The impact of greening interventions in school grounds on social behavior and cognitive performance among primary school children

IntroductionOccupational rehabilitation may be offered to workers on long-term sick leave who often report problems with cognitive functioning, anxiety, depression, pain, and reduced work ability. The empirical knowledge is sparce on how occupational rehabilitation may influence cognitive and emotional functioning and patients have not previously been subjected to comprehensive objective testing. The main aim of this study was to assess possible changes in cognitive and emotional functioning such as memory, attention, executive function, and emotion recognition among patients in occupational rehabilitation.MethodsA large sample of 280 sick-listed workers referred to inpatient and outpatient occupational rehabilitation was recruited. The rehabilitation programs had a mean duration of 28 days and comprised physical activity, cognitive behavior treatment components and collaboration with the workplace. A pre–post design was applied to investigate possible changes in cognitive and emotional functioning (primary outcomes) and work and health measures (secondary outcomes), comparing the rehabilitation group with a control group of 70 healthy workers. Individuals in the control group were tested at random time points with an approximately 28 day interval between pre- and post-test, thus coinciding with the duration of rehabilitation. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used for the main analyses.ResultsCompared to the control group, the rehabilitation group had greater gains from pre- to post-test in focused and sustained attention, as well as greater improvements in work ability and reduction in subjective health complaints (SHC), helplessness, pain, pain related to work, anxiety, and depression. In the rehabilitation group, exploratory correlational analysis indicated that improvements in focused and sustained attention were associated with improvements in return-to-work self-efficacy, work ability as well as a reduction in SHC.ConclusionThe sick-listed workers improved in focused and sustained attention and work and health measures after participating in occupational rehabilitation. This study is one of the first to systematically investigate changes in cognitive and emotional functioning during occupational rehabilitation. Clinical practice should benefit from increased knowledge about all cognitive functions and should be specifically aware of the improvements in focused and sustained attention, while memory, executive function and emotion recognition remained unchanged. The results can be used as a motivation to tailor specific interventions to gain further improvements in all cognitive and emotional functions.

Background: Academic staff have different roles which may impose a high mental workolad on them and affect their cognitive function. This study was designed to assess different subscales of mental worklaod and cognitive function in university academic staff. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on 86 faculty members of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. Stratified sampling was used to select participants from different schools. The participants were divided into basic sciences and clinical faculty members. Mental workload was assessed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). Cognitive function was assessed by Stroop test. Data were analyzed by SPSS 26 using Shapiro-Wilks test, Student’s T-test, Mann Whitney U test, univariate ANOVA, and Kruskal-Wallis test. The level of significance was 0.05. Results: Mean age and work history of the participants was 43.6±8.6 yr. and 11.7±9.1 yr., respectively. Mental workload, especially two aspects of mental demand and performance, was high and it was significantly higher in the participants from school of medicine and among those with executive/administrative responsibilities. From subscales of mental workload, physical demand was significantly higher among clinical than basic sciences faculty members (p<0.05). Among different aspects of cognitive function, only numbers of congruent errors were significantly higher among clinical faculties. Mental workload and cognitive function were not significantly correlated. Conclusion: This study showed a high level of mental workload in university academic staff, especially in clinical faculty members, but this high mental workload did not affect their cognitive function.

Children treated for cancer are at risk to develop cognitive problems. Insight in underlying associations with emotional functioning and fatigue can be used to optimize interventions. We therefore aim to study emotional functioning, fatigue, and cognitive functioning in children postcancer treatment and investigate whether fatigue mediates the relationship between emotional and cognitive functioning. Emotional functioning, fatigue, and cognitive functioning were assessed in children post-cancer treatment using subscales of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) Generic Core Scales, Multidimensional Fatigue Scale and Cognitive Functioning Scale. A one sample t-test was used to compare outcomes with general population peers and mediation analysis was used to address the effect of fatigue on the relationship between emotional and cognitive functioning. A total of 137 children (mean age: 13.6, SD±3.3 years; mean time since end of treatment: 7.1 months, SD±5.9) participated. Lower scores on emotional functioning (Cohen's d [D]: 0.4), fatigue (D: 0.8) and cognitive functioning (D: 0.6) were found (p<.001) in children post-cancer treatment than in peers. A medium association was found between emotional and cognitive functioning (standardized regression coefficient [β]: 0.27, p<.001), which was mediated by fatigue (β=0.16). Outcomes on emotional and cognitive functioning are decreased and fatigue is increased in children postcancer treatment. Fatigue mediates the relationship between emotional and cognitive functioning. Our results show the importance to focus on fatigue amongst stress as a target for intervention to improve cognitive functioning.

Cognitive Impairment in Dialysis Patients: Focus on the Blood Vessels?

Objective: In recent years, school belonging has been associated with wellbeing and has been targeted in mental health promotion programmes in schools. Less attention has been paid to the relationship between school belonging and loneliness, especially during primary school years. This study aimed to first analyse the relationship between socioemotional well-being, school belonging and loneliness during primary school years, and secondly, according to the belonginess hypothesis, to examine the role of school belonging as a mediator of the relationship between socioemotional wellbeing and loneliness. Methods: Children (N = 517) of primary school age were recruited from three schools in London to participate in a mental health screening, which involved the completion of standardized self-reported scales for sense of school belonging, loneliness and socioemotional wellbeing. Results: Multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that although correlated, socioemo-tional wellbeing does not predict loneliness. However, in line with belonginess hypothesis, school belonging partially mediated the relationship between socioemotional wellbeing and loneliness in primary school age children. Conclusions: Our findings provide novel data concerning the key role of school be-longing in shaping the relationship socioemotional wellbeing and loneliness in primary school years. This has implications for practitioners working to promote health and wellbeing in schools. KEY POINTS What is already known about the topic: High levels of school belonging have been associated with academic success and better long-term developmental outcomes. Loneliness has been recognised as a potential risk factor related to socioemotional wellbeing of children The relationship between socioemotional wellbeing and loneliness has mostly been investigated in secondary school adolescents and young people. What this topic adds: School belonging partially mediates the relationship between socioemotional wellbeing and loneliness in primary school age children. The effect of school belonging on loneliness could reveal important pathways for the development of related evidence-based interventions. Effects of school belonging on loneliness can be seen as early as in primary school age, which has implications for early intervention.

Depressed patients show cognitive deficits along with mood disturbances. Growing evidence suggests impairment at the level of executive control, which might account in part for patients' difficulties in everyday activities and cognitive performance. Furthermore, there is evidence that depressive patients show information processing biases for emotional information which are thought to play a role in the etiology and maintenance of the disorder. Attentional bias occurs in an early stage of information processing, while memory bias occurs in a later stage of processing (strategic elaboration). The goal of this study was to investigate executive control (the Stroop test) and information processing biases for emotional information in an early stage of processing (the emotional Stroop test) and in a later stage of processing (memory recognition test) in healthy subjects and depressive patients. A further objective of this study was to compare the performance of melancholic and non-melancholic depressive patients in the Stroop test, in the emotional Stroop test and in the memory recognition test. Last, we wanted to investigate the relationship between the performance in an executive control task (the Stroop effect) and information processing bias measures for emotional information. This study is the first to investigate the Stroop test, the emotional Stroop test and the memory recognition test in the same healthy subjects and depressed patients. Furthermore, this is the first study investigating information processing biases for emotional information in the melancholic and non-melancholic patients. Twenty-three depressive patients and 27 healthy subjects performed computerized mixed trial Stroop and emotional Stroop tests. Afterwards, the subjects performed the memory recognition task. Depressive patients were divided according to DSM-IV diagnosis into melancholic and non-melancholic subgroups. Furthermore the level of anxiety and depression was assessed in all subjects. Results of the Stroop task showed that when the depressed patients were analyzed as a whole group, they showed only a trend toward a larger Stroop effect at the beginning of the task. When the analysis was performed with the melancholic and non-melancholic subgroups, contrary to the expectations, only the non-melancholic patients were impaired in the Stroop task compared to the melancholic patients and healthy subjects. Furthermore, we failed to find evidence for an attentional bias in the depressed patients in the emotional Stroop task measured as longer RTs to the emotional compared to neutral stimuli. However, both groups committed more errors in the negative compared to the neutral and positive condition. Memory bias was examined with the memory recognition test since it allowed us to study both “pure” memory and response bias. Response accuracy d’ and response bias beta were calculated according to the signal-detection model. We failed to find evidence for a memory bias in depressed patients measured as discrimination accuracy d’. Considering the response bias measure beta, the analysis showed that the healthy subjects had a more conservative response bias toward positive stimuli. This means that healthy subjects were less likely to answer “yes” to the positive stimuli than to other stimuli. The patients on the other hand had a more conservative response bias toward both negative and positive stimuli compared to neutral stimuli. Contrary to the expectations, there were no differences between the melancholic and non-melancholic patients. The results of the correlational analysis provide evidence that the executive control and emotional information processing are connected phenomena in the healthy subjects but not in the depressed patients. The healthy subjects with poor executive control are paying more attention to the negative stimuli compared to neutral stimuli. This was not the case in the depressed patients. We suggest that the unexpected result of melancholic patients performing better than non-melancholic ones in the Stroop task may be due to their more pronounced rigidity, which makes them more resistant to distraction. Hence, more detailed psychopathological assessment is desirable for future investigations of the melancholic patients. Furthermore, since we failed to find attentional bias in the depressed patients toward the emotional stimuli in the emotional Stroop test, we are concluding that besides methodological issues there are more important clinical factors than diagnosis (i.e. trait anxiety). We are suggesting that memory bias is impossible or difficult to demonstrate in the depressed patients when stimulus exposure occurs under sets that are explicitly antithetical to self-referencing. The relationship found between the Stroop effect and the emotional Stroop effect in the healthy subjects is suggesting that healthy individuals with lower levels of executive control may be more vulnerable to depression.

High impulsivity and attentional bias are common in cocaine-dependent patients and predict poor treatment outcomes. The pharmacological agent modafinil is studied for its cognitive-enhancing capacities and may therefore improve clinical outcomes in crack-cocaine dependent patients. In this study, we investigated first whether pre-treatment impulsivity and attentional bias predict treatment outcome; next whether the drug modafinil given as an add-on treatment to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) improves impulsivity and attentional bias; and last, whether changes in impulsivity and attentional bias are related to improvements in treatment outcome. Crack-cocaine dependent outpatients (n = 65) were randomised to 12 weeks CBT plus modafinil (400 mg/day) or only CBT. Self-reported impulsivity was assessed at baseline using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. At baseline and Week 12, we assessed inhibitory control as a behavioural measure of impulsivity, in terms of cognitive interference (Stroop task) and response inhibition ('stop-signal task'), and attentional bias with the addiction Stroop task. Clinical outcomes were CBT-retention and crack-cocaine use. At baseline, self-reported impulsivity predicted better CBT-retention; low self-reported and behavioural impulsivity and attentional bias predicted less crack-cocaine use. Changes in cognitive performance were not modafinil-related, but most likely due to low adherence. Improvements in impulsivity or attentional bias were not associated with CBT-retention nor changes in crack-cocaine use. Baseline impulsivity and attentional bias predicted clinical outcomes in crack-cocaine dependent patients. There were no firm indications that modafinil reduced impulsivity nor attentional bias in this population. Future studies involving cognitive-enhancing medications should include strategies to optimise adherence, to be better able to evaluate their potential.

Theoretical accounts of attentional and interpretation biases in pain suggest that these biases are interrelated and are both influenced by perceived threat. A laboratory-based study was conducted to test whether these biases are influenced by threat and their interrelationship and whether attention or interpretation biases predict pain outcomes. Healthy participants (n=87) received either threatening or reassuring pain information and then completed questionnaires, interpretation and attentional bias tasks (with eye-tracking) and a pain task (the cold pressor). There was an interaction effect for threat group and stimuli type on mean dwell time for face stimuli, such that there was an attentional bias towards happy faces in the low- but not high-threat group. Further, high threat was also associated with shorter pain tolerance, increased pain and distress. In correlational analyses, avoidance of affective pain words was associated with increased pain. However, no relationship was found between attention and interpretation biases, and interpretation biases were not influenced by threat or associated with pain. These findings provide partial support for the threat interpretation model and the importance of threat and affective pain biases, yet no relationship between cognitive processing biases was found, which may only occur in clinical pain samples. WHAT DOES THIS STUDY ADD?: In healthy participants, no relationship between attention and interpretation biases was found. Eye tracking revealed an association between later attentional processes and pain. Threat influenced attentional biases and pain outcomes, partially supporting theoretical accounts.

Multifaceted stress factors related to infantry combat vehicle (ICV) operation may be considered as major a source of cognitive workload, which may significantly impact the performance of infantry soldiers. The available literature on the effect of ICV’s operational environment on soldier’s cognitive workload is scanty or mostly unreported. The present study was designed to observe the effect of ICV operation on the i) cognitive workload ii) cognitive performance and iii) to study the association between cognitive workload and performance. Thirty soldiers [mean(SD)- age: 31.86(2.9) years, weight: 74.40(7.7) kg, and height: 171.33(3.42) cm] volunteered for this study. Their heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV) and respiratory frequency (RF) were recorded at three time points 00th-05th, 25th-30th and 55th-60th minute during the ICV operation. ‘A’ letter cancellation task (ALCT) was conducted to assess cognitive performance, before and after ICV operation. The internal temperature and relative humidity (RH) of ICV were assessed at same three time-points. Repeated measure ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed ranks test were conducted to observe significant changes in HR, HRV, RF, and cognitive performance. Association between HRV and ALCT was assessed using Pearson’s bivariate correlation. Changes were considered significant when p-value was ≤ 0.05. Significant increase in the HR and RF were observed along with significant decrease in both time and frequency domain of HRV after ICV operation. Similarly, ALCT showed a significant increase in the total and net score, and an increased error score in post-ICV operation. A strong positive correlation was observed between the ICV operation run-trial time and the increasing compartmental temperature (r=0.99) and RH (r=0.89). HRV components showed a negative correlation with ALCT measures. One hour of ICV operation resulted in increased cognitive workload and a significant decrease in the cognitive task performance. Internal temperature and RH of ICV are potential physical stress factors affecting the soldier’s workload and performance.

Background The school curriculum places high demands on students’ cognitive performance, including the executive domain of inhibitory control. Physical activity breaks have been suggested to restore students’ cognitive resources. However, it is unclear which properties (i.e. physical effort and cognitive load) of the physical activity break are suited best to improve subsequent cognitive performance. Therefore, the aim of our study was to investigate the effect of exercise with different physical effort and cognitive load on subsequent inhibitory control. Methods Thirty-five healthy right handed children aged 9 to 13 years were recruited from an academic high school in Basel, Switzerland. On four different days at least one week apart and in randomized order, participants underwent short exercise sessions on an interactive exergaming wall (SMARTfit Single, SMARTfit, USA). The sessions lasted 10 min and combined high (or low) physical effort with high (or low) cognitive load. Participants rated their perceived exhaustion and cognitive load using an RPE scale and the NASA task load index. Before and after the exercise sessions, a standard Stroop task and an affective Stroop task were performed to account for changes in inhibitory control with and without an additional component of emotion processing. Results The manipulation check showed that the high physical effort condition was related to higher rated perceived exhaustion and the high cognitive load condition to higher scores on the NASA task load index. Statistical analysis using 2 x 2 ANOVA revealed that independent from cognitive load, physical effort influenced reaction time on the affective, but not the standard Stroop task. This indicated a greater improvement following exercise at low compared to high physical effort in both the congruent and incongruent trials. This effect was not due to a speed-accuracy trade-off, given that no main effect of physical effort was found for accuracy. There were no main effects of cognitive load and no interaction of physical effort and cognitive load. Conclusion Our results indicated that in school children, lower exercise intensity is more suitable for improving subsequent inhibitory control than exercise with higher physical effort. However, this effect only seems to be present in situations where cognitive challenge is combined with emotionally charged stimuli. This has implications for recommendations on how to optimally organize students’ physical activity during school breaks.

Attentional bias towards threat may be a key factor associated with development and maintaining symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Through the study of attentional bias feature in OCD would be helpful to understand the obsessive-compulsive symptoms and development.We use emotion Stroop task, dot-probe task and eye-tracking methodology in measure attentional bias of obsessive-compulsive disorder, found that OCD patients may performance attentional bias to the general threat stimulus and obsessive-compulsive symptoms related stimulus, and OCD patients may have attentional bias to those obsessive-compulsive symptoms related stimulus in specialty.At present, difficult to repeat studies and inconsistent results are the main problems, and the differences in experimental materials and samples may be the important factors that lead to those inconsistency results. Key words: Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Attentional bias; Stroop; Threating stimuli; Eye-tracking methodology

Patients with amygdala lesions were found to be impaired in recognizing the fear emotion both from face and from music. In patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), impairment in recognition of emotions from facial expressions was reported for disgust, fear, sadness and anger, but no studies had yet investigated this population for the recognition of emotions from both face and music. The ability to recognize basic universal emotions (fear, happiness and sadness) from both face and music was investigated in 24 medicated patients with PD and 24 healthy controls. The patient group was tested for language (verbal fluency tasks), memory (digit and spatial span), executive functions (Similarities and Picture Completion subtests of the WAIS III, Brixton and Stroop tests), visual attention (Bells test), and fulfilled self-assessment tests for anxiety and depression. Results showed that the PD group was significantly impaired for recognition of both fear and sadness emotions from facial expressions, whereas their performance in recognition of emotions from musical excerpts was not different from that of the control group. The scores of fear and sadness recognition from faces were neither correlated to scores in tests for executive and cognitive functions, nor to scores in self-assessment scales. We attributed the observed dissociation to the modality (visual vs. auditory) of presentation and to the ecological value of the musical stimuli that we used. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the care of patients with PD.

The literature suggests that there is a relationship between motor function and cognitive development however, few studies have explored the specific role of Functional Movement Skills on cognitive function. This research aimed to determine if Functional Movement Skills predict cognitive function, when accounting for confounding factors, in a sample of primary school children in Ireland. Cross-sectional. Sixty primary school children (51.7 % girls, age range 7-12 years, mean age 9.9 ± 1.28) were assessed in their Functional Movement Skill proficiency using the Test of Gross Motor Development-3rd Edition and a subtest of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency 2 Short Form (to assess balance). Participants also completed a series of cognitive tests which formed part of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted whilst controlling for covariates (Age; Gender; Socio Economic Status). Attention Switching, Reaction Time, and Emotional Recognition were found to be associated with Overall Functional Movement Skills (Locomotor, Object Control, Stability). Overall Functional Movement Skills significantly accounted for 4.7 % of the variance in Simple Reaction Time (ΔR2 = 0.032; p = 0.13) whilst Stability significantly accounted for 5.5 % (ΔR2 = 0.055; p = 0.04) and 12.9 % (ΔR2 = 0.129; p = 0.00) of the variance in Simple Reaction Time and Emotional Recognition, respectively, after controlling for covariates. Overall Functional Movement Skills may be more related to reaction time than attention and spatial working memory, whilst stability may be more associated with emotional recognition. Further research is warranted. Greater comprehension of the impact of Functional Movement Skills on cognitive function in children can contribute to the development of more effective and efficient physical activity programmes, which can in turn contribute to and promote holistic child development.

Attentional bias in tobacco use disorder using eye tracking: A systematic review

PURPOSE: To investigate the correlation between individual parameters (age, body composition, and inflammation) and cognitive performance. METHOD: Fifty-six healthy women (age range: 20~60 yrs) were recruited and completed four cognitive tests, including attention, speedup test, Stroop tests (word, square, congruent, incongruent, and neutral conditions), and memory span test. All cognition tests were conducted in a counter-balanced order. Blood samples were collected to determine the ratio of neutrophil and lymphocyte (NLR) and the ratio of platelet and lymphocyte (PLR) which were considered as indicators of inflammation. The body composition was measured by using Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry. The correlation between age, body composition, inflammatory factors, and cognitive variables was analyzed by Pearson's correlation coefficient (r). P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: There were negative correlation between age and attention test (r=-0.47, p<0.005), Stroop tests (word: r=-0.65, p<0.001; square: r=-0.69, p<0.001; congruent: r=-0.61, p<0.001; incongruent: r=-0.70, p<0.001; neutral: r=-0.70, p<0.001). The results also showed that the higher the body fat % (BF%), the worse the cognitive test performance (attention test, r=0.46, p<0.005; Stroop's word tests, r=0.49, p<0.005; Stroop's square test, r=0.61, p<0.001; Stroop's congruent test, r=0.44, p<0.01; Stroop's incongruent, r=0.56, p<0.001; Stroop's neutral test, r=0.59, p<0.001). Similarly, the higher the body lean mass (BLM%), the better the cognitive test performance. There was positive correlation between age, NLR and PLR, but there was no significant correlation between inflammatory markers and cognitive performance. Furthermore, after controlled age, although the above net correlation was eliminated, the correlation between Stroop's square test and BF% (r=-0.343, p=0.035), square and BLM% (r=0.334, p=0.040), neutral test and BLM% (r=0.32, p=0.050) still exits. Besides, after controlled BF%, the age-related correlation effects are unchanged, and only the correlation between BLM% and the speed of answering represent significant (r=0.393, p<0.015). CONCLUSION: In addition to age, body fat is an important factor affecting cognitive performance. Supported by MOST 107-2410-H-845-018-MY3