Issues in Educational Research, 7(1), 1997, 19-36.

Cognitive dispositions and student nurses' appraisals of their learning environment

Robert H. Cantwell
Faculty of Education
University of Newcastle

234 nursing students completed a questionnaire concerning their expectations of the content and strategic demands of their course. These included expectations of the role and importance of concepts, facts and skills; the degree to which they expected their goals for learning and their study methods to be consistent with those of the lecturers, the degree to which the relevance of a course would influence their study methods; and their expectations of both difficulty levels and their ability to adapt to different aspects of their nursing program. Additionally, student nurses were asked to indicate their preferred approach to learning (Biggs, 1987) and the nature of their control beliefs (Cantwell & Moore, 1996). Correlational analysis indicated that student nurses reporting both a deep approach and adaptive control beliefs were more likely to expect congruence with lecturer goals and study methods, and were more likely to expect a broad knowledge base underlying learning in nursing. Surface-oriented student nurses were more likely to make career relevance-based judgements on study methods, were more likely to expect curriculum emphasis in terms of skill acquisition, and, along with student nurses reporting inflexible control beliefs, more likely to expect general nursing content as both less difficult than mental health nursing, and less difficult to adapt to in the clinical context. Student nurses reporting irresolute control beliefs were less likely to expect congruence between their intended study methods and those they presumed to be endorsed by their lecturers. The findings indicate broad consistency between reported cognitive dispositions and appraisals of the learning environment.

One of the driving assumptions of research into student learning is that the nature of beliefs about learning and knowing held by students will act to mediate the kinds of metacognitive behaviour engaged in during the process of learning (Butler & Winne, 1995; Salomon & Globerson, 1987; Schoenfeld, 1987). While it is acknowledged that task-specific behaviours may be more strongly influenced by situational factors (e.g. Marton & Saljo, 1976a, b; Ramsden, 1988), there exists, nonetheless, a strong literature suggesting that existing student theories and beliefs can provide a strong source of bias on the metacognitive decisions taken by individual students (Biggs, 1993; Eley, 1992). For example, high versus low Need for Cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), naive versus sophisticated Epistemological Knowledge (Schommer, 1993), Mastery Goals versus Performance Goals (Archer, 1994), Deep versus Surface Approach to Learning (Biggs, 1987a) and so forth all may indicate contrasting dispositional biases in the way learning contexts and tasks are conceptualised, and the way parameters for addressing these environments are determined. These dispositions may establish reasonably powerful "road maps", indicating to the student ways of constructing expectations of a course, and determining appropriate terms for addressing the demands of the course.

Typically as students undertake a programme of study, two major types of concerns are at the forefront of their thinking: "What am I expected to know in this course?", and "How best should I go about achieving this?". Such questions implicate reflection on the nature and depth of content in the course, and on the kinds of learning strategies that may be appropriate for meeting those content demands. However, students rarely appraise courses in a vacuum: all students bring to the learning environment an array of experiences and beliefs that may act as significant mediators of how, and in what terms, these kinds of content and strategic demands are assessed. For example, prior learning within a domain may act as a powerful predictor of the kinds of learning expected in a particular field of study. Students may possess certain implicit understandings of the goals, the directions and the nature of learning within a domain that can act as important mediators of what they consider to be important, and what methods typically are rewarded (e.g. Eley, 1992, Thomas & Bain, 1984). Such understandings may, in many cases, be quite inappropriate. Nonetheless, evidence suggests they may also be quite pervasive. Both Meyer and Dunne (1991) and Higgins (1989), for example, allude to a powerful clinical perception in nursing that is often at odds with the espoused objectives of many nursing faculties. In this instance, it may well be that such nurses are likely to interpret and evaluate course demands in terms of clinical relevance and skills rather than broader discipline attributes such as higher level conceptual learning.

At the same time, it would also seem reasonable to speculate that the form and direction of course appraisals may relate to the kinds of dispositions students bring to the learning context. Motivational orientations, for example, may bias the student towards emphasising one form of learning above another, or one interpretation of content demands above another (Archer, 1994; Biggs, 1993), as may self-evaluations of strategic competence in terms of the degree to which students believe the demands of learning to be within their own competency range (Cantwell & Moore, 1996; Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). The present study is concerned with investigating the relationships between two sets of dispositions and the expectations student nurses report of the content and strategic demands of their course. Specifically, the study addresses nursing students' reported approaches to learning (Biggs, 1987b) and control beliefs (Cantwell & Moore, 1996) and their relationship to course expectations. In Biggs' description of approaches to learning, students may be discriminated on the basis of the relative depth with which they appraise and engage learning. Deep learners, for example, typically are motivated by a desire to personalise learning in terms of the construction of reasonably complex knowledge networks. These individuals are concerned with understanding the material to be learned at a deeper level of analysis. Implicit in this approach is a sense of the need for a deeper form of appraisal of learning contexts. That is, we may expect the student endorsing a deep approach to appraise learning, at all levels (task, subject, course), by acknowledging the probability of encountering potentially complex content demands and potentially complex metacognitive demands. On the other hand, surface learners are typically more motivationally detached from the learning context. For these students, the primary motivating force is a desire to achieve some externally derived goal (such as accreditation) by avoiding failure. It is less important for these individuals to accurately appraise the potential complexity of the target content than it is to accurately appraise the potential hurdles to be overcome in order to achieve the external goal. Underlying the surface approach then, is an epistemological and metacognitive framework potentially less sensitive to the possibilities and requirements of deeper understandings and more sensitive to those (often more concrete) aspects of learning perceived to be minimally required to apprehend if failure is to be avoided.

Where the characterisation of students as dispositionally deep or surface in their approach to learning may yield contrasting predictions in relation to the depth of appraisal of learning, Cantwell and Moore's (1996) discrimination of students on the basis of control beliefs addresses possible individual differences in the way in which the self-regulatory demands of learning are conceptualised. Adaptive students, for example, typically anticipate learning to involve a sensitivity to, and enjoyment in, the changing strategic demands of learning, and are thus more likely to consider potential planning and monitoring requirements. In turn, this is likely to extend towards a considered appraisal of the strategies and methods of learning appropriate to and endorsed by the learning context. For some students, however, strategic decision making is often characterised by undue perseverance with habitual routines. These routines tend to be uncritically and inflexibly applied, regardless of their appropriateness to the task, subject or even course. It would be unlikely for these students to anticipate a necessity to fundamentally alter learning methods across the variety of learning contexts confronted. Students reporting such inflexible control beliefs may well be less likely to focus on critical appraisal activity - their "perceptual bias" is less oriented towards the identification of elements of uncertainty than it is towards elements of predictability and certainty. Learning for these students is more likely to be seen as involving a relatively stable array of cognitive processes which remain uninfluenced by the idiosyncrasies of particular tasks and contexts. Amongst a third group of students identified by Cantwell and Moore (1996), the recognition of a need to strategically adjust learning behaviours is accompanied by a diminished ability to generate and orchestrate appropriate strategic responses to tasks and learning contexts ·(see Archer, Bourke & Cantwell, 1996). For these students, determining coherent study plans and programs is problematic. This irresoluteness in cognitive decision-making may be reasonably presumed to also influence initial appraisal activities, particularly in relation to an inability to coherently conceptualise those learning goals likely to be promulgated in the course, and those learning behaviours likely to be endorsed by the learning context.

The objective of the current research, then, is to investigate the possible relationships between the way individuals appraise a specific learning situation and reported beliefs about how learning is generally approached and controlled. Research by Eley (1992) has indicated that the appraisals individuals make of the courses they confront do act as filtering mechanisms mediating the approach to learning likely to be adopted in that specific context. By examining individual's responses to learning in two subject areas - one ostensibly more encouraging of a deep approach, and one ostensibly more encouraging of a surface approach, Eley found that the way students perceived the character and demands of a particular subject significantly influenced the approach to learning adopted for that context. Similar influences in relation to perceived assessment demands have been reported by Thomas and Bain (1984). In the present study, appraisal behaviours are examined in the context of the kinds of expectations a group of nursing students bring to the final year of their nursing programme. Specifically, student nurses, in the second week of the final year of their course, were asked to respond to a questionnaire containing statements about possible expectations the students may have of their forthcoming programme of study. The questionnaire was specifically designed to tap into potential biases that would be consistent with dispositions associated with the reported approaches to learning and control beliefs. For example, there is evidence suggesting that a bias toward a deep or surface approach to learning is related to the way student nurses perceive the nature and goals of nursing courses (Meyer & Dunne, 1991) and engage learning in nursing at both the course (Heggarty, 1990; Higgins, 1989; Trigwell & Presser, 1991) and the specific task (Cholowski & Chan, 1992) levels. Higgins (1989), for example, found a consistent pattern of preconception amongst some nursing students of the nature and goals of "learning in nursing" that reflected a very narrow and technical dispositional bias. This kind of preconception was also apparent in Meyer and Dunne's (1991) study of the learning approaches of nurses, one of which links closely to some aspects of a clinical culture:

Much of what they are taught [in clinical settings] is, in practice (if not in theory) procedure oriented. There is not much scope for divergent thinking although this is a much espoused intention of nursing education. Most task engagement follows a well established step-by-step ritual from which there is in practice little permitted deviation.... this factor demonstrates an underlying inability to adopt alternative and more versatile learning styles. (p513.)

Within this framework, a number of predictions about course appraisals are possible. The study addresses five areas of appraisal in learning in nursing: relevance, knowledge, content focus, institutional congruence, and domain comparisons. The narrow and instrumental bias associated with the surface approach, for example, would suggest that student nurses disposed towards a surface approach to be more likely to expect their learning to be driven by relatively strict "relevance" criteria, to be biased towards a more quantitative conception of the goals of nursing (reflected in an expectation of emphasis on acquiring factual information and nursing skills) and to be less sensitive to possible higher level conceptual learning. Student nurses more disposed towards a deep approach, on the other hand, may well be expected to their learning to involve a lesser emphasis on immediate "relevance", to perceive a more complex knowledge base underlying nursing (where concepts, facts and skills are interrelated), and , as a consequence, to be more sensitive to institutional messages about the optimal goals and methods of learning in nursing. Similarly, students indicating a more adaptive approach to strategy selection and use may well be expected to consciously focus on the strategic requirements specific to different components of a course, and to indicate sensitivity to institutional demands. On the other hand, students inclined towards more inflexible strategic control may well be less sensitive to the subtle (and sometimes glaring) shifts in strategic emphasis expected both within specific areas of study (such as accommodating different levels of nursing knowledge) and across areas of study (such as between academic and clinical learning contexts, and between general nursing and mental health nursing contexts). For those nursing students more uncertain about conceptualising and controlling strategic options (irresolute control), the appraisal process is most likely to indicate a perceived inability to establish the parameters within which learning should occur - particularly in relation to conceptualising the "goals" of learning and in conceptualising effective means of achieving those goals.

What these institutional and preconceptual factors may suggest is that student nurses may be influenced in appraisal behaviour not only by the dispositional biases evident in their reported approaches to learning and control beliefs, but also by the intuitive and/or formal experiences, and reflections on those experiences, within the domain of nursing itself. Certainly the population taking part in the present study do not represent novitiate nurses: they were entering the final year of their pre-service training and thus also likely conduct their appraisals in the context of two years of prior academic and clinical learning. Following Meyer and Dunne (1991), to the extent that as a group these student nurses may endorse a surface approach above a deep approach, and inflexible control behaviours above adaptive control behaviours, and to the extent that the appraisals reflect the content and strategic biases of these approaches, then one may reasonably propose the presence of an institutional effect. Moreover, the predominant career preference of these students towards general rather than mental health nursing (74 % of the nurses nominated general nursing as their preferred option for future clinical practise compared to 26% nominating mental health nursing) may indicate a bias towards what is traditionally seen as the more structured and routinised nursing sector. Arguably such preferences may also influence the kinds of course appraisals reported by nurses.

In summary, the paper reports a study investigating the relationships between nurses' reported dispositions towards aspects of learning (approach to learning and control beliefs) and reported appraisals of the content and strategic demands of their final year pre-service nursing program. Additionally, the study addresses the possibility of linking reported dispositions and appraisals to attributes of a domain-specific clinical culture.

Method

Participants

234 final year pre-service nursing students took part in the study. The sample consisted of 37 male and 197 female nurses. Mean age of the sample was 22.82 years (s.d. 5.46) ranging from 19 to 48 years.

Materials

Participants completed three questionnaires:

1. The Strategic Flexibility Questionnaire (Cantwell & Moore, 1996). This is a 21-item Likert-type questionnaire characterising the self-regulatory control beliefs reported by students. Three scales are included: Adaptive Control, marked by an acknowledgment of the need to adjust processing behaviours in response to changing demands; Inflexible Control, marked by a tendency to persevere with existing processing behaviours even when these may be perceived as inappropriate; and Irresolute Control, marked by difficulty in conceptualising alternative processing behaviours when processing impasses are recognised. Each scale consists of seven items. In the present study, individual scale scores were constructed by calculating a weighted mean score based on the lambda coefficients for each contributing item to the scale in a series of separate confirmatory analyses using the Sepath program from the Statistica package (Statsoft, 1995).

2. The Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, 1987b). This is a 42-item Likert-type questionnaire characterising the approaches to learning typically endorsed by university students. Three approaches may be identified: a Deep Approach, marked by a commitment to deeper understanding of target content; a Surface Approach, marked by a detached academic goal orientation where failure avoidance takes precedence over content mastery; and an Achieving Approach, marked by a pragmatic orientation towards achieving academic learning goals. Each scale consists of a combination of seven motivational statements and seven congruent strategic statements. In the present study, only the deep and surface approaches were utilised. As with the SFQ, scale scores were calculated using a weighted mean score based on the summed lambda contribution of constituent items.

3. A course-specific Expectations of the Learning Environment Questionnaire was constructed for this study. The first six items consisted of a stem followed by its application to four areas of learning in nursing: academic learning in general nursing (AG), academic learning in mental health nursing (AMH), clinical learning in general nursing (CG), and clinical learning in mental health nursing (CMH). Item I asked student nurses to indicate whether the perceived relevance of the particular area of nursing would influence the way they went about learning in that particular area. Two items related to expected knowledge emphasis in learning: Item 2 asked student nurses to indicate how much they expected each area of nursing to place emphasis on ideas and theories, while Item 4 asked student nurses to indicate how much they expected each area of nursing to place emphasis on detailed factual material. Item 5 asked student nurses to predict whether their major focus in learning would be on developing nursing skills above understanding ideas about nursing. Two items sought the degree of agreement between student nurses' expectations of the goals of studying in each of the areas with their expectations of the lecturers' goals (Item 6), and the degree of agreement between student nurses expectations of the methods of studying in each area and their expectations of those methods anticipated by lecturers (Item 3). Items 7 and 8 asked nurses to compare the way they would go about learning in general and mental health nursing in both academic and clinical settings. Items 9 and 10 asked nurses to compare the ease of learning in both general and mental health nursing, both in academic and clinical settings. All items were prepared as Likert-type using a 1 (low agreement) to 5 (high agreement) scale.

Procedures

After obtaining informed consent, all questionnaires were completed in one sitting during normal lecture time. All lecture groups used were from the one subject area. The order of completion of questionnaires was randomised across lecture groups. The questionnaires were completed in the second week of the academic year.

Results

Descriptive statistics for measures of individual differences (control beliefs and approaches to learning) and for the appraisal responses are included in Table 1. All relationships between measures of individual differences and appraisals of the learning environment were estimated by zero-order correlations. For purposes of description, the data are organised in to five areas: Career Relevance (Item 1), Knowledge (Items 2 & 4), Content Focus (Item 5), Institutional Congruence (Items 3 & 6) and Domain comparisons (Items 7 to 10). All analyses were conducted using the Statistica for Windows (v5.1) package.

Descriptive statistics

A series of dependent t-tests indicated a stronger bias within this group of student nurses towards a surface approach above a deep approach (t (234) = 6.78, p <.001), and towards inflexible control above both adaptive control (t (234) = 2.63, p <.01) and irresolute control (t (234) = 18.43,p <.0001). Amongst the appraisal measures, nurses agreed strongly that the course would focus on both conceptual and detailed nursing information. Greatest variation was in the appraisal of skills acquisition and comparative difficulty of general and mental health nursing. Descriptive statistics for all variables are summarised in Table 1.

Relationships between measures of individual difference: There was no relationship between scores on the deep and surface approaches. Within the SFQ, adaptive control was negatively related to inflexible control (r = -.29), while inflexible and irresolute control were correlated (r = .34). There were several significant relationships between the SFQ and SPP scales. A surface approach was significantly correlated with both inflexible control (r = .32) and irresolute control (r = .29), while a deep approach and adaptive control were strongly correlated (r = .57). The correlation matrix is reproduced in Table 2.

*p <.05 **p <.01

Career relevance

Generally, the relationships between the measures of individual differences and the relevance measures were low (see Table 3). While there were significant positive relationships between a surface approach and the relevance measure for both AG and CHG, as well as between irresolute control and CG, the amount of shared variance implied by these correlations is quite minimal. Nonetheless, in the light of both Meyer and Dunne's (1991) and Higgins' (1989) observations of pervasive and narrow clinical cultures in nursing, the results in relation to both general nursing contexts are at least indicative.

*p <.05
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

Knowledge

It was expected that the endorsement of a deep approach would bias nurses towards the construction of a more complex knowledge base incorporating both theoretical and detailed factual information. Conversely, it was expected that endorsement of a surface approach would bias a nurse towards factual information to the likely exclusion of more theoretical information. The data failed, however, to distinguish between approaches at the theoretical level, while it was clearly evident that nurses endorsing a deep approach were more likely to perceive an emphasis on the acquisition of detailed factual information (see Tables 4 & 5). The data also revealed nurses reporting adaptive control beliefs to be significantly more likely to expect both theoretical learning (in AMH) and detailed learning (AMH and CG). While consistent with character of the disposition, the magnitude of the relationships is nonetheless relatively low.

*p <.05 AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

Content focus

The data indicated a significant, but moderate, relationship between a surface conception of learning and the more technical bias of "skills" oriented learning (see Table 6). There were also similar moderate correlations between inflexible control beliefs and a bias towards skills acquisition in both areas of academic nursing. In both instances, these relationships are consistent with the "character" of the dispositions, revealing both a shallow conception of nature of the discipline of nursing, and an emphasis on the routine skills of nursing above the more complex clinical problem solving (Cholowski & Chan, 1992).

*p <.05 **p <.01
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

*p <.05 **p <.01
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

Institutional congruence

This dimension includes perceptions of congruence between nurses' and lecturers' learning goals and learning methods. Nurses endorsing a deep approach were likely to perceive congruence with lecturer goals (particularly in relation to mental health nursing) and, less strongly, in relation to learning methods across all areas (see Tables T & 8). While adaptive control beliefs were associated with congruence in relation to learning goals in mental health, there was a much stronger relationship between this disposition and perceptions of congruence with learning methods. Similarly, while irresolute control was related to a perceived lack of congruence in learning goals in mental health nursing, irresolute nurses were equally less likely to perceive congruence with learning methods across all areas of nursing.

*p <.05 **p <.01
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

Domain comparison

The data revealed two major findings in relation to domain comparisons. There was a significant, although relatively weak, relationship between endorsement of a surface approach and a belief that learning in general nursing (both academic and clinical) was easier than in mental health nursing (see Table 9). A stronger finding was the relationship between inflexible control and a belief that common learning strategies could be used across all domains, as well as a belief that learning in general nursing was easier than learning in mental health nursing.

*p <.05 **p <.01
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

*p <.05 **p <.01
AG = academic learning in general nursing
AMH = academic learning in mental health nursing
CG = clinical learning in general nursing
CMH = clinical learning in mental health nursing

Summary

The data revealed a number of findings consistent with the predictions of the study. Nurses reporting both a deep approach and adaptive control beliefs were more likely to assume congruence with lecturer goals and study methods, and were more likely to perceive a broad knowledge base underlying learning in nursing. Surface-oriented nurses were more likely to make relevance-based judgements on study methods, were more likely to perceive nursing in terms of skill acquisition, and, along with nurses reporting inflexible control beliefs, more likely to perceive general nursing content as both less difficult than mental health nursing, and less difficult to adapt to in the clinical context. Nurses reporting irresolute control beliefs were less likely to assume congruence between their goals for learning in both academic and clinical mental health and those likely to be espoused by their lecturers, and less likely to perceive congruence between their intended study methods and those likely to be endorsed be their lecturers.

Discussion

The aim of the study was to investigate the possible relationships between student dispositions towards learning (as indicated by the SPQ and SFQ) and the kinds of expectations these students might generate in anticipation of engaging the learning context. It was predicted that the nature of the dispositions reported should be systematically related to different kinds and qualities of expectation. That is, how a student appraises the potential demands and requirements of a program of study should reflect the dispositions and biases inherent in the conceptions of learning the student brings to the learning context. In this sense, quite different appraisals could be expected from students reporting different emphases in their apparent approaches to learning and control beliefs.

The data yielded two broad conclusions. First, the magnitude of the relationships between the areas of course expectations and the measures of individual differences were quite moderate. This would suggest, at a minimum level of interpretation, that factors beyond general decontextualised dispositions may be more critical in explaining the kinds of appraisal behaviours students engage in upon entering a course. Second, the significant relationships which did emerge were selective and were consistent with specific attributes of the measures of individual differences under consideration. Students reporting more functional deep and adaptive dispositions, for example, were more likely to perceive potential complexity in the content demands and to perceive congruence between their own goals and methods of study and those they felt were likely to be endorsed by lecturers. The less functional dispositions embodying surface learning and inflexible control also related to appraisals in predictable ways. The instrumental focus of the surface approach was linked to relevance-based judgements on learning methods, while these student nurses were also more biased towards general rather than mental health nursing, and perceived nursing more strongly in terms of skill acquisition. This is consistent with the narrow preconceptions reported by Higgins (1989) and Meyer and Dunne (1991). Additionally, the unwillingness of nurses reporting inflexible control beliefs to discriminate between study methods across learning domains within nursing both reinforces narrowness of the strategic options conceptualised by students endorsing inflexible control practices as well as the possibility of a pervasive narrow clinical culture amongst some nursing students.

For those nurses reporting higher irresolute control behaviours, the picture becomes potentially more confounding. The metacognitive difficulty of students reporting irresolute control beliefs lies primarily in a diminished capacity to orchestrate complexity - either within the content domain or within the strategic domain. Previous research has shown this disposition to be associated ultimately with poorer academic performance amongst undergraduate education (Cantwell & Moore, 1996) and nursing (Cantwell & Moore, under review) students. Additionally, Archer et al (1996) have found that highly irresolute pre-degree enabling students report lower achievement goals? lower self-confidence, less course satisfaction as well achieving as lower grades. In the present study, irresolute control beliefs were associated with an expected lack of congruence with lecturer goals and methods. These data would suggest that nurses lacking the capacity to effectively self-regulate are disadvantaged even at the point of initial appraisal of course demands. The fact that the finding generalises across both academic and clinical contexts, and across both general and mental health nursing, suggests that it may well be a more general metacognitive deficit less influenced by specific attributes of the learning environment.

Overall the data suggest that for some nurses highly functional dispositions are related to what may be seen as more desirable appraisal behaviours. Nursing is seen by deep and adaptive students as a discipline involving awareness of and sensitivity to the content and procedural demands of studying. For nurses biased towards surface and inflexible dispositions, the picture is more akin to that described by Meyer and Dunne (1991). That is, a focus on lower level attributes of learning in nursing (particularly in terms of emphasising skill acquisition) combined with a more limited appraisal of strategic demands in the context of an emphasis on general rather than mental health nursing. This is at least consistent with a view of nursing as a clinical pursuit rather than academic discipline - despite the intention of the course to promote its discipline base. Perhaps most "at risk", however, are those irresolute nurses for whom the construction of any conception of nursing - either in discipline or clinical terms - remains problematic.

Note

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Joint ERA/AARE Conference, Singapore, November, 1996. The constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers are also acknowledged.

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