Low Salience Research Articles

Nursing Home Resident Preferences for Daily Care and Activities: A Latent Class Analysis of National Data.

Uncovering subgroups of nursing home residents sharing similar preference patterns is useful for developing systematic approaches to person-centered care. This study aimed to (i) identify preference patterns among long-stay residents, and (ii) examine the associations of preference patterns with resident and facility characteristics. This study was a national cross-sectional analysis of Minimum Data Set assessments in 2016. Using resident-rated importance for 16 preference items in the Preference Assessment Tool as indicators, we conducted latent class analysis to identify preference patterns and examined their associations with resident and facility characteristics. We identified 4 preference patterns. The high salience group (43.5% of the sample) was the most likely to rate all preferences as important, whereas the low salience group (8.7%) was the least likely. The socially engaged (27.2%) and the socially independent groups (20.6%) featured high importance ratings on social/recreational activities and maintaining privacy/autonomy, respectively. The high salience group reported more favorable physical and sensory function than the other 3 groups and lived in facilities with higher staffing of activity staff. The low salience and socially independent groups reported a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms, whereas the low salience or socially engaged groups reported a higher prevalence of cognitive impairment. Preference patterns also varied by race/ethnicity and gender. Our study advanced the understanding of within-individual variations in preferences, and the role of individual and environmental factors in shaping preferences. The findings provided implications for providing person-centered care in NHs.

The (non) Europeanization of Latvia’s Far Right

Abstract Latvia’s far right has had a great deal of political influence since the late 1980s, when nativist movements played a key role in mobilizing political opposition to Soviet power. Far-right parties have been in 16 of the 22 government coalitions in Latvia between 1993 and 2023. Since 2010, the National Alliance (NA), a merger between an established far-right party and a more youthful political party, has come to dominate Latvia’s far right and has been a part of every government coalition from 2011-2023. This article begins with a discussion of Europeanization, the Europeanization of political parties, and the qualitative methodology used in the article to examine the impact of Latvia’s membership in the European Union on NA’s international links and program. The article then outlines the development and influence of Latvia’s far-right. The following sections examine links between Latvia’s far right and Europe’s far right and the impact of Europe on NA’s ideology and program. It finds little evidence of Europeanization of Latvia’s far right. Latvia’s far right is more hawkish toward Russia than the West European right and also enjoys greater domestic influence and respectability. “New nativist” anti-immigration and cultural Marxism themes have lower salience in Latvia where Russian-speakers are perceived as a bigger and more immediate threat than Muslims or “Woke” activists.

The predictive processing of number information in subregular verb morphology in a first and second language

AbstractWe investigated the predictive processing of grammatical number information through stem-vowel alternations in German strong verbs by adult first language (L1) speakers and Dutch-speaking advanced second language (L2) learners of German, and the influence of working memory and awareness (i.e., whether participants consciously registered the predictive cue) thereon. While changed stem vowels indicate a singular referent (e.g., /ε/ in fällt3SG, “falls”), unchanged vowels indicate plural (e.g., /a/ in fallt2PL, “fall”). This target structure presents a challenge for L2 learners of German due to its subregularity and low salience. With their eye movements being tracked, participants matched German auditory sentences (VSO order) with one of two pictures, displaying identical action scenes but varying in agent number. The number cue provided by the strong verbs allowed participants to predict whether the upcoming subject would be singular or plural. The analyses revealed significant prediction, measured as predictive eye movements toward the target picture and faster button-press responses. Prediction in the L2 group was weaker than in the L1 group and present in the eye movement data only. Higher working memory scores were linked to faster predictive presses. Approximately half of the participants had become aware of the predictive cue, and being aware facilitated prediction to a limited extent.

What makes an acute emergency? Temporal manifestation patterns and global health emergencies

In this article, we consider the role that onset patterns play in shaping how acute global events are taken to be, drawing on illustrative cases from the field of global health emergencies. We identify four temporal manifestation patterns that we argue display distinct political dynamics. First, an emergent onset pattern (e.g. the H1N1 health emergency), with political dynamics dominated by novelty-induced uncertainty and lack of information as well as familiar analogies. Second, an anticipatory onset pattern (e.g. the risk of a global avian flu health emergency), with a political dynamic characterised by dread of an as-of-yet unrealised high-consequence risk. Third, a cyclical onset pattern (e.g. Ebola), with a political dynamic characterised by a sense of familiarity and expectedness, unless eventual ‘unexpected’ or ‘unprecedented’ aspects manifest themselves. Lastly, a perpetual onset pattern (e.g. antimicrobial resistance), with political dynamics characterised by incrementalism and low political salience. We argue that acuteness is often associated with a departure from expected manifestation patterns, such as an escalation or other traits that make events appear unfamiliar. Whilst drawing on global health emergences in this paper, the four categories theorised here may also be used on a range of other adversities at the global or local level.

The political and fiscal determinants of public health and curative care expenditures: evidence from the Canadian provinces, 1980-2018.

Public health systems have been centre stage during the COVID-19 pandemic, but governments invest relatively little in public health as compared to curative care. Previous research has shown that public health expenditures are under pressure during recessions and could be politically determined, but very few studies analyze quantitatively their determinants. This study investigates the political and fiscal determinants of public health and curative care expenditures. After constructing a dataset building on disaggregated health expenditures in the Canadian provinces from 1975 to 2018, we use error correction models to study the short-run and long-run influence of fiscal and political determinants on public health expenditures and on curative expenditures. Fiscal determinants include measures of public debt charges and federal transfers. Political determinants include government partisanship and election cycles. We also explore whether curative expenditures crowd out public health expenditures. We find no difference between left and right governments in curative care expenditures but show that left governments spend more on public health if we control for past spending decisions in favour of curative care. Fiscal austerity reduces both public health and curative expenditures, and provincial governments use additional intergovernmental transfers to increase their curative care budgets. A growth in the proportion of curative care relative to total health budgets is associated with a decline in public health expenditures. Even though they have low political salience, public health expenditures remain driven by partisanship and electoral concerns. Despite their widely acknowledged importance, public health programs develop in the shadow of curative care priorities.

Self-referential and social saliency information influences memory following attention orienting.

Self-referential information is a processing priority in individuals. Whether or how self-referential information plays a role in attention orienting by modulating memory encoding during attention orienting is presently unknown. First, we investigated this role with self-referential processing for words. Participants were trained to associate two cues (red and green arrows) with social labels (the words "self" and "other" in Experiment 1). Then, participants performed a cueing task to determine whether various targets were presented at a right or left location. Finally, a recognition task of target items was implemented to examine the influence of arrow cues on memory. Second, given that the difference in social salience also exists between self-and other-referential processing, we investigate whether the same effect as the self-referential processing of words exists for emotional faces with high social salience and regardless of emotional valence (a high and a low social salience in Experiment 2A; and a positive and a negative emotional face in Experiment 2B). The results showed that self-referential and emotional cues, irrespective of their emotional valence, enhance memory for the indicated target objects across experiments. This suggests that automatic prioritization of social salience for self-referential words or emotional faces plays an important role in subsequent cognitive processing through attention orienting to influence memory.

Marked and managed: performing a “good” White identity in non-White spaces

ABSTRACT As dominant group members, Whites tend to experience race as a low salience identity, particularly in interactions in White settings with other Whites. Using data collected from in-depth interviews with White partners in interracial relationships, this paper analyses what happens when Whites enter non-White settings and become racially marked. How do Whites understand the meaning of their Whiteness in these settings and what strategies do they use to manage others’ impressions? White participants reported experiencing hypervisibility, a sharp awareness of their racial identity, and heightened apprehensions about being perceived as potentially racist and culturally inept. Consequently, participants made conscious changes to their behaviours (e.g. body language, food consumption), speech, and appearance as a means of signalling a “good” White identity and establishing belonging in spaces where they were marked as racial and cultural outsiders.

How salience enhances inhibitory control: An analysis of electro-cortical mechanisms

Stop-signal tasks (SSTs) combined with human electro-cortical recordings (Event-Related Potentials, ERPs) have revealed mechanisms associated with successful stopping (relative to failed), presumably contributing to inhibitory control. The corresponding ERP signatures have been labeled stop N1 (+/- 100-ms latency), stop N2 (200 ms), and stop P3 (160–250 ms), and argued to reflect more sensory-specific (N1) versus more generic (N2, P3) mechanisms. However, stop N1 and stop N2, as well as latencies of stop-P3, appear to be quite inconsistent across studies. The present work addressed the possible influence of stop-signal salience, expecting high salience to induce clear stop N1s but reduced stop N2s, and short-latency stop P3s. Three SST varieties were combined with high-resolution EEG. An imperative visual (go) stimulus was occasionally followed by a subsequent (stop) stimulus that signalled to withhold the just initiated response. Stop-Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) decreased linearly from visual-low to visual-high-salience to auditory. Auditory Stop N1 was replicated. A C1-like visual evoked potential (latency < 100 ms) was observed only with high salience, but not robustly associated with successful versus failed stops. Using the successful-failed contrast a visual stop-N1 analogue (112–156 ms post-stop-signal) was identified, as was right-frontal stop N2, but neither was sensitive to salience. Stop P3 had shorter latency for high than for low salience, and the extent of the early high-salience stop P3 correlated inversely with SSRT. These results suggest that salience-enhanced inhibitory control as manifest in SSRTs is associated with generic rather than sensory-specific electrocortical mechanisms.

Factors Associated with Postpartum Maternal Functioning in Black Women: A Secondary Analysis.

In the United States, 29-44% of Black women experience postpartum depressive symptoms (PDS), yet few are properly identified and/or connected to mental care services. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to examine the relationship between maternal functioning and clinical variables (PDS, maternal-infant attachment), racial variable (Black racial identity types-low race salience, assimilated and miseducated, self-hating, anti-White, multiculturalist, and conflicted), and sociodemographic characteristics (relationship status, education, insurance, childbirth type). A total of 116 women living in the southern United States were included in the analysis. Multivariate analyses revealed that Black racial identity (p = 0.02), PDS (p &lt; 0.0001), maternal-infant attachment (p &lt; 0.0001), and educational level (p = 0.03) were independently associated with maternal functioning. This work provides new evidence regarding the role of various clinical and racial factors on Black postpartum women's adjustment to motherhood. This analysis also adds to the growing body of evidence of reliability for the BIMF in Black postpartum women.

Does institutional misfit trigger customisation instead of non-compliance?

This article analyses the role of institutional misfit in why member states customise European Union (EU) renewable energy (RE) policies when implementing them. Institutional misfit theory posits that member states only adjust to EU policies when the adaptation pressure remains moderate and national actors’ policy preferences align. Conversely, this article tests the argument that member states manage institutional misfit by adjusting – customising – EU policies, that is, through vertical EU policy change rather than domestic change. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the article compares the customisation of EU Directive 2009/28/EC in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, results suggest that institutional misfit is not a necessary condition for customised implementation. Instead, when high institutional fit meets high salience, member states may issue substantively more ambitious policies than the EU requires. Conversely, when high institutional fit meets low salience, member states have no impetus to customise EU rules.

Modulation of performance during executive function tasks by emotional salience of stimuli (Modulación del desempeño en tareas de funciones ejecutivas por saliencia emocional de los estímulos)

ABSTRACT Because emotional salience has a critical effect on cognitive processing, its effect on core executive functions has not been considered much. This study compares reaction time and accuracy of the response in the three core executive functions. The 92 students who participated in the study were assigned to two groups and performed a variety of core executive functions tests: inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility tests in versions where the stimuli had high emotional salience and low emotional salience. Each test evaluated performance according to accuracy of the response and reaction times. The results showed that high emotional salience is a characteristic of the stimuli that, in general, favours the speed and accuracy of answers in visual WM tasks and in IC processes but affects CF tasks depending on the level.

"I just check 'other'": Evidence to support expanding the measurement inclusivity and equity of ethnicity/race and cultural identifications of U.S. adolescents.

In nationally funded research in the U.S., ethnicity and race are measured with checkbox questions, the limited categories of which may yield significant missing data and low salience to available categories, particularly among adults of color. How adolescent-generated data compare to these limited categories, and how adolescents, not just those of color, describe their culture are understudied. In our sample, we asked the following: (a) how do adolescents' ethnicity/race and culture identifications compare?, (b) how do adolescents' open-ended ethnicity/race and checkbox ethnicity/race labels compare?, and (c) how do adolescents' ethnicity/race labels compare to available categories for identification on the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) demographic form? Data from 76 adolescents (64.5% female, Mage = 15.78 years) were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. White adolescents were as likely as adolescents of color to identify with cultural labels, and most adolescents described culture differently than race/ethnicity. White adolescents' open-ended and checkbox labels overlapped more (38.8%) than adolescents of colors' (22.5%). Only 17% of adolescents' open-ended race/ethnicity identification labels and 54% of their checkbox identifications were available on the NIH's demographic form. As measurement of demographic data is reduced to few options that favor privileged identities, innovative methods to measure individuals' identities are warranted. Using tools that do not reflect individuals' identity labels may increase error and reflects structural problems of research inequity. Our findings provide initial evidence of this methodological issue in a sample of adolescents. Building inclusive demographic tools from individuals' self-descriptors that remain feasible and practical for use can diminish inequity associated with describing "diverse" populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

When the cat is away: How institutional autonomy, low salience, and issue complexity shape administrative action

AbstractPolitical issues sometimes display an intriguing combination of high degrees of complexity, low political saliency, and high levels of administrative autonomy. This article investigates how this type of issues shapes the relationship between politicians and the public service. More specifically, we advance the notion of “administrative action space” to describe the emergence of collaborative governance when directives from the political level are intermittent or absent. Using an illustrative case on the administration of measures to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a transnational public health issue in Europe, we find that senior public servants nested in epistemic communities play a leading role in driving agency and facilitating governance of complex but low‐salient issues when administrative autonomy is extensive.

Including visual orienting functions into cerebral visual impairment screening: Reliability, variability, and ecological validity

BackgroundCerebral visual impairment (CVI) is a heterogeneous brain-based visual processing disorder in which basic visual orienting functions (VOF) and higher-order perception can be impaired. AimsTo evaluate (1) the test-retest reliability and variability of an eye tracking-based VOF paradigm, and related clinical characteristics, and (2) the relations between VOF (variability) and daily visual functioning and visuoperceptual dimensions. Methods and proceduresThirty-three children with CVI (Males=14; mean age=9 years 10 months) underwent eye tracking thrice, completed a visuoperceptual battery, and parents completed the Flemish CVI questionnaire. VOF reliability and variability of reaction time (RTF), fixation duration and accuracy were assessed with intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), Bland-Altman plots, and coefficient of variation. Relations were analysed with linear mixed models. Outcomes and resultsHighly salient visual stimuli had good RTF reliability (ICCs=0.75) and triggered less variable VOF. Intermediate and low salience stimuli had poor-to-moderate reliability and triggered more variable VOF. Younger performance age related to more VOF variability. Greater visual (dis)interest, clutter and distance viewing impairments, and a weaker visuoperceptual profile related to slower RTF. Conclusions and implicationsHighly salient stimuli reveal a child’s ‘optimal’ visual performance, whereas intermediate and low salience stimuli uncover VOF variability, which is a key CVI hallmark to detect.

A qualitative exploration of English black adults’ views of strength and balance activities in mid-life

BackgroundPublic health guidelines state that all adults should undertake muscle and bone strengthening and balance training activities at least twice a week to support their physical function and maintain independent health. This is intended to maintain strength in adulthood and offset natural declines in bone density and muscle mass. Most older adults do not meet this guideline with low levels of compliance among older black people. This study explored the experiences of physical activity relating to strength and balance activities, amongst black men and women living in England, aged 50–70.MethodsParticipants were recruited by phone via a network of research recruitment specialists across England. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 25 black people aged 50–70 living in England. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted.ResultsWe found there was only a very general understanding of the importance of maintaining body strength and balance, and low salience: strength and balance activities were not seen to be an important part of participants’ lives. Most participants only wanted to be strong enough to get on with ‘normal life’ and not to build strength or balance. Participants aged 50–70 were likely to think they were too young to worry about strength and balance, which tended to be mentioned only if someone had experienced a problem. Participants reported that NHS staff, especially physiotherapists are a key source of information on the topic and could therefore be useful in future prevention strategies.ConclusionPublic health recommendations stress the importance of increasing participation in regular strength and balance activities as people age, to reduce the risk of falls and maintain independence. This study has shown that among the black middle-aged adults we interviewed, the knowledge and salience of this message is low. Public health approaches should be taken to communicate the importance of enhancing strength and balance as people approach older age, including communication and education programmes led by health professionals, who were viewed with authority amongst these participants.

A blessing and a curse? Examining public preferences for differentiated integration

This study examines public preferences for two forms of differentiated integration (DI): opt-outs and multi-speed EU. Due to the low salience of DI in domestic politics, we suggest that people use ideological benchmarks when forming opinions about DI mostly relating to their general predispositions towards the EU. While pro-EU citizens are more in favor of DI in the form of multiple speeds as this might pose a solution to overcome gridlock, Euroskeptic citizens display more support for opt-outs as a means to accommodate concerns about national identity and control. These differences are in turn accentuated by people’s left-right ideology. We test our hypotheses using public opinion data from the Eurobarometer between 2004 and 2018 and complete it with novel survey data. Our results suggest that while support for DI has increased in recent years, DI preferences largely coincide with ideological predispositions. Our findings indicate that rather than overcoming preference heterogeneity within the EU, DI might entrench existing fault lines.

Intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network moderates adolescent susceptibility to negative and positive peer norms

Not all adolescents are equally susceptible to peer influence, and for some, peer influence exerts positive rather than negative effects. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, the current study examined how intrinsic functional connectivity networks associated with processing social cognitive and affective stimuli predict adolescents’ (n = 87, ages 11–14 years) prosocial tendencies and risky behaviors in the context of positive and negative peer norms. We tested the moderating role of four candidate intrinsic brain networks—associated with mentalizing, cognitive control, motivational relevance, and affective salience—in peer influence susceptibility. Only intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network significantly moderated the association between peer norms and adolescent behavior above and beyond the other networks. Adolescents with high intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network reported greater prosocial tendencies in contexts with more positive peer norms but greater risk-taking behavior in contexts with more negative peer norms. In contrast, peer norms were not associated with adolescent behavior for individuals with low affective salience within-network intrinsic connectivity. The mentalizing network, cognitive control network, and motivational relevance network were not associated with individual differences in peer influence susceptibility. This study identifies key neural mechanisms underlying differential susceptibility to positive and negative peer influence in early adolescence, with a particular emphasis on the role of affective salience over traditional mentalizing, regulatory, and motivational processes.

Who gets persuaded? The heterogeneity of campaign effects in the Brexit referendum

Political contexts affect the degree to which traditional campaign methods like door knocking and leafleting affect referendum outcomes. Campaign methods are most effective when issues are of low salience and political parties provide unified cues to their supporters. In this paper, I draw on Zaller’s model of opinion formation to derive some theoretical expectations about the effectiveness of campaign contact in referendum campaigns when the issue is highly salient but the political parties provide mixed cues, arguing that prior voting intention, rather than partisan identity, should affect receptiveness to campaign messages. I test these expectations with regression analysis of British Election Study panel data, using propensity score matching to mitigate selection bias. My results suggest that the effects of campaigning during the Brexit referendum were mostly small, but differed significantly according to an individual’s political attention and, contrary to the theoretical expectations, their partisan identity.

Unintended Effects of Policy Interactions in the Health Sector: A Case of Kerala, India

The governments of developing countries, including India, are pursuing policy mixes in collaboration with the private sector to strengthen the public health system. However, little is known about the interaction of public policies with different instrument logics. We conducted a contextual analysis of two health policies with different instrument logics—emergency care and social health insurance programme—for over a decade in Kerala, employing primary and secondary data, government reports, newspaper articles, and published and unpublished literature. Our analysis suggests that the competition between policies has led to policies working at crossroads. The low political salience of emergency care has led to the diversion of resources and attention to government health insurance programmes. Thus, emergency care is increasingly facilitated at private facilities, shifting the government’s role from service delivery to financing. Our findings also highlight that the interaction effects among health policies receive limited attention among researchers and practitioners. These findings are relevant to countries of similar economies undergoing New Public Management reforms leading to the weakening of the public system in dealing with health functions such as emergency care.

Behavioral and fMRI evidence that arousal enhances bottom-up selectivity in young but not older adults

The locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system integrates signals about arousal states throughout the brain and helps coordinate cognitive selectivity. However, age-related changes in this system may impact how arousal coordinates selectivity in older adults. To examine this, we compared how increases in emotional arousal modulates cognitive selectivity for images differing in perceptual salience in young and older adults. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that relative to older adults, hearing an arousing sound enhanced young adults’ bottom-up processing and incidental memory for high versus low salience category-selective body images. We also examined how arousing sounds impacted a top-down goal to detect dot-probes that appeared immediately after high or low salience images. We found that young adults were slower to detect probes appearing after high salience body images on arousing trials, whereas older adults showed this pattern on non-arousing trials. Taken together, our findings show that arousal's effect on selectivity changes with age and differs across bottom-up and top-down processing.