Phone Conversations Research Articles

Mentalization-Based Treatment for a Physician With Borderline Personality Disorder.

Mentalization-Based Treatment for a Physician With Borderline Personality Disorder.

Mythology in Guided Imagery and Music (GIM): Practitioners’ Views on the Use of Myth in GIM

This research explores therapists’ perception about the use of myth in GIM, based on clients’ experiences and how myths occur during the GIM process. Six GIM practitioners were interviewed through Skype and phone conversations using semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis revealed that practitioners experience myth as a bridge for the unexpressed to be expressed. The clients give meaning to myth through their journey in the form of private myth. Based on the practitioners’ view, there is something from the collective in each client’s myth, and the path of healing depends on the client’s personal development. The therapists work together with clients, showing cultural sensitivity, and music unfolds like a story, containing all the qualities of myth (intensity and education).

Poor Health Behaviors among Housebound Japanese Community-Dwelling Older Adults Due to Prolonged Self-Restraint during the First COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

BackgroundProlonged self-restraining behaviors induced by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic’s containment measures can limit various positive health behaviors.ObjectiveWe examined the decline in going-out and certain other positive health behaviors and investigated the relationship between excessive decreases in going-out frequency and declining engagement in positive health behaviors among community-dwelling older adults during the self-restraint period.DesignThis study employed a cross-sectional survey design.SettingThis study was conducted in Nishi Tokyo City, Tokyo, Japan.ParticipantsThe participants were 294 respondents (150 women) aged 50 years and older who lived in public housing that were permitted to be surveyed during the self-restraint period.MeasurementsTheir pre-pandemic going-out frequency around February 2020 and going-out frequency during the self-restraint period starting in April 2020 were reported. We mainly assessed the existence of home health behaviors (i.e., exercise, in-person and phone conversations, and healthy diet). A self-report questionnaire was used to obtain data.ResultsGoing-out frequency decreased in 41.2% of the 294 respondents owing to the government’s request for self-restraint. In total, 13 individuals had been going out less than one time per week (housebound) before the request. Of the 281 people who were not housebound before the government’s self-restraint request, 13.9% were newly housebound. Newly housebound individuals were 5.3 times less likely to exercise, had 2.1 times fewer social contacts, and 2.6 times less balanced or healthy diets than those who maintained their frequency of going out.ConclusionsProlonged self-restraint due to the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to housebound status and poor health behaviors. Public health intervention is needed to prevent excessive self-restraint, along with new measures integrating information and communication technologies to enable older adults to live active lives.

Extractive Summarization of Call Transcripts

Text summarization is the process of extracting the most important information from the text and presenting it concisely in fewer sentences. Call transcript is a text that involves textual description of a phone conversation between a customer (caller) and agent(s) (customer representatives). This paper presents an indigenously developed method that combines topic modeling and sentence selection with punctuation restoration in condensing ill-punctuated or un-punctuated call transcripts to produce summaries that are more readable. Extensive testing, evaluation and comparisons have demonstrated the efficacy of this summarizer for call transcript summarization.

The Relationship between Heart Rate and Driver Behavior: Impacts of Cognitive Overload as a Result of Mobile Phone Conversation

The Relationship between Heart Rate and Driver Behavior: Impacts of Cognitive Overload as a Result of Mobile Phone Conversation

Proximal Fifth Metatarsal Fracture Treated with Plantar Plating: Retrospective Multi-Surgeon Case Series

Category:Midfoot/Forefoot; Sports; TraumaIntroduction/Purpose:Proximal fifth metatarsal fractures are a common foot injury. Previous surgical treatments have consisted of intramedullary screw fixation and a newer technique of plantar plating due to non-union and refractures seen with screw fixation. Purpose of this multi-surgeon case series study is to evaluate clinical and radiographic outcomes and complication rates after fifth metatarsal plating for proximal fifth metatarsal fractures in recreational and elite athletes.Methods:Retrospective multiple surgeon case series involving patients who underwent fifth metatarsal plantar plating for proximal fifth metatarsal fractures with a mean follow-up of 33.1 months (range, 12-52). Elite and recreational athletes were included. Demographic data, radiographic evaluation, and clinical notes were analyzed. Patient phone conversations were made to document complications outside of our electronic medical record.Results:Forty-four patients (45 fractures) were treated with plantar plating technique with a mean age of 37.3 years (range 14- 80). Five patients sustained refractures (11.1% of patients), 2 at previous fracture site, 1 through a screw hole, 1 proximal to plate, and 1 distal to plate. All refractures were treated non-operatively. No wound complications were seen. No secondary revision surgery was needed and union rate was 100% at final follow up.Conclusion:With a one year minimum follow up, plantar plating of proximal fifth metatarsal fractures is a viable option for treatment of both acute and chronic fractures as well as after failed intramedullary screw fixation with low refracture rates and without non-unions. Plantar plating allows the surgeon to have direct visualization of fracture reduction and ease of access for bone grafting. Both elite and recreational athletes can benefit from the plating technique.

High Cognitive Load Situations With Different Conversation Topics Affect Walking Speed and Cognitive Complexity

Walking and talking on the phone are common high-cognitive-load-situations (HCLS; e.g. dual-tasks), requiring extra attentional allocation and increasing perceived stress. We explored whether two load types, 1) single-task (ST) walking or talking on a phone and 2) HCLS walking while talking on a phone, influenced walking and/or cognitive performance among young (n=7; age=23.00±2.08yrs), middle-aged (n=14; age=44.79±7.42yrs), and older (n=15; age=74.47±3.91yrs) adults while controlling for perceived stress. Participants completed 3-minute trials of single-task walking (ST-W), single-task phone conversations with common (e.g., weather; ST-C) and uncommon topics (e.g., life experience; ST-U), and walking while talking on a phone (HCLS-C and HCLS-U). Walking speed was analyzed with 3(ST-W;HCLS-C;HCLS-U) x 3(Age) ANCOVA. HCLS resulted in slower walking speed (p<.001). Older adults exhibited slower speed across conditions compared to young (p=.015). Cognitive complexity (i.e., conversational tone and words greater than six letters (SIXLTR)) on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) were analyzed with 2(Cvs.U) x 2(STvs.HCLS) x 3(Age) ANCOVAs. Older age was associated with less cognitive complexity; positive tone (p=.014) and SIXLTR (p=.016), respectively in conversations. Uncommon topics reduced positive tone (p=.022) and SIXLTR (p=.003). Effects of HCLS on tone (p=.040) and SIXLTR (p=.005) varied with age. HCLS with different conversation topics resulted in reduced walking and cognitive complexity while controlling for perceived stress. The analysis of cognitive complexity using common/uncommon conversation topics is a novel method to assess the impact of HCLS. This research will disrupt the transformation of aging leading to a better understanding of attentional allocation and its effects on function.

The Evaluation of a Family-Engagement Approach to Increase Physical Activity, Healthy Nutrition, and Well-Being in Children and Their Parents.

Prevention programs often are directed at either parents or children separately, thereby ignoring the intergenerational aspect of health and well-being. Engaging the family is likely to improve both the uptake and long-term impact of health behavior change. We integrated an intergenerational approach into a frequently used shared assessment tool for children's care needs. The current study's aim was 2-fold: to monitor this family-engagement tool's effects on both children and their parents' health behaviors and well-being, and to examine the different dynamics of health behavioral change within a family.Method: We followed 12 children ages 10–14 years and their parents for 12 weeks using an explanatory mixed-methods design comprising interviews, questionnaires, and an n-of-1 study. During home visits at the beginning and end of the study, we interviewed children and their parents about their expectations and experiences, and measured their height and weight. Furthermore, we collected secondary data, such as notes from phone and email conversations with parents, as well as evaluation forms from professionals. In the n-of-1 study, families were prompted three times a week to describe their day and report on their vegetable intake, minutes of exercise, health behavior goals, and psychosomatic well-being. The interviews, notes, and evaluation forms were analyzed using qualitative content analyses. For the n-of-1 study, we performed multi-level time-series analyses across all families to assess changes in outcomes after consulting the family-engagement tool. Using regression analyses with autocorrelation correction, we examined changes within individual families.Results: Five child-mother dyads and three child-mother-father triads provided sufficient pre- and post-data. The mean minutes of children's physical activity significantly increased, and mothers felt more energetic, but other outcomes did not change. In consultations related to overweight, the family-engagement tool often was used without setting specific or family goals.Conclusions: The family-engagement approach elicited positive effects on some families' health and well-being. For multifaceted health problems, such as obesity, family-engagement approaches should focus on setting specific goals and strategies in different life domains, and for different family members.

Joseph Mills: An Author’s Editor

Joseph Mills is a senior editor in the Neuroscience Publications Department at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, where he lends his editorial expertise to assist authors with preparing manuscripts for journals, surgical textbooks, videos, and presentations. During a recent phone conversation, Mills shared his career path as a science editor, and we discussed matters about substantive editing for authors and publication ethics. After finishing graduate school for English, Mills started his first editorial job with Pfizer, where he copyedited internal laboratory reports and other scientific materials. This led him to his next opportunity editing medical journals for the University of Chicago Press. Following the closure of the medical journals department, he briefly worked supervising freelancers for American Journal Experts before returning to the press to work on scientific journals including American Naturalist, Current Anthropology, and others. Eventually relocating to Arizona, he was a freelance editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) network for a year before taking his current position at Barrow in 2018. There is visceral satisfaction that Mills finds in making something better—to contribute to the texts he edits by improving clarity that will in turn communicate important knowledge to the medical community and directly help patients. The instruments and devices, research findings, and surgical techniques being developed at Barrow are incredibly specialized and important, and while the surgeons are skillfully trained to execute precise procedures in complex areas of anatomy, they can be less experienced in expressing their ideas clearly or presenting […]

Making History the UCW Way

Making History the UCW Way

Optimizing class priors to improve the detection of social signals in audio data

To detect social signals such as laughter and filler events in an audio recording, the most straightforward way is to utilize a Hidden Markov Model — or these days a Hidden Markov Model/Deep Neural Network (HMM/DNN) hybrid. HMM/DNNs, however, perform best if the DNN outputs are scaled by dividing them by the a priori class probabilities first, before applying a dynamic or Viterbi beam search. These class a priori probability values (or priors for short) are usually estimated by counting the frame occurrences of each class in the training set and then dividing these totals by the total number of frames. These estimates, however, may in fact be suboptimal for a number of reasons ranging from imprecise labeling to the overconfidence of DNNs. In this study we show empirically that more reliable scaling factors can be obtained by optimization. Using this approach, we managed to achieve a 6−9% relative error reduction both at the frame level and the segment level, using a public database containing spontaneous English mobile phone conversations.

Understanding the Social Determinants of Mental Health of Undergraduate Students in Bangladesh: Interview Study.

BackgroundThe undergraduate student population has been actively studied in digital mental health research. However, the existing literature primarily focuses on students from high-income nations, and undergraduates from limited-income nations remain understudied.ObjectiveThis study aims to identify the broader social determinants of mental health among undergraduate students in Bangladesh, a limited-income nation in South Asia; study the manifestation of these determinants in their day-to-day lives; and explore the feasibility of self-monitoring tools in helping them identify the specific factors or relationships that affect their mental health.MethodsWe conducted a 21-day study with 38 undergraduate students from 7 universities in Bangladesh. We conducted 2 semistructured interviews: one prestudy and one poststudy. During the 21-day study, participants used an Android app to self-report and self-monitor their mood after each phone conversation. The app prompted participants to report their mood after each phone conversation and provided graphs and charts so that the participants could independently review their mood and conversation patterns.ResultsOur results show that academics, family, job and economic condition, romantic relationship, and religion are the major social determinants of mental health among undergraduate students in Bangladesh. Our app helped the participants pinpoint the specific issues related to these factors, as the participants could review the pattern of their moods and emotions from past conversation history. Although our app does not provide any explicit recommendation, the participants took certain steps on their own to improve their mental health (eg, reduced the frequency of communication with certain persons).ConclusionsAlthough some of the factors (eg, academics) were reported in previous studies conducted in the Global North, this paper sheds light on some new issues (eg, extended family problems and religion) that are specific to the context of the Global South. Overall, the findings from this study would provide better insights for researchers to design better solutions to help the younger population from this part of the world.

Repair Practices in Phone Conversations: A Case Study of Chinese English Speakers

Repair, one key concept in conversation analysis, usually refers to the ways of dealing with troubles of speaking, understanding, and hearing in the talk (Schegloff et al., 1977). This paper focuses on the latter two trouble sources, i.e., troubles of hearing and understanding. The study here, of a dataset of interactions concerning information inquiries between two Chinese learners of English and eight service employees in hotels or airlines, investigates how the repair is initiated and completed via phone through the perspective of conversation analysis. It mainly explores (a) how trouble sources are identified by the recipient over the phone; (b) how the repair is initiated in phone conversations; and (c) how repair strategies and repair avoidance are used based on the recipients’ identification of the trouble source type and the importance of the mistake or misunderstanding, in the service industry. The results showcase that Chinese English speakers encounter troubles of understanding and hearing in phone conversations frequently. A selection of initiators and strategies are identified, such as repair preface (e.g., ‘I mean’) and pre-framing. The analysis also illustrates that the service personnel involved tend to either accept the customer’s candidate understanding to avoid the repair or continuously make repairs on their own turns to clarify. Such empirical evidence further supports and validates Kitzinger’s (2013) idea that a) specific repair forms and practices are constrained by a range of local factors, and b) people adopt diversified methods and strategies to ‘fix’ troubles of hearing and understanding.

How Dorothy L. Sayers Helped the Prime Minister of Canada Rally His Country before D-Day

In May 1944, Dorothy L. Sayers exchanged letters and had a phone conversation with William Lyon Mackenzie King, the prime minister of Canada. Sayers's letter made such an impression on King that he saw mystical and prophetic significance in its arrival and used it in a speech he gave in the Canadian House of Commons. This study uses the digitised archives of King's diaries and the parliamentary records of his speech, as well as Canadian media accounts from the time. It will be shown that Sayers played an underappreciated role in helping the Canadian prime minister rally his country during the war, as the speech that used her letter met with acclaim across the political spectrum and received positive notice in Canadian newspapers. In the weeks leading up to D-Day, Sayers played an integral role in building up the morale of Canada's prime minister, as he endeavoured to inspire his country. Finally, King's diaries offer first-hand testimony of how one important contemporary figure reacted to the radio broadcasts of The Man Born to Be King, as he particularly enjoyed Sayers's portrayal of the masculinity of Jesus.

The influences of listening and speaking on pedestrians' assessments of approaching vehicles

Research suggests a relationship between auditory distraction (such as environmental noises or a vocal cell phone conversation) and a decreased ability to detect and localize approaching vehicles. What is unclear is whether auditory vehicle perception is impacted more by distractions reliant on listening or distractions reliant on speaking (analogous to the two components of a vocal cell phone conversation). In two experiments, adult participants listened for approaching vehicle noises and while performing listening- and speaking-based secondary tasks. Participants were tasked with identifying when they first detect an approaching vehicle and when they no longer felt safe to cross in front of the approaching vehicle. For both experiments, the speaking task resulted in significantly later detection of approaching vehicles and riskier crossing thresholds than in the no-distraction and listening conditions. The listening secondary task significantly differed from the control condition in experiment 1, but not experiment 2. Overall, our results suggest auditory distractions, particularly those reliant on speaking, negatively impact pedestrian safety in situations where visual information is minimal. Results may provide guidance for future research and policy about the safety impacts of secondary tasks.

Instructional Coaching in a TESOL Teacher Preparation Program: An Exploratory Case Study

Instructional coaching is a professional development model that seeks to improve classroom practice through a collaborative, non-evaluative partnerships between teachers and coaches. Although existing literature suggests that coaching in pre-service teacher programs is relatively uncommon, the limited research on its use is promising. This exploratory case study examined one coaching partnership between a pre-service English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and an English language teaching (ELT) faculty member during a course for adult paraprofessional educators learning to take an exam required for teaching licensure. The results of a qualitative document analysis of reflective writing, email correspondence and an audio-recorded phone conversation suggest that instructional coaching supported the pre-service ESL teacher through the use of unique coaching elements, including modeling, a window on the coach's reflective process, opportunities to request specific feedback and the coach's familiarity with the pre-service teacher's students. The coaching partnership also provided an opportunity for the ELT faculty member to grow professionally. Our findings point to the importance of positive interpersonal dynamics in the coaching relationship and the need for clear goal setting, expectations and scheduling logistics.

Post-Lockdown Effects on Students' Mental Health in Romania: Perceived Stress, Missing Daily Social Interactions, and Boredom Proneness.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 worldwide was accompanied by intense fears, confusion, worries, anger, and stress threatening people’s mental health. Unprecedented measures to slow down and prevent the transmission of COVID-19 have had various impacts on the population’s health behaviour and mental health. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the lockdown’s effects on university students’ mental health in Romania. Based on a cross-sectional design, the survey data were collected from a sample of 722 participants (247 males; M = 21.1 years; SD ± 1.73). A path analysis was performed to verify the hypothesised direct and indirect effects included in the multiple mediation model. The findings showed a positive association between stress and boredom proneness, missing daily social interactions, spending more time on phone conversations, and the increasing interest in following news about the pandemic. The path analysis revealed an excellent fit between the proposed multiple mediation model and the sample data. Boredom proneness and missing daily social interactions both affected stress, directly and indirectly, through more time spent on phone conversations. In addition, it was found that the increased interest in following news about the pandemic mediated the relationship between boredom proneness and perceived stress. In terms of gender differences, our findings revealed that female students experienced significantly higher stress levels than male students, perceived to a greater extent the lack of daily social interactions, and spent more time on phone conversations. Overall, the findings further extend the empirical evidence on university students’ mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, universities need to organise support programmes focused on developing university students’ coping strategies to maintain their mental health even in adverse contexts.

Hospital-based traceback program for prior ovarian cancer patients results in minimal uptake of genetic counseling and testing

<h3>Objectives:</h3> Objective: To determine the feasibility of a hospital-based approach to implementation of a genetic testing traceback program for ovarian cancer patients <h3>Methods:</h3> The Division of Cancer Prevention and the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute (NCI) recognized the opportunity lost by the lack of genetic counseling and/or testing (GC/T) for <i>BRCA1</i> and <i>BRCA2</i> in previously diagnosed women with ovarian cancer (OC). During a 2016 workshop, they coined the term ‘traceback' to describe the concept of offering GC/T to these patients and families that should have been offered services previously. We identified traceback-eligible patients and patient-designated surrogates (emergency contacts, medical power-of-attorney designees, family members) using tumor registry and electronic medical record data. Eligible patients had histology-confirmed epithelial malignancies of ovarian, fallopian tube, or peritoneal origin. All living patients were sent a letter explaining the availability of GC/T and surrogates of deceased patients were called on the telephone. Outcomes of contact attempts were systematically recorded and statistically described. <h3>Results:</h3> We identified 176 presumed-living and 441 deceased trace-back-eligible OC patients diagnosed between 2006-2016. For living patients, 6% (n=11) of letters were returned without forwarding address and 1% (n=2) contacted our office upon receipt of the letter and scheduled genetic counseling visits. Telephone numbers but no other contact information details were available for at least one surrogate for 91% (n=401) of deceased patients. The most commonly listed primary surrogates were spouses (41%) followed by daughters (21%). Approximately 20% (n=.77) of contact attempts to primary surrogates have resulted in a phone conversation about the availability of GC/T. More than half (64%) have required more than one call. Of the primary surrogates successfully contacted, 40% have previously heard of GC/T for OC before, 28% have discussed GC/T with their healthcare providers, 9% had already had GC/T and 13% were interested in GC/T at this time. Phone numbers were invalid for 20% of primary contacts. Overall, hospital-based traceback resulted in GC/T for 2% of those patients and surrogates contacted. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> While feasible, telephone-based contact of patient-designated surrogates is time-intensive and results in minimal uptake of GC/T. To practically execute this type of outreach program, health systems should consider collection of alternative contact information details like email addresses for surrogates and should consider the development of family registries for future contact.

A huggable device can reduce the stress of calling an unfamiliar person on the phone for individuals with ASD.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often not comfortable during mobile-phone conversations with unfamiliar people. “Hugvie” is a pillow with a human-like shape that has been designed to provide users with the tactile sensation of hugging another person during phone conversations to promote feelings of comfort and trust in the speaker toward their conversation partners. Our primary aim was to examine whether physical contact by hugging a Hugvie could reduce the stress of speaking with an unfamiliar person on the phone in individuals with ASD. We enrolled 24 individuals and requested them to carry out phone conversations either using only a mobile phone or using a mobile phone along with the Hugvie. All participants in both groups completed questionnaires designed to evaluate their self-confidence while talking on the phone, and also provided salivary cortisol samples four times each day. Our analysis revealed that the medium of communication was a significant factor, indicating that individuals with ASD who spoke with an unfamiliar person on the phone while hugging a Hugvie had stronger self-confidence and lower stress levels than those who did not use Hugvie. Hence, we recommend that huggable devices be used as adjunctive tools to support individuals with ASD during telephonic conversations with unfamiliar people.

Évaluation de la pratique de prescription d’une chimiothérapie orale type « capécitabine ». Résultats de la première enquête auprès des oncologues médicaux marocains

Oral anticancer therapy is becoming increasingly developed; their prescription has become a common practice in oncology. However, there is a variability and diversity in prescription practice. Its magnitude has been very little studied in scientific literature. To our knowledge, this is the first study in Morocco and North Africa to evaluate the practice of prescribing oral chemotherapy. The authors conducted a national exhaustive cross-sectional survey, to evaluate the practice of the oral chemotherapy "Capecitabine" type prescription by Moroccan oncologists and to identify strategies to promote an adherence to oral anti-neoplasic therapy. Ninety-one medical oncologists answered out of 118, from public oncology centres (29.7%), Hospital University (58.2%), and private sector (12.1%). Thirty-four of the oncologists replied by email, 33 through phone conversation and 24 by filling paper questionnaires. In total, 32% of the cases were handwritten prescriptions, and 51.6% electronically generated. Forty-six percent of medical oncologists dedicated more time to the oral chemotherapy type Capecitabine prescription versus its intravenous equivalent 5FU. However, 33% medical oncologists take less time to this prescription, and 20.9% of them take the same time. Adherence to oral chemotherapy was evaluated by simply questioning of patients in most of the cases (94%) and 4% of medical oncologist declared that they did not evaluate this adherence. In total, 87.9% of Moroccan medical oncologists revealed that they have not received any specific training in the therapeutic education of the patient with oral anti-cancer treatment. In Morocco, there is a great variability in prescription and follow-up practice for patients receiving oral chemotherapy. There is a lack of a national standardization with regards to the procedures of prescribing and monitoring patients to ensure the quality and safety of the oral chemotherapy prescription.