Ei sanat salahan joua : fennistiikan murteenkeruun historiaa 1868 - 1925

Pro gradu -tutkielmani käsittelee Suomen murteiden sanakirjan taustaksi kerätyn Suomen murteiden sana-arkiston kartuttamisen historiaa; fennistisen murteenkeruun alkuvaiheita. Lähestyn murresanakirjan pitkää hanketta tutkimus- ja kulttuurihistoriallisesta näkökulmasta. Kansankielen sanakirja on fennistiikan merkittävimpiä tutkimushankkeita. Suo-men kielen vanhojen pitäjänmurteiden sanasto on ällistyttävän laaja aineisto, jonka keräämiseen ja julkaisemiseen on kulunut toista vuosisataa, ja sanakirjan toimitustyö jatkuu edelleen. Kansanmurteemme sisältävät paitsi kielitieteellisesti mielenkiintoista aineistoa myöskin runsaasti tietoa agraarisen elinkeinorakenteen aikakaudelta. Dialektologia ja kansatiede kulkevat käsikkäin. Murresanakirja on niin ollen merkittävä kansallinen omaisuus, jonka arvo koko suomalaiselle yhteiskunnalle on eittämättä suuri. Murteiden sanakirjan syntysanat on ajoitettavissa vuoteen 1868, vaikka toki fennistiikassa oli leksikografisia pyrintöjä jo ennen sitä (mm. Lönnrotin Suomalais-ruotsalainen sanakirja). Sanakirjahankkeessa on hahmotettavissa kolme vaihetta, joita kutsun ryhdistäytymisiksi. Nämä tapahtuivat noin vuosina 1896, 1916 ja 1925. Valotan työni aluksi hieman kansallisten tieteiden ja 1800-luvun alun aatehistoriallista taustaa (luku 2), jonka jälkeen tutkin murresanakirjahankkeen alkuvaiheita ja ensimmäisten sanastonkeruiden käynnistymistä (luku 3). Käsittelen kutakin hankkeen organisatorista muutosvaihetta ja hallinnollisten puitteiden kehittymistä luvuissa 4-6. Lopuksi pohdin murresanakirjan ja murteenkeruun historiallista merkitystä fennistiikalle ja yhteiskunnalle (luku 7). Tutkimukseni lähteinä on oppihistoriallista kirjallisuutta sekä murteiden keruusta vastanneiden yhteisöjen asiakirjoja. Erityisen kiinnostaviksi osoittautuivat Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskuksessa säilytettävät sanakirjahankkeen hallinnolliset asiakirjat 1916-1925. Tuon esiin varhaisempiakin pöytäkirjamainintoja. Hankkeen alussa Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Kielitieteellinen Osakunta ja Kotikielen Seura keräsivät ensimmäisiä sanastokokoelmia. Tämän jälkeen ensimmäinen ryhdistäytyminen tapahtui vuodesta 1896 lähtien, jolloin Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura otti vastuun hankkeesta, E. N. Setälän tunnettua sanakirjaohjelmaa ja E. A. Ekmanin Suomen kielen keräilysanastoa noudattaen. Keruu oli kuitenkin liian hidasta, joten 1916 perustettiin Suomen kielen sanakirjaosakeyhtiö, jotta toimintaan saataisiin enemmän varoja. Ensimmäinen maailmansota ja sisällissota kuitenkin romahduttivat rahan arvon, ja kolmannen kerran hanke jouduttiin organisoimaan uudelleen vuonna 1925, Sanakirjasäätiön muodossa. Vuonna 1976 Sanakirjasäätiö liittyi Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskukseen. Kansanmurteiden keräämisessä korostuu kaikissa keruun vaiheissa kaksi asiaa. Ensinnäkin sanastuksella oli aina kiire. Vanhat murteet olivat katoamassa, ja ne piti saada nopeasti talteen. Tähän kiinnitettiin huomiota jo varhain, ja vielä 1900-luvun loppupuoliskollakin, kun keruuhanke hiljalleen saatiin loppuunviedyksi. Toiseksi sanakirjahanke on aina joutunut elämään kädestä suuhun, toisin sanoen taloudelliset puitteet ovat sanelleet keruumahdollisuudet. Vakaalle taloudelliselle pohjalle hanke pääsi vasta 1930-luvulla Sanakirjasäätiön aikana, jolloin siihen alettiin saada valtion rahoitusta. Murresanakirjahankkeen läpi kulkee punaisena lankana kansallisromanttinen innostus ja isänmaallis-tieteellinen pyrkimys suomen kirjakielen kehittämiseen, joka vielä 1800-luvun puolivälissä oli meneillään. Kansalliset tieteet lujittivat itsenäistymistä ja suoma-laistumista. Aatehistorian kautta sanakirjahanke asettuu laajempaan yhteyteen. Avainsanat: tutkimushistoria, suomen kielen murteet, murteenkeruu, dialektologia, suomen murteiden sanakirja, fennistiikan oppihistoria, leksikografia, kansalliset tieteet, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Kotikielen Seura, Suomen kielen sanakirjaosakeyhtiö, Sanakirjasäätiö

Sairaanhoitajaksi kasvattaminen : Sairaanhoitajakoulutus ja siinä käytetyt oppikirjat Suomessa vuoteen 1967 asti

The historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks from the late 1880s to 1967: the training of nurses in the Foucauldian perspective. This study aims, first, to analyse the historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks in the training of nurses and in nursing education: what Foucauldian power processes operate in the writing and publishing processes? What picture of nursing did early nursing books portray and who were the decision makers? Second, this study also aims to analyse the processes of power in nurse training processes. The time frame extends from the early stages of nurse training in the late 1880s to 1967. This present study is a part of textbook research and of the history of professional education in Finland. This study seeks to explain how, who or what contributed the power processes involved in the writing of nursing textbooks and through textbooks. Did someone use these books as a tool to influence nursing education? The third aim of this study is to define and analyse the purpose of nurse training. Michel Foucault´s concept of power served as an explanatory framework for this study. A very central part of power is the assembling of data, the supplying of information and messages, and the creation of discourses. When applied to the training of nurses, power dictates what information is taught in the training and contained in the books. Thus, the textbook holds an influential position as a power user in these processes. Other processes in which such power is exercised include school discipline and all other normalizing processes. One of most powerful ways of adapting is the hall of residence, where nursing pupils were required to live. Trained nurses desired to separate themselves from their untrained predecessors and from those with less training by wearing different uniforms and living in separate housing units. The state supported the registration of trained nurses by legislation. With this decision the state made it illegal to work as a nurse without an authorised education, and use these regulations to limit and confirm the professional knowledge and power of nurses. Nurses, physicians and government authorities used textbooks in nursing education as tools to achieve their own purposes and principles. With these books all three groups attempted to confirm their own professional power and knowledge while at the same time limit the power and expertise of others. Public authorities sought to unify the training of nurses and the basis of knowledge in all nursing schools in Finland with similar and obligatory textbooks. This standardisation started 20 years before the government unified nursing training in 1930. The textbooks also served as data assemblers in unifying nursing practices in Finnish hospitals, because the Medical Board required all training hospitals to attach the textbooks to units with nursing pupils. For the nurses, and especially for the associations of Finnish nurses, making and publishing their own textbooks for the training of nurses was a part of their professional projects. With these textbooks, the nursing elite and the teachers tended to prepare nursing pupils’ identities for nursing’s very special mission. From the 1960s, nursing was no longer understood as a mission, but as a normal vocation. Nurses and doctors disputed this view throughout the period studied, which was the optimal relationship between theory and practice in nursing textbooks and in nurse education. The discussion of medical knowledge in nursing textbooks took place in the 1930s and 1940s. Nurses were very confused about their own professional knowledge and expertise, which explains why they could not create a new nursing textbook despite the urgency. A brand new nursing textbook was published in 1967, about 30 years after the predecessor. Keyword: nurse, nurse training, nursing education, power, textbook, Michel Foucault

Kasvatus- ja valmennustyylien yhteys juniorijääkiekkoilijoiden suoriutumisstrategioihin, tyytyväisyyteen ja joukkueen koheesioon

This thesis focused on the roles of parenting styles (including parental norm-breaking attitudes and parents perceptions of players coach-athlete relationship), players achievement strategies, perceptions of coaching behaviours, coaches own perceptions, and perceptions of team leaders, in explaining player satisfaction and team cohesion. Five studies based on the same data provided by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association (FIHA) were carried out. The sample sizes were as follows: players, 1,018; parents, 979; coaches, 35; and team leaders, 57. Questionnaires and self-report questionnaires were used to collect data. The results revealed that: (1) family-parenting styles provided a basis for adolescents achievement strategies and influenced whether the sons played fairly or engaged in rule breaking. Democratic parenting was associated with the adolescents high level of mastery-oriented behaviour, low level of task-irrelevant behaviour, and low level of norm-breaking behaviour. The adaptive achievement strategies enhanced player satisfaction. (2) Democratic parenting styles influenced parents perception of the coach-athlete relationship, which was further associated with a coaching style that also influenced how the child experienced his own cohesion within the team. (3) The adolescents tended to reflect the similarity in leadership behaviours between home and sport from both democratic and autocratic backgrounds. In particular, the compensating combination of non-demanding styles at home and a high level of support by a positive coach was associated with high team cohesion. (4) The stress factor changed the dynamics of the parenting behaviour. (5) Players ratings, coaches ratings, and the ratings of team leaders all differed upon coaching behaviours and team cohesion. Only the players ratings were associated with cohesion high with positive coaching and low with autocratic coaching. The developmental age and the long-lasting membership on an ice hockey team made positive coaching acceptable for all players. Sixteen year-olds from all families rated high team cohesion with positive coaching. Parenting styles were associated with adolescent ice hockey players achievement strategies, norm breaking, and satisfaction. The combination of parenting and coaching was associated with cohesion rated by players. The staff s experiences of coaching and its effects on cohesion differed from the players experiences. These results contribute to understanding links between parenting styles, achievement strategies, norm breaking, and satisfaction, as well as parenting styles, coaching behaviour and cohesion. This work has importance for parents, coaches, sport organizations, and teachers.

School and choice : Anethnography of a primary school with bilingual classes

Based on a one-year ethnographic study of a primary school in Finland with specialised classes in Finnish and English (referred to as bilingual classes by research participants), this research traces patterns of how nationed, raced, classed and gendered differences are produced and gain meaning in school. I examine several aspects of these differences: the ways the teachers and parents make sense of school and of school choice; the repertoires of self put forward by teachers, parents and pupils of the bilingual classes; and the insitutional and classroom practices in Sunny Lane School (pseudonym). My purpose is to examine how the construction of differentness is related to the policy of school choice. I approach this questions from a knowledge problematic, and explore connections and disjunctions between the interpretations of teachers and those of parents, as well as between what teachers and parents expressed or said and the practices they engaged in. My data consists of fieldnotes generated through a one-year period of ethnographic study in Sunny Lane School, and of ethnographic interviews with teachers and parents primarily of the bilingual classes. This data focuses on the initial stages of the bilingual classes, which included the application and testing processes for these classes, and on Grades 1─3. In my analysis, I pursue poststructural feminist theorisations on questions of knowledge, power and subjectivity, which foreground an understanding of the constitutive force of discourse and the performative, partial, and relational nature of knowledge. I begin by situating my ethnographic field in relation to wider developments, namely, the emergence of school choice and the rhetoric of curricular reform and language education in Finland. I move on from there to ask how teachers discuss the introduction of these specialised classes, then trace pupils paths to these classes, their parents goals related to school choice, teachers constructions of the pupils and parents of bilingual classes, and how these shape the ways in which school and classroom practices unfold. School choice, I argue, functioned as a spatial practice, defining who belongs in school and demarcating the position of teachers, parents and pupils in school. Notions of classed and ethnicised differences entered the ways teachers and parents made sense of school choice. Teachers idealised school in terms of social cohesiveness and constructed social cohesion as a task for school to perform. The hopes parents iterated were connected to ensuring their children s futurity, to their perceptions of the advantages of fluency in English, but also to the differences they believed to exist between the social milieus of different schools. Ideals such as openmindedness and cosmopolitanism were also articulated by parents, and these ideals assumed different content for ethnic majority and minority parents. Teachers discussed the introduction of bilingual classes as being a means to ensure the school s future, and emphasised bilingual classes as fitting into the rubric of Finnish comprehensive schooling which, they maintained, is committed to equality. Parents were expected to accommodate their views and adopt the position of the responsible, supportive parent that was suggested to them by teachers. Teachers assumed a posture teachers of appreciating different cultures, while maintaining Finnishness as common ground in school. Discussion on pupils knowledge and experience of other countries took place often in bilingual classes, and various cultural theme events were organized on occasion. In school, pupils are taught to identify themselves in terms of cultural belonging. The rhetoric promoted by teachers was one of inclusiveness, which was also applied to describe the task of qualifying pupils for bilingual classes, qualifying which pupils can belong. Bilingual classes were idealised as taking a neutral, impartial posture toward difference by ethnic majority teachers and parents, and the relationship of school choice to classed advantage, for example, was something teachers, as well as parents, preferred not to discuss. Pupils were addressed by teachers during lessons in ways that assumed self responsibility and diligence, and they assumed the discursive category of being good, competent pupils made available to them. While this allowed them to position themselves favourably in school, their participation in a bilingual class was marked by the pressure to succeed well in school.

Kehittävän kuntoutuksen mahdollisuudet. : Tutkimus Aslak -kuntoutuksen työkytkennän ja asiakkuuden rakentumisesta.

The possibilities of developmental rehabilitation. A study on the construction of work relatedness and the customer in Aslak rehabilitation The challenge of work-related rehabilitation is to anticipate the factors threatening work ability and to affect them. The purpose of this study was to analyze how work-related rehabilitation is constructed in practice and what are the challenges and, at the same time, the possibilities of an innovative transformation of rehabilitation when trying to achive this goal. The theoretical basis is cultural-historical activity theory and developmental work research. Based on a historical analysis, I studied rehabilitation activity empirically using the data gathered from one Aslak programme (Aslak = occupationally oriented medical rehabilitation) over two years. I described and analysed the construction of Aslak using ethnographic data and interviews. The data includes audio- and video-recordings of the Aslak course, fieldnotes, documents and other materials used in the course. The study aimed to reveal rehabilitation practices from different perspectives carried out by different stakeholders and participants in the Aslak course. It focused on the Aslak trajectory produced by a multiorganizational subject. I analyzed the rehabilitation activity using the method of ethnographic analysis of infrastructure. The method of analyzing the construction of the object of rehabilititation the customer was a membership categorization analysis (MCD) based on the ethnomethodological research tradition. I analyzed the meanings denoting customers given by different parties during one Aslak process and the relations between the meanings. Based on this analysis, I studied the disturbances, ruptures, and innovations in the rehabilitation activity. The results of the study show that the infrastructure of Aslak has different basic ideas. Aslak is constructed most explicitly on the infrastructure of medical rehabilitation. The second layer has been provided with some tools of identifying and preventing well-defined occupation-specific load factors. However, it has failed to perform a new structure, as Aslak has encountered, at the same time, rapid changes in working life. The study identified some promising markers representing new kinds of work-related rehabilitation ideas, but they proved to be incomplete and fragile. As a consequence of the multilayered infrastructure, the contents of the Aslak course were split into fragmented phases and disconnected themes, which were blocked in by the master idea of medical orientation. Its relationship to work remained weak and obscure. The categorizations of customers in Aslak were manifold and contradictory. According to the results, the possibilities for transforming work-related rehabilitation lie both in changing the orientation to the customer to be more relevant to changing working life and forging the infrastructural innovations related to this change. The results showed that a new work-relatedeness would be difficult but possible to construct. What is needed is the construction of an infrastructure that will support a coherent master idea of work-related rehabilitation over the entire trajectory of a process. A shared idea of a rehabilitation object must be constructed in close collaboration between different stakeholders, such as Kela (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland), occupational health services, work organizations, and rehabilitation institutes. Key words: Aslak rehabilitation, work-related rehabilitation, development of rehabilitation, customer of rehabilitation, developmental work research, analysis of infrastructure, membership category analysis

Pain in juvenile idiopathic arthritis : parents and children as agents of disease management

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a severe childhood disease usually characterized by long-term morbidity, unpredictable course, pain, and limitations in daily activities and social participation. The disease affects not only the child but also the whole family. The family is expected to adhere to an often very laborious regimen over a long period of time. However, the parental role is incoherently conceptualized in the research field. Pain in JIA is of somatic origin, but psychosocial factors, such as mood and self-efficacy, are critical in the perception of pain and in its impact on functioning. This study examined the factors correlating and possibly explaining pain in JIA, with a special emphasis on the mutual relations between parent- and patient-driven variables. In this patient series pain was not associated with the disease activity. The degree of pain was on average fairly low in children with JIA. When the children were clustered according to age, anxiety and depression, four distinguishable cluster groups significantly associated with pain emerged. One of the groups was described by concept vulnerability because of unfavorable variable associations. Parental depressive and anxiety symptoms accompanied by illness management had a predictive power in discriminating groups of children with varying distress levels. The parent’s and child’s perception of a child’s functional capability, distress, and somatic self-efficacy had independent explanatory power predicting the child’s pain. Of special interest in the current study was self-efficacy, which refers to the belief of an individual that he/she has the ability to engage in the behavior required for tackling the disease. In children with JIA, strong self-efficacy was related to lower levels of pain, depressive symptoms and trait anxiety. This suggests strengthening a child’s sense of self-efficacy, when helping the child to cope with his or her disease. Pain experienced by a child with JIA needs to be viewed in a multidimensional bio-psycho-social context that covers biological, environmental and cognitive behavioral mechanisms. The relations between the parent-child variables are complex and affect pain both directly and indirectly. Developing pain-treatment modalities that recognize the family as a system is also warranted.

Expert Identity in Development of Core-Task-Oriented Working Practices for Mastering Demanding Situations

The point of departure in this dissertation was the practical safety problem of unanticipated, unfamiliar events and unexpected changes in the environment, the demanding situations which the operators should take care of in the complex socio-technical systems. The aim of this thesis was to increase the understanding of demanding situations and of the resources for coping with these situations by presenting a new construct, a conceptual model called Expert Identity (ExId) as a way to open up new solutions to the problem of demanding situations and by testing the model in empirical studies on operator work. The premises of the Core-Task Analysis (CTA) framework were adopted as a starting point: core-task oriented working practices promote the system efficiency (incl. safety, productivity and well-being targets) and that should be supported. The negative effects of stress were summarised and the possible countermeasures related to the operators' personal resources such as experience, expertise, sense of control, conceptions of work and self etc. were considered. ExId was proposed as a way to bring emotional-energetic depth into the work analysis and to supplement CTA-based practical methods to discover development challenges and to contribute to the development of complex socio-technical systems. The potential of ExId to promote understanding of operator work was demonstrated in the context of the six empirical studies on operator work. Each of these studies had its own practical objectives within the corresponding quite broad focuses of the studies. The concluding research questions were: 1) Are the assumptions made in ExId on the basis of the different theories and previous studies supported by the empirical findings? 2) Does the ExId construct promote understanding of the operator work in empirical studies? 3) What are the strengths and weaknesses of the ExId construct? The layers and the assumptions of the development of expert identity appeared to gain evidence. The new conceptual model worked as a part of an analysis of different kinds of data, as a part of different methods used for different purposes, in different work contexts. The results showed that the operators had problems in taking care of the core task resulting from the discrepancy between the demands and resources (either personal or external). The changes of work, the difficulties in reaching the real content of work in the organisation and the limits of the practical means of support had complicated the problem and limited the possibilities of the development actions within the case organisations. Personal resources seemed to be sensitive to the changes, adaptation is taking place, but not deeply or quickly enough. Furthermore, the results showed several characteristics of the studied contexts that complicated the operators' possibilities to grow into or with the demands and to develop practices, expertise and expert identity matching the core task. They were: discontinuation of the work demands, discrepancy between conceptions of work held in the other parts of organisation, visions and the reality faced by the operators, emphasis on the individual efforts and situational solutions. The potential of ExId to open up new paths to solving the problem of the demanding situations and its ability to enable studies on practices in the field was considered in the discussion. The results were interpreted as promising enough to encourage the conduction of further studies on ExId. This dissertation proposes especially contribution to supporting the workers in recognising the changing demands and their possibilities for growing with them when aiming to support human performance in complex socio-technical systems, both in designing the systems and solving the existing problems.

Spinaalistenoosipotilaiden psyykkinen hyvinvointi ennen leikkaushoitoa ja sen jälkeen

Surgical treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a treatment option for those patients who remain severely symptomatic after a course of conservative treatment. Majority of the patients treated surgically enjoy good-to-excellent outcomes with respect to pain alleviation and functional recovery. However, between 20% and 40% of the patients who have surgery for LSS do not benefit from it. The knowledge of the psychological factors associated with recovery and treatment outcome is still scarce. The aim of this study was to assess LSS patients selected for surgical treatment. Specifically, the study assessed the prevalence of depression (Beck Depression Inventory, BDI) before surgical treatment and three months after the treatment. Also preoperative life satisfaction (four-item Life Satisfaction scale) of the LSS patients was studied. Furthermore, the patients satisfaction with surgery outcome at the three months postoperative stage was studied. One-fifth (20%) of the LSS-patients were found to have depression preoperatively. The patients assessments of the pain intensity or location were not associated with depression. The factors that did associate with depression were subjective disability of everyday living and poor life satisfaction. In addition to this, low sense of coherence and poor life satisfaction were associated with depression in logistic regression models. Significant associations were seen between preoperative depression and postoperative high disability scores, high symptom severity scores and higher pain intensity ratings. The patients with continuous depression (60% of the patients who had preoperative depression) showed less improvement in symptom severity, disability, pain and walking capacity than the patients who did not experience depression at any stage. In those patients who recovered from depression (35% of the patients with preoperative depression), the postoperative improvement was rather similar to the improvement seen in the normal mood group. One-fourth (25%) of the preoperative patients with LSS were found to be dissatisfied with life. The dissatisfied patients were significantly younger and had more self-reported somatic comorbidity. The dissatisfied patients had also elevated subjective disability scores and more extensive pain locations. Also lower coping resources and higher BDI scores were associated with life dissatisfaction. Younger age and somatic comorbidity were associated with life dissatisfaction in regression models. Two-thirds (66%) of the patients were at least clearly satisfied with the surgery outcome at three months postoperative stage. In group comparisons, the lack of physical, functional and emotional well-being was associated with the patients dissatisfaction with the surgery outcome. Younger age, postoperative symptom severity, disability and depression were independently associated with dissatisfaction with the surgery outcome. The results show that depression and psychological well-being are important factors with respect to LSS patients functional ability and recovery both before and three months after surgical treatment. Therefore, the clinical practice recommendations should include an assessment of depression

Factors related to seat belt use : A Turkish case

Seat belts are effective safety devices used to protect car occupants from severe injuries and fatalities during road vehicle accidents. Despite the proven effectiveness of seat belts, seat belt use rates are quite low, especially in developing countries, such as Turkey. The general aim of the present study was to investigate a large variety of factors related to seat belt use among Turkish car occupants using different perspectives and methods and therefore, to contribute to the design of effective seat belt use interventions for increasing seat belt use rates in Turkey. Five sub-studies were conducted within the present study. In the first sub-study, environmental (e.g., road type) and psycho-social factors (e.g., belt use by other car occupants) related to the seat belt use of front-seat occupants were investigated using observation techniques. Being male, of a young age, and traveling on city roads were the main factors negatively related to seat belt use. Furthermore, seat belt use by the drivers and front-seat passengers was highly correlated and a significant predictors of each other. In the second sub-study, the motivations of the car occupants for seat belt use and non-use were investigated using interview techniques. Situational conditions, such as traveling on city roads and for short distances, and not believing in the effectiveness and relevance of seat belt use for safety, were the most frequently reported reasons for not using a seat belt. Safety, habit and avoiding punishment were among the most frequently reported reasons for using a seat belt. In the third sub-study, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Health Belief Model (HBM) were applied to seat belt use using Structural Equation Modeling techniques. The TPB model showed a good fit to the data, whereas the HBM showed a poor fit to the data. Within the TPB model, attitude and subjective norm were significant predictors of intentions to use a seat belt on both urban and rural roads. In the fourth sub-study, seat belt use frequency and motivations for seat belt use among taxi drivers were investigated and compared between free-time and work-time driving using a survey. The results showed that taxi drivers used seat belts more when driving a private car in their free-times compared to when driving a taxi during their work-times. The lack of a legal obligation to use a seat belt in city traffic and fear of being attacked or robbed by the passengers were found as two specific reasons for not using a seat belt when driving a taxi. Lastly, in the fifth sub-study, the relationship of seat belt use to driver and health behaviors was investigated using a survey. Although seat belt use was related both to health and driver behaviors, factor analysis results showed that it grouped with driver behaviors. Based on the results of the sub-studies, a tentative empirical model showing different predictors of seat belt use was proposed. According to the model, safety and normative motivations and perceived physical barriers related to seat belt use are the three important predictors of seat belt use. Keywords: Seat belt use; environmental factors; psycho-social factors; safety and normative motivations; the Theory of Planned Behavior; the Health Belief Model; health behaviors; driver behaviors; front-seat occupants; taxi drivers; Turkey.

Pitch discrimination in optimal and suboptimal acoustic environments: electroencephalographic, magnetoencephalographic, and behavioral evidence

Pitch discrimination is a fundamental property of the human auditory system. Our understanding of pitch-discrimination mechanisms is important from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. The discrimination of spectrally complex sounds is crucial in the processing of music and speech. Current methods of cognitive neuroscience can track the brain processes underlying sound processing either with precise temporal (EEG and MEG) or spatial resolution (PET and fMRI). A combination of different techniques is therefore required in contemporary auditory research. One of the problems in comparing the EEG/MEG and fMRI methods, however, is the fMRI acoustic noise. In the present thesis, EEG and MEG in combination with behavioral techniques were used, first, to define the ERP correlates of automatic pitch discrimination across a wide frequency range in adults and neonates and, second, they were used to determine the effect of recorded acoustic fMRI noise on those adult ERP and ERF correlates during passive and active pitch discrimination. Pure tones and complex 3-harmonic sounds served as stimuli in the oddball and matching-to-sample paradigms. The results suggest that pitch discrimination in adults, as reflected by MMN latency, is most accurate in the 1000-2000 Hz frequency range, and that pitch discrimination is facilitated further by adding harmonics to the fundamental frequency. Newborn infants are able to discriminate a 20% frequency change in the 250-4000 Hz frequency range, whereas the discrimination of a 5% frequency change was unconfirmed. Furthermore, the effect of the fMRI gradient noise on the automatic processing of pitch change was more prominent for tones with frequencies exceeding 500 Hz, overlapping with the spectral maximum of the noise. When the fundamental frequency of the tones was lower than the spectral maximum of the noise, fMRI noise had no effect on MMN and P3a, whereas the noise delayed and suppressed N1 and exogenous N2. Noise also suppressed the N1 amplitude in a matching-to-sample working memory task. However, the task-related difference observed in the N1 component, suggesting a functional dissociation between the processing of spatial and non-spatial auditory information, was partially preserved in the noise condition. Noise hampered feature coding mechanisms more than it hampered the mechanisms of change detection, involuntary attention, and the segregation of the spatial and non-spatial domains of working-memory. The data presented in the thesis can be used to develop clinical ERP-based frequency-discrimination protocols and combined EEG and fMRI experimental paradigms.

Fatigued driving : prevalence, risk factors and groups, and the law

Fatigue and sleepiness are major causes of road traffic accidents. However, precise data is often lacking because a validated and reliable device for detecting the level of sleepiness (cf. the breathalyzer for alcohol levels) does not exist, nor does criteria for the unambiguous detection of fatigue/sleepiness as a contributing factor in accident causation. Therefore, identification of risk factors and groups might not always be easy. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to incorporate fatigue in operationalized terms into either traffic or criminal law. The main aims of this thesis were to estimate the prevalence of fatigue problems while driving among the Finnish driving population, to explore how VALT multidisciplinary investigation teams, Finnish police, and courts recognize (and prosecute) fatigue in traffic, to identify risk factors and groups, and finally to explore the application of the Finnish Road Traffic Act (RTA), which explicitly forbids driving while tired in Article 63. Several different sources of data were used: a computerized database and the original folders of multidisciplinary teams investigating fatal accidents (VALT), the driver records database (AKE), prosecutor and court decisions, a survey of young male military conscripts, and a survey of a representative sample of the Finnish active driving population. The results show that 8-15% of fatal accidents during 1991-2001 were fatigue related, that every fifth Finnish driver has fallen asleep while driving at some point during his/her driving career, and that the Finnish police and courts punish on average one driver per day on the basis of fatigued driving (based on the data from the years 2004-2005). The main finding regarding risk factors and risk groups is that during the summer months, especially in the afternoon, the risk of falling asleep while driving is increased. Furthermore, the results indicate that those with a higher risk of falling asleep while driving are men in general, but especially young male drivers including military conscripts and the elderly during the afternoon hours and the summer in particular; professional drivers breaking the rules about duty and rest hours; and drivers with a tendency to fall asleep easily. A time-of-day pattern of sleep-related incidents was repeatedly found. It was found that VALT teams can be considered relatively reliable when assessing the role of fatigue and sleepiness in accident causation; thus, similar experts might be valuable in the court process as expert witnesses when fatigue or sleepiness are suspected to have a role in an accident’s origins. However, the application of Article 63 of the RTA that forbids, among other things, fatigued driving will continue to be an issue that deserves further attention. This should be done in the context of a needed attitude change towards driving while in a state of extreme tiredness (e.g., after being awake for more than 24 hours), which produces performance deterioration comparable to illegal intoxication (BAC around 0.1%). Regarding the well-known interactive effect of increased sleepiness and even small alcohol levels, the relatively high proportion (up to 14.5%) of Finnish drivers owning and using a breathalyzer raises some concern. This concern exists because these drivers are obviously more focused on not breaking the “magic” line of 0.05% BAC than being concerned about driving impairment, which might be much worse than they realize because of the interactive effects of increased sleepiness and even low alcohol consumption. In conclusion, there is no doubt that fatigue and sleepiness problems while driving are common among the Finnish driving population. While we wait for the invention of reliable devices for fatigue/sleepiness detection, we should invest more effort in raising public awareness about the dangerousness of fatigued driving and educate drivers about how to recognize and deal with fatigue and sleepiness when they ultimately occur.

Everyday beliefs about food and health

The series of studies addresses several everyday beliefs about food and health from the perspective of everyday thinking and paranormal beliefs. They are "you are what you eat" beliefs, attitudes towards genetically modified and organic foods, and belief in alternative medicine. The survey studies included from 239 to 3261 Finnish participants. It was found that food consumption can have far-stretching consequences for the impressions of the eater in a "you are what you eat" manner. The results also demonstrated that belief in alternative medicine was related to belief in the paranormal, as were to a lesser degree attitudes towards genetically modified and organic foods. The study also addressed paranormal beliefs and belief in alternative medicine from the perspective of category observance. Paranormal believers as well as believers in alternative medicine were much more liberal than skeptics in violating categorical boundaries and attributed, for example, intentionality (mental) to body growth (biological) and life (biological) to energy (physical). In addition, the study addressed the relation of these attitudes and beliefs with preferred thinking style. The results demonstrated that belief in alternative medicine was especially appealing to intuitive thinkers, while rational thinking was unrelated to it. The same pattern was demonstrated for negative attitudes towards genetically modified food and positive attitudes towards organic food. In addition, it was demonstrated, however, that such unscientific notions may exist not instead of but parallel with "better knowledge". In sum, the present thesis contributes to the understanding of superstitious elements in various everyday attitudes and beliefs, and investigates their relationship with general inclinations towards belief in the paranormal. It appears that some very common everyday beliefs and attitudes about food and health contain elements of a superstitious nature. Involving conceptual enmeshment they go beyond mere associations, and can coincide with scientifically valid views on the same topic.

Work Stress and Early Atherosclerosis: Do Genetic Background and Pre-Employment Risk Factors Explain Conflicting Findings?

According to the models conceptualizing work stress, increased risk of health problems arise when high job demands co-occur with low job control (the demand-control model) or the efforts invested by the employee are disproportionately high compared to the rewards received (effort-reward imbalance model). This study examined the association between work stress and early atherosclerosis with particular attention to the role of pre-employment risk factors and genetic background in this association. The subjects were young healthy adults aged 24-39 who were participating in the 21-year follow-up of the ongoing prospective "Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns" study in 2001-2002. Work stress was evaluated with questionnaires on demand-control model and on effort-reward model. Atherosclerosis was assessed with ultrasound of carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT). In addition, risk for enhanced atherosclerotic process was assessed by measuring with heart rate variability and heart rate. Pre-employment risk factors, measured at age 12 to 18, included such as body mass index, blood lipids, family history of coronary heart disease, and parental socioeconomic position. Variants of the neuregulin-1 were determined using genomic DNA. The results showed that higher work stress was associated with higher IMT in men. This association was not attenuated by traditional risk factors of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease or by pre-employment risk factors measured in adolescence. Neuregulin-1 gene moderated the association between work stress and IMT in men. A significant association between work stress and IMT was found only for the T/T genotype of the neuregulin-1 gene but not for other genotypes. Among women an association was found between higher work stress and lower heart rate variability, suggesting higher risk for developing atherosclerosis. These associations could not be explained by demographic characteristics or coronary risk factors. The present findings provide evidence for an association between work stress and atherosclerosis in relatively young population. This association seems to be modified by genetic influences but it does not appear to be confounded by pre-employment adolescent risk factors.

Cortical processing of speech and non-speech sounds in autism and Asperger syndrome

Autism and Asperger syndrome (AS) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by deficient social and communication skills, as well as restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour. The language development in individuals with autism is significantly delayed and deficient, whereas in individuals with AS, the structural aspects of language develop quite normally. Both groups, however, have semantic-pragmatic language deficits. The present thesis investigated auditory processing in individuals with autism and AS. In particular, the discrimination of and orienting to speech and non-speech sounds was studied, as well as the abstraction of invariant sound features from speech-sound input. Altogether five studies were conducted with auditory event-related brain potentials (ERP); two studies also included a behavioural sound-identification task. In three studies, the subjects were children with autism, in one study children with AS, and in one study adults with AS. In children with autism, even the early stages of sound encoding were deficient. In addition, these children had altered sound-discrimination processes characterised by enhanced spectral but deficient temporal discrimination. The enhanced pitch discrimination may partly explain the auditory hypersensitivity common in autism, and it may compromise the filtering of relevant auditory information from irrelevant information. Indeed, it was found that when sound discrimination required abstracting invariant features from varying input, children with autism maintained their superiority in pitch processing, but lost it in vowel processing. Finally, involuntary orienting to sound changes was deficient in children with autism in particular with respect to speech sounds. This finding is in agreement with previous studies on autism suggesting deficits in orienting to socially relevant stimuli. In contrast to children with autism, the early stages of sound encoding were fairly unimpaired in children with AS. However, sound discrimination and orienting were rather similarly altered in these children as in those with autism, suggesting correspondences in the auditory phenotype in these two disorders which belong to the same continuum. Unlike children with AS, adults with AS showed enhanced processing of duration changes, suggesting developmental changes in auditory processing in this disorder.

Soveltuvuuskokeella täydennetty opiskelijavalinta : Seurantatutkimus eräiden sosiaali- ja terveysalan teknisluonteisten koulutusohjelmien (apuvälinetekniikka, hammastekniikka ja optometria) opiskelijavalinnan toteuttamisesta

Aptitude-based student selection: A study concerning the admission processes of some technically oriented healthcare degree programmes in Finland (Orthotics and Prosthetics, Dental Technology and Optometry). The data studied consisted of conveniencesamples of preadmission information and the results of the admission processes of three technically oriented healthcare degree programmes (Orthotics and Prosthetics, Dental Technology and Optometry) in Finland during the years 1977-1986 and 2003. The number of the subjects tested and interviewed in the first samples was 191, 615 and 606, and in the second 67, 64 and 89, respectively. The questions of the six studies were: I. How were different kinds of preadmission data related to each other? II. Which were the major determinants of the admission decisions? III. Did the graduated students and those who dropped out differ from each other? IV. Was it possible to predict how well students would perform in the programmes? V. How was the student selection executed in the year 2003? VI. Should clinical vs. statistical prediction or both be used? (Some remarks are presented on Meehl's argument: "Always, we might as well face it, the shadow of the statistician hovers in the background; always the actuary will have the final word.") The main results of the study were as follows: Ability tests, dexterity tests and judgements of personality traits (communication skills, initiative, stress tolerance and motivation) provided unique, non-redundant information about the applicants. Available demographic variables did not bias the judgements of personality traits. In all three programme settings, four-factor solutions (personality, reasoning, gender-technical and age-vocational with factor scores) could be extracted by the Maximum Likelihood method with graphical Varimax rotation. The personality factor dominated the final aptitude judgements and very strongly affected the selection decisions. There were no clear differences between graduated students and those who had dropped out in regard to the four factors. In addition, the factor scores did not predict how well the students performed in the programmes. Meehl's argument on the uncertainty of clinical prediction was supported by the results, which on the other hand did not provide any relevant data for rules on statistical prediction. No clear arguments for or against the aptitude-based student selection was presented. However, the structure of the aptitude measures and their impact on the admission process are now better known. The concept of "personal aptitude" is not necessarily included in the values and preferences of those in charge of organizing the schooling. Thus, obviously the most well-founded and cost-effective way to execute student selection is to rely on e.g. the grade point averages of the matriculation examination and/or written entrance exams. This procedure, according to the present study, would result in a student group which has a quite different makeup (60%) from the group selected on the basis of aptitude tests. For the recruiting organizations, instead, "personal aptitude" may be a matter of great importance. The employers, of course, decide on personnel selection. The psychologists, if consulted, are responsible for the proper use of psychological measures.