model then fires a production rule screening for a traffic sign, changes the state according to the result, and sets the far point. In our model, the near and far points are used as control components and explained in detail in the next paragraph. If the model reaches the state “find far”, it will continuously repeat the primary control loop. This primary loop can be extended in case the monitoring component finds a special state like an intersection, that is, the condition part of a production rule investigating the right road marks on the right detects a crossing and the action part of this rule changes the state of the model, testing for other given constraints. According to the result, the model might change the state or repeat the primary control loop updating the near and the far points for stable navigation. Control The control component of attention while performing a driving task manages the perception of lower-level visual cues and the control over the vehicle (e.g., stopping). The model uses the simple concept of two salient visual attributes, based on earlier findings on locomotion (Llewellyn, 1971). Steering is described (Land & Horwood, 1995) as divided into two levels, guidance and stabilization, by using a “far” and a “near” region. Models of steering developed under this assumption have been proven to be consistent with empirical evidence. This specific information of task was required to construct the model. An issue to be addressed was what kind of strategies might be used by a human in a driving environment. Salvucci and Gray (2004) based the perception of a cognitive model on a near and a far point for guidance and stabilization. This model extends the idea of two levels to the extend, and with the far point, other salient attributes are also encoded. The visual attention of the model does not only switch between the near point in the middle of the road and the horizon (or any other straight point ahead), but also encodes crossings, traffic signs, or other cars coming from the right hand side on a crossing. For the here created artificial road environment, these two points account to capture the relevant aspects of the environment. The idea behind this wider use of the far point is the possible extension in further implementations. The far point could be used to determine other attributes relevant or irrelevant for the driving task and give an account, how errors happen while driving (e.g., overlooking of a traffic light before a noisy background during monitoring). Figure 6 illustrates the near and far points and how they are set in some possible situations during the driving task. The near point determines the position in the middle of the road. The far point is used to identify the direction of driving and other non-control points like vehicles,

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crossroads, and traffic signs. If there is a lead vehicle, the distance between the two points is determined, and in case it falls below a certain safety distance, the model can react according to that. At a crossroad, the model will set the far point on the border of the crossing or on the vehicle approaching from the right. If the model decides to continue driving, it will not look again for another car at the crossroad, which is surely an issue for future implementations. Stopping is implemented by setting the far point onto the near point. The model will continue a loop until the other vehicle is not on the crossroad anymore and out of the safety distance.

Figure 6. Near and far points for a straight road with a vanishing point and a road segment with a lead car.

Monitoring The monitoring component captures the environment continuously and updates the declarative memory. In the here implemented driving environment, the situation awareness mainly focuses on other vehicles around or traffic signs. The model shifts the focus of visual attention towards a certain object which is then encoded as visual attribute in the declarative memory. This shift is achieved through three different methods of shifting attention: First by specific locations or directions, second by specific characteristics, and third by objects, that have not been in the focus of attention yet. The combination of these methods of attention shift enables the model to create complex search strategies through the production rules. As ACT-R has a build-in memory decay mechanism, it might be possible to predict driver errors because the chunks encoding the current environment decay and can be forgotten if not updated continuously. Another source of possible driver errors could be the potential failure in encoding relevant information (e.g., to overlook a traffic sign or a vehicle). Decision-Making The information provided by the control and monitoring component is used to determine if and what decisions must be made on the tactical level concerning the maneuvering (e.g., stopping or overtaking). Our focus on decision-making assumes that the attributes in the environment are encoded correctly. The decision how to proceed (in what state of the model) is based on a pattern matching with the knowledge about the environment. If there is no crossing encoded, the corresponding production rule will not fire and the primary loop will continue. The decision whether to stop or to continue driving depends on the encoded traffic sign or on other vehicles. In our environment, the model always recognized these situations correctly, but it would be

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interesting in future implementations to observe the behavior and decision of the model in case, an error during encoding of attributes occurs. In order for the model to produce a decision-making process similar to humans, encoding a visual attribute and shifting visual attention cannot occur at the same time. For this model, the focus of attention is for example either on the near or far point or encoding a traffic sign.

Results and Discussion Obviously, the model presented here does not account for all aspects of human attention during driving, especially not in a naturalistic environment. There are still quite some practical limitations in both, the architecture and the modeling effort itself. This study is an attempt to capture some of the difficult behaviors involved in driving. It also shows some of the limitations of the ACT-R architecture. This study presents a simple simulation environment and a cognitive model of driver attention during car driving that is able to interact during run-time. To obtain an integrated driver model of human driving behavior, it is essential to develop models in an architecture which is not task specific and can also model human behavior also in a different context, like ACT-R. This model is a first attempt to recognize still simplified traffic signs and crossroads and might make a first step towards the vision of accident-free driving. A majority (over 80%) of the automobile accidents are caused by the drivers themselves (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2011). Nearly 16% of the accidents happen while turning and during exit, followed by disregarding the right of way (15%) and not-adapted speed (15%). Theoretically, the cognitive driver model could give a deeper insight for around 30% of the human errors while driving. However, it has to be taken into account that the model is still interacting with a simplified environment and not yet taking into account driver’s prior experience, which could be implemented by an increased attention in potentially high accident risk situations. The model and the environment do not present a complete picture of driver behavior yet, but they form a base to extend the ETA framework in any direction. The ACT-R architecture limits the employment of the three components: control, monitoring, and decision-making by using a serial cognitive processor. The serial processing of the subtasks is typical for the human bottleneck of information processing (Anderson, Bothell, Byrne, Douglass, Lebiere, & Qin, 2004). The resulting model is not an optimal model in a mathematical sense, but approximates human behavior and makes it possible, to mimic human cognitive capacities, simulate the dynamic nature of human driving behavior, and therefore to produce a cognitive adequate model of human driving behavior. If the model is, for example, occupied with an attention shift, it cannot simultaneously update the near point. Also, the model can only fire on production rule at a time and only one visual operation can be executed at a time. These processes take a certain time which are written in an output file. This file contains the time, the active buffer, and the according event. This enables the researcher to compare the produced data with human data. The knowledge representation comprehends declarative knowledge in chunks and procedural knowledge in production rules. For example, the scenario at a crossroad was implemented in 73 explicit production rules, which are highly detailed, and is therefore open to future extensions of the model. This study did not validate the model data so far. Future research could compare the output file data with human data, specially compare the attention shift of the model to human drivers over eye-tracking and the reaction times. But one must remember that only most critical parts of key scenarios can be validated as no single method is sufficient enough to understand the complex task of human driving behavior yet.

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ACT-R for Complex Tasks Modeling such complex tasks in the cognitive architecture ACT-R presents quite some technical challenges to the modeler. For a complex driving task and the validation, the ACT-R model and the participants should interact in the same environment. However, for this validation, it must be possible from the technical side to connect the ACT-R model directly to the simulation environment, which can be technical challenging. Also thinkable is to develop an LISP version of a driving simulator which can easily interact with ACT-R. If the simulator allows extracting the same information ACT-R does, the output files could be compared, even though the multiple implementation might be a potential source of errors. Also, the current version of ACT-R has some difficulties directly recognizing other components than the already implemented. The attempt to model such complex tasks in generic cognitive architectures shows the applicability as well as the still remaining technical limitations. However, such a complex task might raise the question not only about the limitations of the architecture itself, but also the modeling of human behavior. It might be a good approach to study the key scenarios of human attention during driving in more detail and transfer these results into the model code, breaking down the overall complex task into smaller subtasks in specific situations. Conclusion and Outlook We hope that this research will motivate more members of the computational modeling community to study human attention during driving a car and to overcome the practical limitations. Modeling of such complex tasks holds great promise for meeting the modeling challenges. The progress to date in the development of cognitive architectures has been impressive, yet scientific gaps, technical challenges, and practical issues remain. On one hand, cognitive models help to develop an understanding of driver behavior and aim to provide a theoretical account for human attention while driving. On the other hand, they are powerful and practical tools when implementing human-centered design and real-world applications. First steps towards the examination of the source of human mistakes through distraction from the primary driving task through secondary tasks like dialing a phone haven been taken (Salvucci, 2001), showing the feasibility of the architecture for these tasks and possible extensions. The ACT-R architecture enables to elucidate interesting aspects and provides a theory of human attention while driving. At the same time, human attention during driving is a challenging task for the ACT-R cognitive architecture. It shows the still existing limitations beyond basic laboratory tasks and pushes the research community to expand the architecture towards more complex and finally real-world tasks.

References Aasman, J. (1995). Modeling driver behavior in soar. Leidschendam, The Netherlands: KPN Research. Anderson, J. R. (1993). Rules of the mind. Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum. Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., & Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review, 111, 1036. Anderson, J. R., & Lebiere, C. (1998). The atomic components of thought. Mahwah, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Anderson, J. R. (2007). The algebraic brain. In M. A. Gluck, J. R. Anderson, & S. M. Kosslyn (Eds.), Memory and mind: A festschrift for Gordon H. Bower. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bellet, T., Bailly, B., Mayenobe, P., & Georgeon, O. (2007). In P. Cacciabue (Ed.), Modelling driver behavior in automotive environments: Critical issues in driver interactions with intelligent transportation systems, Cognitive modelling and computational simulation of driver mental activities (pp. 315-343). Springer Verlag.

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Benmimoun, A. (2004). The driver as model for driver assistance systems: A driver model based approach to the development of situation adaptive assistance systems 13. Aachener Kolloquium Fahrzeug-and Motorentechnik. Boer, E. R. (1996). Tangent point oriented curve negotiation. IEEE Proceedings of the Intelligent Vehicles 96 Symposium, September 19-20, 1996, pp. 7-12. Byrne, M. D. (2001). ACT-R/PM and menu selection: Applying a cognitive architecture to HCI. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 55, 41-84. Land, M., & Horwood, J. (1995). Which part of the road guide steering? Nature, 3, 77, 339-340. Liu, Y. (1996). Queuing network modeling of elementary mental processes. Psychological Review, 103, 116-136. Liu, Y., Feyen, R., & Tsimhoni, O. (2006). Queuing network-model human processor (QN-MHP): A computational architecture for multitasking performance in human-machine systems. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 13, 37-70. Llewellyn, L. (1971). Visual guidance of locomotion. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 91, 245-254. Michon, J. A. (1985). A critical view of driver behavior models: What do we know, what should we do? Human behavior and traffic safety (pp. 485-452). Plenum Press. Pomerlau, D., & Jochem, T. (1996). Rapidly adapting machine vision for automated vehicle steering. IEEE Expert, 112, 19-27. Reid, L. D., Solowka, E. N., & Billing, A. M. (1981). A systematic study of driver behavior steering control models. Ergonomics, 24, 447-462. Salvucci, D. D. (2001). Predicting the effects of in-car interface use on driver performance: An integrated model approach. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 55, 85-107. Salvucci, D. D. (2006). Modeling driver behavior in a cognitive architecture. Human Factors, 48, 362-380. Salvucci, D. D., Liu, A., & Boer, E. R. (2001). Control and monitoring during lane changes. Vision in Vehicles, 9. Salvucci, D. D., & Gray, R. (2004). A two-point visual control model of steering. Perception, 33, 1233. Statistisches Bundesamt. (n.d.) Retrieved December 20, 2011, from http://www.destatis.de

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Constructive Cognition as Positive Behaviour Lipi Mukhopadhyay Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, India

Emotion and cognition are inter-related variable influenced by environment and individual constructive ability. Review of researches done in this area would help in understanding of emotional bearing and influence on human behaviour. This is intended to explore in the present paper. Emotion plays an important role in constructive cognition. It is found that academic goal pursuit among young adolescents depends much on their emotional intelligence and adaptive skills. How one finds the immediate environment as supportive or oppressive will depend on the individual constructive cognition and influence future actions in dealing with the situation. Recent years, it has witnessed a revival of research in the interplay between cognition and emotion. Emotion theorists have recognized the pivotal role of cognitive factors in virtually all aspects of the emotion process. They rely on basic cognitive factors and insight in creating new models of affective space. Also, the successful application of cognitive therapies to affective disorders has prompted clinical psychologists to work towards a clearer understanding of the connections between cognitive processes and emotional problems. An analytical review of studies is presented to explain individual differences in cognitive achievement and emotional adaptation in adolescents. Gender differences, culture, and school environment are studied as independent variables. Development of cognitive psychology and neuroscience in the areas of cognitive and emotional behaviour made many contributions to the understanding of the positive and negative correlates of human behaviour, neural processes, and their implications in the daily lives of the people. Based on these new challenges and emerging nuances of positive psychology, the present paper deals with empirical data-based researches in the area of development of constructive cognition in shaping positive behaviour and healthy society. Keywords: constructive cognition, emotion, behaviour adaptation, environment, neuroscience

Introduction Understanding of human behaviour and its determinants had been a dominant area of research in psychology ever since the discipline has emerged as an independent science. It is evident that understanding of human behaviour is not possible through psychology alone but a multidisciplinary knowledge is required to focus on this complex subject. Recent studies have reported that human behaviour is influenced by physical, psychological, and environmental factors. Research data on dynamics of human behaviour and its determinants are vast. To limit our discussion to the present theme, we would review those studies that indicate an association of multivariate variables and interplay between human brain, personality characteristics, and environmental situations. The fact that human beings are social and unique in their behaviours is an accepted norm in psychology. In order to understand the interdependent linkage of human biology, psychological characteristics and cognition, it Lipi Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., professor, Indian Institute of Public Administration.

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is important to note some of the definitions of human learning from the fields of psychology, education, anthropology, and cognitive sciences. Situations might be said to co-produce knowledge through activity. Learning and cognition are fundamentally situated. (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) Rather than a person being “in” an environment, the activities of person and environment are viewed as parts of a mutual-constructed whole. Put simply, the inside/outside relationship between person and environment is replaced by a part/whole relationship. (Bredo, 1994) Situated cognition theory, by contrast, shifts the focus from the individual to the socio-cultural setting and the activities of the people within that setting. Knowledge accrues through the live practice of the people in a society. (Driscoll, 2004)

Understanding of “how people learn”, it is believed by the contemporary research findings that learning involves social participation (Driscoll, 2004), and learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived in world (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Situated cognition acknowledges the mind-body connection. It focuses on “dynamics of intentions” where the individuals intentionally adopt a specific goal. The intention will direct and control the individuals’ behaviour until the goal is achieved (Kugler, Shaw, Vicente, & Kinsella-Shaw, 1991; Shaw, Kadar, Sim, & Repperger, 1992; Young, Kulikowich, & Barab, 1997). According to Eysenck and Keane (2005) learning occurs in three stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. This view represents nature—nurture dichotomy which describes knowledge as either innate or experiential. A common metaphor for this type of knowledge is a computer. People and computers store information and process information sequentially in a number of steps. Learning is transferable to situation. Engle (2006) suggested that “Transfer is more likely to occur when learning contexts are framed as part of a larger ongoing intellectual conversation in which students are actively involved”. On knowledge “transfer”, Collins, Brown, and Newman (1989) observed that, Learning in multiple contexts induces the abstraction of knowledge, so that students acquire knowledge in a dual form, both tied to the contexts of its uses and independent of any particular context. This unbinding of knowledge from a specific context fosters its transfer to new problems and new domains.

It becomes evident from these discussions what makes people behave the way they do. Human learning takes place in the “real world”. Thinking is complex, radical, individual yet inextricably bound to, and motivated by, the complex social human interaction (Wikipedia). Human thought and human action are the product of a dynamic interplay of personal, behavioural, and environmental influences (Pajares, 2005).

Why Emotion Is Important in Cognition? Emotion and cognition are inseparable entity. They function in a continuum process. There is a good deal of research evidence now that there are almost constant interactions between cognition and emotion in everyday life. Interrelationship between neuroscience and development of children is found significant. It is reported that how children differ in their capacity to benefit from their early motor and cognitive experiences can be understood. The crucial roles of attention and memory were established in motor and perceptual development (Dalton & Bergenn, 2007). It further claims that experience affects brain growth and a child’s capacity to learn in neuro-science it is assured that “affect” and cognition compete for brain resources (Isen, 2003). Earlier it was believed that “affect” and cognition had separate forces and processes rooted in the

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psychological concepts: cognition, conation, and affect (Hilgard, 1980; Isen & Hastorf, 1982; Isen, 2002). It is established by significant research findings that cognitive processing is involved in emotion. An extensive research evidences indicate that positive “affect” has important facilitating effects on thinking and on people’s ability to function. This is found among children, adult, and other professionals (Isen, 1999, 2002; Isen, Daubmn, & Nowicki, 1987; Isen, Johnson, Mertz, & Robinson, 1985; Isen, Rosenzweig, & Young, 1991; Kahn & Isen, 1993). The positive feedback strengthens self-esteem and motivates the individuals to put more attention to outer and inner sources of energy (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). This was supported by positive psychologist, Seligman (2002), and consequent research evidences. It is reported that positive feeling is a neon, a potential to win by activating an expansive, tolerant, and creative mindset. Positive affect signals that a situation is benign, whereas negative affect indicates a problem (Schwarz, 1990). People evaluate their behaviours and actions in a given environment based on the characteristics they possess and review and alter them if necessary for future actions. This is known as “reciprocal determinism” (Bandura, 1986). According to Bandura (1986), human behaviour is the result of: (1) personal factors—cognitive, affect, and biological; (2) behaviour and actions; and (3) environmental influences which create interactions that result in triadic reciprocality. Actions are good indicators of emotion. Thus, it is possible to infer emotion from different aspects of action, both expressive and instrumental. Emotion can be detected and interpreted from facial expressions (Ohman, 2006). It is further reported that from different outputs such as verbal reports, physiological and behavioural changes it may provide clear understanding of emotion and its bearing on evolutionary theory and neuroscience. It is evident that positive emotion helps in constructive evaluation for achieving optimal results in a given task. Defining the interrelated link between emotion and cognition modern research studies reported the impact of exposure and non-exposure state. It was found that participants were exposed to a set of Chinese ideograms very briefly so that they could not differentiate the ideograms. They were then shown and asked to rate the stimuli they had already viewed and stimuli to which they had not been exposed. Participants rated the previously exposed Chinese ideograms as more likeable than similar non-exposed ideograms (Zajonc, 1980). Emotion as sensory-motor reflexive as considered (James & Lange, 1885; Cannon, 1927) and its critiques in subsequent researches showed autonomic nervous system as important device for emotional state. In a given situation, when emotional information reaches amygdale and starts activating the bodily response within some 10 milliseconds after reaching sensory receptors and before reaching the adequate cortical areas may produce emotion. Cognitive role in emotion may be understood from research evidences that the brain may have quite specific information from the body early enough to make a factor in shaping emotional experience. Recalling certain emotional episodes sets off distinct patterns of activity in brain structures that regulate and represent bodily states—patterns that differ between emotions (Damasio, 1999). This suggests that emotion is a matter of reflection. People to a considerable extent construct their emotions. It is also found that the perceived meaning of the situation is the “central determinant” of the emotional response and the meaning the respondents claim results from an “appraisal” process (Ohman, 2006). Cognitive Determinants of Emotion Most cognitive psychologists ignore the issue of the effects of emotion on cognition. But with extensive

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research done in the areas of “emotional states” (Lazarus, 1991; Smith & Lazarus, 1993), factors determining emotion have been stated (Parkinson, 1994) as appraisal of some external situations, reactions of the body, facial expression, and action tendencies. It is defined that “Emotions are an integral and central component of human functioning and affairs in everyday life” (Cigrrochi, Forgas, & Mayer, 2006). It is important to note that these four factors are not independent of each other. In fact, cognitive appraisal of the situation, affects, bodily reactions, facial expression, and action tendencies influence emotional experience. This research inspired the bold notion that cognitive factors, especially, appraisals are always of fundamental importance in determining emotional experience (Lazarus, 1982; 1991). Gender Difference in Cognition and Emotion A vast literature is available to understand the gender difference in cognitive and emotional behaviours. It found that men and women differ in emotional intelligence. A worldwide study of (500,000) people by Bradberry and Su revealed significant differences in overall emotional intelligences and three of the four emotional intelligence skills. Men and women were measured on: self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, and relationship management. Women outscored men in all the skills except self-awareness. This is important to note that on self-awareness men and women received equal score. Another study was done on knowledge and attitude towards mental health and people with mental health problems measured among 496 boys and girls (teenagers) reported by Williams and Janette (2007). It was found that boys reported lower levels of knowledge and different sources of stress than girls. Negative attitudes were more common among boys than girls. Boys were less likely to think that an understanding of mental health was important. An ongoing research study on “adolescents’ strengths” indicated (pilot study) gender difference between male and female students. It was found that female students have more humility, perseverance, and integrity whereas males showed curiosity of learning and optimism (Mukhopadhyay, 1998). Another study has indicated that gender identity develops through the process of a lifetime of learning experiences (Mukhopadhyay, 1998). From the above discussion, it is established that emotion plays a crucial role in cognition. But how do individuals learn, store information, remember and recall them, what kind of neural processing takes place in the brain in daily learning, and how do they change, make new neurons and synaptic connections, are still not known fully. Neuroscientists jointly with other related branches of science are constantly trying to evolve more scientific information on brain and behaviour dynamics. It is a difficult and challenging task as we know that the mind is not just a passive encoder of reality. The brain is continually organizing, structuring, extracting, and creating. As a result of learning, brain comes to recognize a stimulus as a signal of vulnerable and disaster. For example, during Tsunami in the year 2004, Onge tribal community of Andaman and Nicobar Island got the signal of disaster prior to others to save their life on time (Mukhopadhyay, 2005). Recent developments of cognitive and neuroscience in the areas of positive emotion and cognitive development need to be highlighted as significant contribution towards human learning and behaviour modification. Positive beliefs about self provide the foundation for motivation. This was well documented by Pajares (2005). He defined self-efficacy as “These self-efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for motivation, well-being and personal accomplishment in all areas of life”. This states that if the individuals believe that their

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action will produce desired results then they will make efforts and be motivated to accomplish the goal. There has been noteworthy contribution made on this concept by others (Goleman 1993; Seymour Epstein; Gardner 2003; Snyder & Loopez, 2005; Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman, 2003). It is found that positive emotion promotes well-being and social responsibility (Isen, 1987). Researches on positive emotion showed that positive emotion often facilitates cognitive processing (Forgas, 2002; Schwarz & Bless, 1991).

Discussion Shaping constructive cognition with positive values in the children is particularly important, as their brain is still plastic, receptive, and free from prejudice. For enhancing academically, the students should be focused on developing right skills for accomplishment. Parents and school teachers can work out how to build desired skill to enhance knowledge towards developing self-confidence and esteem among young adolescents. Students’ self-efficacy beliefs develop primarily through actual success on challenging academic tasks. Similar views were expressed by Erik Erikson (1959) that “Ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment that is achievement that has meaning in their culture”. It is important to remind the educationists that characteristics of successful individuals do not undermine their self-efficacy beliefs in the face of failure and adversity. In fact, young children should be taught that failure is normative and building resilience is an important trait. Another way of building positive behaviour in the school culture is to make the classroom and school environment facilitate students’ competencies in normal standardized academic atmosphere without competitive and individualized manner. The school atmosphere should help students develop a cooperative and persuasive personality engaging in learning and flourishing. In classroom, teachers should be careful in instruction and making comments toward some students that may affect the healthy peer relationship. In group activity, often, teachers are not careful about the selection of students and personality which may be a disadvantage for others and only a few would dominate and monopolize the activity. It should be ensured that everybody participates in such group activities irrespective of their competences. Praise and appreciation for good work may be made honestly when they deserve. One of the ways to praise a deserving task or a performance is the recognition of the effort and encouragement and ensuring support may go a long way to develop positive self-esteem among young children. Foster Optimism and Confidence Optimism refers to adaptive behaviour, learning aptitude, positive goal setting, and use of opportunity for optimal use. These characteristics are usually demonstrated in everyday life at home and school. Parents and teachers may make room to develop such characteristics among their children and students. It is found that an environment of less competitive on “success” but on developing “competence” may foster self-confidence and adaptability among young children. Research studies have been reported on how low self-efficacy was found to be related to maladaptive academic behaviours, disciplinary problems and school drop-outs irrespective of knowledge and skill (Pajares, 2005). Critical challenge of parents and educators is making children’s self-regulatory practices as early as possible (William James, 1985). According to James, self-regulatory processes that individuals use to make most of their decisions become automatic and are exercised primarily unconsciously. These habitual ways of behaving are a powerful influence on the choices that people make on the success or failure they experience.

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Once self-efficacy beliefs are cognitively structured across activities the effect of such beliefs may be generalized. For example, students not good at mathematics may be made to believe that increased effort and perseverance will result in academic progress and greater understanding in the “subject”. The connection will be made to achieve success in other academic areas.

Conclusion As discussed earlier that emotion is an integral part of cognition and motivational process. It is convincing to believe that more positive emotional experiences will broaden and build the perspectives of an individual seeking goal attainment (Fredrickson, 2001). Multiple intelligences embodied in biological potential and environmental factors need constructive cognition and interactive resources to develop in early childhood (Gardner, 1993). It is possible to identify a special domain of interest or potential out of other abilities among the children enabling them to master in that specific domain. Fostering values among young children addressing gender issues, caste, class stereotypes, communal violence towards harmonious and healthy society may be built through conscious effort by all the stakeholders in respective fields. Researches on “emotional states” suggest that facts determining emotions are the appraisal of some external situations, reactions of the body, facial expressions and actions.

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Experience of Neuropsychological Treatment of a Patient With Aphasia Luis Quintanar Rojas, Yulia Solovieva, Arturo López Cortés Autonomous University of Puebla, Puebla, Mexico

Consideration of functions and its localization has an impact on the treatment of patients with brain injury. The aim of the article is to show an experience of neuropsychological treatment applied to a Spanish-speaking masculine of 77 years old with brain injury of ischemic type in left anterior artery. Pre- and post-assessment was applied to the patient. The previous assessment established motor efferent aphasia with serious problems of cortical and sub-cortical activation. The program for rehabilitation included special activities on concrete, perceptual, and verbal level of verbal and non-verbal activities. The 11 months of application of program of rehabilitation permitted to obtain considerably better results in all neuropsychological tasks. Functional reorganization in motor organization, oral language, comprehension, drawing, writing, reading, and problem-solving significant for patient’s life and occupation took place. Our study shows that the program of neurorehabilitation should be based on qualitative analysis of verbal and non-verbal activity. The results confirm the necessity of inclusion of broad scale of activities during rehabilitation of patients with motor aphasia. Keywords: aphasia, rehabilitation, neuropsychological rehabilitation, cognitive rehabilitation, rehabilitation of aphasia

Introduction In the history of neuropsychology, the issue of rehabilitation of patients with brain injury has been associated with two main concepts: How psychological functions are conceived and the localization of the brain injury. Since the beginnings of neuropsychology, researchers in the field of aphasia have only considered the expressive and receptive language alterations, related to the classic zones of the language (Dejerine, 1926): the Broca zone and the Wernicke zone respectively, proposing these as the material substrate of each one of these processes (Benson & Ardila, 1996; Ardila, 2005). Many authors (Goodglass, 1992; Balasubramanian, 2005) have contributed to analyze the specific errors in all forms of oral language associated with particular kind of aphasia. When the patient presents any other difficulties, these are interpreted as “associated alterations”, i.e., in the cases of patients who, besides language problems, present oral and written problems, the diagnosis might be motor aphasia with alexia or agraphia (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972; LaPointe, 2005).

Luis Quintanar Rojas, Ph.D., director of Neuropsychology Masters Program, Autonomous University of Puebla. Yulia Solovieva, Ph.D., researcher of Neuropsychology Masters Program, Autonomous University of Puebla. Arturo López Cortés, M.C., researcher of Neuropsychology Masters Program, Autonomous University of Puebla.

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 207 This interpretation shows that in the cases of aphasia, the alteration of others psychological functions are considered in an isolated way, without being related to the language alterations. This form of diagnosis has an impact on the patient’s treatment since the proposed rehabilitation methods, behavioral or cognitive, and usually addressed to the symptom (LaPointe, 1977; Seron & Partz, 1993; Goodglass, 1987; Seron & Partz, 1993; Cuetos, 1998; Lorenzo & Fontán, 2001), or to the patient’s adaptation to his illness (Gardner, Zurif, Berry, & Baker, 1976). Alternatively, general treatments for diverse types of aphasia are used (Ojeda del Pozo, Ezquerra-Iribarren, Urruticoechea-Sarriegui, Quemada-Ubis, & Muños-Céspedes, 2000; Levine et al., 2000; Cuetos, 2004). In the practice of neuropsychological treatment of patients with aphasia, two basic problems can be considered: treatment of verbal and of non-verbal functions. According to conceptions of localization of functions, the deficits of patients depend on localization of brain injury, which may affect only verbal or only non-verbal processes (Ardila, 2005). Such isolated consideration of functions has an impact on the patient’s treatment since the proposed rehabilitation methods, behavioral or cognitive (Seron & Partz, 1993; Cuetos, 1998; Lorenzo & Fontán, 2001). General treatments for diverse types of aphasia are commonly used (Cuetos, 2004). We consider that the neuropsychological assessment and treatment should not be limited either to verbal or non-verbal functions. The conception of dynamic and systemic localization of psychological functions in human brain pretends to find common brain mechanisms for different functions (Tsvetkova, 2000). This means that each brain injury produces a systemic effect in the patient’s psychological functions and affects necessarily both verbal and non-verbal processes. According to this conception, the objective of neuropsychological assessment is to establish the systemic effect of brain injury for psychological activity as a whole and to design a specific rehabilitation program. The ultimate goal of rehabilitation should be, besides the overcoming specific difficulties, the recuperation of general cognitive abilities and the reintegration of the patient to his social, familiar, and labor environment (Wilson, 2000; Akhutina, 2002a, 2002b). To carry out the work of assessment, diagnosis, and rehabilitation of Spanish-speaking patients, our group has incorporated the concepts of neuropsychology developed by Luria (1977) and Tsvetkova (1985; 2000; 2001). Based on this approach, none of the functions (language, reading, writing, etc.) is located in a restricted area of the brain. Any action or function requires the participation of a diverse number of brain zones, which contribute with their specific work. An action or function is through the activation of neuronal populations organized spatially and temporarily. These systems are composed of different “neuropsychological factors” like mechanisms of work, or functioning of zones, or groups of cerebral zones denominated functional systems (Luria, 1977, 1973; Xomskaya, 2002). According to this functional organization, an injury does no affect only one function, but all those functions or actions that require the specific work accomplished by the affected cerebral zone. From this perspective, the goal of neuropsychological assessment is to identify the affected factor or factors responsible for the difficulties that the patient undergoes. Thus, the alteration of each factor produces a specific type of aphasia that in this context must be understood not only as an isolated alteration of language, but as a complex neuropsychological syndrome in which other processes are altered, such as memory, thought, writing, attention, calculation, and reading. We use classification of aphasia proposed by Luria (1977), its brain mechanisms or factors have been studied and elaborated recently (Tsvetkova, 1995; Tsvetkova & Torchua, 1997; Akhutina, 1989, 2002;

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Quintanar & Solovieva, 2002; Quintanar, Solovieva, & León-Carrión, 2002; Solovieva & Quintanar, 2005). In his classification of aphasia, Luria (1977) proposed to consider four different levels: anatomic, psycho-physiological or neuropsychological, psychological, and linguistic. Table 1 represents these levels for the case of motor efferent aphasia. Table 1 Affected Levels in Motor Efferent Aphasia Anatomic

Neuropsychological

Premotor zones of left hemisphere

Motor sequential organization of movements and actions

Psychological All actions which require motor organization (motor praxis, speaking, writing, drawing, reading, etc.)

Linguistic Syntactic operations in language production and comprehension

The neuropsychological factor “sequential motor organization”, which is located at the base of the efferent motor aphasia, conduces not only to impossibility of language production. However, the verbal level is only one of the levels of human actions, it is necessary to identify how they affect reading, writing, drawing, and other actions, which require the organization of sequential movements. The involvement of the organization of sequential movements produced by brain damage in the premotor area (frontal posterior zones of left hemisphere) leads to difficulties in all forms of language: spontaneous language, denomination, repetition, syntactic organization of phrases, sentences and texts, silent and loud reading, and all types of writing and drawing. Execution of all kinds of motor dynamic praxis (movements) is also severely affected. Therefore, an injury in these cerebral sectors will affect not only the production of the oral language, but a large specter of actions of a patient. This kind of analysis allows us to point out that in motor efferent aphasia, as in other types of aphasia, multiple difficulties could be explained from the viewpoint of the affected mechanism. The objective of this study is to show the effectiveness of the application of a neuropsychological rehabilitation program in the case of an adult patient with motor efferent aphasia as consequence of vascular stroke. This study analyzed the results of neuropsychological assessment before and after application of the rehabilitation program.

Case This is the case of a 77-year-old male patient (JL), with education level corresponding to completed primary school (six years), right-handed, and trading occupation. He showed symptoms of weakness in legs and arms and temporal loss of orientation. The neurological report showed the presence of right hemiparesis with ipsilateral Babinsky and aphasia as consequence of cerebral ischemia in the area of the anterior cerebral artery.

Instruments Brief neuropsychological evaluation for adults (Quintanar & Solovieva, 2002) and neuropsychological clinical diagnosis of aphasia (Quintanar, Solovieva, & León-Carrión, 2002) were used for the initial and final evaluation. These instruments assess the functional state of the neuropsychological factors.

Results of Initial Assessment The neuropsychological evaluation showed the conservation of the following factors: (1) phonematic; (2) kinaesthetic; and (3) spatial integration. The patient’s language was nonfluent with a verbal production was limited to a few words (“Joaquin... Joaquin, Martha... Martha”) which he pronounced persistently as an answer

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 209 to any kind of question. Sometimes, he included words taken from the questions of the evaluator. The patient was completely unable to fulfil the task of reciprocal coordination of the hands, and it was impossible to fulfil for the patient, even with the help of the evaluator’s instructions. The same negative result was found in the task of copying a graphical sequence and of a house. The repetition of series of words and their evocation with homogenous and heterogeneous interference (audio-verbal retention) was impossible due to the presence of stereotypes. The same difficulties were observed in the tasks of visual retention, with presence of perseverations and loss of the activity’s objective (see Figure 1). The task consisted in copy of the model and later reproduction after homogeneous interference of three complex figures. During the assessment sessions, the tone of cortical activity diminished as time went by, increasing the number of errors and stereotyped answers. (1) Model for copy

(2) Reproduction

Figure 1. Fulfillment of the task “reproduction of three figures” in initial evaluation.

Table 2 Preserved and Disturbed Brain Mechanisms in Our Patient During Initial Assessment Brain mechanism Kinesthetic analysis and synthesis Phonematic analysis and synthesis Motor sequential organization Visuo-verbal retention Acustic-amnestic Dynamic organization Spatial analysis and synthesis

Preserved or disturbed No difficulties No difficulties Constant perseveration on verbal and non-verbal levels, absence of productive independent language, echolalia: Joaquín…Joaquín, Martha…Martha, Martha... Severe perseveration on graphic and verbal oral level Severe perseveration on verbal level instead of nomination of all categories of words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, and so on) Absence of independent verbal production, constant perseverations Difficulties for comprehension and production of complex grammar structures (with prepositions and conjunctions of all types)

These results indicate the presence of a disturbance of the motor sequential organization, which depends on the inferior frontal posterior regions of the left hemisphere (area 44, according to Brodmann). The work done by this cortical zone guarantees the passage of an articulatory movement to another. For this reason, brain lesion in this zone makes it difficult or impossible to produce the sequence of sounds that forms words, phrases, and sentences. Instead, we find the presence of constant multiple perseverations in all kinds of verbal production of the patient (Luria, 1980; Akhutina, 1989). The alteration of this factor produces disturbances not only of diverse forms of language (spontaneous, repetitive, comprehensive, and written), but also of other non-verbal activities (arithmetical operations and graphical activities). This clinical case corresponds to the

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motor efferent aphasia. Table 2 shows functional state of brain mechanisms in our patient during initial assessment.

Program of Neuropsychological Treatment The program of neuropsychological treatment was oriented to the formation of the patient’s active oral and written language and to the reestablishment of the possibility of regulation of the activity of the patient with the help of his own oral and internal language. The main goals of rehabilitation program we included are: (1) To overcome pathological inertia at different levels (material, perceptive, and verbal); (2) To reestablish motor organization (in verbal and non-verbal acts); (3) To support oral and written production and comprehension. We applied the rehabilitation program during a period of 11 months, three times per week. Below, we describe the most important exercises of the program organized by stages. Stage I: Unblocking of Activity and Overcoming of Pathological Inertia Part 1: Material and materialized (symbolic material) level. This stage objective was to overcome the perseverations and stereotypes that obstruct the verbal activity of the patient. These tasks reinforced the patient’s previous experience with linguistic elements. Exercises and games for general activation were used (categorization and classification of real objects in different colors, sizes and shapes as well as songs and rhymes). One of the most important exercises was the elaboration of material and materialized sequences according to an established model: sequences with geometric shapes, numbers or real objects (see example 1 in Figure 2). Example of such sequences: one square, two circles, one square, two circles and so on; then in different order: two squares, one circle, two squares, one circle and so on.

Figure 2. Example 1: Model of materialized sequences.

Part 2: Perceptive level. The categorization and classification of photos and cards with representation of real objects was used at this stage. The sequences were applied at a graphic level, that is to say, the patient had to draw the sequences he had constructed in the previous stage. Stage II: Reconstruction of Motor Organization Part 1: Material and materialized (symbolic material) level. At this stage, the patient worked with numerical material. The Shultz’s method of tables was used. The patient’s task was to fill in the blank with numbers from 1 to 10 without any order, as he liked. After that, following the instruction of a therapist, he performed the following: show the number in direct, indirect order, without any order, only even numbers and only uneven numbers. The same kinds of exercises were used in the modality of dictation and graphic representation of tables and numbers. In another exercise, patient listened to a phrase pronounced by the therapist and chose the corresponding picture without pronouncing it compulsorily. The patient pointed to the image that completes the sentence. If the patient considers that the word that correctly completes the sentence is not represented, he could point to the blank square. The therapist always helped and congratulated the patient when he tried to say the corresponding word or if the word came out spontaneously (see example 2 in Figure 3).

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Figure 3. Example 2: Complete the sentences with the card.

Instruction: Listen carefully to the phrase and show an object: “The horse is black”, and “The milk of the cow tastes good”. Working with these exercises, the patient spontaneously managed to express names of numbers and other objects. Part 2: Verbal level. At this stage of rehabilitation, the patient started to pronounce some common words and phrases correctly. With the purpose of guaranteeing a better word production, we used some exercises at the verbal level. Always with the oral help of the therapist, the patient listened to the phrase and completed it with the appropriate word. We used the same exercises (or some very similar ones) as those of the previous stage, with the only difference that this time the patient tried to pronounce the word or even the whole phrase (always helped and encouraged by the therapist). Also in this stage we worked with rhymes and automatic verbal series (days of the week, numbers, months, names of relatives, etc.). The patient was encouraged to use all these names more frequently in his own speech production. The first stage was worked with word pronunciation through rhymes and rhythms, the evocation of frequent words and with the writing of automatic words like numbers, names of relatives, days of the week, months, etc.. Stage III: Oral and Writing Language Part 1: Level of phrases and sentences. Different kinds of photos and cards representing diverse situations were used. The patient listened to a sentence pronounced by the therapist and pointed out the corresponding object, detail, or situation in the photos. He also tried to repeat or complete the phrase, assisted by the therapist. First, we worked on the copy of examples and their evocation. In order to do that, descriptions of the activities fulfilled by the patient the day before were used. Later on, for verb actualization, a phrase was presented to the patient where he had to identify the verb by underlining it with two lines. Afterwards, the verb was covered with a card and the patient had to choose a new verb from a list, place it in the phrase, and read the sentence aloud. Thematic illustrations were used as support. Finally, the patient evaluated the congruency of the sentence produced. This task was used to demonstrate to the patient that is possible to build sentences using different verbs for the same subject (Quintanar & Cols, 2002). While working with the elaboration of phrases and sentences, the schemes for symbolic representation of sentences were used. This scheme helped the patient to actualize his internal representation of the phrase or

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sentence by symbolizing the main grammar elements of the phrase: subject and predicate. Such schemes were useful for finding the necessary noun or verb to complete the sentence according to the card or picture. Scheme of the sentence: Subject (noun) __________ Predicate (verb) _________

Mamá (Mother) come (eats)

The work with phrases instead of isolated words or the denomination of an object helps to prevent syntactic problems, which are very typical in cases of motor efferent aphasia. In order to reestablish the process of writing, special exercises were used. In the case of writing of words, it was also necessary to guarantee a correct representation of phonetic structure of words and also of the sequence of sound and letters in oral and written words. The method of materialized analysis of the structure of sounds and letter in the words was applied. We call this method as phonetic analysis of the words, which consists of the introduction of an external scheme of the word (Solovieva, Chávez, Pérez, & Quintanar, 2001; Solovieva & Quintanar, 2005a, 2005b). Each square of the scheme represents a sound in a concrete word (see example 3 in Figure 4). Such representation of the phonetic structure of the word helped the patient to precise the articulation and the sequence of the sound in the word. The procedure is the following: The therapist pronounces each sound and the patient points the corresponding place in the scheme. In order to favor the sequential dynamic organization of the perception and the articulation of the words, the sound can be pronounced following the original order or not. The patient needed seven sessions to stabilize his writing of words.

Figure 4. Example 3: The materialized scheme of the word “pato” (duck).

Part 2: Writing of phrases and sentences. Tasks such as copying, writing from memory, and dictation of elaborated phrases and sentences were used. Verb conjugation exercises were also used (Quintanar & Cols., 2002). Below, we show some examples of such exercises: (1) A picture representing an action is presented to the patient; (2) The therapist describes the picture orally; (3) The patient is asked to make his own sentence according to the scheme for expressing the situation shown in the picture; (4) The patient is asked to write the sentence or to copy it in case of difficulties; (5) The patient is asked to verify and correct the execution, if necessary; (6) The patient is asked to read the sentence with the therapist’s help;

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 213 (7) The therapist hides the scheme and asks the patient to say a sentence without the support of the scheme; (8) The same sentence is changed into the simple past tense and the same procedure is applied; (9) The same sentence is changed into the simple future tense and the same procedure is applied; (10) It is possible to try to use the other grammar tenses. Part 3: Actualization of independent grammar categories. In this stage, we used the exercises for rehabilitation of grammar categories. The objective of these exercises was to overcome and to anticipate pathological syntactic difficulties called “telegraphic style”: (1) The therapist shows an object to the patient (an apple) explaining that it is a noun; (2) The patient has to choose another object, which corresponds to the same category (fruit) and to write down the corresponding word; (3) The patient has to choose more examples of the same category (pictures, cards, real objects, or his own examples); (4) The patient has to write down the words that correspond to the objects. It is possible to use the materialized scheme of the words, like in the previous stage, if necessary; (5) The patient has to construct a sentence using each word and writing it down; (6) The patient has to read the sentence with the therapist’s help; (7) The patient is asked to verify the execution of each stage of this work; (8) The same procedure is applied to other grammar categories: adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and so on. Part 4: Actualization of auxiliary grammar categories. In this stage of the rehabilitation, we worked with texts. The objective was to guarantee the correct usage of articles, prepositions, and conjunctions in oral and written speech. These exercises include the following steps: (1) The patient finds and underlines the verbs with prepositions in the texts; (2) The patient copies the sentence; (3) The same sentence without the prepositions is presented to the patient; (4) The patient has to read this sentence; (5) The patient receives a group of five prepositions in separate cards; (6) The patient has to choose the preposition that completes the sentence correctly; (7) The patient reads the sentence once more and verifies if the preposition is correct; (8) The patient has to repeat the same sentence using the general scheme of the sentence (subject—noun and predicate—verb); (9) During the work the patient is asked to verify and correct his execution constantly. The same procedure can be done with other prepositions, articles, and conjunctions in sentences taken from different texts.

Results The methods used in our rehabilitation program led to the reorganization of the motor sequential organization of movements and actions of the patient on material, materialized, perceptive, and verbal levels. Important positive changes were observed in the sphere of the patient’s language. At the beginning of the rehabilitation process, he was able to articulate only a few words independently. The majority of these words were nouns

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(names of the patient’s children, his wife’s names, and some animals). The patient was able to pronounce only three verbs in their infinitive form (to eat, to live, and to drink), and three adjectives (big, little, and pretty). As an answer to any question, the patient used perseverations: yes, no, and uncle. At the end of the rehabilitation program, the patient was able to produce complete phrases and sentences with correct verb conjugations using proper grammar tenses and modes. His expressions included articles, prepositions (under, against, in, inside, for, etc.), and conjunctions used in his native language. All sentences included subject, predicate and accurate subject-verb agreement. Patient’s written and oral expressions were understood by other people within and out of his family circle. Table 3 shows initial and final results of the patient’s oral production. Table 3 Oral Production Before and After Rehabilitation Task

Initial assessment

Repetition of words

Martha (esposa), Joaquín, hijo, perro, España, casa, tienda, y, morir, (Martha, Joaquín, sun, dog, Spain, home, shop, and die)

Repetition of phrases

“Joaquín… Morir”, “no comer”, “Martha… Martha” (Joaquín… die… No eat… Martha… Martha)

Nominative language

Ojos, dedos, mano, lápiz, Martha, coche, casa, carro

Narrative language and syntactic level

Inexistent

Final assessment Martha, esposa, Joaquín, Cuba, España, México, Puebla, barcos, papá, padre, enfermo, mama, hermano, hijos, queridos, etc. (Martha, wife, Joaquín, Cuba, Spain, Mexico, Puebla, sheeps, father, dad, patient, mother, brother, hilaren, dear) “Hoy desayune, tomé jugo y comí pan”, “me ayudó a bañarme Oscar y vine a clase con usted” (“Today I had my breakfast and have eaten the bread. Oscar helped me to bath and I came to the class with you”) Partes del cuerpo (cabello, cabeza, orejas, nariz, lengua, dientes, etc.) (Parts of the body (hair, head, eras, nose, tongue, teeth)) Refacciones para auto (juntas, llaves, gato, acumulador, motor, bujías, chasis, etc.); (Different parts of the car) Frutas (Manzana, plátano, uvas, naranja, etc.) (Different kind of fruits) Prendas de vestir (pantalón, camisa, boina, camisa, zapatos, etc.) (Different kinds of cloths) Nombres de hijos y familiares (Names of all relatives and friend) Fui al dr. en la mañana para que me revisara el corazón… es algo normal,… me siento bien… pero Martha me dijo que fuéramos, nos llevó el chofer (I went to the doctor in the morning in order to revise my Herat… it was normal… I fell well… but Martha told me that it was necessary to go and the driver took us)

The comprehension of complex grammar structure was also achieved as a result of neuropsychological rehabilitation. The patient was able to fulfil the following instructions: “Raise your left hand”, “Touch your left ear with your right hand”. These results show adequate form of usage and understanding of complex grammar by the patient. Progressive changes in motor sequential organization were also observed in graphic activity (drawing) of the patient. In the task of copying and continuing the sequence of two elements, neither omissions of elements nor perseverations were detected in the final assessment. On the contrary, the initial assessment showed total impossibility of fulfilment of this task (see Figure 5). The motor manual task of reproduction of serial movements (dynamic praxis) lacked any mistakes in the final assessment.

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 215 (1) Model

(2) Initial assessment

(3) Final assessment

Figure 5. The task of “copy and continuation of the sequence” by model after rehabilitation.

Important achievements were observed in the patient’s drawing complex activity of the patient: the execution of the task of drawing an object following instructions, and copying of objects and free independent drawing were possible after neuropsychological rehabilitation. Before the rehabilitation, reading and writing were processes, the patient could not carry out at all, due to the presence of severe pathological inertia and multiple perseverations. The final assessment has pointed out significant and positive results: The writing while copying, taking dictation and the writing as an independent process showed no mistakes, such as substitutions, omissions, or perseverations. The patient was able to keep a written record of his everyday activities in the form of a plan and a diary. The patient himself could read this plan to the therapist without any mistakes during the last sessions of the rehabilitation program. In the case of mathematical operations, during the initial assessment the patient was unable to understand the meaning of this task. The obstacle, like in other tasks, was the presence of pathological inertia and severe perseverations. After the application of the program, the subject was able to fulfil basic mathematical calculations according to his educational level. It is interesting to mention that the work with numeric operations was not an objective of the rehabilitation program, the ability of solving mathematical calculations was automatically re-established as the consequence of the disappearance of perseveration and pathological inertia. The positive results were also noticed in the fulfilment of the complex drawing. After rehabilitation, the patient was able to copy a house, a task that he could not fulfill before. The patient could also represent all the details of the model correctly. It was possible to recognize the proposed models in his execution. His only difficulty in this latter case was the representation of the second dimension in his drawings (see Figure 6). However, it is convenient to mention that normal subjects with the same educational level would also omit the second dimension in their copies (López, 2001; Quintanar, López, Solovieva, & Sardá, 2002). The spatial depth of the parts of the objects is not commonly accessible for these subjects (Solovieva, López, & Quintanar, 2008).

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(2) Before rehabilitation

(3) After rehabilitation

Figure 6. The task of “copy of a house” after rehabilitation.

Discussion The rehabilitation of patients with brain injury is a field of great importance in neuropsychology. There are controversies among the authors about the possibility of function recovery, especially about the effectiveness of the rehabilitation programs (León-Carrión, Machuca, & Domínguez, 1999; Machuca, Madrazo, Rodríguez, & Domínguez, 2002; Machuca, León-Carrión, & Barroso, 2006). For example, some studies have reported that aphasic patients who received therapy had a larger recovery compared with patients who did not receive therapy (Basso, Capitani, & Vignolo, 1979; Marshall, Thompkins, & Phillips, 1982), while in other studies no differences in the recuperation of patients with or without therapy are reported (Levita, 1978; Sarno, Silverman, & Sands, 1970). The recovery of functions is based on the brain plasticity, not as a spontaneous process, but a consequence of learning during the therapeutic work, focusing on the causes of the patient’s difficulties. Therefore, the interests of different health specialists in creating systematized and organized procedures that guarantee the recuperation of altered functions in patients with some kind of brain injury have increased. In favor of the necessity of designing programs directed to the rehabilitation and against the idea of spontaneous recuperation, we can mention that directed rehabilitation allows not only disinheriting

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 217 and activating verbal comprehension and expression, but also anticipating and correcting the patient’s verbal and non-verbal difficulties. In the case of the motor efferent aphasia, we can talk about agrammatism, that is to say, the single use of the nominative language, which is pointed out by authors who have had the opportunity to be in touch with subjects diagnosed with motor efferent aphasia without being treated by programs of directed neuropsychological rehabilitation (Shojor-Trotskaya, 2002). In the field of intervention projects, it could be of great use for the knowledge of the possibility of designing rehabilitation programs for adults with aphasia according to the neuropsychological, psychological, and pedagogic principles (Tsvetkova, 1985). As it was mentioned in the introduction, the proposal of Luria and Tsvetkova (Luria & Tsvetkova, 1977; Tsvetkova, 1988, 2000, 2001) was considered as the theoretical-methodological basis for designing our rehabilitation program. They consider that in the case of brain injury, the brain functions do not disappear, but are disorganized and weakened. In consequence, the corrective teaching must be oriented to the creation of a new functional system based on the functional elements that remain undamaged, that is to say, the restructuration of the functional system on top of new functional units. It is possible to achieve such reorganization only by including a patient in specific kinds of activities, which integrate necessary functional elements. The reorganization can be intrasystemic (reeducating the patient to fulfill tasks using more basic or higher levels inside the same functional system) or intersystemic (reeducating the patient to use other functional systems). Luria (1977) considered that the intra-systemic reorganization is the most frequent situation. In the case of this study, we dealt with an intrasystemic reorganization since our patients were reeducated to fulfill tasks using specific external supports and orientating base of action. Each time, later, we tried to step from the fulfillment of the task to a more independent level of the patient. The qualitative analysis of the patient’s syndrome allowed us to identify the factor that lays under the aphasic syndrome, which permitted designing a plan to focus not on the symptoms but on the altered factor. The results obtained from the posterior evaluation of the application of the rehabilitation program showed that the patient’s performances improved significantly. The program designed according to the neuropsychological, psychological, and pedagogic principles has proved its effectiveness. The results obtained at the end of our program proved the efficacy of proposed treatment. The correct functional reorganization achieved permitted the activation of new functional systems, which now serve as a psycho-physiological base for some complex mental processes: writing, reading, and calculating. At the same time, our methods permitted to overcome the predominant verbal stereotypes in oral language of our patient and therefore to achieve a fluent production in all its aspects (spontaneous, repetitive, denominative, etc.). This work permitted rehabilitating the adequate use of the verb forms and other related grammar elements: diverse verb tenses, prepositions and gerunds, and consequently, the agrammatism was significantly improved. Regarding the patient’s articulate language, an adequate functional reorganization was observed. The patient achieved a better production of sentences, which were complex and accurate according to Spanish grammar, and importantly, the patient was able to integrate himself adequately to his daily life. We consider that this study is a contribution to the proposals of individualized programs for patients with brain injury, with aphasia in particular, in contrast to the more generalized proposal in the field of neuropsychological rehabilitation.

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References Akhutina, T. (1989). Production of language: Neurolinguistic analysis of syntaxis. Moscow: Moscow State University. Akhutina, T. (2002). Rehabilitation in cases of severe complex sensoriomotir aplasia. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de Neuropsicología), 4(2-3), 236-261. Akhutina, T. (2002b). Neurolinguistic analysis of dynamic aphasia. Moscow: Terevinf. Ardila, A. (2005). The aphasia. Miami, Florida: International University. Balasubramanian, V. (2005). Dysgraphia in two forms of conduction aphasia. Brain and Cognition, 57, 8-15. Basso, A., Capitani, E., & Vignolo, L. (1979). Influence of rehabilitation on language skills in aphasic patients: A controlled study. Archives of Neurology, 36, 190-196. Benson, D., & Ardila, A. (1996). Aphasia: A clinical perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Cuetos, F. (1998). Assessment and rehabilitation of aphasia: Cognitive approach. Madrid: Médica Panamericana. Cuetos, V. (2004). Assessment and rehabilitacion of aplasia. Madrid: Médica Panamericana. Dejerine, J. (1926). Semiology of disturbances in nervous system (Semiologie des affections du systeme nerveux). París: Mouton. Gardner, H., Zurif, E., Berry, T., & Baker, E. (1976). Visual communication in aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 14, 275-292. Goodglass, H. (1987). Neurolinguistics principles and aphasia therapy. In M. Meier, A. Benton, & L. Diller (Eds.), Neuropsychological rehabilitation (pp. 315-326). New York: Plenum Press. Goodglass, H. (1992). Diagnosis of conduction aphasia. In S. Kohn (Ed.), Hillsdale conduction aphasia. N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goodglass, H., & Kaplan, E. (1972). The assessment of aphasia and related disorders. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. LaPointe, L. (1977). Base-10 programmed stimulation: Task specification scoring and plotting performance in aphasia therapy. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 42, 90-105. LaPointe, L. (2005). Aphasia and related neurogenic language disorders. New York: Thieme Medical Publishers. León-Carrión, J., Machuca, F., & Domínguez, R. (1999). Efficiency of programs C.RE.CER for intense, integral and multidisciplinary treatment of patients with traumatic brain injury: Legal and medical values. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de neuropsicología), 1(2-3), 49-68. Levita, E. (1978). Effects of speech therapy on aphasics: Responses to the functional communication profile. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47, 151-154. López, A. (2001). Evaluation of neuropsychological factors in normal population of adults of different educational levels by Breaf assessment (Master dissertation, Puebla Autonomous University). Lorenzo, J., & Fontán, L. (2001). Rehabilitation of cognitive disorders. Medical Journal of Uruguay (Revista Médica Uruguaya), 17, 133-139. Luria, A. (1977). Superior cortical functions. México: Fontamara. Luria, A. (1980). Fundaments of neurolinguistics. Barcelona: Masson. Luria, A. (1983). Bases of neuropsychology. Moscow: Moscow State University. Luria, A., & Tsvetkova, L. (1977). Reeducation of language, reading and writing. Barcelona: Masson. Machuca, F., León-Carrión, J., & Barroso, J. (2006). Efficiency of neuropsychological rehabilitation of tardial start in functional recuperation in patients with acquired brain injury. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de Neuropsicología), 8(3-4), 81-103. Machuca, F., Madrazo, M., Rodríguez, R., & Domínguez, M. (2002). Integral, multidisciplinary and holistic neuropsychological rehabilitation of acquired brain injury. Journal of General and Applied Psychology (Revista de Psicología General y Aplicada), 55(1), 123-137. Marshall, R., Thompkins, C., & Phillips, D. (1982). Improvement in treated aphasia: Examination of selected prognostic factor. Folia Phoniatrica, 34, 305-315. Ojeda del Pozo, N., Ezquerra-Iribarren, I., Urruticoechea-Sarriegui, J., Quemada-Ubis, J., & Muños-Céspedes, J. (2000). Traning of social habilitéis in patients with acquired brain injury. Journal of neurology (Revista de Neurología), 8, 783-787. Quintanar, L. (2001). Theoretical and methodological aspects of neuropsychological rehabilitation. Mexico: Puebla Autonomous University. Quintanar, L. (2002). Theory and methotodology of neuropsychological rehabilitation. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de Neuropsicología), 4(1), 45-53.

EXPERIENCE OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT, A PATIENT WITH APHASIA 219 Quintanar, L., & Solovieva, Yu. (2001). Methods for neuropsychological rehabilitation in adults. Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Quintanar, L., & Solovieva, Yu. (2002). Neuropsychological analysis of speech disturbances. Journal of General and Applied Psychology (Revista de Psicología General y Aplicada), 55(1), 67-87. Quintanar, L., López, A., Solovieva, Yu., & Sardá, N. (2002). Neuropsychological assessment of normal subject of different educational levels. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de neuropsicología), 4(2-3), 197-216. Quintanar, L., Solovieva, Yu., & León-Carrión, J. (2002). Diagnostic of motor efferent aplasia. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de neuropsicología), 4(4), 301-311. Quintanar, L., Solovieva, Yu., Bonilla, M., Sánchez, A., & Figueroa, S. (2002). Clinical and electrophysiological changes alter neuropsychological therapy in one patient with motor efferent aplasia. Latina Journal of Thinking and Language (Revista Latina de Pensamiento y Lenguaje), 5(2b), 205-222. Quintanar, L., & Solovieva, Yu. (2013). Breaf neuropsychological assessment for adults. Mexico: Puebla Autonomous University. Quintanar, L., Solovieva, Yu., & León-Carrión, J. (2011). Clinic neuropsycholiogical assessment of aplasia Puebla-Sevilla. Mexico: Puebla Autonomous University. Sarno, M., Silverman, M., & Sands, E. (1970). Speech therapy and language recovery in severe aphasia. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13, 607-623. Seron, X., & Partz, M. (1993). The re-education of aphasics: Between theory and practice. In A. Holland, & M. Forbes (Eds.), Aphasia treatment: World perspectives (pp.131-144). New York: Chapman & Hall Press. Shojor-Trotskaya, M. (2002). Pedagogical correction in cases of aplasia. Moscow: Institute of General Humanitarian Research. Solovieva, Yu., Chávez, M., Pérez, A., & Quintanar, L. (2001). Porposal for rehabilitacion of of speach comprehension in sensory aphasia. In L. Quintanar, & Yu. Solovieva (Eds.), Methods for neuropsychological rehabilitation in adults (pp. 159-187). Mexico: Puebla Autonomous University. Solovieva, Yu., & Quintanar, L. (2005). Acustic mnesic aplasia: A case study. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de Neuropsicología), 7(1), 17-34. Solovieva, Yu., & Quintanar, L. (2011). Teaching of reading. Mexico: Trillas. Solovieva, Yu., López, A., & Quintanar, L. (2008). Análisis de las funciones espaciales en adultos de diferentes niveles educativos. Revista de Ciencias Clínicas, 9, 1-13. Tsvetkova, L. (1985). Rehabilitation of patients with aphasia. Moscow: Moscow State University. Tsvetkova, L. (1988). Aphasia and re-education. Moscow: Education. Tsvetkova, L. (1995). Brain and intellect. Moscow: Ilustration. Tsvetkova, L. (2000). Introduction to neuropsychology and rehabilitation. Moscow: Moscow Psychological and Social Institute. Tsvetkova, L. (2001). Neuropsychology and aphasia: New approximation. Moscow: Moscow Psychological and Social Institute. Tsvetkova, L., & Torchua, N. (1997). Aphasia and perception. Moscow: Moscow Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences. Wilson, B. (2000). Compensating for cognitive deficits following brain injury. Neuropsychological Review, 10, 233-243. Xomskaya, E. (2002). The problem of catros in neuropsychology. Spanish Journal of Neuropsychology (Revista Española de Neuropsicología), 4(2-3), 151-167.

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Psychology Research, ISSN 2159-5542 April 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, 220-231

DAVID

PUBLISHING

Emotional Costs, Social Influence, Sense of Coherence, and Coping in the Situation of Reemployment Katarzyna Ślebarska, Agata Chudzicka-Czupała University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland The main goal of the study was to investigate the emotional costs of occupational reintegration and their influence on a person. The sample consisted of the reemployed (n = 88) who voluntary agreed to participate in the study. Questionnaires battery was administered in two waves (Time 1 and Time 2) in the first month of reemployment and after three months. Personal characteristics, as SOC (sense of coherence), and social factors, as unethical behaviors in the workplace and their association to coping with reemployment emotional costs were analyzed. The results showed SOC and unethical behaviors as significant predictors of reemployment emotional costs. Additionally, focal costs partially mediate the effect of psychosocial factors on coping. The role of received social support in moderating the relation between emotional costs and coping has been observed. Keywords: emotional costs, SOC (sense of coherence), coping strategies, reemployment

Introduction The existing research on the transition from unemployment to reemployment mainly focuses on job search behaviors. In fact, there exists consistent evidence with respect to antecedents and outcomes of the job search process (Wanberg, 1997; Saks & Ashforth, 1999), whereas there is a relative lack of evidence concerning predictors of reemployment success, involving adaptation in a new environment and avoiding occupational re-exclusion, and long-term well-being. Reemployment outcomes are usually considered as, e.g., number of job interviews, reemployment speed, reemployment status, or job satisfaction based on comparison between last and current job (Wanberg, Kanfer, & Rotondo, 1999; Wanberg & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2000; Van Hooft & Noordzij, 2009); also RTW (return-to-work) approach traditionally examines, e.g., worked hours, income, or work absenteeism for evaluating RTW outcomes (Steenstra, Lee, de Vroome, Busse, & Hogg-Johnson, 2012; Huijs, Koppes, Taris, & Blonk, 1999). However, employees regarded their productivity, job satisfaction, work-home balance, and the social relations in the workplace as much more significant (Wanberg & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2000). Klehe, Van Vianen, and Zikic (2012) reviewed past research that underlines importance of employee involvement, communication, and fair organizational procedures in dealing with employee insecurity. In such circumstances, the issue of employees’ emotional well-being plays an important role in understanding and supporting the reemployment success. Entering the organization, the reemployed reported some amount of disorientation, reality shock, as well as need to make sense of the new environment 

Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge the support of the National Science Centre Grant No. 106 349540. Katarzyna Ślebarska, Ph.D., Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia. Agata Chudzicka-Czupała, Ph.D., Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia.

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and they attempted to clarify the new area and his or her place in it (Bauer & Erdogan, 2011; Allen, 2006). Thus, the appearing obstacles might lead to reemployment failure. Emotional Costs and Coping Unfavorable working atmosphere affects in particular the newcomers, especially persons who have been previously unemployed and got a new job. Long-term unemployment principally receives much attention due to the decrease in quality of life, and productivity and skills loss for the individual, as well as for the organization. Most of the unemployment research has focused on describing the experience of unemployment. Different studies (Feather & O’Brien, 1986; Paul & Moser, 2006) have shown that from the individual perspective unemployment causes undesirable psychological consequences; correlates with negative psychological effects, provides worsening of mental health, self-esteem, and shifts toward more external locus of control. Unemployment often leads to decreases in perceived competence, as well as real lack of qualification, decreases in activity, and life satisfaction and increases in depressive effect. There is also tendency to blame the unemployed for their worklessness what causes in poorer available support (Feather & O’Brien, 1986; R. S. Sarason, I. G. Sarason, & Pierce, 1990). Additional, for the economic reasons, unemployed individual has limited social contacts that lead to narrow social network. Decrease of monetary resources also lead to difficulties, like transportation or accommodation problems or limited mobility and availability. The longer they have been without a job, the more likely they are to declare the lack of time structure and purpose (Rowley & Feather, 1987) that can be one of the obstacles in the work adaptation after reemployment. Moreover, existing in the society, stereotypes of the unemployed could force them to accept a job offer which does not really fit to their abilities, qualifications, and interests. The costs for all these stakeholders could decrease if a person returns to work. After the reemployment they could face the stigmatization from organizational members generating difficulties in a new workplace. In accordance, the concept of self-categorization among the unemployed reviewed by McFayden (1995) plays an important role in experiencing emotional costs, and is affected by several factors, e.g., how great the individual perceived the stigma of unemployment. Social norms attached to category labels may influence the self-categorization process and thus generate negative feeling also after reemployment. It is indicated that self-categorization outcomes (e.g., self-esteem) have an impact on coping behaviors. This study examines the relation between emotional costs experienced by the reemployed and their tendency to cope with appearing difficulties. Coping can be described as ongoing changes of behavioral and cognitive efforts to manage specific internal or external demands that are appraised as exceeding the individual’s resources (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Albion, Fernie, & Burton, 2005). The kinds of coping strategies are usually distinguished into problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. Using problem-focused coping individual attempts to directly manage or modify the problem causing distress, whereas emotion-focused coping attempts to regulate emotional responses to the problem (Kinicki & Latack, 1990). The similar typology of coping is proposed by Latack (Kinicki & Latack, 1990; Latack, Kinicki, & Prussia, 1995). He has distinguished control-oriented coping, including behavioral or cognitive strategies, and escaped oriented coping, which is focused on escaping or avoiding the situation, as trying not to think about the appearing difficulties. Although individuals adopt different coping strategies to deal with difficult situation, not all of them are effective in the long term. Albion et al. (2005) reviewed for instance that people who use emotion-focused strategies in longer perspective are more likely to report the negative symptoms than persons who are more

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instrumental problem-focused. Since emotion-focused coping includes coping strategies, such as avoidance, which focus on managing and relieving the affective responses to the situation. Research has suggested that coping strategies used by a person may be impacted by his or her personality predispositions, described also as individual-differences resources or coping resources (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989; Wanberg et al., 1999). This study assessed SOC (sense of coherence) as a specific individual-differences variable that predicts coping behaviors among reemployed individuals. The inclusion of these personality variables in this study was based on Antonovsky’s (1987; 1993) salutogenic paradigm, discussed next. The constructs considered in this study as important antecedents of coping are psychosocial factors, such as SOC and unethical behaviors provided by the working network. SOC and Unethical Behaviors as Antecedents SOC (Antonovsky, 1987) is described as a global orientation that allows perceiving the individual environment as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful. Comprehensibility concerns an extent to which an individual perceives internal or external stimuli in a clear, ordered, and structured way; manageability describes expectancy and confidence of a person that his/her resources are adequate and available to cope with the stimuli; and meaningfulness refers to the extent to which a person believes that life demands and challenges are worthy of investment and engagement (Griffiths, Ryan, & Foster, 2011). As a personal resource, SOC shapes one’s reactions to stressful events, and his/her effectiveness and efficacy in coping with negative circumstances and life stressors, and buffers their detrimental effects on psychological well-being (Antonovsky, 1987; 1993). Accordingly, individuals with higher SOC are more resistant to stress and have a better health. The evidence of SOC refers to coping resources and expressed confidence in the ability to cope (Pallant & Lae, 2002). Previous study indicated that individuals with stronger SOC used more active and problem-focused coping strategies, in opposite, persons with lower SOC were more likely to use avoidant and emotion-focused coping (Amirkhan & Greaves, 2003; Pallant & Lae, 2002). In follow, the reemployed with stronger SOC would, from the theoretical point of view, react and adapt to a new work environment better than the reemployed with lower SOC. In the present study, we tested this assumption by using SOC as a framework for understanding the relation between reemployment, emotional costs, and coping in a new workplace. More specifically, our aim was to explore the role of SOC in prediction the emotional costs experienced by the organizational newcomers and their coping after reemployment. The second construct considered in this study as important predictors of emotional costs and coping are unethical behaviors provided by the social network in the new workplace. Unethical behaviors are usually seen as acts or verbal comments that can mentally hurt or isolate a person in the workplace. Work abuse could be described as brutalizing and dehumanizing of a person through patterned ways of interacting at work involving behaviors that are intended to intimidate, offend, degrade, or humiliate a particular person or group of people. Thus, unethical behaviors could include various forms of incorrect treatment and hostile behaviors in the workplace setting (Fox & Stallworth, 2005). Unethical behaviors in the workplace could have varied intensity, from very subtle, even unconscious to obvious, and could also differ in their forms, as excluding or isolating someone from certain benefits or opportunities; intimidation; undermining or deliberately impeding the employee from working; withholding information or providing wrong information; yelling or using profane

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language or persistently criticizing the employee (Fox & Stallworth, 2005). According to the definition of workplace bulling, the unethical behaviors experienced in the workplace could be characterized by following criteria (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2003): A person is exposed to direct or indirect negative acts that may range from the most subtle to the most apparent, intentional emotional abuse; negative acts are not an isolated episodes, but repeated regularly toward one or more employees; and imbalance of power between the provider and the target could be perceived (Leymann, 1996; Zapf & Einarsen, 2001). Verbal and emotional as well as physical abuse leads to deterioration in workers’ well-being. Among the observed individual consequences are psychosomatic and psychological symptoms such as depression, fatigue, sleep difficulties, and even symptoms (Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996). This study proposed unethical behaviors provided by working network as predictors of emotional costs experienced by a person in the first period of reemployment. Social Support as Moderator Social support has been defined in various ways, e.g., as resources provided by others, coping assistance, or as an exchange of resources (Sarason et al., 1990; Vaux, 1988). Several types of social support have been investigated, such as instrumental, referring to assistance with a problem; tangible involving goods donation; informational as giving advice, and emotional support concentrated on give reassurance (Cutrona & Russell, 1990; Cutrona, Suhr, & MacFarlane, 1990). Different kinds of social support might be appropriate depending on the recipient’s specific situation (Viswesvaran, Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999). In accordance, adequacy of social support plays an important role. The social support evidence shows perception, availability, and activation of social support during a life crisis as a major moderator in successfully dealing with stress (Sarason et al., 1994; Schwarzer & Knoll, 2007). For example attachment or embeddedness may buffer the negative effect of stress. Thus, we hypothesized that social support moderates the relation between emotional costs after reemployment and coping.

Study Hypotheses The following hypotheses were formulated: Hypothesis 1: Higher level of emotional costs after reemployment will be predicted by: (1) higher level of unethical behaviors experienced in the workplace; and (2) lower SOC; Hypothesis 2: Emotional costs of reemployment will be: (1) positively related to avoidance; and (2) negatively related to problem-focused coping; Hypothesis 3: Emotional costs will partially mediate the effects of psychosocial factors (SOC and unethical behaviors) on coping (problem-solving and avoidance); Hypothesis 4: Social support will moderate the relation between emotional costs and coping.

Methodology Participants Participants were 88 organizational newcomers within the first period of reemployment. The sample was 50% women, and the mean age was 34.5 (SD (standard deviation) = 10.55, range = 21–57). The average length of unemployment before getting the job was 16 months (SD = 9.03), what classified them as long-term unemployed. Materials The study used following questionnaires (see Table 1 for means, SD, ranges, and reliability values).

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Emotional costs. Emotional costs consist of 14 items referring to negative feelings at work (e.g., sense of insecurity, disappointment, and inferiority). Participants answered each item on a 5-point rating scale (1—“Not at all”, 5—“Very often”). Higher scores indicate higher emotional costs. SOC scale. SOC scale is devised by Antonovsky (1987; 1993), and consists of 29 items that tap three components of the construct: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Responses were rated on 7-point semantic differentials tailored to each question. There is a good evidence of reliability and validity for the original version. The present study used the total scale score (α = 0.84) and the subscale score (see Table 1). Unethical behaviors scale. Unethical behaviors scale is to recognize the unethical behaviors in the workplace, and consists of 20 items corresponding to different forms of violence at work (such as ignoring, belittling, and isolation). Participants responded to 39 items on a scale ranging from 1 (“Never”) to 3 (“Often”). Higher scores indicate a higher level of unethical behaviors experienced in a workplace. In the study we used the total score scale. CSI (coping strategy indicator). The CSI (Amirkhan, 1990, as cited in Chudzicka-Czupała, 2004) examines coping strategies (problem-solving, seeking support, and avoidance). Respondents determine the extent of certain coping strategies responding to 33 items; 11 for each subscale. Problem-solving is denoted by items such as “tried to solve the problem”, seeking support: “confided your fears and worries to a friend or relative”, and avoidance: “daydreamed about better times”. Present study used the scores for problem-solving and avoidance scales. Social support. The scale (Ślebarska, 2010) contains questions on four kinds of support (emotional, valuable, informational, and tangible). Each question has two parts: received support (Part A) and needed support (Part B). In Part A, participants were asked to report the amount of support they receive from others, using a 5-point rating Likert-scale from 1—“Not at all” to 5—“A great extent”. In Part B, respondents reported the amount of support they need/would like to receive on the respective rating scales. Adequacy of received support was defined as the difference between received and needed support, and all discrepancies were considered as inadequate. Thus, the adequacy measure describes the absolute difference between the level of social support received and the level of social support wanted Demographic data. The questionnaires included age, gender, and working status. Table 1 Psychometric Properties of the Study Variables Variable Emotional costs Unethical behaviors SOC Comprehensibility Manageability Meaningfulness Problem-solving Avoidance Social support

M 38.23 57.25 125.14 42.88 43.99 38.27 27.31 21.60 11.91

SD 12.63 13.81 20.81 8.74 8.78 8.07 3.29 3.17 2.26

Range 15–68 39–104 57–183 23–71 19–63 14–54 16–33 12–31 2.65–3.21

α 0.95 0.95 0.84 0.78 0.73 0.66 0.74 0.50 0.78

Research Design and Procedure The study was designed as longitudinal. Questionnaires battery was administered in two waves (Time 1

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EMOTIONAL COSTS, SOCIAL INFLUENCE, SENSE OF COHERENCE, AND COPING

and Time 2). The newcomers were approached in the first month in their new workplace. They were given the questionnaires to complete and they were asked to write down the minimum personal data to contact them on Time 2. The second measurement point took place three months later; participants were asked to complete the questionnaires for the second time. The 3-month follow-up was chosen for reasons that were both theoretical (e.g., this time frame allowed for the longer-term consequences of the coping behaviors reported at Time 1 to be observed) and practical (e.g., to maintain the engagement of respondents). The differences in level of unethical behaviors, emotional costs experienced by newcomers, coping and received social support in both groups have been examined. The results were recorded, and participants’ contact data removed to ensure anonymity. The data were then coded and analyzed.

Results Table 2 presents the correlation matrix of emotional costs, environmental factors (co-workers’ unethical behaviors and received social support), SOC, and coping. Table 2 Correlation Between Emotional Costs, Unethical Behaviors, SOC, Coping, and Social Support (T1) Variable 1. Emotional costs 2. Unethical behaviors 3. SOC 4. Comprehensibility 5. Manageability 6. Meaningfulness 7. Problemfocused coping 8. Avoidance 9. Social support 10. Support adequacy

M

SD

1

2

38.23

12.63

57.25

13.81

0.564**

125.14

20.81

-0.474**

42.87 43.99

8.74 8.78

3

4

5

6

7

8

-

-0.240

* **

-0.446

38.27

8.07

-0.477

27.31

3.29

-0.016

**

*

-0.286**

0.750**

-0.088 -0.332

**

-0.281

**

0.094

21.60 2.98

3.17 0.57

0.216 0.201

0.108 0.138

-0.50

0.34

-0.222*

-0.234*

-

0.850

**

0.402**

0.843

**

**

0.294** -0.185 -0.154 0.300**

0.413

0.236* -0.071 -0.047 0.160

0.667**

0.298**

0.189 -0.285 -0.174

-

**

0.281**

-0.092 -0.157 0.321**

-0.058 0.048

0.036

-0.170

-0.213*

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

Emotional costs were positively related to unethical behaviors provided by co-workers, avoidance, and social support (information and tangible). The negative relations between emotional costs and SOC and its three dimensions have been found. No significant association was found between emotional costs and problem-focused coping. Problem-focused coping was positively correlated to SOC, and its dimensions: comprehensibility and meaningfulness. Avoidance was negatively associated with manageability. Finally, social support was positively related to emotional costs and unethical behaviors (information and tangible support) and negatively related to SOC (information support). Tables 3, 4, and 5 present the hierarchical multiply regressions used to test the research hypotheses. Table 3 shows the regressions of emotional costs on unethical behaviors and SOC. As can be seen, higher level of unethical behaviors experienced in the workplace and higher SOC were positively related to emotional costs. The comprehensibility, manageability, nor meaningfulness has predicted emotional costs. Table 4 shows that neither emotional costs nor unethical behaviors were related to problem-focused

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EMOTIONAL COSTS, SOCIAL INFLUENCE, SENSE OF COHERENCE, AND COPING

coping, whereas SOC predicted problem-solving. As can be seen in Table 5, higher level of emotional costs and lower manageability were related to higher avoidance. Table 3 Hierarchical Regression of Emotional Costs on Research Variables (T1) Variable Unethical behaviors SOC Comprehensibility Manageability Meaningfulness R2 (R2-change)

Step 1 0.56***

Step 2 0.47*** -0.34*** 0.13 -0.01 -0.20 0.44*** (0.12***)

0.32***

Note. *** p < 0.001.

Table 4 Hierarchical Regression of Problem-Focused Coping on Research Variables (T1) Variable

Step 1

Emotional costs Unethical behaviors SOC Comprehensibility Manageability Meaningfulness R2 (R2-change) Note.

**

-0.02

0.01

Step 2 -0.11 0.15

0.02 (0.01)

Step 3 0.07 0.16 0.37** 0.23 0.22 0.33 0.13** (11**)

p < 0.01.

Table 5 Hierarchical Regression of Avoidance on Research Variables (T1) Variable

Step 1

Emotional costs Unethical behaviors SOC Comprehensibility Manageability Meaningfulness R2 (R2-change)

0.22**

+

*

Notes. p < 0.10; p < 0.05;

0.05** **

Step 2 0.23+ -0.02

0.05 (0.00)

Step 3 0.20 -0.06 0.26 0.03 -0.38** 0.22 0.12* (0.06*)

p < 0.01.

Hypothesis 1 regarding the effects of psychosocial factors (unethical behaviors and SOC) on emotional costs was confirmed: As can be seen in Table 2, higher level of unethical behavior experienced by the reemployed in their workplace was related to higher emotional costs, and lower SOC was related to higher level of emotional costs. Emotional Costs The descriptive statistics show the level of emotional costs experienced by the reemployed in the new workplace just after being hired and after three months (see Figure 1).

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227

Figure 1. The emotional costs mean (T1 and T2).

Figure 1 depictes negative feelings experienced by a person in the first period of reemployment. The emotional costs are rather stable within the first three months. In order to test hypothesis 2 regarding the effect of emotional costs on coping, the regression analysis was made. The problem-focused coping (T2) was regressed onto emotional costs (T2), and the relationship between this kind of coping and irritation was found to be significant (β = 0.26, p < 0.05). Following, the regression analysis (T2) was made for avoidance, which showed significant relation to sense of insecurity at work (β = 0.34, p < 0.01). The results partially confirmed the hypothesis 2 and assumed the effect of emotional costs on coping after reemployment. Experiencing higher level of irritation predicted increased use of problem-focused coping, and higher sense of insecurity predicted increased use of avoidance. In order to test a mediating effect of emotional costs, the Sobel test (Preacher, Hayes, 2004) was used. When SOC dimensions: manageability and emotional cost (sense of insecurity) were entered as predictors of avoidance (R2 = 0.15, F(2.85) = 7.72, p < 0.001), the beta for manageability fell from -0.29 to -0.20, t = -1.91, p < 0.05, and the beta for sense of insecurity was 0.28, p < 0.01. The Sobel test (Preacher, Hayes, 2004) showed Z = -1.978, p < 0.05. Figure 2 illustrates the direct and indirect effects of analyzed variables. The same calculation was applied to emotional cost: irritation and problem-focused coping, however the effect was not significant. Thus, emotional cost that was sense of insecurity partially mediated the effect of SOC (manageability) on avoidance.

SENSE OF INSECURITY -.04

**

.08

*

*

AVOIDANCE

MANAGEABILITY *

**

-.07 (-.11 )

Figure 2. Mediated and direct effect of manageability on avoidance (*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01).

Finally, the moderation effect of social support on the relation between emotional costs and coping (hypothesis 4) was examined. The moderation effect of support adequacy received by the reemployed was then tested by the hierarchical regression technique in which the interaction term, consisting of the product of emotional costs and support adequacy deviation scores, was entered at the second step of the regression, following the entry of the first order variables at step 1.

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The inclusion of the interaction term did significantly add to the prediction of avoidance (∆R2 = 0.05, p < 0.05), indicating the presence of a moderation effect, that is, the influence of emotional costs on coping: Avoidance varied significantly according to the support adequacy received by the respondents (see Figure 3). Figure 3 depicts the respective interaction pattern. Adequacy of social support seems to have complex effect on coping. Hypothesis 4 regarding the moderating effects of the relation between emotional costs and coping was partially confirmed. The interaction term is negative. As can be seen, if emotional costs are high, support inadequacy further increases avoidance. In opposite, receiving more adequate support decreases avoidance even if a person experiences high emotional costs.

Figure 3. Moderation effect of support adequacy on the relation between emotional costs and avoidance (+p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01).

Figure 4. Centered regression plot of support adequacy as a moderator of the relationship between emotional costs and avoidance.

Discussion The present study investigated the emotional cost and coping after reemployment and their psychosocial predictors, such as SOC and unethical behaviors experienced by the reemployed in their new workplace. The findings show that unethical behaviors provided by the reemployed working network increasing negative feelings in the new workplace. The assumption about the impact of specific psychosocial factors (unethical

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behaviors and SOC) on emotional costs experienced within the first period of reemployment has been supported by the significant negative effect of SOC. Although the hypothesized prediction of coping by unethical behaviors has not been confirmed, the results support the premised relation between SOC and coping. The correlation analysis showed coexistence of positive relation between SOC and its dimension: comprehensibility and meaningfulness, and problem-focused coping. These positive associations were expected in reference to the previous research indicating that individuals with a strong SOC should choose more adequate and effective strategies to cope with these stressors (Pallant & Lae, 2002). According to the manageability component of SOC, the regression analysis confirmed its negative effect on avoidance. Thus, the reemployed with low manageability would prefer to avoid thinking about the difficulties, or use escape as coping strategy. Avoidance was also significantly predicted by emotional costs experienced in the first period of reemployment. In the next step, we have analyzed the mediating effect of emotional costs reported by the reemployed on the relation between psychosocial factors and coping. Results partially support this premise. The mediation has been found between SOC dimension: manageability and avoidance, when one of the considered costs, sense of insecurity (see Figure 1), was tested. One of the reasonable explanation for this effect could be found in organizational socialization approach that underlines entering a new organization as accompanied by some degree of disorientation, reality shock, and a need to make sense of the new environment (Bauer & Erdogan, 2011; Allen, 2006). Those difficulties could cause that the sense of insecurity of the reemployed becomes an important task to cope with (Klehe et al., 2012). The mediation analysis showed this emotional cost as increasing avoidance. Thus, individuals with low manageability reported higher sense of insecurity that leads them to higher tendency to use avoidance. However, the moderation analysis indicated that the relation between negative emotions in the workplace and avoidance is moderated by adequacy of received social support. Individuals receiving more adequate support from their social network are less likely to use avoidance as a coping strategy, even if they reported high emotional costs. These results confirm the previous assumption of positive effect of social support. There is a general view that it is better for individuals to exist in a supportive environment (Lindorff, 2000). The results showed that only adequate support, more than support in general, should increase a person’s ability to cope with difficult life situations.

Limitation of the Study There are few important limitations to the present study. First, the study has been focused only on the reemployed, thus we cannot make claims about the higher emotional costs experienced by the reemployed compared to other organizational newcomers. Future research should include the control group (e.g., employees after turnover) to notice possible differences. Second, we did not consider in the study other factors that could influence the emotions experienced in the workplace. The individual could differ for instance in the tendency to experience negative emotional states, i.e., negative affectivity. Future research should more closely scrutinize the construct validity of this measure.

Conclusions The psychosocial context of reemployment plays an important role in well-being in the first period of reemployment. Experiencing unethical behaviors from the environment and evincing lower SOC influence the emotional costs and lead to ineffective coping. Especially, the direct effect of manageability and moderating

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effect of social support adequacy received by the reemployed have been observed. Although lower manageability leads to higher avoidance, the reemployed who receive more adequate support from their environment should be able to better perform in the new workplace.

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Psychology Research, ISSN 2159-5542 April 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, 232-241

DAVID

PUBLISHING

Evaluation of Differential Item Functioning of the Center of Epidemiological Scale Depression Revisited for Gender in Mexican Adolescents Jesús Rafael Osorno Munguía, Herminia Beatriz Segura Celis Ochoa, Alma Gloria Vallejo Casarín

Patricia Andrade Palos Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, México

Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, México

The literature on depression reports great differences between women and men, presenting women higher rates of depression, few researchers have questioned if the instruments used to evaluate depression can affect these gender differences. This study aimed at the determination of the DIF (differential item functioning) of the CES-D-R (Center of Epidemiological Scale Depression Revisited), taking into account the gender variable. A sample of 1,636 adolescents whose mean was 13.3 years, standard deviation 1.0 participated in this research. The analysis was calculated using DIF MH (Mantel-Haenszel) method and detected 13 items with DIF of the total of 35 items with significant presence of DIF. Six items were identified with DIF in high execution, five of those favor women. These results suggest a revision of the CES-D-R in terms of gender. Keywords: differential item functioning, CES-D-R (Center of Epidemiological Scale Depression Revisited), gender, adolescents, MH (Mantel-Haenszel) method

Introduction Depression is a widely prevalent health problem that affects the general population regardless of gender, social status, or age. According to data from the World Health Organization (2009), within a few years, depression will be the second most likely cause of healthy life reduction in inhabitants of developing countries and the leading cause in developed countries. Depression can present itself at all stages of life, and prevalence data for non-clinical depression in the adolescent population indicate an average prevalence of 5% to 20% (Mellin & Beamish, 2002; Steinberg, 2005; Hyun, Nam, Kang, & Reynolds, 2009). In Mexico, 2% of the general population has presented with depression in childhood or adolescence (Benjet, Borges, Medina-Mora, Fleiz-Bautista, & Zambrano-Ruiz, 2004), and other authors such as Caraveo, Colmenares, and Martínez (2001) indicated that depression is present in 6.3% of the pediatric and adolescent population. Two of the most widely accepted forms for classifying depression are those established by ICD 10 (the 10th International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization) and the DSM IV (Diagnostic Jesús Rafael Osorno Munguía, Ph.D., College of Psychology, Universidad Veracruzana. Herminia Beatriz Segura Celis Ochoa, Ph.D., College of Psychology, Universidad Veracruzana. Alma Gloria Vallejo Casarín, Ph.D., College of Psychology, Universidad Veracruzana. Patricia Andrade Palos, Ph.D., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

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and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association). The most serious type of depression, according to the DSM IV, is an MDE (Major Depressive Episode), which requires the presentation of at least five of the following symptoms during a two-week period: condition of chronic sadness during the day for a period of at least two weeks, decreased capacity to become interested and obtain pleasure from daily activities, decreased weight and appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia, psychomotor delay or agitation, physical weakness, feelings of guilt, decreased intellectual functioning, recurrent thoughts of death, or manifestations of suicidal ideation. It must be verified that these symptoms are not caused by the ingestion of medications, illegal substances, schizophrenia, the loss of a loved one, or the occurrence of a traumatic event (APA (American Psychiatric Association), 2007). Depression significantly compromises the well-being of adolescents and affects their performance in school and their relationships with family and friends; moreover, it is associated with the consumption of addictive substances, unwanted pregnancies, and suicide attempts (Chabrol, Rodgers, & Rousseau, 2007; Garber & Horowitz, 2002; Garcia, Skay, Sieving, Naughton, & Bearinger, 2008; McLeod, Weisz, & Wood, 2007; Zalsman, Brent, & Weersing, 2006). For this reason, the early identification of depression is fundamental to preventing adverse life outcomes. In the literature, there is a marked difference between men and women in the prevalence of depression. In the pediatric population, the prevalence of depression is similar between boys and girls. However, from the age of 15, depression manifests twice as often in women compared to men, and this difference prevails throughout the entire life span (Kuehner, 2003; Klein, Dougherty, & Olino, 2005; Roxburgh, 2009; Van de Velde, Bracke, & Lebecque, 2010). The arguments regarding this difference in gender have included the biological changes that occur in adolescence (Bearman & Stice, 2008); the intensification of sexual roles, which in the case of women makes them pay more attention to their popularity and physical appearance (Burwell & Shirk, 2009; Hazler & Mellin, 2004); and the differences in stress management according to gender (Foster, Kuperminc, & Price, 2004; Jose & Brown, 2008; Piko, 2001; Washburn, Hillman, & Sawilosky, 2004; Ying, Fangbiao, Jiahu, & Yuhui, 2010). It is important to note that some researchers (Osorno, Vallejo, Segura, & Mazadiego, 2008; Zumbo, 2001) have proposed that the tools used to evaluate depression may interfere with results regarding gender differences and depression, especially considering that the authors who have studied this disorder regularly come from the field of psychometrics and rely on DIF (differential item functioning) methods. The measurement tools and/or tests are tools that reflect the differences between groups; therefore, it is necessary to discern if these differences are real or the result of the measurement tools themselves. If individuals with identical levels of the measured characteristics have a different likelihood of responding positively to an item depending on the group to which they belong, then bias or DIF exists in this measurement tool (Hidalgo & Gómez, 2006). Some characteristics that may produce DIF are differences in the instructional experience of the groups, cultural differences, motivation differences, anxiety differences, and the medium used to present the items. The tool must guarantee that the individuals are not affected by the manner of measurement or other artifacts affecting the validity of the tool. A test must be impartial with respect to culture, language, gender, ethnicity, and so on so that no illegitimate difference is produced between the groups. Not all of the differences observed between the groups are due to the presence of DIF. In other words, real differences exist between groups with respect to the construct being measured. This indicates impact. For this

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reason, the techniques used to detect DIF require that the study controls for impact between the groups (Ferreres, Hidalgo, & Muñiz, 2000). The CES-D (Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale) was created for the detection of depressive symptoms at the population level and has been used in multiple studies throughout the world, including adolescents, adults, and women in Mexico (Aguilera, Carreño, & Juárez, 2004; Benjet, Hernández, Tercero, Hernández, & Chartt, 1999; González-Forteza, Andrade, & Jiménez, 1997; Mariño, Medina-Mora, Chaparro, & González-Forteza, 1993; Vallejo, Osorno, & Mazadiego, 2008a). The Center for Prevention Research of Johns Hopkins University has proposed to update and make the content of the CES-D compatible with the diagnostic criteria proposed for the detection of MDE in the DSM-IV and to equilibrate the depression categories used in the original scale which emphasize dysphoria and include few physical symptoms and psychomotor delay. This effort resulted in the reviewed version, the CES-D-R (Eaton, Muntaner, & Smith, 1998). Fifteen items were added to the 20 items in the original version, and a response option was included that broadens the time range to include the last two weeks, thereby fulfilling the DSM-IV criteria. This version was translated and adapted for Mexico by González-Forteza, Jiménez-Tapia, Ramos-Lira, and Wagner (2008). Several studies have been conducted to detect the DIF in the CES-D with the additional goal of studying ethnic differences; such studies include those conducted by Covic, Pallant, Conaghan, and Tennant (2007), Iwata, Turner, and Lloyd (2002), Jang, Kwag, and Chiriboga (2010), and Macintosh and Strickland (2010). Studies comparing quality of life levels have been conducted by Rocha, Power, Bushnell, and Fleck (2009) and Small et al. (2008). Pickard, Dalal, and Bushnell (2006) have studied differences among stroke patients. Osorno, Vallejo, Segura, and Mazadiego (2008) researched DIF in relation to gender in the CES-D amongst Mexican adolescents and found evidence of DIF in 11 of 20 items, with a tendency toward women. Their results coincide, in part, with those found by Zumbo in Canadian adolescents and adults (Zumbo, 2001). It is evident that despite the importance of the gender variable in depression, there is very little research of this type that evaluates DIF in the CES-D. For this reason, the goal of this study was to identify the presence of DIF in gender in the revised versions of the CES-D or the CES-D-R in a sample of Mexican adolescents.

Methods Participants The sample was composed of 1,636 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 with a mean age of 13.3 years. The sample included 839 women and 797 men who were urban students of public high schools from the cities of Poza Rica, Veracruz, Culiacán, Sinaloa, and México D. F. during the 2009 school cycle. The participants were from low and middle socioeconomic levels. Tools The version of the CES-D-R that was translated and adapted to Mexico by González-Forteza, Jiménez-Tapia, Ramos-Lira, and Wagner (2008) was used in this study. The CES-D-R is a self-report scale that evaluates the probability of the occurrence of MDE based on the DSM-IV criteria. It is made up of 35 items that evaluate depressive effect, positive effect, somatic symptoms, emotional well-being, delayed activity, emotional insecurity, and interpersonal relationships. The questionnaire was answered using a 5-point Likert scale (from 0 to 1 day, 2 to 4, 4 to 5, 6 to 7, and 8 to 14 days) in which the individual indicates the frequency of each symptom during the last two weeks.

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Procedures Application. The authorities from each school were contacted, and written informed consent was sent to parents for their children’s participation. This consent was granted in the majority of cases. The questionnaire was not applied to those adolescents from whom no informed consent was obtained or if they decided not to participate. The questionnaire was applied by three research teams composed of professionals in the fields of psychology and social work, and support was provided by Bachelor’s degree students who were trained in the application of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was given in classrooms during the morning section at times agreed upon with the school’s authorities. Students whose parents authorized their participation in the study were asked for voluntary collaboration and were given a guarantee that the results and all questions raised during the application of the questionnaire were to be held in strict confidentiality. The data were collected using SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Science) 17.0 software. Analysis. For the detection of DIF, the MH (Mantel-Haenszel) statistical test was used. Women were considered as the RG (reference group), given that they were shown to have higher depression scores than men in previous studies, and men were used as the FG (focal group). To apply the technique, the variables were dichotomized (López-Pina, 2005). To calculate the MH statistic, the MHDIF program created by Fidalgo (1994) at the Universidad de Oviedo was used. This analysis was completed by choosing the option of non-uniform DIF with respect to the original model by Holland and Thayer (1988).

Results The results obtained for the low performance items are presented first. Table 1 shows the scores of the item analysis for gender DIF obtained using the MH method in low performance. The alpha scores (MH-Alpha), delta values (MHD-DIF), and chi-squared (MH-CHI2) values with a significance level of 0.05 are also shown. In the DIF column, the items showing DIF are given a value of 1, and those that did not demonstrate DIF are shown as 0. Table 1 Evaluation of Gender DIF in Low Performance in the CES-D-R With MH Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

MH-Alpha 2.18 2.02 1.53 1.63 0.87 2.55 0.48 0.64 0.90 0.90 0.76 0.67 0.54 0.36 0.39 0.81

MHD-DIF -1.83 -1.66 -1.01 -1.15 0.32 -2.20 1.74 1.05 0.24 0.26 0.64 0.96 1.46 2.41 2.23 0.51

MH-CHI2 13.02 7.49 4.61 3.13 0.24 11.30 1.61 1.05 0.03 0.14 2.19 0.89 3.81 3.51 1.20 0.51

DIF 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

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(Table 1 continued) Item 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

MH-Alpha 1.86 1.56 1.23 1.19 1.50 0.67 0.72 0.63 1.12 2.07 0.63 1.14 1.92 0.90 0.88 2.10 0.63 1.63 1.43

MHD-DIF -1.45 -1.05 -0.48 -0.41 -0.96 0.95 0.79 1.09 -0.26 -1.71 1.10 -0.30 -1.53 0.26 0.30 -1.74 1.08 -1.15 -0.84

MH-CHI2 2.24 1.36 0.61 0.43 2.72 6.19 4.13 9.19 0.00 3.80 8.64 0.36 3.63 0.13 0.65 5.57 8.77 1.04 1.17

DIF 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0

In the low performance group, 10 items were identified that manifested gender DIF corresponds to 38.57% of the participants tested. Table 2 shows the magnitude of the DIF and the group it favors. Table 2 Items With Gender DIF in Low Performance Item 1. I had little appetite 2. I could not shake off the sadness 3. I had difficulty staying focused in what I was doing 6. I felt sad 22. I felt I was as good as others 23. I felt everything I did was done with effort 24. I felt hopeful about the future 27. I felt happy 32. I had crying spells 33. I had a lot of fun

Favored group Women Women Women Women Men Men Men Men Women Men

MH-Alpha 2.18 2.02 1.53 2.55 0.67 0.72 0.63 0.63 2.10 0.63

From the 10 items identified with DIF, five favored the RG and five the FG in low performance; however, the scores in the MH-Alpha category in women ranged from 1.53 to 2.55, whereas the men’s scores ranged from 0.63 to 0.72. Table 3 shows the results of the gender DIF in the participants with high performance with MH-Alpha, MHD-DIF, and MH-CHI2 scores. DIF values are shown in Table 3. Six items that showed gender DIF were identified, which corresponded to 17.14% of the test. Table 4 displays the items that were identified to demonstrate DIF, the group each item favors, and the corresponding MH-Alpha scores for each item.

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Table 3 Evaluation of the Gender DIF in High Performance of the CES-D-R With MH Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

MH-Alpha 1.35 2.56 1.36 2.02 0.64 2.28 0.84 0.66 0.78 0.96 0.73 1.23 0.83 1.05 0.78 1.03 0.92 0.67 0.74 1.55 1.04 1.10 1.16 1.11 1.60 1.16 1.12 0.99 1.43 0.77 0.92 2.69 1.20 1.08 1.24

MHD-DIF -0.70 -2.21 -0.72 -1.66 1.04 -1.94 0.42 0.98 0.57 0.08 0.75 -0.48 0.44 -0.11 0.58 -0.08 0.20 0.96 0.70 -1.03 -0.09 -0.22 -0.34 -0.24 -1.10 -0.35 -0.26 0.01 -0.84 0.60 0.20 -2.33 -0.42 -0.18 -0.51

MH-CHI2 1.70 16.02 1.67 9.32 3.88 11.52 0.41 2.52 0.98 0.01 2.44 0.75 0.68 0.01 0.66 0.00 0.08 2.69 1.96 4.16 0.01 0.08 0.30 0.15 3.58 0.37 0.17 0.00 2.55 1.49 0.12 19.18 0.57 0.05 0.96

DIF 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

Table 4 Items With Gender DIF in High Performance Item 2. I could not shake off the sadness 4. I felt depressed 5. I slept without rest 6. I felt sad 20. It was difficult to concentrate on important things 32. I had a lot of fun

Favored group Women Women Men Women Women Women

MH-Alpha 2.56 2.02 0.64 2.28 1.55 2.69

Of the six items identified with DIF, five favored the RG, and one favored the FG in high performance;

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the MH-Alpha scores for women ranged from 1.55 to 2.69, whereas the men’s score was 0.64. Considering the functioning of patients with low and high performance in each of the items, 13 items with DIF were identified. Seven of these items were favored by women (items 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 20, and 32), and six items were favored by men (items 5, 22, 23, 24, 27, and 33). Given this apparent equilibrium in the number of items with DIF that were favored by women and men, it is important to remember that the magnitudes in the women’s MH-alpha scores range from 1.53 to 2.69, whereas the scores of the DIF items favored by men have a maximum of 0.72. In addition, among the items favored by participants with high scores or high levels of depressive symptoms, five of the six items were favored by women with higher levels in the magnitude of DIF.

Discussion The CES-D-R is the updated and improved version of the widely used CES-D. During its first use in the psychometric evaluations of adolescents in Mexico, it demonstrated very satisfactory reliability and validity (González-Forteza et al., 2008). Based on the adjustments made to the current diagnostic criteria, it promises to be one of the safest tools to evaluate the risks for depressive symptomatology at the population level. Depression is predicted to reach its highest incidence in the near future, which emphasizes the need to establish its psychometric functioning with certainty. In this study, 13 items were identified that manifested DIF in the CES-D-R for participant gender. In other words, 37.14% of the test items manifested a preferential functioning toward one group. For this reason, it is necessary to review the 13 items that were identified to demonstrate DIF. Seven items were favored by women, and six were favored by men; these findings might suggest a degree of balance for the test. However, the items favored by women had much higher scores in the magnitude of DIF than those favored by men, which contradicts the idea of balance. One of the objectives of the CES-D-R is to be more sensitive to the presence of an MDE. In this study, we found that of the items identified with DIF amongst the participants with high scores, five were favored by women, and only one was favored by men. Therefore, we can confirm that the functioning of the test generally produces higher scores for women than for men as a result of the test itself, which leads to the proposal of conducting a detailed analysis of the items identified with DIF and of the possible factors that intervene in the biased behavior of these items. These results coincide with those obtained in a previous study of the CES-D in Mexican adolescents (Osorno, Vallejo, Segura, & Mazadiego, 2008), in which 40% of the items showed DIF favoring women. The current study of the CES-D-R also found that almost 40% of the items with DIF were also identified to be biased toward women, and we have further concluded that the test in general produces results biased toward women. These findings suggest that the manner in which depression is measured selects distinctive features of the manifestation of depression in women. These biases are present in the content of both the CES-D and the CES-D-R, given that 20 of the original CES-D items were used in the revision. The fact that women score higher than men in depression has been widely reported in the literature; however, the role of these measurement tools in these differences has not been sufficiently explored. It is of the utmost importance to study in greater detail how depression manifests in male adolescents in order to include items that evaluate relevant aspects for male manifestations of depression. In this sense, the role of clinical psychologists working alongside researchers will be very productive. Clinical and research efforts that also include the use of semantic networks and other techniques will provide information for the development of new items. The improvement of the scale will lead to considerations about what the test detects,

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that is, if depression symptoms are being detected or if we are evaluating the expression of characteristics of the female role. In other words, we will be able to determine whether the intended construct or a spurious variable is being measured. This research has shown that the techniques used for the identification of DIF, such as the MH statistic, are useful for the evaluation of the test’s validity, whereas other techniques such as the exploratory factorial analysis did not allow the identification of internal validity problems (Mariño et al., 1993; Vallejo, Osorno, & Mazadiego, 2008b). This finding leads us to propose the systematic use of DIF detection techniques in the evaluation of the validity of measurement tools. The CES-D is a widely used tool internationally, and we do not doubt that the revised version has the same level of acceptance. The results reported here were found in a Mexican sample, but it is important to conduct studies in other cultures and contexts.

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