ATTITUDES AND SOCIAL COGNITION Construal Levels and Self-Control

The authors propose that self-control involves making decisions and behaving in a manner consistent with high-level versus low-level construals of a situation. Activation of high-level construals (which capture global, superordinate, primary features of an event) should lead to greater self-control than activation of low-level construals (which capture local, subordinate, secondary features). In 6 experiments using 3 different techniques, the authors manipulated construal levels and assessed their effects on self-control and underlying psychological processes. High-level construals led to decreased preferences for immediate over delayed outcomes, greater physical endurance, stronger intentions to exert selfcontrol, and less positive evaluations of temptations that undermine self-control. These results support a construal-level analysis of self-control

A Comprehensive Human Factors Analysis of Wearable Computers Supporting a Hospital Ward Round

This paper focuses on the social computing and usability issues connected to the use of a wearable computer as support of the clinical ward round. An evaluation of a prototype system was performed with a group of doctors and nurses, who physically tried out the system in a simulated ward round scenario and were interviewed about their experiences. Generally, the doctors and nurses felt such system would be helpful in diminishing paper work and enhance collaboration. The most critical component of the prototype system was the navigation in electronic patient documents using gesture interaction. The doctors found the gestures difficult to learn and were worried the patient contact would suffer as a result of too much attention being needed by the gestures