Overview of systematic reviews. Effective home support in dementia care: Components and impacts, Stage 1, psychosocial interventions for dementia.

Aim: To synthesise evidence to identify the components of effective psychosocial interventions in dementia care to inform clinical practice, policy and research. Background: With population ageing dementia represents a significant care challenge with 60% of people with dementia living at home. Design: Overview of systematic reviews with narrative summary. Data sources: Electronic searches of published systematic reviews in English using Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, DARE, EPPI-Centre, between September 2013 - April 2014. Review methods: Systematic reviews were appraised against Cochrane Collaboration levels of effectiveness. Components of psychosocial interventions were identified with their theoretical rationale. Findings were explored with a Patient, Public and Carer Involvement group. Results: 36 systematic reviews were included. From interventions, 14 components were identified, nine for people with dementia and five for carers, mostly undertaken in nursing/care homes. For people with dementia, there was evidence of effectiveness for cognitive stimulation and cognitive training; but less evidence for sensory stimulation, reminiscence, staff education, behavioural therapy and ADL training. For carers, there was evidence of effectiveness for education and training, psychotherapy and counselling. Conclusion: There was a lack of definitive evidence of effectiveness for most psychosocial interventions. Further studies with stronger methodology or replication of existing studies would strengthen the evidence base. Few interventions were undertaken with people with dementia and their carers living at home. Further work will investigate the extent to which components identified here are present in models of home support for people with dementia and carers and their effectiveness

Creativity and the Social Brain

The neuroscience of imagination has revealed extensive parallels between the brain correlates of creative cognition and those of social cognition. There is, however, scarcely any exchange of ideas between the different research communities that is aimed at understanding what such commonalities reveal. The evidence indicates that there are some fundamental similarities in very nature of the information processing mechanisms that underlie cognitive and social aspects of mental life that are customarily viewed to be quite distinct from one another. This chapter features reflections on these similarities by generating cross-connections between current knowledge on creative cognition and social cognition. Themes that are explored include candidate mechanisms of correspondences between creativity and social behaviour, such as the ‘intention to communicate’ (by means of expression), the ‘intention to understand’ (by means of inference and discovery), and the ‘personal relevance bias’ (by means of alertness to self-related salience and significance)

Age and work-related motives: Results of a meta-analysis

Item does not contain fulltextAn updated literature review was conducted and a meta-analysis was performed to investigate the relationship between age and work-related motives. Building on theorizing in life span psychology, we hypothesized the existence of age-related differences in work-related motives. Specifically, we proposed an age-related increase in the strength of security and social motives, and an age-related decrease in the strength of growth motives. To investigate life span developmental theory predictions about age-related differences in control strategies, we also examined the relationship between age and intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Consistent with our predictions, meta-analytic results showed a significant positive relationship between age and intrinsic motives, and a significant negative relationship between age and strength of growth and extrinsic motives. The predicted positive relation between age and strength of social and security motives was only found among certain subgroups. Implications of these findings for work motivation and life span theories and future research are discussed

Assumption without representation: the unacknowledged abstraction from communities and social goods

We have not clearly acknowledged the abstraction from unpriceable “social goods” (derived from communities) which, different from private and public goods, simply disappear if it is attempted to market them. Separability from markets and economics has not been argued, much less established. Acknowledging communities would reinforce rather than undermine them, and thus facilitate the production of social goods. But it would also help economics by facilitating our understanding of – and response to – financial crises as well as environmental destruction and many social problems, and by reducing the alienation from economics often felt by students and the public