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A qualitative study of problem solving and diabetes control in type 2 diabetes self-management.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore and compare diabetes-related problem solving in urban African Americans in good and poor diabetes control. METHODS: Two focus groups were conducted, one with participants in good diabetes control and one with participants in poor control. Based on a theoretical model, focus group interview questions were designed to elicit responses about 3 aspects of diabetes-related problem solving: (1) problem-solving orientation, (2) problem-solving process, and (3) transfer of past experience. Transcripts were analyzed using a qualitative data analysis software program, and expert panel members independently reviewed responses and coding. RESULTS: The primary types of problems with diabetes self-management were similar in the good control and poor control groups. Predominant problem-solving themes in the good control group reflected a positive orientation toward diabetes self-management and problem solving, a rational problem-solving process, and a positive transfer of past experience. In contrast, predominant themes in the poor control group revealed a negative orientation, careless and avoidant problem-solving processes, and negative transfer of past learning to new situations. CONCLUSIONS: The problem-solving model may help identify ineffective problem-solving patterns in persons with poor diabetes control. Empirical studies testing the model are warranted.

Black or African American↗

Developing effective institutional managers in the 1980s--part 2: some new directions.

In the earlier paper (published in the March 1980 issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing) two dominant themes were developed. One was that the organizational behaviour of nurse managers could be traced to the social defence system learned during early nursing, the other was that many of the assumptions which underpin much of the current thinking on nurse management training can do little either to help them unlearn these early behaviours or to prepare them to take more innovative action in their respective roles. Part 2 analyses some implications of this. The initial discussion examines the purpose of management training and what it is intended to achieve, which embraces the issues of the transfer of course learning back to the workplace and the greater involvement of line managers in the development of their staff. By redefining nursing in terms of open-system boundary management, some new directions are suggested which management trainers may find useful in clarifying and redefining their own task, as well as enabling nurse managers to be more innovative and effective within the constraints of their organizational situations. The implications go beyond just nursing and nurse management training. They are concerned with the wider range of institutions whose task is the throughput of people, and which tend to be managed by groups of professionals.

Administrative Personnel↗

Military, civilian, and rural application of the damage control philosophy.

Damage control surgery is a useful salvage strategy for the most critically injured patients. Conceptually, this approach to individual patients can be extrapolated to situations such as military field surgery, civilian mass casualty events, and long-range transfers from rural areas. The logistic realities of Army forward surgery teams are addressed with regard to typical damage control maneuvers and evacuation. Specific areas requiring improvement through directed research are identified. Initial civilian mass casualty strategies are discussed, and a plan to prevent transfer delays of rural trauma patients is presented. By transferring the lessons learned from individual damage control patients to military, civilian mass casualty, and rural casualty events, resource utilization is optimized. The concept of minimal acceptable care rather than optimal trauma care can be applied to these three seemingly different situations.

Disaster Planning↗

Perceptual learning in contrast discrimination: the effect of contrast uncertainty.

Performance in perceptual tasks improves with repetition (perceptual learning), eventually reaching a saturation level. Typically, when perceptual learning effects are studied, stimulus parameters are kept constant throughout the training and during the pre- and post-training tests. Here we investigate whether learning by repetition transfers to testing conditions in which the practiced stimuli are randomly interleaved during the post-training session. We studied practice effects with a contrast discrimination task, employing a number of training methods: (i) practice with a single, fixed pedestal (base-contrast), (ii) practice with several pedestals, and (iii) practice with several pedestals that included a spatial context. Pre- and post-training tests were carried out with the base contrast randomized across trials, under conditions of contrast uncertainty. The results showed that learning had taken place with the fixed pedestal method (i) and with the context method (iii), but only the latter survived the uncertainty test. In addition, we were able to identify a very fast learning phase in contrast discrimination that improved performance under uncertainty. We contend that learned tasks that do not pass the uncertainty test involve modification of decision strategies that require exact knowledge of the stimulus.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

Relational object association learning in rats with hippocampal lesions.

The contribution of the hippocampus to relational association learning was examined using a paired associate task in the rat. Using a go/no-go paradigm, rats were trained to respond quickly on positive pair presentations, and to withhold responding on negative pair presentations. Using four constant three-dimensional objects (A, B, C and D), pairing of either AB or CD was assigned as positive pairs, whereas the other possible object combinations (AC, DB, AD, and CB) were never associated with reinforcement. A further type of negative pair trial was also studied which involved object-pairs composed of one of the four constant objects and another object, which varied from trial, and which was selected from a set of 120 junk objects. Electrolytic lesions of the hippocampus were performed on the rats which had previously acquired the paired associate task. Results indicated that hippocampal lesions did not significantly impair the ability of the animals to solve the paired associate task. To study further the exact nature of the learned associations, a transfer test which involved a reversal of the spatial position within each of the six positive as well as negative pair-types was conducted. Results of the transfer test demonstrated that hippocampal-lesioned as well as control rats performed normally by distinguishing the positive from negative pairs regardless of the relative location of stimuli within the object pairs. These data suggest that the hippocampus might not be critical for relational object associations.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Animals↗

TV guide: two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information.

Learning to use symbols is a challenge for young children even when the symbol in question (e.g., a live video image) is iconic and seems transparent to adults. This research examined the effect of experience on children's use of video-presented information. Two-year-old children saw themselves "live" on their family television for 2 weeks and then participated in an object-retrieval task. The children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. Most also transferred what they learned to a task involving another symbol (pictures) that typically is very difficult for this age group. The results reveal flexibility in 2-year-olds' symbol use that follows from successful representation of a symbolic relation.

Child Development↗

Learning to identify contrast-defined letters in peripheral vision.

Performance for identifying luminance-defined letters in peripheral vision improves with training. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether performance for identifying contrast-defined letters also improves with training in peripheral vision, and whether any improvement transfers to luminance-defined letters. Eight observers were trained to identify contrast-defined letters presented singly at 10 degrees eccentricity in the inferior visual field. Before and after training, we measured observers' thresholds for identifying luminance-defined and contrast-defined letters, embedded within a field of white luminance noise (maximum luminance contrast=0, 0.25, and 0.5), at the same eccentric location. Each training session consisted of 10 blocks (100 trials per block) of identifying contrast-defined letters at a background noise contrast of 0.5. Letters (x-height=4.2 degrees) were the 26 lowercase letters of the Times-Roman alphabet. Luminance-defined letters were generated by introducing a luminance difference between the stimulus letter and its mid-gray background. The background noise covered both the letter and its background. Contrast-defined letters were generated by introducing a differential noise contrast between the group of pixels that made up the stimulus letter and the group of pixels that made up the background. Following training, observers showed a significant reduction in threshold for identifying contrast-defined letters (p<0.0001). Averaged across observers and background noise contrasts, the reduction was 25.8%, with the greatest reduction (32%) occurring at the trained background noise contrast. There was virtually no transfer of improvement to luminance-defined letters, or to an untrained letter size (2 x original), or an untrained retinal location (10 degrees superior field). In contrast, learning transferred completely to the untrained contralateral eye. Our results show that training improves performance for identifying contrast-defined letters in peripheral vision. This perceptual learning effect seems to be stimulus-specific, as it shows no transfer to the identification of luminance-defined letters. The complete interocular transfer, and the retinotopic (retinal location) and size specificity of the learning effect are consistent with the properties of neurons in early visual area V2.

Adult↗

Intermanual transfer in the monkey as a function of amount of callosal sparing.

The effects of commissure section, task difficulty and overtraining on the intermanual transfer of tactile learning have been examined. Twenty-one rhesus monkeys were allocated to 4 groups. One group was subjected to complete transection of the corpus callosum, massa intermedia and posterior commissure. Some of this group also sustained a cerebellar section. A second group received a similar division of the commissures but with part of the posterior body of the corpus callosum left intact. A third group received similar division of the commissures but with the posterior commissure left intact. The fourth group formed an unoperated control group. Animals with only the posterior commissure left intact showed little or no transfer. Animals with partial callosal lesions showed significantly greater transfer than animals with total transections, but were impaired relative to the unoperated controls. Estimates have been made of the number of callosal fibres left intact in the animals with partial callosal lesions. These estimates have been correlated with transfer. The correlation was significant on only one task. Neither task difficulty nor overtraining were found to affect transfer significantly. The comparison of transfer of the submodalities of size and roughness was inconclusive.

Animals↗

The hippocampus, context, and information processing.

Two experiments are described in which groups of rats with bilateral hippocampal lesions, cortical lesions, and operated controls are compared on tests of discrimination learning, retention, and reversal learning. Experiment 1 examined the effects of varying prior training and context on new learning. Experiment 2 used a transfer paradigm to compare extent of original learning by hippocampal and control groups in a discrimination task involving multiple discriminanada . The major findings were that rats with hippocampal damage were less efficient at processing information and were more constrained by contextual influences than control rats.

Animals↗

Problem-solving behaviour in apomorphine-susceptible and unsusceptible rats.

Pharmacogenetically selected apomorphine-susceptible (APO-SUS) and apomorphine-unsusceptible (APO-UNSUS) rats were trained in a discrimination learning paradigm. After the initial discrimination task was solved, reinforcement contingencies were reversed. No differences between APO-SUS and APO-UNSUS animals were found in the rate of learning. However, negative transfer from the initial discrimination to its reversal was less for the APO-SUS rats than for the APO-UNSUS rats. Moreover, the APO-SUS rats responded more to the relevant dimension (light) than the APO-UNSUS rats in the last 100 trials before solving the initial problem as well as the reversal. During overtraining on the first problem, APO-SUS animals responded less to an irrelevant dimension (position of the lever) than APO-UNSUS animals. In the first 100 trials of the reversal APO-SUS rats responded more to another irrelevant dimension (noise) than APO-UNSUS rats. The data show that APO-SUS and APO-UNSUS rats used the various dimensions (visual, auditory, and spatial) differently in the chosen discrimination learning paradigm. It is concluded that the interline differences found are the consequences of the interline differences in the dopaminergic activity of the ventral and dorsal striatum.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Evaluation of a community care project for people with learning difficulties.

The quality of life and adaptive behaviour of a group of 17 adults with learning difficulties who transferred from a long-stay hospital or hostel into small community-based group homes was assessed before and 1 year after the move. It was found that the increase in adaptive behaviour was largely dependent on structural staff procedures and there was a bias toward achievement in house-bound skills. Subjects had a low level of community presence and few meaningful relationships. Implications for service planning are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Variability effects on retention of a motor skill in elementary school children.

Variability effects on learning, retention, and transfer of motor skills have been a main issue for scientists involved in laboratory and field research. Variable practice is intended as parameter variations of a generalized motor program as well as rehearsal of different motor programs. Although the benefits deriving from variable practice on motor skill retention appear quite robust in laboratory settings, field investigations have produced mixed results. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of different variable schedules on the retention of a complex min tor skill in a physical education setting. 61 elementary school children were assigned Blocked/Nonvariable, Blocked/Variable, Serial/Nonvariable, or Serial/Variable schedules, and practiced two tasks (throwing and hurdle running) and a complex skill (jumping) across 14 lessons. Improved performance in the complex skill was found after practice, with the Serial/Nonvariable group outperforming all other groups. Therefore. the rehearsal of different motor programs was beneficial for jumping skill retention, whereas parameter variation was not.

Child↗

Nutritional effects on operant visual learning in Drosophila melanogaster.

The nutritional effects on operant visual learning behavior were investigated in a flight simulator. Operant visual learning and memory formation were normal in Drosophila (S-flies) reared on standard medium, but absent in flies (P-flies) raised on Peking medium. S- and P-flies were transferred to the alternative medium soon after hatching and their progeny was also raised on corresponding medium for several generations. respectively. S-flies transferred showed significantly reduced learning acquisition and 20 min memory retention, and operant visual learning along with memory formation was abolished in their progeny within three generations. Transferred P-flies recovered slowly their learning acquisition and memory formation to normal levels within five generations. Further studies suggested that low protein and minerals or high carbohydrate contents in Peking medium might be related to abnormal performance of P-flies. These results confirm the feasibility of affecting learning behavior by dietary regimens and developing an insect model of maternal malnutrition for pre- or post-natal malnutrition in Drosophila.

Animal Feed↗

Action observation supports effector-dependent learning of finger movement sequences.

Practising a motor skill can result in effector-dependent learning (learning that does not transfer from the set of muscles used in training to a new set of muscles). Proceeding from neurophysiological evidence of motor activation during action observation, this study asked whether observational learning, learning through observation of skilled performance, can also be effector-dependent. Adult human participants observed a model's right hand as the model responded to an eight-item sequence in a serial reaction time (SRT) task. Their sequence learning was then compared in two tests with that of controls who had observed the model's right hand responding to random targets during training. All participants performed the SRT task with their right hand in the first test and with their left hand in the second. Evidence of observational learning was obtained in the right hand test but not in the left hand test. This implies that sequence learning based on observation of right hand performance did not transfer to the left hand, and therefore that observational learning can support effector-dependent learning of finger movement sequences. A second experiment used the same procedure to assess learning by a group of participants who observed a sequence of response locations only. This group did not observe the model's responses. Results suggested that action observation was necessary for the effector-dependent observational learning demonstrated in Experiment 1.

Adult↗