Prior Hypothesis (prior + hypothesis)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Initial physiological responses and perceived hyperarousal predict subsequent emotional numbing in pediatric injury patients

JOURNAL OF TRAUMATIC STRESS, Issue 3 2006
Nicole R. Nugent
The present study tested the hypothesis that acute posttraumatic hyperarousal would lead to the development of emotional numbing (EN) symptoms in a pediatric injury population. Eighty-two youths aged 8,18 years were recruited from the emergency department of a Midwestern children's hospital. Heart rate was recorded from emergency medical services reports and a 12-hour urine collection was initiated upon admission. Six weeks and 6 months later, depression and PTSD symptoms were assessed. Initial heart rate and urinary cortisol levels predicted 6-week and 6-month EN after controlling for concurrent depression, avoidance, and reexperiencing symptoms and 6-week hyperarousal symptoms. These findings provide empirical support for prior hypotheses concerning the development of PTSD symptoms over time. [source]


Differentiating Good Soldiers from Good Actors*

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 6 2007
Robin S. Snell
abstract In a qualitative interview study, 20 Hong Kong Chinese informants were asked to report stories about colleagues who were either ,good soldiers' or ,good actors'. In stories about good soldiers, informants attributed their colleagues' organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) primarily to prosocial or pro-organizational motives. Informants' stories about good actors broke down into three major subcategories of citizenship-related impression management: OCB attributed primarily to impression management motives; alleged pseudo-OCB concomitant with minimal compliance; and alleged pseudo-OCB concomitant with counterproductive behaviour. When distinguishing good soldiers from good actors, informants adopted two criteria for attribution: wilful behavioural inconsistency, i.e. low generality of behaviour across contexts; and alleged false pretence, i.e. discrepancy between claims or allusions and actual deeds. Our findings partially supported a prior hypothesis from attribution theory, that consistency was a criterion for attribution, but indicated that consensus, i.e. correspondence between the focal colleague's behaviour and other employees' behaviour, failed to differentiate good soldiers from good actors. Informants generally regarded OCB as socially desirable only when it was attributed primarily to prosocial/pro-organizational motives. [source]


Maternal severe migraine and risk of congenital limb deficiencies

BIRTH DEFECTS RESEARCH, Issue 8 2006
Ferenc Bánhidy
Abstract BACKGROUND: Migraines occurs frequently during pregnancy; however, there are no published data on their possible teratogenic potential in a controlled epidemiological study. Therefore, we examined the risk of congenital abnormalities in infants born to women who had migraines and other headaches during pregnancy. METHODS: Between 1980 and 1996, the Hungarian Case-Control Surveillance of Congenital Abnormalities evaluated 22,843 cases (newborns or fetuses) with congenital abnormalities, 38,151 control newborn infants without any abnormalities, and 834 malformed controls with Down syndrome. RESULTS: Migraines anytime during pregnancy occurred in 565 (2.5%) mothers of the case group compared with 713 (1.9%) mothers in the control group (crude prevalence odds ratio [POR], 1.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2,1.5) and 24 (2.9%) pregnant women in the malformed control group (crude POR, 0.9; 95% CI, 0.6,1.3) The mothers of 247 cases, 533 controls, and 21 malformed controls had severe migraines during the second and/or third months of pregnancy. There was only 1 congenital abnormality group: limb deficiencies, which had a higher rate of maternal migraines during the second and third months of pregnancy both at the comparison of cases and matched controls (adjusted POR, 2.5; 95% CI, 1.1,5.8) and of cases and malformed controls (adjusted POR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.3,3.0). There was no association between other headaches and different congenital abnormalities at the comparison of cases and controls. CONCLUSIONS: Our data showed that maternal severe migraines during the second and/or third months of pregnancy were associated with an increased risk of congenital limb deficiencies. A similar association was not detected between congenital anomalies and other headaches during pregnancy. Our study was not based on a prior hypothesis; therefore, these data can be considered only as a signal that needs confirmation by independent data sets. Birth Defects Research (Part A), 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Cladistic coding of genomic maps

CLADISTICS, Issue 5 2002
Cyril Gallut
A new method of genomic maps analysis is described. The purpose of the method is to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships from the genomic organization of taxa. Our approach is based on gene order coding. This coding allows the description of genome topology without a prior hypothesis about evolutionary events and phylogenetic relationships. Different characters are used for each gene: (1) presence/absence, (2) orientation, and (3) relative position. The relative position of a particular gene inside the genome is the pair of genes surrounding it. The relative position character represents all the positions of a gene in the sampled genomes. It is coded as a multistate character. Our coding method has a priori variable cost implications on operators such as inversion, transposition, and gene loss/gain, which we discuss. The overall approach best fits the "duplication, random loss" evolutionary model. The coding method allows the reconstitution of a possible hypothetical common ancestor genome at each node of the tree. This reconstitution is based on the character states' optimization; it comes down to choosing, among all possible optimizations, the optimization compatible with a complete genome topology at each internal node. The multistate coding of gene relative position, which is an undeniable advantage of this method, permits this reconstitution. [source]