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PubMed1998

What is 'heavy'?

One of the work practices frequently taught to employees is to estimate the heaviness of load before it is actually handled. If it is 'heavy', then one should ask for help. However, limited information can be found in the ergonomics literature about what a person perceives as a 'heavy load'. This study was conducted on 20 male and 20 female workers in the package delivery industry to estimate the amounts of load that correspond to various levels of load heaviness (e.g. 'somewhat heavy'). Experienced employees were used for this purpose. The distribution of loads within each heaviness level was developed using fuzzy sets theory. The maximum load (i.e. 23 kg) defined by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health represents a 'somewhat heavy' load based on the analysis of load distribution (corresponding to a 1.0 certainty factor). Also, the 40 kg considered in the 1981 NIOSH guidelines may be classified as a 'very heavy' load. A comparative analysis of the results of this study with norms established in prior research indicates that one should be more careful in the interpretation of statistical norms for human perception of load handling. A 'moderate' level of load heaviness (i.e. 14 kg) can be handled by 85% of the worker population.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Rhythm perception and differences in accent weights for musicians and nonmusicians.

In order to investigate the contribution of harmonic-temporal and structural features to the perception of musical rhythm, three experiments were conducted in which a harmonic and a temporal accent were pitted against each other in such a way as to form five possible patterns. In three experiments, the temporal structure of various chord progressions was manipulated in an effort to determine the harmonic contributions to the inference of meter. The final experiment differed from the first two in the use of nondiatonic progressions that implied an unlikely key modulation. In all experiments, musicians and nonmusicians were requested to report perceived rhythm patterns in an attempt to determine the relative salience of various accents. Results indicated that changes in the temporal structure led to predictable change in an inferred meter, and that all diatonic chord progressions led to similar patterns of responses in which coincidences of harmonic, temporal, and metrical accents were perceptually salient events. Unusual progressions implying key modulations resulted in a qualitatively distinct pattern of results, and, in all experiments, amount of formal musical training was found to be a good predictor of the use of harmonic cues.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

The relative weighting of acoustic properties in the perception of [s] + stop clusters by children and adults.

We examined the perceptual weighting by children and adults of the acoustic properties specifying complete closure of the vocal tract following a syllable-initial [s]. Experiment 1 was a novel manipulation of previously examined acoustic properties (duration of a silent gap and first formant transition) and showed that children weight the first formant transition more than adults. Experiment 2, an acoustic analysis of naturally produced say and stay, revealed that, contrary to expectations, a burst can be present in stay and that first formant transitions do not necessarily distinguish say and stay in natural tokens. Experiment 3 manipulated natural speech portions to create stimuli that varied primarily in the duration of the silent gap and in the presence or absence of a stop burst, and showed that children weight these stop bursts less than adults. Taken together, the perception experiments support claims that children integrate multiple acoustic properties as adults do, but that they weight dynamic properties of the signal more than adults and weight static properties less.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Bridging the gap between theory and model: a reflection on the balance scale task.

At first glance, the two lead articles in this issue share little except the balance scale task, yet we view them as complementary rather than unrelated or contradictory. Our Reflection focuses on the individual strengths of the two lead articles and, to a greater extent, the potential power of their combined perspectives. Our general approach is to allow psychological theory to suggest a model of performance that can both evaluate specific theoretical claims and reveal important features of the data that had been previously obscured using conventional statistical analyses. Our guiding principle is that model, theory, and data all should be connected.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Perceiving the sweet spot.

Many sports involve aligning a hitting implement with a ball trajectory such that contact is made at the implement's center of percussion or 'sweet spot'. This spot is not visibly distinct; its perception must be haptic. Although it is functionally defined with respect to contact--it is the point of impact that produces the least vibration in the hand holding the implement--hitting success requires appreciating the location of the sweet spot prior to contact. Two experiments verified that perceivers (novices as well as expert tennis players) distinguished perception of length from perception of the position of the sweet spot simply on the basis of wielding, both for tennis rackets and for bats contrived from wooden rods with attached masses. Results conformed to previous research on dynamic touch in showing that perceiving the lengths of wielded objects, including selectively perceiving partial lengths, is constrained by inertial properties of the object.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The relationship between quality of life and perceived body weight and dieting history in Dutch men and women.

OBJECTIVES: (1) To study the relationship between quality of life (QoL) and measured and perceived weight and dieting history in Dutch men and women; (2) to assess the effect of weight loss over a 5 y period on QoL. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, in a sub-sample longitudinal over 5 y. SUBJECTS: A total of 2155 men and 2446 women, aged 20-59 and recruited from the general population from three towns in The Netherlands. MEASUREMENTS: Body weight, height, self-administered questionnaire including questions concerning demographic variables and weight loss practices as part of the Dutch Monitoring project on Risk Factors for Chronic Disease (MORGEN). The Rand-36 questionnaire was used as the QoL measure. RESULTS: In men, measured overweight (body mass index, BMI>25 kg/m(2)) was not associated with any dimension of QoL after adjustment for age, educational level and perceived overweight. Perceived overweight was related to reduced scores for general health and vitality. This relationship was independent of measured obesity. A history of repeated weight loss was associated with reduced scores for role functioning due to both physical and emotional problems. In women, measured overweight was significantly associated with lower scores for five out of eight QoL dimensions and perceived overweight with three: general health, vitality and physical functioning. A history of frequent weight loss was related to significantly reduced scores in six dimensions. However, only with history of frequent weight loss, and uniquely in women, was there a significant reduction in scores on mental health and limited emotional role functioning. Measured and perceived overweight and frequent weight loss were all related to reduced scores for physical functioning. Longitudinal data indicate that in older women weight gain of 10% body weight or more was associated with a significant deterioration in QoL. CONCLUSIONS: When looking at measures of QoL in relation to overweight it is important to separate the effects of perception of weight status and history of weight loss. We observed that the latter two factors were associated with reduced scores on several dimensions of QoL, particularly in women. These associations were observed to be independent of body weight.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Correlates of motivation to prevent weight gain: a cross sectional survey.

BACKGROUND: This study is an application of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with additional variables to predict the motivations to prevent weight gain. In addition, variations in measures across individuals classified into Precaution Adoption Process stages (PAPM-stages) of behaviour change were investigated. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey among 979 non-obese Dutch adults aged 25-35 years was conducted. Multiple binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the associations of Body Mass Index (BMI), demographic factors and psychosocial variables from the TPB with the intention to prevent weight gain. Differences in BMI, demographic and psychosocial factors between PAPM-stages were explored using one-way analysis of variance and chi-square tests. RESULTS: Eighty-five percent of respondents intended to prevent weight gain. Age, attitudes and risk perceptions related to weight gain were the strongest correlates of intention (age: OR = 1.12, 95%CI: 1.04-1.20; attitude OR = 7.91, 95%CI: 5.33-11.74; risk perception OR = 1.24, 95%CI: 1.11-1.38). Significant differences were detected between the PAPM-stages in almost all variables. Notably, perceived behavioural control was lowest among people who had decided to prevent weight gain. CONCLUSION: Messages to influence attitudes towards the prevention of weight gain and risk perception may affect people who are not yet motivated to prevent weight gain. Interventions increasing people's perceived behavioural control in overcoming barriers to prevent weight gain may help people to act on their intentions.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2005

Young teenagers' perceptions of their own and others' bodies: a qualitative study of obese, overweight and 'normal' weight young people in Scotland.

The rise in numbers of overweight/obese children in the UK is causing widespread concern. Biomedical constructions of body acceptability and 'good health' mean that overweight/obese young people are frequently seen as deviant. The socio-cultural contexts within which young teenagers become fat, and lay conceptualisations of fatness, have largely been ignored. This qualitative study involved in-depth interviews with teenagers aged 13-14 years (n = 36), drawn from families living in areas classified as socio-economically disadvantaged. Half of the sample had a Body Mass Index (BMI) classifying them as overweight or obese, whilst the remainder were classified as being 'normal' weight. Participants' embodied perceptions of fatness were complex and sometimes contradictory. We discuss what young teenagers perceive the influences on fatness and body size to be; the professed consequences of being fat; participants' experiences of attempting to lose weight; and, their reported interactions with friends and family relating to fatness and dieting. Participants rarely mentioned any health-related consequences of their own and others' fatness, although wearing 'nice' clothes and being slowed down were raised as considerations by girls and boys, respectively. 'Normal' weight teenagers who disliked their bodies or who wanted to lose weight often claimed to be anxious about this. Being very obese also led to anxiety and reported attempts at 'crash dieting'. Acceptance of body size/shape was, however, common amongst the overweight and obese teenagers, although some had attempted weight loss. The teenagers in this study were rarely supportive of friends or family who attempted to lose weight and frequently disagreed with others' perceptions of fatness. These findings are important as they contradict the common perception that being overweight/obese is related to body dissatisfaction and that young people have a fear of fatness.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

The development of children's rule use on the balance scale task.

Cognitive development can be characterized by a sequence of increasingly complex rules or strategies for solving problems. Our work focuses on the development of children's proportional reasoning, assessed by the balance scale task using Siegler's (1976, 1981) rule assessment methodology. We studied whether children use rules, whether children of different ages use qualitatively different rules, and whether rules are used consistently. Nonverbal balance scale problems were administered to 805 participants between 5 and 19 years of age. Latent class analyses indicate that children use rules, that children of different ages use different rules, and that both consistent and inconsistent use of rules occurs. A model for the development of reasoning about the balance scale task is proposed. The model is a restricted form of the overlapping waves model (Siegler, 1996) and predicts both discontinuous and gradual transitions between rules.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

The balance beam in the balance: reflections on rules, relational complexity, and developmental processes.

The lead articles by Jansen and van der Maas (2002, this issue) and Halford, Andrews, Dalton, Boag, and Zielinski (2002, this issue) raise numerous questions concerning the development of rule use and how best to assess it. In this Reflection, we focus on the following: (a) When can one infer the use of a rule? (b) What are the mechanisms underlying the development of rule use? and (c) What is the relation between understanding and execution? In addressing these questions, we contrast relational complexity theory with cognitive complexity and control (CCC) theory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Perceptions and beliefs about body size, weight, and weight loss among obese African American women: a qualitative inquiry.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore perceptions and beliefs about body size, weight, and weight loss among obese African American women in order to form a design of weight loss intervention with this target population. Six focus groups were conducted at a community health clinic. Participants were predominantly middle-aged with a mean Body Mass Index of 40.3 +/- 9.2 kg/m(2). Findings suggest that participants (a) believe that people can be attractive and healthy at larger sizes; (b) still feel dissatisfied with their weight and self-conscious about their bodies; (c) emphasize eating behavior as the primary cause for weight gain; (d) view pregnancy, motherhood, and caregiving as major precursors to weight gain; (e) view health as the most important reason to lose weight; (f) have mixed experiences and expectations for social support for weight loss; and (g) prefer treatments that incorporate long-term lifestyle modification rather than fad diets or medication.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

The effects of patient weight and sex on nurses' perceptions: a proposed model of nurse withdrawal.

This investigation challenged the premise that nurses adhere to affective neutrality in their practice of nursing, and examined the effect of patient weight and sex on evaluations, attributions and care delivery decisions formed by nurses. The phenomenon of mutual withdrawal originally identified by Tudor in psychiatric nursing was adapted to the general nursing milieu and served as the conceptual framework. Emphasis in this study was given to the phenomenon of nurse withdrawal. A volunteer sample of 100 senior female baccalaureate students was randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 X 2 factorial design with the following factors: (a) weight of the stimulus patient (normal versus obese); and (b) sex of the stimulus patient (male versus female). These independent variables were presented through descriptive vignettes and visual stimuli to participants completing a self-administered questionnaire. Dependent variables included evaluation, attribution and care delivery. Analysis of the questionnaire demonstrated that obese patients were evaluated more negatively than normal weight patients, F = 2.82, P less than 0.05, but were not held more responsible for an alleged transgression, nor did nurses indicate withdrawal. The phenomenon of social attractiveness was identified as an intervening variable lending support to the proposed model of nurse withdrawal. This finding is examined within the context of affective neutrality in the nurse-patient relationship. Implications for nursing practice, theory and research are discussed.

Female↗
PubMed1991

Weight change in cardiac transplant patients.

The perception exists that excessive weight gain commonly occurs after cardiac transplantation. To examine this perception, 91 transplant patients from one to eight years post-transplant responded to a questionnaire eliciting data on premorbid and post-transplant weights, exercise frequency, and fat intake. Only 37% of subjects weighed more post-transplant than premorbidly. More than half of the subjects were over their ideal weights premorbidly and post-transplant. On t-test there was no significant difference (p less than .05) between weight gainers and weight losers in exercise frequency (t = .63; p = .53), or fat intake (t = -.80; p = .43). Findings of the study dispute the perception of excessive weight gain post-transplantation. This perception may be due to the comparison of cachectic pre-transplant weight with well weight post-transplant. Since more than half of the subjects were over their ideal weight post-transplantation, teaching regarding weight control remains important. Future research on effective methods of weight control is needed.

Adult↗