Psychological variable

Klopfer, B., Psychological Variables in Human Cancer , Journal of Projective Techniques 21, no. 4 (1957) 331-40 Kondro, Wayne and Barbara Sibbald, Drag Company Experts Advised Staff to Withhold Data About SSRI Use in Children , Canadian Medical Association Journal 170, no. 5 (2004) 783 Kramer, Mark S., Neal Cutler, John Feighner, Ram Shrivastava, John Carman, John J. Sramek, Scott A. Reines, Guanghan Liu, Duane Snavely, Edwina Wyatt-Knowles, Jeffrey J. Hale, Sander G. Mills,... 

Morag, M. et al., Psychological variables as predictors of rubella antibody titers and fatigue—a prospective, double blind study, J. Psychiat. Res., 33, 389, 1999. 

Gelfin, Y., Gorfine, M., Lerer, B. Effect of clinical doses of fluoxetine on psychological variables in healthy volunteers. Am. J. Psychiatry 155, 290-292, 1998. 

Further sleep disturbance in FM may be related to increased incidence of periodic limb movements in sleep, restless legs syndrome, or the presence of comorbid depression. Consequently, given that a number of factors contribute to the sleep disturbance in FM, it would appear prudent to undertake a multifactorial approach to best understand sleep complaints and daytime symptoms of FM patients. Consistent with this notion, the interaction between psychological variables, such as cognitive appraisals of pain and sleep, as well as emotional reactions ought to be more carefully examined to best understand this complex syndrome. 

Mikulincer M, Babkoff H, Caspy T, Sing H. The effects of 72 hours of sleep loss on psychological variables. Br J Psychol 1989 80 145-162. 

Pilcher JJ, Walters AS. How sleep deprivation affects psychological variables related to college students cognitive performance. J Am College Health 1997 46 121-126. 

Like many other psychiatric and medical disorders, bipolar disorder is not curable, but it is certainly treatable. Its clinical symptoms can be controlled, modified, and even silenced. Successful treatment must combine drug therapy, psychotherapy, and psychoeducation. More and more frequently, treatment is provided by a team that, at a minimnm, includes a physician—usually a psychiatrist—and a therapist. Whenever possible, treatment should involve the patient s immediate family (sponse, parents, and children). Although medication is the core intervention, it is widely recognized that a number of psychological variables can inflnence the course of the disorder and the patient s adherence to treatment. 

Gordillo V, del Amo J, Soriano V, Gonzalez-Lahoz J (1999) Sociodemographic and psychological variables influencing adherence to antiretroviral therapy. AIDS 13 1763—1769. 

Pathological emotional stress and adrenocortical activity is reviewed and it is concluded that the psychological variable correlating with increased secretion is loss of "ego defense strength" 5. Stress increased the CRF activity of rat plasma but this could be an artefact since CRF was tested in rats with implanted pituitary tumors while ACTH was tested... 

The recording of physiological and psychological variables is but one aspect of assessment in applied environments. Basic issues in methodology include the features of field studies as opposed to those of laboratory experiments, the development of adequate assessment strategies, issues in multimetfaod assessment, subject compliance, and method-dependent reactivity. In addition to addressing these issues, several examples of research have been selected in order to delineate a new orientation in ambulatory assessment. 

Brown and Noy (2000) considered several driver behaviour models in an attempt to look for variables associated with behavioural adaptation to driver support systems. One conclusion of their study was that one element that determines the degree to which humans rely on automation is the amount of trust drivers feel towards a system, which in turn depends on a system s perceived competency. One hypothesis is that in-vehicle systems that are perceived by users to be trustworthy are also those that generate behavioural adaptation. They propose that new directions in studies of behavioural adaptation should include notions as trust in automation and possible contributing psychological variables as SS and locus of control (LoC) (Brown and Noy, 2004). In follow-up studies, Rudin-Brown and Noy (2002) and Rudin-Brown (2010) proposed their qualitative model of behavioural adaptation (Figure 11.1) from which they developed hypotheses about psychological characteristics that may affect behavioural adaptation to in-vehicle intelligent transport systems (ITS). 

Visibility and expectancy. Expectancy, in the context of pedestrian detection, is a psychological variable that represents the degree to which the driver anticipates a pedestrian on the road. To be detected an unexpected object must be conspicuous to attract the drivers fixation (and attention). In contrast, detecting an expected object involves a visual search that is directed at detecting the object s most salient features. If we also know where the object is likely to appear, the process is much quicker because our visual fixation and attentional mechanisms are already directed at it (see Chapters 3 and 4 for a discussion on the difference between top-down and bottom-up processing and visual attention, respectively). Several studies have demonstrated the importance of expectancy for pedestrian detection. The effect was first quantified nearly three quarters of a century ago by Roper and Howard (1938), who measured driver s detection distance to an obstacle on the road when it was either expected or unexpected. With 46 drivers/observers they found that "the average driver perceives the unexpected obstacle only half as far away as from the expected one...all of them saw the unexpected obstacle at least 20 percent as far as the expected obstacle, whereas none saw it at more than 80 percent of the distance." (pp. 419-420). Thus, this seminal study showed that an imexpected pedestrian is likely to be detected at half the distance as an expected one. 

Lastly, the relation between the collective psychology variable destructiveness Qj of Sfy and the material variable destruction rate D, (= equipment destroyed per time unit in f,) in the case of war has to be established. On a coarse-grained level of argumentation this relation can be defined as follows The destruction rate D2 inflicted on society If2 in absolute terms is (roughly) proportional to ... 

The second term VjPjEj and the third term iyjjPj + YjiPi)EiEj postulate a modification of the growth and saturation process due to the influence of the psychology variables and the interaction between the economies of the two societies. These terms, being proportional to Ej, lead to a constructive or destructive and in general time dependent renormalization of the growth rate and the saturation level of Ej. The choice of positive values for the parameters Vy, yjj and Yji seems to be quite plausible. 

As can be inferred from this overview of some important psychological variables, few increases in the explained variance due to the tooth lead level reach the 5% level of significance only the number of errors in the simple reaction time test is significantly related to the lead level. However, the relationship is a discordant one which needs further exploration. On the other hand, if a 10% level of statistical significance is accepted, there is some indication of a relationship between the tooth lead level and the WISC-R... 

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