Everyday Life Tasks Research Articles

A preliminary investigation of error enhancement of the velocity component in stroke patients’ reaching movements

Background/aim: Patients with stroke who are suffering from impaired reaching movement experience insufficient spatial and temporal coordination, affecting upper limb functions and everyday life tasks. This study examines a new robot-assisted rehabilitation method for ameliorating arm reaching movements through velocity error enhancement training. The authors hypothesised that this robot-assisted rehabilitation training may encourage restoration of arm reaching abilities among post-stroke hemiparesis patients.Methods: Several clinical and kinematic measures were used to evaluate outcomes. Subjects were assigned either to an experimental group that underwent 5-week treatments with error enhanced forces, or to a control group that received passive treatment. The control group undertook reaching tasks over the same period while they were connected to the robot but without it applying any error enhancement forces to their upper limb. The robotic system was programmed based on previous kinematic data from healthy subjects, so any deviation from the relatively smooth, calculated, optimal trajectory, and velocity profile mean encountered error enhancing external forces.Results: The results showed an appreciable effect on smoothness and regularity of movement. After 5 weeks of velocity error enhancement treatment, all subjects in the experimental group displayed movements converging towards their optimal profiles, together with decreased variability in path trajectory. In contrast to the control group, their mean deviation was also significantly reduced. These positive changes in motor control patterns were paralleled by gains in functional capacity, as reflected by the Motor Assessment Scale test results. However, those results should be carefully inspected in regard to small sample size and un-matching of motor performance at the beginning of the trial between groups.Conclusion: The study demonstrates the potential of robotic rehabilitation that combines error enhancement and velocity component training to help stroke patients.

The 'everyday work' of living with multimorbidity in socioeconomically deprived areas of Scotland.

BackgroundMultimorbidity is common in patients living in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation and is associated with poor quality of life, but the reasons behind this are not clear. Exploring the ‘everyday life work’ of patients may reveal important barriers to self-management and wellbeing.ObjectiveTo investigate the relationship between the management of multimorbidity and ‘everyday life work’ in patients living in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation in Scotland, as part of a programme of work on multimorbidity and deprivation.DesignQualitative study: individual semi-structured interviews of 14 patients (8 women and 6 men) living in deprived areas with multimorbidity, exploring how they manage. Analysis was continuous and iterative. We report the findings in relation to everyday life work.ResultsThe in-depth analysis revealed four key themes: (i) the symbolic significance of everyday life work to evidence the work of being ‘normal’; (ii) the usefulness of everyday life work in managing symptoms; (iii) the impact that mental health problems had on everyday life work; and (iv) issues around accepting help for everyday life tasks. Overall, most struggled with the amount of work required to establish a sense of normalcy in their everyday lives, especially in those with mental–physical multimorbidity.ConclusionsEveryday life work is an important component of self-management in patients with multimorbidity in deprived areas, and is commonly impaired, especially in those with mental health problems. Interventions to improve self-management support for patients living with multimorbidity may benefit from an understanding of the role of everyday life work.Journal of Comorbidity 2014;4:1–10

An Investigation on Learning Performance among Disabled People Using Educational Multimedia Software: A Case Study for Deaf People

The increasing number of people with hearing-impaired in Malaysia attracts to produce a variety of technologies, which can assist the deaf people in carrying out their tasks in everyday life as normal people. New technology can help to decrease the difficulty that hearing-impaired people faces in daily life to use the information services like normal people. Thus, this paper focuses on: i) developing a new multimedia courseware for pre-school students with hearing problem, and ii) comparing the deaf student’s learning performance before and after using the courseware. Four modules were developed for e-MSL courseware consist of alphabets, numbers, words and quizzes with colorful text, animation, sounds, video and pictures using Malaysian Sign Language (MSL). Sekolah Rendah Pendidikan Khas (SRPK) Indera Mahkota II, Kuantan has been chosen as the case study for data collection and for investigating the student learning performance on the courseware. The survey results show that 100% of the respondents have agreed that using e-MSL courseware managed to reduce the student learning time more than 80%. The result has indicated that students have shown better learning performance using e-MSL compared to traditional learning.

Elucidating Poor Decision-Making in a Rat Gambling Task

Although poor decision-making is a hallmark of psychiatric conditions such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, pathological gambling or substance abuse, a fraction of healthy individuals exhibit similar poor decision-making performances in everyday life and specific laboratory tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task. These particular individuals may provide information on risk factors or common endophenotypes of these mental disorders. In a rodent version of the Iowa gambling task – the Rat Gambling Task (RGT), we identified a population of poor decision makers, and assessed how these rats scored for several behavioral traits relevant to executive disorders: risk taking, reward seeking, behavioral inflexibility, and several aspects of impulsivity. First, we found that poor decision-making could not be well predicted by single behavioral and cognitive characteristics when considered separately. By contrast, a combination of independent traits in the same individual, namely risk taking, reward seeking, behavioral inflexibility, as well as motor impulsivity, was highly predictive of poor decision-making. Second, using a reinforcement-learning model of the RGT, we confirmed that only the combination of extreme scores on these traits could induce maladaptive decision-making. Third, the model suggested that a combination of these behavioral traits results in an inaccurate representation of rewards and penalties and inefficient learning of the environment. Poor decision-making appears as a consequence of the over-valuation of high-reward-high-risk options in the task. Such a specific psychological profile could greatly impair clinically healthy individuals in decision-making tasks and may predispose to mental disorders with similar symptoms.

Objective integrated assessment of functional outcomes in reduction mammaplasty.

Background:The aim of our study was an objective integrated assessment of the functional outcomes of reduction mammaplasty.Methods:The study involved 17 women undergoing reduction mammaplasty from March 2009 to June 2011. Each patient was assessed before surgery and 2 months postoperatively with the original association of 4 subjective and objective assessment methods: a physiatric clinical examination, the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire, the Berg Balance Scale, and a static force platform analysis.Results:All of the tests proved multiple statistically significant associated outcomes demonstrating a significant improvement in the functional status following reduction mammaplasty. Surgical correction of breast hypertrophy could achieve both spinal pain relief and recovery of performance status in everyday life tasks, owing to a muscular postural functional rearrangement with a consistent antigravity muscle activity sparing. Pain reduction in turn could reduce the antalgic stiffness and improved the spinal range of motion. In our sample, the improvement of the spinal range of motion in flexion matched a similar improvement in extension. Recovery of a more favorable postural pattern with reduction of the anterior imbalance was demonstrated by the static force stabilometry. Therefore, postoperatively, all of our patients narrowed the gap between the actual body barycenter and the ideal one. The static force platform assessment also consistently confirmed the effectiveness of an accurate clinical examination of functional impairment from breast hypertrophy.Conclusions:The static force platform assessment might help the clinician to support the diagnosis of functional impairment from a breast hypertrophy with objectively based data.

Innovative wearable interfaces: an exploratory analysis of paper-based interfaces with camera-glasses device unit

The new ubiquitous interaction methods change people's life and facilitate their tasks in everyday life and in the workplace, enabling people to access their personal data as well as public resources at any time and in any place. We found two solutions to enable ubiquitous interaction and put a stop to the limits imposed by the desktop mode: namely nomadism and mobility. Based on these two solutions, we have proposed three interfaces (Zhou et al. in HCI international 2011: human---computer interaction. Interaction techniques and environments, Springer, Berlin, pp 500---509, 2011): in-environment interface (IEI), environment dependent interface (EDI), and environment independent interface (EII). In this paper, we first discuss an overview of IEI, EDI, and EII, before excluding IEI and focusing on EDI and EII, their background, and distinct characteristics. We also propose a continuum from physical paper-based interface to digital projected interface in relation with EDI and EII. Then, to validate EDI and EII concepts, we design and implement a MobilePaperAccess system, which is a wearable camera-glasses system with paper-based interface and original input techniques allowing mobile interaction. Furthermore, we discuss the evaluation of the MobilePaperAccess system; we compare two interfaces (EDI and EII) and three input techniques (finger input, mask input, and page input) to test the feasibility and usability of this system. Both the quantitative and qualitative results are reported and discussed. Finally, we provide the prospects and our future work for improving the current approaches.

Visual Scanning Training, Limb Activation Treatment, and Prism Adaptation for Rehabilitating Left Neglect: Who is the Winner?

We compared, for the first time, the overall and differential effects of three of the most widely used left neglect (LN) treatments: visual scanning training (VST), limb activation treatment (LAT), and prism adaptation (PA). Thirty-three LN patients were assigned in quasi-random order to the three groups (VST, LAT, or PA). Each patient received only one type of treatment. LN patients’ performance on everyday life tasks was assessed four times (over a period of 6 weeks): A1 and A2 (i.e., the two pre-treatment assessments); A3 and A4 (i.e., the two post-treatment assessments). LN patients in each of the three treatment conditions were treated for the same number of sessions (i.e., 20). The results showed that improvements were present in the majority of the tests assessing the peripersonal space in everyday life activities. Our findings were independent of unspecific factors and lasted for at least 2 weeks following the end of the treatments. There were no interactions, however, between LN treatments and assessments. We suggest that all three treatments can be considered as valid rehabilitation interventions for LN and could be employed for ameliorating LN signs.

Closed-Form Inverse Kinematic Solution for Anthropomorphic Motion in Redundant Robot Arms

As robots are increasingly migrating out of factories and research laboratories and into our everyday lives, they should move and act in environments designed for humans. For this reason, the need of anthropomorphic movements is of utmost importance. This paper proposes a framework for solving the inverse kinematics problem of redundant robot arms that results to anthropomorphic configurations. The swivel angle of the elbow is used as a human arm motion parameter for the robot arm to mimic. The swivel angle is defined as the rotation angle of the plane defined by the upper and lower arm around a virtual axis that connects the shoulder and wrist joints. Using kinematic data recorded from human subjects during every-day life tasks, we validate the linear relations between intrinsic and extrinsic coordinates of the human arm that estimates the swivel angle, given the desired end-effector position. Defining the desired swivel angle simplifies the kinematic redundancy of the robot arm. The proposed method is tested with an anthropomorphic redundant robot arm and the computed motion profiles are compared to the ones of the human subjects. We show that the method computes anthropomorphic configurations for the robot arm, even if the robot arm has different link lengths than the human arm and starts its motion at random configurations.

People, sensors, decisions

The ratio of healthcare professionals to care recipients is dropping at an alarming rate, particularly for the older population. It is estimated that the number of persons with Alzheimer's disease, for example, will top 100 million worldwide by the year 2050 [Alzheimer's Disease International 2009]. It will become harder and harder to provide needed health services to this population of older adults. Further, patients are becoming more aware and involved in their own healthcare decisions. This is creating a void in which technology has an increasingly important role to play as a tool to connect providers with recipients. Examples of interactive technologies range from telecare for remote regions to computer games promoting fitness in the home. Currently, such technologies are developed for specific applications and are difficult to modify to suit individual user needs. The future potential economic and social impact of technology in the healthcare field therefore lies in our ability to make intelligent devices that are customizable by healthcare professionals and their clients, that are adaptive to users over time, and that generalize across tasks and environments. A wide application area for technology in healthcare is for assistance and monitoring in the home. As the population ages, it becomes increasingly dependent on chronic healthcare, such as assistance for tasks of everyday life (washing, cooking, dressing), medication taking, nutrition, and fitness. This article will present a summary of work over the past decade on the development of intelligent systems that provide assistance to persons with cognitive disabilities. These systems are unique in that they are all built using a common framework, a decision-theoretic model for general-purpose assistance in the home. In this article, we will show how this type of general model can be applied to a range of assistance tasks, including prompting for activities of daily living, assistance for art therapists, and stroke rehabilitation. This model is a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) that can be customized by end-users, that can integrate complex sensor information, and that can adapt over time. These three characteristics of the POMDP model will allow for increasing uptake and long-term efficiency and robustness of technology for assistance.

Growing up in rural Galilee, Palestine: memories of childhood geographies

This paper reconstructs the author’s geographies of childhood growing up as a Palestinian in a small village in the Galilee in the early 1950s. It seeks to narrate his experience as a ‘shepherd boy and a schoolboy’ at a certain phase of his life. This type of duality in performance of tasks in everyday life – being a schoolboy but also a shepherd/goatherd contributing to the family’s work, and the maintenance of the household and home from a young age – is presented as a revealing experiential autoethnographic window. It becomes a prism for exploring spatial memory and attachment, and for reading a place and understanding what such places mean to their indigenous inhabitants and occupiers (i.e. people are not ‘thrown’ into places but they make them). The paper further demonstrates that indigenous attachment by individuals to their home place can be a catalyst for political resistance and directly challenge forces emanating from state ideology, as illustrated here in the case of Palestine. Today, as 60 years ago, Palestinian ‘homes’ are seen by Palestinians who are challenging Israeli policies of uprooting on a daily basis as sites impregnated with distinctive existential qualities and a high level of resistance. Such places and spaces acquire substantial new meaning for their indigenous owners who are compelled to dare to protect and guard them.

Book Review: Blind Vision: The Neuroscience of Visual Impairment

Blind Vision: The Neuroscience of Visual Impairment. Zaira Cattaneo and Tomaso Vecchi. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011, 269 pp., illustrated, $36. This book's title phrase, Blind Vision, is a concise summary of the book's contents, which comprise arguments and evidence that people who cannot see have the same kinds of perceptions, mental imagery, and knowledge as people who can see. Blindness is a big nuisance, but in most areas of everyday life it doesn't much change what people can notice, what people can remember, or what people can do. Authors Cattaneo and Vecchi take on the enormous task of synthesizing 50 years of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience research conducted people who are blind. Like the best cognitive psychology, the work examines the cognitive processes and memory representations that underlie the skilled performance of functionally important tasks in everyday life. Like the best neuroscience, the work synthesizes evidence-based findings on the major brain imaging (fMRI and EEG, for example) and brain assessment (TMS, for example) methods that are used to localize brain regions that mediate perception and cognition, and it summarizes what happens to those brain regions when vision is absent or impaired. Cattaneo and Vecchi provide a comprehensive and balanced view of the cognitive neuroscience of blindness, acknowledging its current limitations and highlighting its potential applications. In doing so, they set the stage for others to apply the lessons gained to help learners learn and teachers teach. In terms of topical content, Blind Vision is about how perception, imagery, knowledge, working memory, and spatial cognition are used to accomplish the tasks of daily life that involve locomotion, wayfinding, and object identification and manipulation; as well as academic tasks including those involved in reading, science, and math. Wherever possible, the authors compare total blindness, low vision, and typical vision, and they identify perceptual and cognitive skills (tactile picture identification, for example) that appear to vary based on the age at onset of blindness and those (tactile discrimination, for example) that do not. And although it is not a major part of the book, the authors make an important contribution to the literature by synthesizing what is known about monocular vision-which, in our view, is an important category of low vision that is often overlooked by researchers and teachers alike. ORGANIZED BY THEME Cattaneo and Vecchi organize their topics around four major themes: Amodal information, sensory compensation and substitution, spatial imagery (not visual imagery), and brain plasticity. These themes form the core of the book and are mentioned in most of the chapters. We elaborate on each below. Amodal information Amodal information (meaning without modality) specifies properties of objects and events that are common in multiple senses. Temporal properties of events like rhythm, tempo, duration, and synchrony can be perceived by listening, looking, and touching. Consider, for example, that the cadence of a person's gait can be heard as well as seen by others; the viscosity of a liquid can be heard when it is poured and felt when it is stirred; and whether a smooth plate is metal or wood can be felt when it is touched and heard when it is struck a mallet. Different modalities of information specify the same properties, but they are not completely redundant and vary in their precision, breadth of field, and speed. Cattaneo and Vecchi point to the evidence that when amodal information is available, people pragmatically select the mode that is easy, in the sense that it is best matched to a given task. For example, pedestrians tend to rely on vision for guidance in street crossings, because with a single gaze we can simultaneously embrace an enormous amount of information, and our foveal acuity allows us to focus on very detailed characteristics of what we are perceiving (p. …

The Complexity of the Relation between Fear of Failure and Procrastination

This study investigated the indirect and conditional relation between fear of failure and procrastination based on constructs from self-determination theory. Using structural equation modeling to analyze data from 300 university students, we found that the relation between fear of failure and procrastination was moderated by perceived competence. The relation was positively significant for students with low levels of competence and negatively significant for those with high level of competence. However, in the latter group, fear of failure negatively affected satisfaction of the need for autonomy, which in turn increased the likelihood of problematic delay on academic and everyday-life tasks. The results are discussed in relation to the complex interplay of motivational variables related to self-regulatory failure.

Kinesiophobia, catastrophizing and anticipated symptoms before stair climbing in chronic fatigue syndrome: an experimental study

Purpose: Kinesiophobia and catastrophizing are frequent among people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). This study was aimed at examining (1) whether kinesiophobia, anticipated symptoms and fatigue catastrophizing are related to stair climbing performance in people with CFS; and (2) whether kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing are related to daily physical activity in CFS. Method: Patients with CFS filled in a set of questionnaires, performed a physical demanding task (two floors stair of climbing and descending) with pre-test and post-test heart rate monitoring and immediate post-stair climbing symptom assessment. Real-time activity monitoring was used between the baseline and second assessment day (7 days later). Results: Kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing were strongly related (ρ = 0.62 and 0.67, respectively) to poorer stair climbing performance (i.e. more time required to complete the threatening activity). Kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing were unrelated to the amount of physical activity on the first day following stair climbing or during the seven subsequent days. Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing for performing physical demanding tasks in everyday life of people with CFS, but refute a cardinal role for kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing in determining daily physical activity level in these patients.Implications for RehabilitationPeople with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) can easily perform stair climbing, a daily physical activity perceived by themselves as threatening, without triggering symptom flares. This is important as it can be used clinically to convince people with CFS of undertaking such a threatening task during treatment programs such as graded activity or graded exposure.The finding that kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing are strongly related to stair climbing performance in CFS underscores the importance of restructuring the beliefs of these patients about the relationship between activity and symptoms. This should be a key component of the early stages of rehabilitation for people with CFS.In rehabilitation practice, diminishing kinesiophobia and fatigue catastrophizing in patients with CFS appears only relevant for targeting physical activities that are perceived as threatening (e.g. stair climbing), and not for increasing work-related or social (physical) activities.Clinicians can use the Tampa Scale Kinesiophobia version CFS for assessing the fear of patients with CFS to exacerbate their symptoms (including pain, fatigue and brain fog) due to physical activities.Clinicians can use the Tampa Scale fatigue for assessing the fear of patients with CFS to exacerbate their fatigue level due to physical activities.

Analyses of Gait and Jump Tasks in Female Obese Adolescents

In spite of the advances in knowledge on the multi-factorial nature of obesity, many questions related to the consequences of the disease continue to be unanswered. Several studies have reported biomechanic and kinematic adaptation and alterations in walking and in tasks of every day life, motivated by the additional load of fat mass in children and adults. The main objective of this study was to understand the effect of obesity in the electromyographic activity of four lower extremity muscles during three speeds of walking and during a countermovement jump (CMJ) in twenty two (9 obese and 13 normal weight) female adolescents aged 13. Although electromyographic differences were not observed between groups for normal, slow and fast speeds, data suggests that the preferred pace of the obese is less efficient than that of the normal weight group. In CMJ task, differences in the after-fall jump phase were observed. More studies are needed to explain if the few differences observed between groups are caused by the bigger amount of fat mass.

Memory training interventions require a tailor-made approach: Commentary on McDaniel and Bugg

McDaniel and Bugg (2012) discuss whether memory training nterventions might have value for older adults’ everyday memry functioning and how this might be improved. The starting oint of their argument is that there is little evidence showing that emory training produces transfer in general or leads to benefits n non-trained everyday memory challenges in particular. They rgue that most available data counter a ‘generalist assumption’ hich assumes that training a specific cognitive faculty (e.g., longerm memory) will improve performance in a wide range of lab nd everyday life tasks requiring this faculty. Instead of going this oute, in order to facilitate transfer to everyday life, McDaniel and ugg suggest to (a) focus on everyday memory challenges (such as rospective memory or face-name associations) and (b) explicitly rain for transfer by enabling older adults to (learn how to) adapt nd generalize the strategies they have acquired during training e.g., via training general strategies such as elaboration, varying raining material, giving homework, or providing metacognitive nowledge on how memory works). We want to applaud the authors of this target article for idenifying key issues in current memory training research and for uggesting several interesting ways that future research on and pplication of memory interventions certainly should and will folow. In our commentary, we will briefly describe some thoughts elated to two main steps of the target article’s rationale. First, e fully agree with the problem analysis: previous and current

Altruistic People Show No Self-Reference Effect in Memory

ABSTRACT The self-reference effect (SRE), by which encoding of information is done in a self-referential manner (e.g., “Does the word describe you?”), enhances subsequent memory performance. It is thought to reflect that self-reference is a highly practiced task in everyday life. Accordingly, it is expected that the types of tasks that produce memory enhancement vary according to individual differences of past experiences. On the basis of neuroimaging studies, we hypothesized that social desirability reference (“Is this word socially desirable?”) produces memory enhancement as with SRE in people who have chosen altruistic behavior frequently. Participants processed trait adjectives in relation to themselves, social desirability, and meaning. Then they performed a free recall task. The self-report altruism scale was used to assess the frequency of past altruistic behavior. Consistent with our prediction, the social desirability reference yielded the best retention in the high-altruism group. SRE was observed only in the low-altruism group.

Celebrating and Con-Questioning Mary Daly

Celebrating and Con-questioning Mary Daly Xochitl Alvizo (bio) It was five years ago here at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference that I first saw Mary Daly in person. At that session, one of the women who spoke with Mary said, “nothing is complete. There is no complete system—there are only conversations, we can learn and receive from each other, and we can give and teach each other.” And that is part of what I want to emphasize here today: how we can build on and build up each other’s work. One of the first things Mary Daly did at that AAR session was conjure our foresisters. It was a beautiful practice and a new one for me that I witnessed her model that day. She started by quoting, “You will forget us but maybe someday someone will remember us”—so we remembered them: Sappho, Sojourner Truth, Hildegard, Theresa of Avila, Virginia Woolf, and Matilda Joslyn Gage.1 Some of the women I knew; some I did not, but rest assured that I went home and looked up the ones I didn’t know. Mary set a mood of gynergy, remembering the liberating work of women gone before us, affirming that their energy and work still exist and was present. Mary herself invited women to build on her work and each other’s work. For nothing is complete—there is no complete system. At times, Mary’s work reads as if she thought she had a complete system—but she herself knew better. I worked with her the last two years of her life, learning from her and learning to con-question with her, as well as engage in the mundane tasks of everyday life with her, the beta. Although, with Mary’s fiery spirit, nothing ever was really mundane. That first day in Mary Daly’s presence, I lost my breath and all ability to articulate any words—I was a bit of a bumbling goof. But I went from that first moment with her to being with her during her last days, the days when her own breath was leaving her. It is one of those rare experiences that makes you really believe that divine forces are at work for your delight. Mary Daly expected us all to continue building on each other’s work, learning and receiving from, questioning, and building on. When we would raise questions to her or disagree with her, she would say—“Good then, now go build! Go beyond what I’ve done.” She did not take for granted the wisdom we receive from one another and the fact that we can continue building on it. Because no wisdom is complete. She knew that. [End Page 98] And so she called women to Con-Questioning2—that is, to the practice of questioning together, the proclivity/activity of Nag-nostic searchers—who are women who Nag our Selves and Others with recurrent awareness of questions and uncertainties.3 Too often in academia, or academentia4 as she liked to call it, we define concepts and ideas in exclusive terms—something is this and not that. We define ourselves in opposition. But things are never that simple or clear-cut. The human spirit and lived reality do not fit nicely into exclusive or binary categories. We cannot be reduced in such ways—nor should we want to be. I am feminist—proud and empowered. I am also Latina, Mexican American, and mujerista. I am Christian, I love Jesus, and I love Goddess. I am lesbian, I came out some four years ago, and yet, my family, the one I share my everyday life with, still includes the man I married eleven years ago. Some of us cross boundaries and borders and blur lines and categories every day. And yet none of us can be reduced to just one part of our entire being—as Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “Would you chop me up into little fragments and tag each piece with a label?”5 And so we need methods and ways of engaging that make room for all that—that invite our Con-Questioning and don’t lead us to...

Cognitive Remediation and Psychosocial Rehabilitation for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness

Individuals with severe mental illnesses (SMI) such as schizophrenia are more likely to have impaired cognitive functioning in areas such as attention and concentration, psychomotor speed, memory, executive functions, and social cognition. These cognitive challenges are strongly associated with reduced psychosocial adjustment, such as the capacity for independent living, work or school, and social relationships, as well as the ability to benefit from rehabilitation programs targeted at improving outcome in these areas of adjustment. Cognitive remediation is the systematic use of methods aimed at improving cognitive functioning through the practice of cognitive exercises on either computer-based or paper and pencil tests, teaching more effective strategies for addressing cognitive challenges, and teaching coping or compensatory skills to reduce the effects of cognitive impairment on psychosocial functioning. For over 30 years, research has examined the feasibility and effects of cognitive remediation on cognitive functioning and psychosocial adjustment in people with SMI. Recent meta-analyses of controlled research have shown that cognitive remediation is associated with significant improvements in both cognitive functioning and psychosocial adjustment. However, these reviews of research have also found that the impact of cognitive remediation on psychosocial adjustment is contingent upon the provision of adjunctive or integrated psychiatric rehabilitation, such as supported employment or social skills training. That is, studies that have added or integrated cognitive remediation and psychiatric rehabilitation programs have been found to improve psychosocial functioning more than psychiatric rehabilitation alone, whereas studies that have added cognitive remediation to usual services have found little to no differences in psychosocial outcomes compared to usual services alone. This issue on cognitive remediation and psychiatric rehabilitation brings together six papers addressing topics critical to improving the long-term psychosocial functioning of people with SMI. Four of these papers provide pertinent reviews of research that point the field in important new directions, and two papers are original research contributions. While the research suggests that combining cognitive remediation with psychiatric rehabilitation is more effective at improving psychosocial outcomes, very little is known about how such programs should be combined. The review by R. Penades and colleagues addresses this question by providing a framework and hierarchical flowchart for integrating cognitive remediation with other evidence-based psychosocial interventions. D. L. Roberts and D. L. Velligan review relevant research suggesting that programs specifically developed for and targeting social cognition (e.g., emotion recognition, ability to infer other's mental states) may be more effective and efficient than broad-based cognitive remediation programs. This review has important implications for developing or refining cognitive remediation and psychiatric rehabilitation interventions in order to maximize their cost effectiveness. N. Contreras and colleagues provide a theoretical review of strategies for improving workforce participation in people with a SMI, with a particular focus on the Australian context. The review highlights the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model of vocational rehabilitation, the most empirically validated program for improving employment outcomes in people with SMI, which has recently been combined with cognitive remediation in the USA. The authors suggest that Australia may be in a prime position to implement such combined interventions. N. Boycott and colleagues also focused in their review on the IPS model, with a particular aim at evaluating the effects of supplementary interventions on work outcomes, including cognitive remediation. While prior research has evaluated the impact of adding cognitive remediation to vocational rehabilitation for people with SMI, scant attention has been paid to integrating cognitive remediation with supported education for this population. The paper by S. A. Kidd and colleagues addresses this lacuna by providing encouraging pilot data from such an integrated program, supporting both the feasibility of integrating cognitive remediation with supported education, and suggesting benefits in education-related outcomes. Finally, the research paper by M. N. Levaux and colleagues provides a useful case illustration of how cognitive remediation can be individually integrated and tailored into helping a person accomplish everyday life tasks. We believe that the papers compiled in this issue make an important contribution to the cognitive remediation field by providing useful syntheses of the research literature, suggesting new directions for research and clinical implementation, and presenting new data on promising programs and approaches to integrate cognitive remediation and psychiatric rehabilitation into people's daily lives. Susan R. McGurk Shaun M. Eack Matthew Kurtz Kim T. Mueser

O BOM DESEMPENHO DA SECRETÁRIA EXECUTIVA BILÍNGUE NA REDAÇÃO DA CORRESPONDÊNCIA COMERCIAL

Saber redigir corretamente e-mails e cartas comerciais em inglês é uma tarefa imprescindível na vida diária da secretária executiva. Este trabalho tem como objetivo oferecer exemplos de correspondência comercial em inglês que possam facilitar o trabalho da profissional da área. Algumas das opções serão discutidas para que o bom desempenho da escrita comercial seja concretizado de forma eficaz. Alguns elementos que dão suporte ao bom entendimento da recepção do texto como o estilo, a coerência, o emprego de expressões úteis assim como o planejamento estratégico dos parágrafos, foram destacados neste projeto.

Incorporating aspects of motor control in the optimisation of human performance

Computer simulation modelling is a powerful tool in Sports Biomechanics as it allows the researcher to investigate the underlying mechanics of technique. Once the underlying mechanics have been established technique may be optimised, which may be used to reduce injuries or to improve performance. When optimising technique, minimising effort or joint torque is often used as the basis of the score (or cost function). Many tasks in everyday life may be based on minimising such variables, however, in the field of sport it is often the case that effort is maximised in order to achieve the desired aspect of technique or to achieve the performance outcome. Therefore, optimisation criteria must reflect the performance outcome rather than the amount of effort required. It is acknowledged that realistic strength characteristics should be incorporated in to simulation models so as to be representative of the athlete, however, strength should not be considered the only limit to maximal performance. Aspects of motor control such as coordination and timing precision are as, if not more, important in certain limiting situations. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how computer simulation modelling may be used to gain an insight into the important aspects of gymnastics swinging techniques and the importance of including aspects of motor control when investigating limiting movements. The paper presents three case studies to outline the above issues.