| 1. |
- Dahlbäck, Nils, et al.
(författare)
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Distributed Remembering Through Active Structuring of Activities and Environments
- 2013
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Ingår i: Review of Philosophy and Psychology. - : Springer Netherlands. - 1878-5158 .- 1878-5166. ; 4:1, s. 153-165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we consider a few actual cases of mnemonic strategies among older subjects (older than 65). The cases are taken from an ethnographic study, examining how elderly adults cope with cognitive decline. We believe that these cases illustrate that the process of remembering in many cases involve a complex distributed web of processes involving both internal or intracranial and external sources. Our cases illustrate that the nature of distributed remembering is shaped by and subordinated to the dynamic characteristics of the on-going activity and to our minds suggest that research on memory and distributed cognition should focus on the process of remembering through detailed descriptions and analysis of naturally occurring situations.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Dahlbäck, Nils, et al.
(författare)
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Two ways of grounding the discussion on extended cognition
- 2011
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Ingår i: Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science. - : Cognitive Science Society, Inc.. - 9780976831877 ; , s. 2347-2352
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We question two of the basic foundations of the Extended Mind hypothesis originally formulated by Clark and Chalmers, i.e. that all cognition is organism centered and that the important theoretical issues that the debate surrounding the Extended Mind hypothesis can fruitfully be resolved by to a large extent rely on invented examples of cognitive activities as the empirical foundation. We suggest that one way to proceed is to frame the hypothesis within the larger theoretical framework of activity theory, and another is to conduct extensive field studies of extended cognitive processes. We illustrate our position with examples of how these can be used to reformulate some of the aspects of the Extended Mind hypothesis.
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| 4. |
- Forsberg, Bertil, et al.
(författare)
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Air pollution levels, meteorological conditions and asthma symptoms
- 1993
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Ingår i: European Respiratory Journal. - 0903-1936 .- 1399-3003. ; 6:8, s. 1109-1115
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We wanted to assess relations between the daily occurrence of asthma symptoms and fluctuations of air pollution concentrations and meteorological conditions. In a panel of 31 asthmatic patients residing in the town of Piteå in northern Sweden, severe symptoms of shortness of breath, wheeze, cough and phlegm were recorded in an asthma diary together with suspected causes. Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, black smoke, relative humidity and temperature were used to evaluate the relationship to the environment. By using multivariate analyses, we found that daily variations in the particulate pollution levels, indicated by black smoke levels below the criteria limits, had significant effects on the risk of developing severe symptoms of shortness of breath. This association was stronger among 10 subjects, who had at least five incident days with severe shortness of breath. Meteorological conditions were not significant in the multivariate models. Cough and phlegm did not show significant relationships to any environmental condition that was evaluated. Only one-third of the subjects reported, at least once during the study, symptoms believed to be related to air pollutants, although we found significant correlations between the pollution levels and the frequency of pollution-related symptoms. We conclude that an association has been established for black smoke as pollutant and shortness of breath as respiratory symptom, and that in certain asthmatics, effects were occurring at lower particulate levels than suggested previously.
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| 5. |
- Forsberg, Bertil, et al.
(författare)
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Childhood asthma in four regions in Scandinavia : risk factors and avoidance effects
- 1997
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Ingår i: International Journal of Epidemiology. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0300-5771 .- 1464-3685. ; 26:3, s. 610-619
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: The high and increasing prevalence of childhood asthma is a major public health issue. Various risk factors have been proposed in local studies with different designs.METHODS: We have made a questionnaire study of the prevalence of childhood asthma, potential risk factors and their relations in four regions in Scandinavia (Umeå and Malmö in Sweden, Kuopio in eastern Finland and Oslo, Norway). One urban and one less urbanized area were selected in each region, and a study group of 15962 children aged 6-12 years was recruited.RESULTS: The prevalence of symptoms suggestive of asthma varied considerably between different areas (dry cough 8-19%, asthma attacks 4-8%, physician-diagnosed asthma 4-9%), as did the potential risk factors. Urban residency was generally not a risk factor. However, dry cough was common in the most traffic polluted area. Exposure to some of the risk factors. such as smoking indoors and moisture stains or moulds at home during the first 2 years of life, resulted in an increased risk. However, current exposure was associated with odds ratios less than one.CONCLUSIONS: Our findings were probably due to a combination of early impact and later avoidance of these risk factors. The effects of some risk factors were found to differ significantly between regions. No overall pattern between air pollution and asthma was seen, but air pollution differed less than expected between the areas.
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| 6. |
- Forsberg, Bertil, et al.
(författare)
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Daily air pollution levels and acute asthma in southern Sweden
- 1998
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Ingår i: European Respiratory Journal. - Copenhagen : Munksgaard Forlag. - 0903-1936 .- 1399-3003. ; 12:4, s. 900-905
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aimed to investigate the association between daily air pollution levels and the occurrence of acute respiratory signs and symptoms among people with asthma or asthma-like problems.Thirty eight subjects in the southern Swedish city of Landskrona kept a daily diary for 10 weeks. The daily prevalence of symptoms, supplementary bronchodilator use and peak flow deviations were compared with measurements of environmental nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide, temperature and humidity in the city.The occurrence of severe asthma, both during the day and during the evening, was significantly positively associated with the concurrent 24 h average concentration of NO2, which never exceeded 72 microg x m(-3). A correlation of borderline significance was found between the use of on-demand medication and the NO2 level. However, peak flow deviations were not associated with air pollution or weather conditions, which may be explained by the beneficial effect of bronchodilators used by 28 of the subjects.The results of this study confirm those of some earlier studies and suggest that aggravation of asthma is related to daily variations in air quality, as indicated by relatively low ambient concentrations of nitrogen dioxide. These results also indicate that it may be appropriate to examine severe asthma symptoms separately.
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| 7. |
- Forsberg, Bertil, et al.
(författare)
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People can detect poor air quality well below guideline concentrations : a prevalence study of annoyance reactions and air pollution from traffic
- 1997
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Ingår i: Occupational and Environmental Medicine. - : BMJ. - 1351-0711 .- 1470-7926. ; 54:1, s. 44-48
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- OBJECTIVES: Motor vehicle exhaust fumes are the main source of atmospheric pollution in cities in industrialised countries. They cause respiratory disease and annoy people exposed to them. The relation between ambient exposure to air pollution mainly from motor vehicles and annoyance reactions in a general population was assessed. Also, the importance of factors such as age, sex, respiratory disease, access to the use of a car, and smoking habits on the reporting of these reactions was studied.METHODS: A postal questionnaire was sent out in 55 urban areas in Sweden that had nearly identical air quality monitoring stations of the urban air monitoring network. From each area, 150 people aged 16-70 were randomly selected. The questionnaire contained questions on perception of air quality as well as a question on how often exhaust fumes were annoying.RESULTS: Six-monthly nitrogen dioxide concentrations correlated consistently with the prevalence of reported annoyance related to air pollution and traffic exhaust fumes. Black smoke and sulphur dioxide had no significant effects. The frequency of reporting annoyance reactions was higher among people with asthma, women, and people with lack of access to a car.CONCLUSIONS: In this study town dwellers could detect poor air quality at concentrations well below current guidelines for outdoor air pollution. This suggests that questionnaire studies have a place in monitoring air quality.
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| 8. |
- Forsberg, Bertil, et al.
(författare)
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Prevalence of respiratory and hyperreactivity symptoms in relation to levels of criteria air pollutants in Sweden
- 1997
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Ingår i: European Journal of Public Health. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1101-1262 .- 1464-360X. ; 7:3, s. 291-296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Our knowledge of the adverse health effects from exposure to low levels of air pollution is still insufficient. Early indicators, such as respiratory symptoms, need more attention. We made use of the fact that possible weak effects can be detected more easily when the relevant exposure and other determinants are well controlled. A postal questionnaire was sent to random samples of inhabitants registered as residing in the Vicinity of 55 centrally located air quality monitoring stations in Swedish towns. There were 6,109 questionnaires (76%) returned. Multivariate analyses with confounding control were used to examine the effects of different levels of criteria pollutants on the prevalence of symptoms. The ranges of the half year values were 9-32 and 2-16 mu g/m(3) for nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide respectively. Logistic regression analyses showed higher risks for respiratory problems such as coughs, throat irritation and nose irritation among the persons most exposed, The associations were most obvious for nitrogen dioxide exposure among women. The suggested effects of air pollution exposure cannot be medically evaluated today but they are nevertheless interesting since they are found within common levels usually considered to be safe.
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| 10. |
- Forsblad (Kristiansson), Mattias, 1985-
(författare)
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Distributed cognition in home environments : The prospective memory and cognitive practices of older adults
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis I explore how older people make use of, and interact with, their physical environment in home and near-by settings to manage cognitive situations, specifically prospective memory situations. Older adults have in past research been shown to perform better on prospective memory in real-life settings than what findings in laboratory-like settings predict. An explanation for this paradox is that older adults has a more developed skill of using the environment for prospective memory than younger adults. However, research investigating this explanation has primarily been based on self-reports.I contribute to the understanding of this skill by doing two related things. First I introduce distributed cognition, a theoretical perspective that primarily has been used within professional and socio-technical environments, to the research field of prospective memory in everyday life. Second I present a cognitive ethnography conducted during two years across eight home, and near-by, environments and old-age retired persons, for which I have used theoretical concepts from distributed cognition to analyze observations.The analysis shows rich variations in how participants use common cultural cognitive tools, invent their own cognitive tools, deliberately and incidentally shape more or less functional spaces, make use of other physical features, orient themselves toward and make sense of cognitive resources. I complement both prospective memory and distributed cognition research by describing both the intelligent shaping and use of space. Furthermore, by taking a distributed cognitive perspective I show that prospective memory processes in home environments involve properties, and the management, of a multipurpose environment.Altogether this supports the understanding of distributed cognition as a perspective on all cognition. Distributed cognition is not a reflection of particular work practices, instead it is a formulation of the general features of human cognition. Prospective memory in everyday life can be understood as an ability persons have. However, in this thesis I show that prospective memory can also be understood as a process that takes place between persons, arrangements of space, and tools.
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