Since 1994 there have been considerable additions to the range of health care professionals (HCPs) that can prescribe in the United Kingdom (UK). These HCPs include nurses, pharmacists, radiographers, physiotherapists, podiatrists, chiropodists and optometrists. After a period of specific prescribing training these HCPs are often referred to as non-medical prescribers (NMPs). There has been a limited amount of research that has investigated the influences on the prescribing behaviour of NMPs. Additional research with NMPs would be beneficial to contribute to the currently limited understanding of the prescribing behaviour of NMPs. Knowledge about the influences on NMPs' decisions will also provide further insight into the training and support requirements of these HCPs. A programme of research was conducted to explore the influences on the prescribing behaviour of nurse and pharmacist independent and/or supplementary prescribers working in primary and community care. The research utilised a range of qualitative data collection techniques including interviews, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and the critical incident technique. The Q-method was also used. This allowed perspectives amongst NMPs about prescribing influences to be identified. In total, 104 NMPs took part in this research. This included 31 pharmacist prescribers and 73 nurse prescribers. NMPs were mainly recruited via their primary care trust prescribing lead but pharmacist prescribers were also contacted using the details they provided to their professional body. NMPs in this research occupied a wide range of roles and had diverse demographic characteristics. Relevant ethical approval was obtained before conducting this research. NMPs were motivated by their desire to feel safe, keep it simple and fit in with prescribing culture when prescribing. They also had a code of practice which underlined their rejection of some influences, such as patient pressure and logistical influences, and their acceptance of others, such as guidelines and formularies. The research found that the influences on NMPs' prescribing decisions can be best understood through identifying how and in what circumstances NMPs take responsibility for issuing prescriptions and making prescribing decisions. As well as providing insights into the training and support requirements of NMPs the findings of this research are important to others that may want to research the prescribing influences on NMPs in the future.

No description available.

The aim of the first three experiments was to delineate the physical characteristics of an artificial call for which naive Peking X Aylesbury ducklings show the greatest natural preference. In each experiment SO ducklings were tested at 20 ± 2 hrs. posthatching, for following and approach responses to one of four auditory stimulus conditions or a silent model. The responsiveness of subjects was greatest when the call contained tone frequencies of 500, 800, and 1600Hz and was presented at a repetition rate of 4/second with a note duration of 50 milliseconds (Optimal call). In Experiment 4 Peking X Aylesbury eggs were exposed to intermittent prenatal stimulation with the optimal call and the hatchlings were tested for responsiveness to this call at 20 ± 2 hrs. posthatching. Subjects with prenatal auditory experience of the optimal call showed significantly greater responsiveness to this call than non-stimulated control subjects. The aim of the final experiment was to determine whether the natural auditory stimulus preferences of ducklings could be overridden through sheer prenatal experience of a non-preferred call. Ducklings with prenatal experience of the non-preferred call continued to show as strong a preference for the optimal call as non stimulated control subjects. The responses of both stimulated and non-stimulated subjects to the optimal call were significantly stronger than the responses of stimulated and non-stimulated subjects to the non-preferred call. The responses of stimulated subjects to the non-preferred call were only slightly stronger than responses of non-stimulated subjects to the same call. These results indicate that responsiveness to calls for which naive birds show the greatest preference is enhanced by prenatal experience of the preferred call. This effect is not evident, however, when subjects are stimulated prenatally with a non-preferred call.

No description available.

No description available.

To date, there is compelling evidence to show that theory-of-mind development is influenced by different environmental and cognitive factors. However, despite our understanding of the different individual processes that facilitate theory-of-mind acquisition, what remains relatively unclear is how these processes operate together during development. The goal of the present dissertation is to examine mediation (examines the relationship between two different factors and address the question of “why” or “how” one variable predicts or causes an outcome variable) and moderation (examines “when” or “for whom” a variable most strongly predicts or causes an outcome variable) processes that can help explain why and under what conditions environmental and cognitive factors are important for theory-of-mind development. The investigation began by examining the influence of environmental factors on theory-of-mind development. Mediation analyses were used to examine “why” environmental factors such as family (i.e., family risk) and socio-linguistic factors (i.e., parental cognitive talk), may be important for theory-of-mind development. Preliminary results demonstrated possible mediated effects of both family risk and parental cognitive talk on theory of mind. That is, family risk may delay children’s theory-of-mind development by impeding the rate of language acquisition, whereas parental cognitive talk may facilitate more advanced theory-of-mind understanding by encouraging more parent-child reciprocity during conversations. Next, the effects of cognitive factors on theory-of-mind development were explored. Moderation analysis was used to examine under what conditions children’s language abilities and conflict inhibition skills (children’s ability to inhibit a prepotent response while responding with a less salient response) are important for theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there may be limited effects of child language and conflict inhibition on early theory of mind, advanced theory-of-mind understanding such as false belief requires both. However, optimal effects of child language on false-belief understanding occurred when children also had high levels of conflict inhibition ability. These findings suggest that effects of child language on false belief are contingent on children’s conflict inhibition skills. Finally, to investigate how environmental and cognitive factors operate together during theory-of-mind development, moderation analysis was conducted to examine whether delays in language and/or conflict inhibition can be compensated for by more exposure to parental cognitive talk (and vice versa) during theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there was no evidence to suggest compensatory effects, results demonstrated that child language and parental cognitive talk both independently contributed to theory of mind. These findings suggest that environmental (e.g., parental cognitive talk) and cognitive factors (e.g., child language) play distinct roles during theory-of-mind development. Overall, these results demonstrate the value of understanding theory-of-mind development from a bioecological perspective where children are both directly and indirectly influenced by multiple mechanisms during theory-of-mind development.

L’intertextualité devrait permettre d’appréhender l’œuvre sarrautienne dans ses contradictions structurelles, réflexivement représentées, dans son évolution problématique, dans sa spécificité littéraire. Une première partie, analytique, met en évidence le régime moderne de l’emprunt, à travers l’étude de deux Nouveaux Romans emblématiques (Portrait d’un inconnu, Le planétarium), tandis que s’amorcent, avec « disent les imbéciles » et Ich sterbe, un tournant autobiographique et une restauration de la directivité auctoriale, caractéristiques des derniers opus. Une seconde partie, synthétique, retrace le contexte culturel de l’emploi figuré du mot tropismes ; s’efforce de répondre à l’objection qui oppose la composition d’Enfance à la discontinuité fragmentaire des autres livres ; propose d’identifier, dans la « sous-conversation », la réécriture d’une forme de dialogue commenté que Proust, héritier de Balzac, a perfectionnée, mais qui devient, chez Sarraute, le lieu d’une déconstruction littéraire du soupçon moderne, où son œuvre peut trouver sa cohérence thématique et stylistique comme sa pertinence historique en se mesurant à un paradigme majeur du XXème siècle. Enfin, un Répertoire des allusions est joint en Appendice pour illustrer la densité de l’intertexte sarrautien, de Tropismes à Ouvrez. – Manifestant la radicalité d’une recherche expérimentale, d’un « tâtonnement aveugle dans le langage », l’intertextualité offre un point de vue critique sur l’œuvre sarrautienne, permettant de saisir comment le projet littéraire, à la fois psychologique et poétique, d’un auteur se réfléchit et s’épuise dans les tensions souvent extrêmes de ses textes indécidables, à l’inapparente opacité, attendant de l’avenir d’imprévisibles métamorphoses. / Is Intertextuality a permanent (even a structural) component of the Nathalie Sarraute’s writing? To maintain this critical position, we should first scrutinize how the intertextuality system, especially in Portrait of a Man Unknown and in The planetarium, is strongly perturbing the narrative conventions and promoting a reflexive approach of the text; while Fools say and Ich sterbe show an autobiographical evolution and a restoration of the author’s directivity; then some examples from a missing Index of References based upon the whole of the Sarrautean oeuvre should confirm the extent of intertextuality; in a second section, we should relativize the originality of the sarrautean tropisms by studying how the traditional forms of dialog or fragment are renewed by such a rhetorical “estrangement”. So, with the question of intertextuality, we could realize how a literary project become distorted by the practice of writing, since the Sarraute’s post-romantic conceptions heavily contrast with the modernist features of her works, which is a deciding factor of their aporetic ambiguity.

There have been many commercial, cultural, and literary endeavors which have examined connections between African Americans and the Irish. Irish musicians as diverse as De Dannan, U2, and Van Morrison have all voiced their debt to the African-American traditions of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Popular mediums, such as newspaper cartoons and columns, as well as a recent spate of Irish films (The Commitments, The Crying Game , and In the Name of the Father) have characterized the experience of the Irish as colonized subjects, wholly parallel with the experience of disenfranchised African Americans. In a literary context, most examples link the Harlem Renaissance with the Celtic Revival, relying upon instances when James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke and others connected the two. Often, however, such comparisons have been made at the expense of racial and cultural differences. / Relying upon Frederick Douglass's affiliation with the Irish, my dissertation works to uphold racial and cultural differences between African Americans and the Irish in order to assert that it is precisely because of their distinctions that both communities have been useful to each other in the articuation of powerful discourses of liberation. I employ a methodology that simultaneously engages the terms of culture, race, gender, and history, and, in so doing, I engage a more precise mode of analysis that acknowledges the importance of interracial and intercultural exchanges, yet does not insist that differing entities be collapsed into one another in order to achieve understanding of their inter-relationship. I contend that the association between African Americans and the Irish is valuable because they have fashioned a formidable language of liberation out of difference. Furthermore, I contribute a new dimension to African-American literary studies which have suggested that the dialectic between the literary and the political springs from a self-contained Black tradition. In my contention that the Irish cannot be discounted when chronicling an African-American ideology of freedom, I lay to rest claims of African-American exceptionalism as well as notions that literature works out of self-contained entities that are separated by stringent national borders.

To date, there is compelling evidence to show that theory-of-mind development is influenced by different environmental and cognitive factors. However, despite our understanding of the different individual processes that facilitate theory-of-mind acquisition, what remains relatively unclear is how these processes operate together during development. The goal of the present dissertation is to examine mediation (examines the relationship between two different factors and address the question of “why” or “how” one variable predicts or causes an outcome variable) and moderation (examines “when” or “for whom” a variable most strongly predicts or causes an outcome variable) processes that can help explain why and under what conditions environmental and cognitive factors are important for theory-of-mind development. The investigation began by examining the influence of environmental factors on theory-of-mind development. Mediation analyses were used to examine “why” environmental factors such as family (i.e., family risk) and socio-linguistic factors (i.e., parental cognitive talk), may be important for theory-of-mind development. Preliminary results demonstrated possible mediated effects of both family risk and parental cognitive talk on theory of mind. That is, family risk may delay children’s theory-of-mind development by impeding the rate of language acquisition, whereas parental cognitive talk may facilitate more advanced theory-of-mind understanding by encouraging more parent-child reciprocity during conversations. Next, the effects of cognitive factors on theory-of-mind development were explored. Moderation analysis was used to examine under what conditions children’s language abilities and conflict inhibition skills (children’s ability to inhibit a prepotent response while responding with a less salient response) are important for theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there may be limited effects of child language and conflict inhibition on early theory of mind, advanced theory-of-mind understanding such as false belief requires both. However, optimal effects of child language on false-belief understanding occurred when children also had high levels of conflict inhibition ability. These findings suggest that effects of child language on false belief are contingent on children’s conflict inhibition skills. Finally, to investigate how environmental and cognitive factors operate together during theory-of-mind development, moderation analysis was conducted to examine whether delays in language and/or conflict inhibition can be compensated for by more exposure to parental cognitive talk (and vice versa) during theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there was no evidence to suggest compensatory effects, results demonstrated that child language and parental cognitive talk both independently contributed to theory of mind. These findings suggest that environmental (e.g., parental cognitive talk) and cognitive factors (e.g., child language) play distinct roles during theory-of-mind development. Overall, these results demonstrate the value of understanding theory-of-mind development from a bioecological perspective where children are both directly and indirectly influenced by multiple mechanisms during theory-of-mind development.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-122). Also available on the World Wide Web.