Daily Life Interactions Research Articles

Social interactions in daily life

It is well established that individuals who engage in more positive social interactions report a broad array of benefit relative to those with fewer positive social interactions. Yet less is known about how, within individuals, naturally occurring social interactions in daily life relate to momentary indicators of health (e.g., mood, psychological, and physiological stress). The current study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine these within-person relationships, as well as complementary between-person relationships, among 115 adults (75% female; Mage = 41.21). Participants completed six EMA surveys per day for 3 days to report on whether they experienced any social interactions and whether the interactions were pleasant as well as on their mood, pain, tiredness, interest, and perceived stress; they also provided a salivary cortisol sample after each EMA survey. Multilevel modeling analyses showed that individuals felt more happiness and interest, and less sadness, tiredness, and pain, during moments when they were engaged in a social interaction versus when they were not. Individuals also reported less stress during more pleasant versus less pleasant social interactions. When examining between-person effects, we found evidence that people who gave more pleasant interactions generally reported more positive outcomes. This study presents evidence for intraindividual links between social interactions and momentary health indicators in daily life.

FICTIONAL DIALOGUE: PATTERN DESIGN, FIGURATIVE MEANING, LANGUAGE SPECIFICS (BASED ON M.A. SHOLOKHOV’S PROSE)

Purpose. The purpose of the conducted research is revealing the pattern design of the figurative meaning forming in the characters’ speech conversations. We develop the notion of fictional dialogue as the archetypical form of reflecting the daily life interaction in the author’s universe. The article defines the constructive role of ambiguity, contradiction, humorous reality reproduction and paradox in the reader’s interpretation of the coherent literary piece of work. The deduction is made that on constructing the fictional dialogue the author appeals to the specific form of realism and authenticity, representing the language characteristics which the reader admits as typical, though idealized for the particular speech situation. Interpersonal conversation taking place between the characters is embedded into the general communicative process where the narrator and the reader invariably take part. Methodology. The research analyzes the fictional dialogue fragments reflecting the characters’ personal characteristics. The material for investigation is based on the examples of the characters’ interaction taken from the second volume of M.A. Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don”. The concrete methodology applied to the analysis of the speech material is characterized as a complex combination of the elements of descriptive, componental and pragmatic and semantic methods. Results. In the course of fictional dialogue development, the speaking character’s personal characteristics are actualized. The speech conversation partakers’ features, their various correlation determine the author’s choice of the linguistic means in the process of speech conversation constructing, reflecting the verbal behavior of the interacting characters. The author constructs the dialogue in such a way that various (psychological, intellectual, social and cultural) characters’ personality features start to have influence upon the basic development of interpersonal interaction being constructed , as well as determine the external dialogic context. Thus, the reader interpreting the fictional dialogue uses the expression plan to reconstruct the content plan. Practical implications. The material investigated can be used in the practical courses on literary text interpretation and in teaching text linguistics and fictional narrative theory.

It’s a material world: the critical and on-going value of ethnoarchaeology in understanding variation, change and materiality

ABSTRACTContemporary ethnoarchaeology has come a long way from material correlates and ‘fleshing out the past’. This paper re-introduces ethnoarchaeology and opens a debate on its role in archaeology today. We summarize the role ethnoarchaeology has in developing, testing and building archaeological interpretation, and argue for its continuing importance in the wider discipline. This critical role further produces rich ethnographic and material information to think about human-material relationships not necessarily as analogies, but as empirical accounts of how culturally different people engage with the material in complex and variable ways. The study of human-material interaction in daily life and in long-term studies can both challenge and support dominant and emergent theoretical models.

Daily Interpersonal Experience Partially Explains the Association Between Social Rank and Physical Health.

Socioeconomic position is a well-established risk factor for poor physical health. This study examines whether the effects of lower social rank on physical health may be accounted for by differences in daily social experience. In a large community sample (N = 475), we examined whether subjective social rank is associated with self-rated health, in part, through positive and negative perceptions of daily interpersonal interactions, assessed using ecological momentary assessment. Higher social rank was associated with higher average perceived positivity of social interactions in daily life (e.g., B = .18, p < .001), but not with perceived negativity of social interactions. Further, the association between social rank and self-rated physical health was partially accounted for by differences in perceived positivity of social interactions. This effect was independent of well-characterized objective markers of SES and personality traits. Differences in the quality of day-to-day social interactions is a viable pathway linking lower social rank to poorer physical health.

A Test for the Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS): Normative Data and Psychometric Properties

The Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) test is a new tool to evaluate pragmatic abilities in clinical populations with acquired communicative deficits, ranging from schizophrenia to neurodegenerative diseases. APACS focuses on two main domains, namely discourse and non-literal language, combining traditional tasks with refined linguistic materials in Italian, in a unified framework inspired by language pragmatics. The test includes six tasks (Interview, Description, Narratives, Figurative Language 1, Humor, Figurative Language 2) and three composite scores (Pragmatic Productions, Pragmatic Comprehension, APACS Total). Psychometric properties and normative data were computed on a sample of 119 healthy participants representative of the general population. The analysis revealed acceptable internal consistency and good test-retest reliability for almost every APACS task, suggesting that items are coherent and performance is consistent over time. Factor analysis supports the validity of the test, revealing two factors possibly related to different facets and substrates of the pragmatic competence. Finally, excellent match between APACS items and scores and the pragmatic constructs measured in the test was evidenced by experts' evaluation of content validity. The performance on APACS showed a general effect of demographic variables, with a negative effect of age and a positive effect of education. The norms were calculated by means of state-of-the-art regression methods. Overall, APACS is a valuable tool for the assessment of pragmatic deficits in verbal communication. The short duration and easiness of administration make the test especially suitable to use in clinical settings. In presenting APACS, we also aim at promoting the inclusion of pragmatics in the assessment practice, as a relevant dimension in defining the patient's cognitive profile, given its vital role for communication and social interaction in daily life. The combined use of APACS with other neuropsychological tests could also improve our understanding of the cognitive substrates of pragmatic abilities and their breakdown.

Communication and pragmatic breakdowns in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

While there is increasing attention toward cognitive changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the domain of pragmatics, defined as the ability to integrate language and context to engage in successful communication, remains unexplored. Here we tested pragmatic abilities in 33 non-demented ALS patients and 33 healthy controls matched for age and education through 6 different tasks, ranging from discourse organization to the comprehension of figurative language, further grouped in three composite measures for pragmatic production, pragmatic comprehension and global pragmatic abilities. For a subgroup of patients, assessment included executive functions and social cognition skills. ALS patients were impaired on all pragmatic tasks relative to controls, with 45% of the patients performing below cut-off in at least one pragmatic task, and 36% impaired on the global pragmatic score. Pragmatic breakdowns were more common than executive deficit as defined by the consensus criteria, and approximately as prevalent as deficits in social cognition. Multiple regression analyses support the idea of an interplay of executive and social cognition abilities in determining the pragmatic performance, although all these domains show some degree of independence. These findings shed light on pragmatic impairment as a relevant dimension of ALS, which deserves further consideration in defining the cognitive profile of the disease, given its vital role for communication and social interaction in daily life.

The role of the cannabinoid receptor in adolescents′ processing of facial expressions

The processing of emotional faces is an important prerequisite for adequate social interactions in daily life, and might thus specifically be altered in adolescence, a period marked by significant changes in social emotional processing. Previous research has shown that the cannabinoid receptor CB1R is associated with longer gaze duration and increased brain responses in the striatum to happy faces in adults, yet, for adolescents, it is not clear whether an association between CBR1 and face processing exists. In the present study we investigated genetic effects of the two CB1R polymorphisms, rs1049353 and rs806377, on the processing of emotional faces in healthy adolescents. They participated in functional magnetic resonance imaging during a Faces Task, watching blocks of video clips with angry and neutral facial expressions, and completed a Morphed Faces Task in the laboratory where they looked at different facial expressions that switched from anger to fear or sadness or from happiness to fear or sadness, and labelled them according to these four emotional expressions. A-allele versus GG-carriers in rs1049353 displayed earlier recognition of facial expressions changing from anger to sadness or fear, but not for expressions changing from happiness to sadness or fear, and higher brain responses to angry, but not neutral, faces in the amygdala and insula. For rs806377 no significant effects emerged. This suggests that rs1049353 is involved in the processing of negative facial expressions with relation to anger in adolescence. These findings add to our understanding of social emotion-related mechanisms in this life period.

TINJAUAN KONSEP DIRI DAN DIMENSINYA PADA ANAK DALAM MASA KANAK-KANAK AKHIR

Individual self-concept is manifested in things that is related to that individual. Views about one’s self, self-evaluation, and expectation to one’s self formed the individual self-concept. Awareness of self-concept from the view of psychology would help a good and positive self-concept. This positive self-concept would in turn develop positive behaviours and interactions in daily life. This article discuss the concept of self-concept from psychological literatures and perspective. Dimensions, aspects, and factors of self-concept would be discussed and related to children’s situation in late childhood stage. Parents, teachers, and also the surrounding environment have important role in shaping self-concept of children. Social support and positive behavior model from the children’s closest persons and also the community will help in creating positive self-concept that in turn will support the transition to teenager phase. This article hopefully will be able to stimulate researcher to conduct further relevant research concerning children’s self-concept.

Jalos, USA: Transnational Community and Identity

830 Reviews Reading these diverse yet commonly threaded stories, readers can come to their own conclusions regarding the liminal, fluid, intersectional, multiple, and continuously evolving nature of Korean Americans’ ethnic identity formation. The editors, however, organize the personal narratives by utilizing a typology of ethnic identity development, which they introduce in the beginning and revisit at the end of the book. Ethnic identity formation is dependent on a combination of low and high internal factors (retention of ethnic culture, involvement in ethnic social networks, linkages to the homeland) and external factors (racial discrimination). Based on this typology, the editors conclude that the first cohort of Korean Americans had many more problems in developing their ethnic identity than the later cohort. This is due to the earlier cohort having more difficulty in retaining ethnic culture, being less involved in ethnic social networks, and lacking posi- tive linkages to the homeland than the later cohort. It is also because the earlier cohort grew up encountering more intense and overt racial discrimination in America than the later cohort. Thus, the later cohort of Korean Americans are more likely to have a strong positive ethnic identity as Koreans throughout their lives and have experienced much less inner psychological turmoil over their identity than the earlier cohort. The editors therefore conclude that today’s youn- ger generation of Korean Americans are not forced to accept either a Korean or an Asian label. Instead, they have the luxury of choos- ing whether or not they want to add their Korean ethnic identity onto their American identity. They can pick and choose from American and Korean culture in the ways that suit them best. Readers may find that the personal narra- tives that fill the main body of the book do not fit neatly into the ethnic identity typology provided by the editors. No matter their cohort type, all of the essays share the com- mon thread of being in-between, self- conscious, hybrid, and experiencing an identity evolution. The identity typology insufficiently captures the fluid, situational, intersectional, and evolving nature of identi- ties across time and place. Given that the book seeks to provide a cohort analysis, it would have also been helpful to have a more detailed description of the sample so that readers could know how the two cohorts compared in terms of age, gender, place of socialization, and class. It is also unclear how the essays were selected and how representative they are of the Korean American population. Several of the essay authors are sociology PhDs, and many are leaders in the Korean American community. As the editors recognize, their cohort analysis is also impeded by the fact that there are only three essays from the first cohort and that not all of the same subjects were addressed in the essays. Finally, readers who have a more sys- tematic view of racism in America may ques- tion how easily Korean Americans can now forge an optional ethnicity of their own. Younger-Generation Korean Experiences in the United States is, no doubt, a must-read for anyone interested in the subject of 1.5- and second-generations’ ethnic identity forma- tion. Some readers may find the typology of ethnic identity formation helpful. All readers will find the personal narratives of the second generation’s journey of ethnic identity development moving and thought- provoking. Jalos, USA: Transnational Community and Identity, by Alfredo Mirande´. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. 240 pp. $27.00 paper. ISBN: 9780268035327. A BIGAIL A NDREWS University of California, San Diego alandrews@ucsd.edu In a growing literature on transnational migration, Alfredo Mirande´’s book Jalos, USA: Transnational Community and Identity adds a rich portrait of a migrant community, stretched between the hometown of Jalos, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, and its primary destination of Turlock, in the Central Valley of California. Building on seminal contribu- tions to the study of transnationalism, such as the work of Peggy Levitt (2001) and Robert Smith (2006), Mirande´ uses in-depth interviews and focus groups to portray in detail the workings of a transnational com- munity, including religious festivals and traditions, gender interactions in daily life, the ways people maintain a shared identity Contemporary Sociology 44, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on October 27, 2016

Şifa Bahçesi Tasarım Yöntemlerinin Araştırılması

The witness, of the urbanization increase besides profits which it can have for the habitants in the cities has brought some problems. Besides the problems associated with urban life for citizens it also has a negative impact on individual and community health. It is obligatory that some policy be considered for reduce these negative agents. In the recent years the results which have evidenced the physical environment’s effect on human health are accompanied and caused to emerge of approach called “Health Design”. Influence of this action in the landscape architecture have been raised in forms of “Healing Garden”. The designers of these gardens attempt to design places with complementing the natural and artifical elements that has positive effects on users and supply them with mental and physical health. Today Healing Garden design is a relatively new research topic that is researched in detail. However, studies on this subject in abroad has increased rapidly.This research is based on the healing garden design principles in the world and it identifies the role of analysis and research. The results of this articles show that most of the global cases of the healing garden are related to the medical spaces and the hospitals. However, the need of spaces with the function of healing is felt in the public spaces of cities, too. In this way, designed the gardens causes close communication of people with each other so this will lead to more interaction in daily life

Compensating for age limits through emotional crossmodal integration.

Social interactions in daily life necessitate the integration of social signals from different sensory modalities. In the aging literature, it is well established that the recognition of emotion in facial expressions declines with advancing age, and this also occurs with vocal expressions. By contrast, crossmodal integration processing in healthy aging individuals is less documented. Here, we investigated the age-related effects on emotion recognition when faces and voices were presented alone or simultaneously, allowing for crossmodal integration. In this study, 31 young adults (M = 25.8 years) and 31 older adults (M = 67.2 years) were instructed to identify several basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) and a neutral expression, which were displayed as visual (facial expressions), auditory (non-verbal affective vocalizations) or crossmodal (simultaneous, congruent facial and vocal affective expressions) stimuli. The results showed that older adults performed slower and worse than younger adults at recognizing negative emotions from isolated faces and voices. In the crossmodal condition, although slower, older adults were as accurate as younger except for anger. Importantly, additional analyses using the “race model” demonstrate that older adults benefited to the same extent as younger adults from the combination of facial and vocal emotional stimuli. These results help explain some conflicting results in the literature and may clarify emotional abilities related to daily life that are partially spared among older adults.

ETHICS AS A PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (KNOWLEDGE)

ABSTRACTIt is a philosophy of ethical values, morality, about good and bad. In addition to studying the ethical values, as well as a knowledge of the values themselves. Some say that ethics is part of a philosophy that teaches the whole mind (good and bad). The concept of ethics as a field of study of philosophy, especially moral philosophy, ethics has very long been the intellectual discourse of the philosophers. Ethics has become the center of attention since the days of ancient Greece. Until now, even ethics still be interesting and actual field of study. Even considered semankin important to not just talk in academic circles but also practiced in daily life interactions every civilized ma. Keywors : Ethics, Philosophy of Science

The management of language and power in intercultural contact situations in Japan

AbstractThis article examines how participants in intercultural contact situations in Japan manage deviations relating to language and power in their daily life interactions. Based on the management summaries of eight plurilingual residents of Japan, this study investigates how deviations relating to language and power are noted and evaluated and what adjustment strategies are implemented in such cases. The results suggest that the management of language and power is complex and a number of interests may be in conflict. Deviations relating to power may be evaluated both positively and negatively and a lack of language proficiency can actually be used as a powerful tool. It is argued that speaker identity is a crucial issue that influences how interactional problems will be managed.

Disability in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Translation to Portuguese and Validation of the “Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Disability Score”

BackgroundInflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has a physical, psychological and social impact, often compromising the patient's ability to perform daily activities. Recently a new measurement for disability in IBD was developed. The Inflammatory Bowel Disease-Disability Score (IBD-DS) comprises the following domains: mobility, self-care, major daily life activities, gastrointestinal-related problems, mental health and interaction with the environment. The aim of our study was to translate to Portuguese and to validate the IBD-DS. MethodsEighty-five patients, 55 with Crohn's disease (CD) and 30 with ulcerative colitis (UC), completed the Portuguese version of the IBD-DS and the short inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire (SIBDQ-10 questions). Disease activity was assessed using the Harvey–Bradshaw (HB) for CD and partial Mayo score (pMayo) for UC. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to assess the correlation between the IBD-DS and SIBDQ. The Student's t-test was used to compare the mean of IBD-DS between active and inactive disease. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 21.0 and the statistical level of significance (α) was established at 5%. ResultsIn our study, a significant negative correlation between the IBD-DS and the SIBDQ was observed (r=−0.858, p<0.001 for CD and r=−0.933, p<0.001 for UC). There was a statistically significant difference of the mean of IBD-DS between inactive vs. active disease (93.78 vs. 117.57, p=0.016 for CD and 78.96 vs. 137.14, p<0.001 for UC). ConclusionThe Portuguese version of the inflammatory bowel disease-disability score has a strong correlation with patients’ quality of life and clinical disease activity and was shown to be a valid tool to measure disability in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Analyse d'un corpus longitudinal de SMS produits par de jeunes adolescents

In this paper, our hypothesis is that the SMS register of the written language shares certain features with the spoken language. One of them – the way it is being acquired – will be at the center of this study. In contrast to traditional writing, the SMS register is not the result of explicit academic instruction. It is acquired through daily life activities and interactions, just as spoken language is, although at a later stage in time. To examine this question, we collected a longitudinal corpus of natural SMS data (2009-2010), with the collaboration of a junior high school in the region of Poitou-Charentes (France). Data collection took place over the course of one school year (each month) among youngsters between the ages of 11 and 13 years who had no previous experience using a cell phone (a total of 4,524 SMS messages has been collected). These text messages were analyzed using two kinds of indices: a) orthographic indices (categories of spelling errors) and b) dialogic indices (presence/absence of openings or closings). The data are discussed in terms of the specificities of the SMS register as compared to other large registers (traditional spoken, traditional written language).

P.2.b.037 Increase of alertness correlates with early brain-derived neurotrophic factor serum level rise and treatment outcome in major depression

should be taken into consideration, affecting emotional states and appraisals of daily life situations and social contexts in a variety of ways. Within the framework of our study on early treatment response to antidepressants, we explored how attachment style, alexithymia and social support influence the emotional states and daily experiences in healthy individuals. Methods: The Experience Sampling Method was used to collect repeated reports of daily affect and experiences from 104 healthy university students during one week of their normal lives. Affective states were assessed using words adapted from the circumplex model of affect [2]. Daily life experiences were assessed by asking the subjects to report their current activities, recent events, social context and appraisals of them. Attachment styles, alexithymia and perceived social support were assessed using self-report questionnaires (ECR, TAS and PSSS-R, respectively). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze their effect on daily emotional processes, e.g. on daily life level of affect and on daily life contexts. Results: Effect on level of affect: Both anxious and avoidant attachment style were associated with lower total level of positive affect, as well as with higher total level of negative affect. Alexithymia and its subscales ‘difficulty describing feelings’ and ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ predicted higher total level of negative affect, whereas perceived social support predicted lower level of negative affect, higher level of positive and low arousal affect. Effect on daily life contexts: Both anxious and avoidant attachment style were associated with more negatively appraised daily life activities and social interaction. Anxious attachment style was also associated with more negatively appraised daily life events. Alexithymia and its subscales’ difficulty describing feelings’ and ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ predicted more negatively appraised daily life activities, whereas perceived social support predicted more positive appraisals of daily life events, activities, social situations and interaction. Conclusions: The association of attachment style, social support and alexithymia on daily emotional states and experiences was investigated in healthy individuals. Insecure attachment style and alexithymia were found to predict higher levels of experienced negative affect and more negatively appraised daily life activities, whereas perceived social support predicted lower level of negative affect and higher positive affect as well as more positive appraisals of daily life events, activities, social situations and interaction. The results indicate that these psychological factors have an impact on daily life emotional states and experiences and should therefore be taken into account in experience sampling studies of every day mood experiences. This could have implications for future intervention studies of affective disorders.

Reflection does not undermine self-interested prosociality

The cognitive basis of prosocial behavior has received considerable recent attention. Previous work using economic games has found that in social dilemmas, intuitive decisions are more prosocial on average. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis (SHH) explains this result by contending that strategies which are successful in daily life become automatized as intuitions. Deliberation then causes participants to adjust to the self-interested strategy in the specific setting at hand. Here we provide further evidence for the SHH by confirming several predictions regarding when and for whom time pressure/delay will and will not alter contributions in a Public Goods Game (PGG). First, we replicate and extend previous results showing that (as predicted by the SHH) trust of daily-life interaction partners and previous experience with economic games moderate the effect of time pressure/delay in social dilemmas. We then confirm a novel prediction of the SHH: that deliberation should not undermine the decision to benefit others when doing so is also individually payoff-maximizing. Our results lend further support to the SHH, and shed light on the role that deliberation plays in social dilemmas.

Self-Organized Things (SoT): An energy efficient next generation network management

The prodigious rise in consumer electronics and advanced low-cost manufacturing techniques have increased the human-device interaction in daily life. This interaction has led researches on the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) to raise the quality of life in all manner. However, communication between these “things” reduces their lifetimes because of the battery limitation. Due to this reason, energy efficiency has became one of the most important challenge in IoT. In many recent studies, even though this main challenge has been addressed with different aspects, most of all these solutions have compromised the coverage area for energy efficiency. Beside coverage losses, most of the proposed frameworks demand human control and interaction during fail recovery. The energy efficiency and minimization of human interactions should be handled simultaneously in IoT frameworks for more effective deployments. Additionally, the total covered area, distribution of devices and the distribution of events have to be taken into account to successfully manage the network. Having this motivation, we propose an energy efficient Self-Organized Things framework, SoT. The proposed SoT uses an optimization procedure in order to minimize the overall energy consumption of the things, while stabilizing the total coverage area. Moreover, the human dependency is overcomed in SoT by re-defining the next generation self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing procedures of self-organizing network structure of Long-Term Evaluation (LTE) systems. In this self-management process of the SoT, specific spatial distributions of devices and intersections of their coverage areas are also analytically derived. Here the spatial distribution is used to determine the distribution of the active things in 2D space. To increase the efficiency, the remote devices are activated and the event observation rate is maximized. By definition the “event” is a special attribute that the things are observing. In addition to spatial distribution in SoT, a conflict parameter, that calculates the intersection of devices’ coverage areas, is also proposed to enlarge the coverage area. Using this conflict parameter, the selection of overlapping things is prevented and the actual covered area is maximized. By increasing the actual covered area, the probability of observing an event is increased. Consequently, the performance of the proposed SoT framework is measured in terms of the total covered area per energy and network’s lifetime. The through evaluation results verify that proposed framework increases the lifetime of network 150%.

Pet-related peritonitis and its prevention in peritoneal dialysis: a case study.

Infectious peritonitis is a major complication of peritoneal dialysis (PD), accounting for considerable mortality and morbidity of PD patients. Although the usual organisms associated with peritonitis are Staphylococci aureus, Staphylococci epidermidis, Pseudomonas species and other gram-negatives, peritonitis due to zoonotic organisms in the context of close contact with companion animals has been reported in literatures (1-12). On a literature review, 124 cases of peritonitis caused by 12 different zoonotic agents have been reported in PD patients. Thirty of them were following documented contacts with an animal with overall mortality of 13.5% (1). In 27% of the cases, the Tenckhoff catheter had to be removed (1). Pets are very popular in our society with 63% of households in the United States (2,3) and 45% in Europe (1) with at least one pet, dogs and cats being more popular (2). Evidence-based literature suggests that animals/pets are a life-time companion and can help a person better cope with stressful life events, provide psychological help for the isolated or elderly, decrease depression, improve activities of daily life and increase social interaction. Pets are considered part of the family in many households and have very close contacts with their owners. However, close contact with pets is one of the major risk factors for peritonitis caused by zoonotic organisms (4). In our dialysis unit, we also encountered a patient who had close contact with cats with 3 episodes of peritonitis due to Pasteurella multocida over a 6-month period. This prompted us to evaluate the prevalence of pets and pets-related peritonitis in our peritoneal dialysis patients, and to assess the impact of a training session on pet-related peritonitis.

Fear of heights and visual height intolerance

The aim of this review is, first, to cover the different aspects of visual height intolerance such as historical descriptions, definition of terms, phenomenology of the condition, neurophysiological control of gaze, stance and locomotion, and therapy, and, second, to identify warranted epidemiological and experimental studies. Vivid descriptions of fear of heights can be found in ancient texts from the Greek, Roman, and Chinese classics. The life-time prevalence of visual height intolerance is as high as 28% in the general population, and about 50% of those who are susceptible report an impact on quality of life. When exposed to heights, visual exploration by eye and head movements is restricted, and the velocity of locomotion is reduced. Therapy for fear of heights is dominated by the behavioral techniques applied during real or virtual reality exposure. Their efficacy might be facilitated by the administration of D-cycloserine or glucocorticoids. Visual height intolerance has a considerable impact on daily life and interpersonal interactions. It is much more frequent than fear of heights, which is defined as an environmental subtype of a specific phobia. There is certainly a continuum stretching from acrophobia to a less-pronounced visual height intolerance, to which the categorical distinction of a specific phobia does not apply.