Understanding jumping to conclusions in patients with persecutory delusions: working memory and intolerance of uncertainty

Background. Persecutory delusions are a key psychotic experience. A reasoning style known as ‘jumping to conclusions’ (JTC) – limited information gathering before reaching certainty in decision making – has been identified as a contributory factor in the occurrence of delusions. The cognitive processes that underpin JTC need to be determined in order to develop effective interventions for delusions. In the current study two alternative perspectives were tested: that JTC partially results from impairment in information-processing capabilities and that JTC is a motivated strategy to avoid uncertainty.Method. A group of 123 patients with persistent persecutory delusions completed assessments of JTC (the 60:40 beads task), IQ, working memory, intolerance of uncertainty, and psychiatric symptoms. Patients showing JTC were compared with patients not showing JTC.Results. A total of 30 (24%) patients with delusions showed JTC. There were no differences between patients who did and did not jump to conclusions in overall psychopathology. Patients who jumped to conclusions had poorer working memory performance, lower IQ, lower intolerance of uncertainty and lower levels of worry.Working memory and worry independently predicted the presence of JTC.Conclusions. Hasty decision making in patients with delusions may partly arise from difficulties in keeping information in mind. Interventions for JTC are likely to benefit from addressing working memory performance, while in vivo techniques for patients with delusions will benefit from limiting the demands on working memory. The study provides little evidence for a contribution to JTC from top down motivational beliefs about uncertainty

Preferences and skills of Indian public sector teachers

With a sample of 700 future public sector primary teachers in India, a Discrete Choice Experiment is used to measure job preferences, particularly regarding location. General skills are also tested. Urban origin teachers and women are more averse to remote locations than rural origin teachers and men respectively. Women would require a 26-73 percent increase in salary for moving to a remote location. The results suggest that existing caste and gender quotas can be detrimental for hiring skilled teachers willing to work in remote locations. The most preferred location is home, which supports decentralised hiring, although this could compromise skills

Unemployment, Education and Skills Constraints in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper investigates the relationship between education and unemployment in post-apartheid South Africa, and probes the argument that employment growth has been inhibited particularly by skills constraints. We use probit regression analysis to show that higher education protected against unemployment in both 1995 and 2003, and that overall, the relative benefits to tertiary education rose over the period

Texts as Data I : Document Analysis

Peer reviewe

A comparative framework: how broadly applicable is a 'rigorous' critical junctures framework?

The paper tests Hogan and Doyle's (2007, 2008) framework for examining critical junctures. This framework sought to incorporate the concept of ideational change in understanding critical junctures. Until its development, frameworks utilized in identifying critical junctures were subjective, seeking only to identify crisis, and subsequent policy changes, arguing that one invariably led to the other, as both occurred around the same time. Hogan and Doyle (2007, 2008) hypothesized ideational change as an intermediating variable in their framework, determining if, and when, a crisis leads to radical policy change. Here we test this framework on cases similar to, but different from, those employed in developing the exemplar. This will enable us determine whether the framework's relegation of ideational change to a condition of crisis holds, or, if ideational change has more importance than is ascribed to it by this framework. This will also enable us determined if the framework itself is robust, and fit for the purposes it was designed to perform — identifying the nature of policy change

The discovery of ash dieback in the UK: the making of a focusing event

Why did the identification of ‘Ash Dieback’ (Chalara Fraxinea) in 2012 in the UK catch the national media, public and political zeitgeist, and lead to policy changes, in a way that no other contemporary tree pest or pathogen outbreak has?The identification of Ash Dieback in the UK is conceptualised as a successful ‘focusing event’ and the ways in which it was socially constructed by the media, stakeholders and the government are analysed. National newspaper coverage contributed to the way that the disease was understood and was significant in driving the political response. Ash Dieback’s focal power derived from the perceived scale and nature of its impact; the initial attribution of blame on government; the ‘war-like’ response from the government; and Ash’s status as a threatened ‘native’ tree. The Ash Dieback focusing event has increased the salience of plant health issues amongst policymakers, the public and conservation organisations in the UK

The coronal line regions of planetary nebulae NGC6302 and NGC6537: 3-13um grating and echelle spectroscopy

We report on advances in the study of the cores of NGC6302 and NGC6537 using infrared grating and echelle spectroscopy. In NGC6302, emission lines from species spanning a large range of ionization potential, and in particular [SiIX]3.934um, are interpreted using photoionization models (including CLOUDY), which allow us to reestimate the central star's temperature to be about 250000K. All of the detected lines are consistent with this value, except for [AlV] and [AlVI]. Aluminium is found to be depleted to one hundredth of the solar abundance, which provides further evidence for some dust being mixed with the highly ionized gas (with photons harder than 154eV). A similar depletion pattern is observed in NGC6537. Echelle spectroscopy of IR coronal ions in NGC6302 reveals a stratified structure in ionization potential, which confirms photoionization to be the dominant ionization mechanism. The lines are narrow (< 22km/s FWHM), with no evidence of the broad wings found in optical lines from species with similar ionization potentials, such as [NeV]3426A. We note the absence of a hot bubble, or a wind blown bipolar cavity filled with a hot plasma, at least on 1'' and 10km/s scales. We also provide accurate new wavelengths for several of the infrared coronal lines observed with the echelle.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

GGC01 cored, seismic monitoring borehole – initial data release

Summary This report gives a short overview of information related to the initial data release for GGC01. The cored, seismic monitoring borehole GGC01 (BGS SOBI number NS66SW BJ 3754) was drilled between 19 November and 12 December 2018 producing a core of 102 mm diameter. The borehole was wireline logged in December 2018 and a string of 5 seismometers were installed in February 2019. Contributions to this report and the data acquired are as follows: Vanessa Starcher: Technical overview, wireline log data acquisition Kirsty Shorter: Fluid and geomicrobiology samples, tracer information, field measurements, photo metadata Hugh Barron: On-site core and data acquisition, initial geological interpretation Joel Burkin; Geomicrobiology samples, on site core management and initial geological interpretation Jack Elsome: Fluid and geomicrobiology samples Mark Fellgett: Wireline log data checking and documentation Andy Kingdon: Wireline log data checking and documentation Megan Barnett: Geomicrobiology samples Alison Monaghan: Coordinating initial data pack, initial geological interpretation IMPORTANT – Note that all borehole depths given in the initial data release are based on the drillers log dataset (excepting wireline data). Borehole depths will be subject to minor change once non-recovery intervals are assigned. Borehole and sample depths will be revised in the final borehole data pack so that core scans, wireline logs and borehole logs/samples are consistent

Assessing Communities of Practice in health policy : A conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Peer reviewe