Participatory action research (PAR) approaches harness collaborative partnerships to stimulate change in defined communities. The purpose of this article is to illustrate key methodological strategies used in the application of PAR methods in the particularly challenging environment of a hierarchical organization. A study designed to promote sustainable, insider-generated system-level changes in the provision of end-of-life (EOL) care in the restrictive setting of six state prisons is used as an exemplar of the application of three cardinal principles of PAR. First, development of a collaborative network with active partnership between outsider academic researchers and insider co-researchers began with careful attention to understanding the culture and processes of prisons and gaining the support of organizational leadership, using qualitative data gathering and trust-building. During the implementation phase, promoting co-ownership of change in EOL care through the co-construction of knowledge and systems to enhance sustainable change required carefully-orchestrated strategies to maximize the collaborative spirit of the project. Co-researchers were empowered to examine their worlds and capture opportunities for change using new leadership skills role-modeled by the research team. Third, their local knowledge of the barriers inherent in the contextual reality of prisons was translated into achievable system change by production of a toolkit of formalized and well-rehearsed change strategies that collaborative teams were empowered to enact within their hierarchical prison environment.

Many smokers are aware that smoking is a dangerous health behavior and eventually try to quit smoking. Unfortunately, most quit attempts end in failure. Traditionally, the addictive nature of smoking has been attributed to the pharmacologic effects of nicotine. In an effort to offer a more comprehensive, biobehavioral analysis of smoking behavior and motivation, some researchers have begun to consider the role of social factors in smoking. In line with recent recommendations to integrate social and pharmacological analyses of smoking, we reviewed the experimental literature examining the effects of nicotine and nicotine withdrawal on social functioning. The review identified 13 studies that experimentally manipulated nicotine and assessed social functioning, 12 of which found support for nicotine's enhancement of social functioning. Although few experiments have investigated social functioning, they nevertheless offer compelling evidence that nicotine enhances social functioning in smokers and suggest that nicotine deprivation may hamper social functioning in those dependent on nicotine. Future directions for investigating social outcomes and context in those who use nicotine products are discussed with a focus on leveraging advances in social and developmental psychology, animal research, sociology, and neuroimaging to more comprehensively understand smoking behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Cigarette craving is a cardinal feature of smoking, which is the leading preventable cause of death. Despite its clinical relevance, there remains a pressing need to develop new approaches for controlling craving. Although olfactory cues (OCs) are especially well suited to reduce affectively charged cravings, there has been surprisingly little research on the topic. We investigated the strategic use of OCs to reduce cigarette craving. Abstinent smokers (N = 232) initially sampled and rated a series of OCs. Participants then were exposed to in vivo smoking cues, which produced robust cigarette cravings. During peak craving, they were randomly assigned to sniff one of three types of OCs (all of which they had previously sampled) while their craving, and a set of responses thought to be associated with craving, were assessed. OCs that a participant had rated as pleasant reduced craving more than did exposure to odor blank (i.e., neutral) or tobacco-related OCs. This effect persisted over the course of 5 min. In addition, smokers with the most specific autobiographical memory systems were most responsive to the craving-reducing effects of pleasant OCs. About 90% of participants reported they could imagine using a pleasant OC to curb their craving in the natural environment. The present data suggest that OCs show promise for controlling cravings and highlight the need to conduct further research to test whether OCs may prove useful alone or in combination with existing approaches as a smoking cessation intervention.

Learning to read specializes a portion of the left mid-fusiform cortex for printed word recognition, the putative visual word form area (VWFA). This study examined whether a VWFA specialized for English is sufficiently malleable to support learning a perceptually atypical second writing system. The study utilized an artificial orthography, HouseFont, in which house images represent English phonemes. House images elicit category-biased activation in a spatially distinct brain region, the so-called parahippocampal place area (PPA). Using house images as letters made it possible to test whether the capacity for learning a second writing system involves neural territory that supports reading in the first writing system, or neural territory tuned for the visual features of the new orthography. Twelve human adults completed two weeks of training to establish basic HouseFont reading proficiency and underwent functional neuroimaging pre and post-training. Analysis of three functionally defined regions of interest (ROIs), the VWFA, and left and right PPA, found significant pre-training versus post-training increases in response to HouseFont words only in the VWFA. Analysis of the relationship between the behavioral and neural data found that activation changes from pre-training to post-training within the VWFA predicted HouseFont reading speed. These results demonstrate that learning a new orthography utilizes neural territory previously specialized by the acquisition of a native writing system. Further, they suggest VWFA engagement is driven by orthographic functionality and not the visual characteristics of graphemes, which informs the broader debate about the nature of category-specialized areas in visual association cortex.

Lists of words varying in m, matched in frequency; varying in goodness, matched in m and frequency; and matched in frequency, varying in m, were used in VDT experiments. Word goodness was clearly related, m possibly related, and frequency essentially unrelated to visual duration threshold.