The causes of low back pain: a network analysis.

Beliefs regarding the cause of low back pain differ between individual sufferers and health care professionals. One consequence of this is the potential acquisition of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour in relation to pain, and increases in the utilisation of primary care services (Health Expect.3(3) (2000) 161). Methods that have been used to elicit the causal interpretation of social phenomena are varied yet they are unable to categorically demonstrate the different weightings or levels of importance that individuals may assign. The diagram method of network analysis allows individuals to spontaneously consider pathways they believe to be critical to a target event and to determine the strength of those pathways. Seventy-one completed diagrams indicating the causes that sufferers perceived to be related to low back pain were analysed. The mean number of direct causal paths was 5.61 (SD=3.25) and mean number of indirect causal links was 1.16 (SD=2.34). A significant correlation between path frequency and path strength was also found (r=0.76, p=0.001). Sufferers do not have an overtly complex view of the causative factors of low back pain but were able to define four core contributory causes (disc, sciatica, lifting, and injury) and one indirect pathway between lifting and injury. There was a clear delineation between external (biomedical) and internal (person-related) factors that were attributed to low back pain acquisition. By determining these causal attributions it is proposed that treatment packages could be tailored to address biases in thinking. This may be particularly useful for those individuals who attribute their pain as a consequence of external (or biomedical) causes.

On mental rotation in three dimensions.

Real three-dimensional models and three-dimensional images were used in a test of mental rotation. Although the 33 men performed better than the 33 women when presented three-dimensional images (14.4 and 11.2), this sex difference disappeared when real models were used (17.5 and 17.3).

"Conservations" with a chimpanzee.

Two chimpanzees (Pan tryglodytes), Fanny and Jane, were presented with liquid and number conservation problems. One chimpanzee, Jane, was successful in solving both sets of problems in that she was not distracted by irrelevant transformations, being influenced only by changes in quantity. Her success appeared to be based on the ability to make inferences rather than on simple perceptual judgement of the final comparison. The results are compared and contrasted with those of Premack, in G. Woodruff, D. Premack, and K. Kennel [(1978). Conservation of liquid and solid quantity by the chimpanzee. Science, 202:99-994] and J. Mehler and T. G. Bever [(1967). Cognitive capacity of very young children. Science, 158:141-142; (1968). Quantification, conservation and nativism. Science, 162:979-981], and it is suggested that there may be a similarity of conservation development between chimpanzees and man.