New Group Of Participants Research Articles

Tailoring Self-Help Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques for Stroke Survivors: Examining Preferences, Feasibility and Acceptability.

Objective: Studies on psychological techniques to reduce stroke-related anxiety and/or distress are limited. More scarce is research on tailoring such techniques to suit stroke survivors’ needs, including the needs of those with aphasia. To address this gap, we report two sequential studies. Study 1 explored preferred psychological techniques (i.e., mindfulness and relaxation) and ways to modify them for stroke survivors, including those with communication difficulties. Study 2 examined the feasibility and acceptability of these modified techniques with a new sample of survivors.Design: Mixed-methods using qualitative and quantitative approach in both studies.Participants: All participants were stroke survivors living in the community (Study 1: n = 13, median age = 61 years; Study 2: n = 38, median age = 67 years).Interventions and Procedures: Study 1: seven techniques representing commonly used types of mindfulness and relaxation were filmed on a professionally produced DVD. Participants feedback on how these techniques could be tailored to meet their needs, their preferences for techniques and reasons for likes and dislikes.Study 2: four favored techniques from study 1 were modified and re-filmed into a new DVD. A new group of participants were asked to practice them twice daily, five times a week for at least 4 weeks. They completed questionnaires at the start of the study (T1), returned approximately 4 weeks later completing the same measures (n = 24 at T2). Focus group discussions/interviews were conducted at the end of T2 exploring the feasibility and acceptability of these techniques.Results: Four techniques were favored by participants in Study 1. After adaptation, these techniques were generally perceived as acceptable, user-friendly and beneficial to participants who participated in the focus groups /interviews in Study 2. A ‘once a day’ practice frequency could make practicing more feasible. Participants also preferred having choices- multiple techniques could be more useful than single technique.Conclusion: Tailoring psychological techniques for stroke survivors is beneficial. Tailored techniques in a self-help DVD format seemed feasible and acceptable, however, a less frequent practice would be easier for stroke survivors. Future studies should seek to recruit a more heterogenous sample as well as implementing strategies to increase the retention rate.

Development of a tablet app designed to improve African Americans' screening colonoscopy rates.

Compared with other racial/ethnic groups, African Americans have the highest colorectal cancer (CRC) morbidity and mortality rates. It is critical to help improve African Americans' CRC prevention efforts in order to reduce the burden of CRC in this community. The aim of this study was to develop and field test a tablet app, called e-Motivate, designed to improve African Americans' screening colonoscopy rates. The e-Motivate app was field tested, using an iterative approach. The first version of the app, e-Motivate 1.0, was field tested on 20 African Americans over the age of 50. Participants engaged in a think aloud exercise and provided feedback regarding the app's usability and acceptability. The results of the first field test were used to modify the app and develop e-Motivate 2.0. The field test procedures were repeated on a new group of participants (N = 18). The results from the second field test were used to make final modifications to the app. Overall, participants responded positively to the app. Qualitative analyses showed that participants found the app to be easy to use and helpful. Furthermore, descriptive statistics revealed that participants found the app to be highly usable and acceptable, exceeding recommended benchmarks for usability and acceptability. Critiques of the app were used to modify and finalize the intervention. The results from the proposed study suggest that the e-Motivate app is highly feasible and acceptable. The next step in this line of research is to conduct a randomized clinical trial to formally test the efficacy of the e-Motivate app for improving screening colonoscopy rates among African Americans.

Automatic and intentional processing of numerical order and its relationship to arithmetic performance

Recent findings have demonstrated that numerical order processing (i.e., the application of knowledge that numbers are organized in a sequence) constitutes a unique and reliable predictor of arithmetic performance. The present work investigated two central questions to further our understanding of numerical order processing and its relationship to arithmetic. First, are numerical order sequences processed without conscious monitoring (i.e., automatically)? Second, are automatic and intentional ordinal processing differentially related to arithmetic performance?In the first experiment, adults completed a novel ordinal congruity task. Participants had to evaluate whether number triplets were arranged in a correct (e.g., ▪) physical order or not (e.g., ▪). Results of this experiment showed that participants were faster to decide that the physical size of ascending numbers was in-order when the physical and numerical values were congruent compared to when they were incongruent (i.e., congruency effect). In the second experiment, a new group of participants was asked to complete an ordinal congruity task, an ordinal verification task (i.e., are the number triplets in a correct order or not) and an arithmetic fluency test. Results of this experiment revealed that the automatic processing of ascending numerical order is influenced by the numerical distance of the numbers. Correlation analysis further showed that only reaction time measures of the intentional ordinal verification task were associated with arithmetic performance.While the findings of the present work suggest that ascending numerical order is processed automatically, the relationship between numerical order processing and arithmetic appears to be limited to the intentional manipulation of numbers. The present findings show that the mental engagement of verifying the order of numbers is a crucial factor for explaining the link between numerical order processing and arithmetic performance.

Dispositional optimism and luck attributions: Implications for philosophical theories of luck

ABSTRACTWe conducted two studies to determine whether there is a relationship between dispositional optimism and the attribution of good or bad luck to ambiguous luck scenarios. Study 1 presented five scenarios that contained both a lucky and an unlucky component, thereby making them ambiguous in regard to being an overall case of good or bad luck. Participants rated each scenario in toto on a four-point Likert scale and then completed an optimism questionnaire. The results showed a significant correlation between optimism and assignments of luck: more optimistic people rated the characters in the ambiguous scenarios as more lucky while more pessimistic people rated the same characters in the same scenarios as more unlucky. Study 2 separated the good and bad luck components of the study 1 scenarios and presented the components individually to a new group of participants. Participants rated the luckiness of each component on the same four-point scale and then completed the optimism questionnaire. We found that the luckiness of the bad luck component could be significantly predicted by their level of optimism. We discuss how these findings pose problems for philosophical accounts that treat luck as an objective property.

User-Defined Gestures for Gestural Interaction: Extending from Hands to Other Body Parts

ABSTRACTMost gestural interaction studies on gesture elicitation have focused on hand gestures, and few have considered the involvement of other body parts. Moreover, most of the relevant studies used the frequency of the proposed gesture as the main index, and the participants were not familiar with the design space. In this study, we developed a gesture set that includes hand and non-hand gestures by combining the indices of gesture frequency, subjective ratings, and physiological risk ratings. We first collected candidate gestures in Experiment 1 through a user-defined method by requiring participants to perform gestures of their choice for 15 most commonly used commands, without any body part limitations. In Experiment 2, a new group of participants evaluated the representative gestures obtained in Experiment 1. We finally obtained a gesture set that included gestures made with the hands and other body parts. Three user characteristics were exhibited in this set: a preference for one-handed movements, a preference for gestures with social meaning, and a preference for dynamic gestures over static gestures.

“Lacking warmth”: Alexithymia trait is related to warm-specific thermal somatosensory processing

Alexithymia is a personality trait involving deficits in emotional processing. The personality construct has been extensively validated, but the underlying neural and physiological systems remain controversial. One theory suggests that low-level somatosensory mechanisms act as somatic markers of emotion, underpinning cognitive and affective impairments in alexithymia. In two separate samples (total N=100), we used an established Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) battery to probe multiple neurophysiological submodalities of somatosensation, and investigated their associations with the widely-used Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Experiment one found reduced sensitivity to warmth in people with higher alexithymia scores, compared to individuals with lower scores, without deficits in other somatosensory submodalities. Experiment two replicated this result in a new group of participants using a full-sample correlation between threshold for warm detection and TAS-20 scores. We discuss the relations between low-level thermoceptive function and cognitive processing of emotion.

An Online Telepractice Model for the Prevention of Voice Disorders in Vocally Healthy Student Teachers Evaluated by a Smartphone Application.

This article describes the Global Voice Prevention Model (GVPM) facilitated with student teachers at West Chester University and the VoiceEvalU8 smartphone application (app) used to assess the effectiveness of the GVPM. Twenty-one participants completed 1 of 3 conditions (i.e., in-person GVPM, telepractice GVPM, and control). The in-person and telepractice conditions ran for 4 weeks during fall 2016, with 1 week dedicated to vocal education and vocal hygiene and 3 weeks spent in vocal training. The control condition ran for 1 week and included only vocal education and vocal hygiene. The VoiceEvalU8 app was used at pre- and post-condition twice a day for 5 days to record acoustic, perceptual, and aerodynamic voice measures. The study is ongoing; therefore, preliminary acoustic results for fundamental frequency (F0) and jitter% are presented from pre- to post-condition. During spring 2017, the participants were student teaching and using the VoiceEvalU8 app to record the voice measures before and after teaching all day. A new group of participants will be enrolled fall 2017 for selection into 1 of the 3 conditions and then continue on to student teaching spring 2018.

Bottled vs. Canned Beer: Do They Really Taste Different?

People often say that beer tastes better from a bottle than from a can. However, one can ask how reliable this perceived difference is across consumers. And, if reliable, one can further ask whether it is a purely psychological phenomenon (associated with the influence of packaging on taste perception), or whether instead it reflects some more mundane physico-chemical interaction between the packaging material (or packing procedure/process) and the contents. Two experiments were conducted in order to address these questions. In the main experiment, 151 participants at the 2016 Edinburgh Science Festival were served a special ‘craft beer’ in a plastic cup. The beer was either poured from a bottle or can (a between-participants experimental design was used). The participants were encouraged to pick up the packaging in order to inspect the label before tasting the beer. The participants rated the perceived taste, quality, and freshness of the beer, as well as their likelihood of purchase, and estimated the price. All of the beer came from the same batch (specifically a Session IPA from Barney’s Brewery in Edinburgh). None of the participants were familiar with this particular craft brew. Nevertheless, those who evaluated the beer from the bottle rated it as tasting better than those who rated the beer served from the can. Having demonstrated such a perceptual difference (in terms of taste), we then went on to investigate whether people would prefer one packaging format over the other when the beer from bottle and can was served blind to a new group of participants (i.e., when the participants did not know the packaging material). The participants in this control study (n = 29) were asked which beer they preferred. Alternatively, they could state that the two samples tasted the same. No sign of a consistent preference was obtained under such blind tasting conditions. Explanations for the psychological impact of the packaging format, in terms of differences in packaging weight (between tin and glass), and/or prior associations of quality with specific packaging materials/formats (what some have chosen to call ‘image molds’), are discussed.

Environmental Cues Assist in Weight Management

Weight management and obesity research is extensive. Previously, our lab demonstrated enhanced weight loss for participants using a simple environmental cue. Specifically, participants placed brightly colored stickers with motivating weight loss sayings around their rooms, in their cars, and even on their wallets (participants were allowed to place the stickers wherever they liked). Participants that placed the cues in locations that they frequently encountered had significantly more weight loss compared to participants that had no such cues. In this follow up study, we employed a multiple baseline design whereby participants in the experimental group received the cues at various times during the experiment. If the cues were in fact impacting weight loss then we hypothesized that weight loss would be significantly enhanced only after the participants received their cues. Using this procedure we were able to confirm that weight loss across all participants was similar up until the introduction of the cues. Each week, a new group of participants received the cues and were allowed to use them for the remainder of the study. Results show that the introduction of the cues enhanced weight loss, regardless of which week the cues were introduced. Motivational factors may also play a role in these findings, however this study further supports the use of simple visual cues as a method of enhancing weight loss in adults.Support or Funding InformationThis research would not have been possible without the assistance of my undergraduate research team: Taz Watson, Martha Williams, Andrew DelCastillo, Scotty Dennis, & Shelley Rae Edwards.Special thanks to Millsaps College for supporting this research.

Effects of different real-time feedback types on human performance in high-demanding work conditions

Experiencing stress during training is a way to prepare professionals for real-life crises. With the help of feedback tools, professionals can train to recognize and overcome negative effects of stress on task performances. This paper reports two studies that empirically examined the effect of such a feedback system. The system, based on the COgnitive Performance and Error (COPE) model, provides its users with physiological, predicted performance and predicted error-chance feedback. The first experiment focussed on creating stressful scenarios and establishing the parameters for the predictive models for the feedback system. Participants (n=9) performed fire-extinguishing tasks on a virtual ship. By altering time pressure, information uncertainty and consequences of performance, stress was induced. COPE variables were measured and models were established that predicted performance and the chances on specific errors. In the second experiment a new group of participants (n=29) carried out the same tasks while receiving eight different combinations of the three feedback types in a counterbalanced order. Performance scores improved when feedback was provided during the task. The number of errors made did not decrease. The usability score for the system with physiological feedback was significantly higher than a system without physiological feedback, unless combined with error feedback. This paper shows effects of feedback on performances and usability. To improve the effectiveness of the feedback system it is suggested to provide more in-depth tutorial sessions. Design changes are recommended that would make the feedback system more effective in improving performances. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The Psychological Representation of Musical Intervals in a Twelve-Tone Context

Previous studies of twelve-tone music suggest that participants can learn a twelve-tone row and identify it in a forced-choice test (Bigand, D’Adamo, & Poulin, 2003; Krumhansl, Sandell, & Sergeant, 1987). However, these findings invite speculation about the extent to which participants were attuning to intervals to complete the task. The present study builds upon these previous experiments by specifically investigating whether participants implicitly attune to repetitive interval patterns embedded in twelve-tone melodies. After passive exposure to a monophonic twelve-tone melody dominated by intervals 1 and 3 (in semitones), musician listeners with no formal training in nontonal music theory demonstrated learning of the frequent intervals (and directed interval pairs) in both forced-choice and ratings tasks. Experiment 2 tested a new group of participants with similar backgrounds, although this time the twelve-tone melody heard in familiarization was predominated with intervals 2 and 5. Participants showed learning of directed interval pairs, but not intervals (possibly due to the more tonal nature of interval successions within familiarization). These findings have pedagogical and analytical implications.

Using and Seeing Co-speech Gesture in a Spatial Task

Visibility of speakers’ conversational hand gestures has been shown to facilitate listeners’ comprehension. Is this true for all types of gestures? In Experiment 1, speakers were videotaped describing apartment layouts from memory. When describing complex compared to simple layouts, speakers used more representational gestures. In particular, they used more iconic–deictic gestures, or hand movements that represent both an object or action, and direction or location. This suggests that the frequency of complex representational gestures increases as a function of task difficulty. To assess the extent to which these gestures facilitate speech comprehension, in Experiment 2 a new group of participants either watched the videos of the apartment descriptions (audio + video condition) or only heard the descriptions (audio-only condition) and drew each corresponding layout. Although drawing accuracy did not differ as a function of condition, the more iconic–deictic gestures produced during the apartment descriptions, the less accurate listeners’ drawings were. Together, findings from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that iconic–deictic gestures reflect task difficulty for the speaker and do not necessarily facilitate comprehension for the listener.

Understanding Chinese Overseas Recreational Vehicle Tourists: A Netnographic and Comparative Approach

A new group of participants, young, independent, technology empowered Chinese tourists, are entering the international recreational vehicle (RV) drive market. This study addressed three research questions: Who are they? Why do they travel in this style? Where do they go? Netnography was undertaken as the research approach. The findings were contextualized by comparison with existing knowledge about mature RV users (e.g., Grey Nomads, Snowbirds, and retirees). It was found that the Chinese RV tourists share some commonalities with the mature RV market. The differences, however, were also substantial. Implications for other markets and destinations in developing the international driving market are offered. Furthermore, the use of netnography to offer insights to understand new markets and/or new activities is highlighted.

Inverted social reward: associations between psychopathic traits and self-report and experimental measures of social reward.

Individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits tend to undervalue long-term, affiliative relationships, but it remains unclear what motivates them to engage in social interactions at all. Their experience of social reward may provide an important clue. In Study 1 of this paper, a large sample of participants (N = 505) completed a measure of psychopathic traits (Self-Report Psychopathy Scale Short-Form) and a measure of social reward value (Social Reward Questionnaire) to explore what aspects of social reward are associated with psychopathic traits. In Study 2 (N = 110), the same measures were administered to a new group of participants along with two experimental tasks investigating monetary and social reward value. Psychopathic traits were found to be positively correlated with the enjoyment of callous treatment of others and negatively associated with the enjoyment of positive social interactions. This indicates a pattern of ‘inverted’ social reward in which being cruel is enjoyable and being kind is not. Interpersonal psychopathic traits were also positively associated with the difference between mean reaction times (RTs) in the monetary and social experimental reward tasks; individuals with high levels of these traits responded comparatively faster to social than monetary reward. We speculate that this may be because social approval/admiration has particular value for these individuals, who have a tendency to use and manipulate others. Together, these studies provide evidence that the self-serving and cruel social behaviour seen in psychopathy may in part be explained by what these individuals find rewarding.

A Preliminary Investigation into Effects of Linguistic Abstraction on the Perception of Gender in Spoken Language.

We investigated the role that linguistic abstraction may play in people’s perceptions of gender in spoken language. In the first experiment, participants told stories about their best friend and romantic partner. Variations in linguistic abstraction and gender-linked adjectives for describing their close others were examined. Participants used significantly more abstract language to describe men compared to women, possibly reflecting a gender stereotype associated with the dispositionality factor of linguistic abstraction. In a second experiment, a new group of participants judged the gender of the protagonists from the stories generated in Experiment 1, after the explicit linguistic gender cues were removed. Consistent with the dispositionality factor, linguistic abstraction moderated the effects of the gender stereotypicality of the context (masculine, feminine, or neutral) on participants’ gender judgments. Discussion focuses on the implications of the results for the communication of gender stereotypes and the effects of linguistic abstraction in more naturalistic language.

Rejection thresholds in chocolate milk: Evidence for segmentation

Bitterness is generally considered a negative attribute in food, yet many individuals enjoy some bitterness in products like coffee or chocolate. In chocolate, bitterness arises from naturally occurring alkaloids and phenolics found in cacao. Fermentation and roasting help develop typical chocolate flavor and reduce the intense bitterness of raw cacao by modifying these bitter compounds. As it becomes increasingly common to fortify chocolate with ‘raw’ cacao to increase the amount of healthful phytonutrients, it is important to identify the point at which the concentration of bitter compounds becomes objectionable, even to those who enjoy some bitterness. Classical threshold methods focus on the presence or absence of a sensation rather than acceptability or hedonics. A new alternative, the rejection threshold, was recently described in the literature. Here, we sought to quantify and compare differences in rejection thresholds (RjT) and detection thresholds (DT) in chocolate milk spiked with a food safe bitterant (sucrose octaacetate). In experiment 1, a series of paired preference tests was used to estimate the RjT for bitterness in chocolate milk. In a new group of participants (experiment 2), we determined the RjT and DT using the forced choice ascending method of limits. In both studies, participants were segmented on the basis of self-declared preference for milk or dark solid chocolate. Based on sigmoid fits of the indifference–preference function, the RjT was ∼2.3 times higher for those preferring dark chocolate than the RjT for those preferring milk chocolate in both experiments. In contrast, the DT for both groups was functionally identical, suggesting that differential effects of bitterness on liking of chocolate products are not based on the ability to detect bitterness in these products.

Shoes as a source of first impressions

Surprisingly minimal appearance cues lead perceivers to accurately judge others’ personality, status, or politics. We investigated people’s precision in judging characteristics of an unknown person, based solely on the shoes he or she wears most often. Participants provided photographs of their shoes, and during a separate session completed self-report measures. Coders rated the shoes on various dimensions, and these ratings were found to correlate with the owners’ personal characteristics. A new group of participants accurately judged the age, gender, income, and attachment anxiety of shoe owners based solely on the pictures. Shoes can indeed be used to evaluate others, at least in some domains.

Musically puzzling II: Sensitivity to overall structure in a Haydn E-minor sonata

Previous studies have suggested that listeners are insensitive to the overall tonal structure of musical pieces. In Part I of this report ( Granot & Jacoby, 2011 ) we reexamined this question by means of a puzzle task using 10 segments of Mozart’s B flat major piano sonata K. 570/I. As expected, subjects had difficulty in recreating the original piece. However, their answers revealed some interesting patterns, including (1) Some sensitivity to the overall structure of A–B–A’ around the non-stable B section; (2) Non-trivial sensitivity to overall “directionality” as shown by a new type of analysis (“distance score”); (3) Correct grouping and placement of developmental sections possibly related to listener’s sensitivity to musical tension; and (4) Sensitivity to opening and closing gestures, thematic similarity, and surface cues. In the current paper we further validate these findings by comparing the results obtained from a new group of participants who performed an 8-segment puzzle task of Haydn’s E minor piano sonata Hob. VXI-34/I. The similarity of our results to those obtained with the Mozart sonata validates our methods and points to the robustness of our findings, despite the differences in the music contexts (composer and key), and despite some methodological caveats.

Abstract A73: Improving colorectal cancer surveys for New Mexico Hispanics

Abstract The goal of this research is to produce Spanish- and English-language versions of a colorectal cancer (CRC) risk factor survey that is easily answered by the three main Hispanic sub-populations in New Mexico - US-born and Mexico-born Mexican Americans and native Spanish New Mexicans. We began by conducting an in-depth review of validated surveys covering the domains of demographics, acculturation, personal and family medical history, diet, height and weight, physical activity, smoking and alcohol use. We next evaluated how New Mexico Hispanics interpret and comprehend survey questions and recall information to answer the questions. Our methodology included, in-person field interviewing of self-identified Hispanics age 40 years and older using cognitive-interviewing techniques. All interviews were conducted by a trained, bilingual interviewer. The survey was tested, revised and retested in a new group of participants who met the eligibility requirements. Three results are highlighted here. First, in a novel approach to reconstructing life histories of body mass index (BMI) and physical activity as indicators of energy balance over time, participants reconstructed their body size (height and weight for BMI estimates), work and leisure time physical activity patterns at age 15, 30, 50 years of age and during the previous year. We noted that respondents a) did not easily understand that the activity levels represented a range of physical exertion from none to vigorous, and b) felt they could not select a level if they had not done any of the example activities listed. The instructions were revised to explain the range and the description of the activity levels simplified incorporating the activities our respondents reported performing. Second, the descriptions provided in the gastrointestinal (GI) cancer and CRC screening questions were confusing. Descriptions were simplified for GI cancer risk questions (e.g. familial polypsis, history of polyps) and the CRC screening questions were replaced with modified versions of Behavioral Health Risk Factor Surveillance Survey questions. Last, a memory aide was designed to help the respondents answer the life history questions. The memory aid and revised versions of life history questions, were tested in a second round of field interviews. The memory aid was determined to be an effective method for reconstructing not only body size and activity pattern history, but also lifetime patterns of cigarette smoking and alcohol use. There is a critical need for this CRC survey in our state, where the incidence of CRC among Hispanics is equal to or higher than the incidence in non-Hispanic Whites. Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):A73.

Perceiving Numbers Affects the Subjective Temporal Midpoint

Temporal experience can be modulated by several environmental factors. There is increasing evidence that numerical quantity may also influence temporal processes. Here, it is shown that merely looking at numbers causes a bias in a time-bisection task that depends on its magnitude. In the first experiment, a group of healthy subjects was submitted to a time-bisection task in which numerical cues were blocked (blocked design). In the second experiment, a new group of participants performed a time-bisection task in which the previous numbers were all randomly arranged in the same block (intermingled design). Results show that temporal performance is biased when numbers of different magnitude are arranged in an intermingled design. These findings argue for a functional interaction between time and numbers, depending on the implicit extrapolation of the size difference between the displayed numbers rather than on the numerical size itself.