Robert D. Russell

Philosophical Trends in Health Education: Implications for the 21st Century

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore five health education philosophies: cognitive based, decision-making, behavior change, freeing/functioning, and social change. This was done in order to ascertain if there is a single dominant philosophy ascribed to by health educators, and discover any variations in philosophical preferences between health education academicians and practitioners. The Health Education Philosophy Inventory (HEPI) was designed to answer these questions. Through a series of vignettes and a rank order exercise, HEPI determined both philosophical preference within educational settings and philosophical beliefs. Data were collected from a nationwide random sample of health education professionals through a mailed survey. Total response rate of usable inventories was 48.3 percent. Content analysis determined the philosophical preference in educational settings was behavior change, followed by freeing/functioning. The stated philosophical preferences in the rank order exercise wa...

Assessing Psychologists' Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Near-Death Phenomena

Nina Thornburgs (1988) Near-Death Phenomena Knowledge and Attitudes Questionnaire was distributed to 326 randomly selected Illinois psychologists. Of 117 usable questionnaires received, the mean score for knowledge questions was 7.5 of a maximum score of 18. Respondents were most knowledgeable about near-death elements of peace, out-of-body transcendence, and tunnel/light phenomena. The mean score for the attitude portion of the instrument was 61.3 of a maximum score of 85 points for the most positive attitude. Seven percent of the respondents indicated having had a near-death experience, 19% indicated having counseling near-death experiencers, and 28% indicated having had personal contacts with an experiencer.

An external focus of attention enhances manual tracking of occluded and visible targets.

The present study investigated the enhancement effects of an external focus of attention (FOA) in the context of a manual tracking task, in which participants tracked both visible and occluded targets. Three conditions were compared, which manipulated the distance of the FOA from the participant as well as the external/internal dimension. As expected, an external FOA resulted in lower tracking errors than an internal FOA. In addition, analyses of participants’ movement patterns revealed a systematic shift toward higher-frequency movements in the external FOA condition, consistent with the idea that an external FOA exploits the natural movement dynamics available during skilled action. Finally, target visibility did not influence the effect of focused attention on tracking performance, which provides evidence for the proposal that the mechanisms that underlie FOA do not depend directly on vision.