-
Cognitive Research: Principles and... Nov 2022Intersectionality refers to the simultaneous and interacting effects of multiple group categorization on individuals with minoritized status, often leading to being...
Intersectionality refers to the simultaneous and interacting effects of multiple group categorization on individuals with minoritized status, often leading to being perceived in a manner inconsistent with the additive contributions of those categories. For Black women, a number of findings have contributed to the idea that Black women have a unique perceived absence of status, for example, and are perceived as distinct from being Black or a woman. We sought to quantify and visualize the combined effects of race and gender on judgments of persons using data-defined dimensions (the Semantic Differential; Osgood et al. in The measurement of meaning, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 1957). Our data suggest that gender and race contribute to orthogonal dimensions of difference in the perception of persons. Whereas white males, white females, and Black males all seem to be perceived in accord with additive effects in these two dimensions, Black females seem to be perceived more neutrally, as if neither their gender nor their race is treated as predictive.
Topics: Male; Humans; Female; Intersectional Framework; Black People; Gender Identity
PubMed: 36435861
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00450-1 -
Medical Science Educator Feb 2022Lectures remain a common instructional method in medical education. Instructor methods, curricular factors, and technology affect students' use of scheduled live...
BACKGROUND
Lectures remain a common instructional method in medical education. Instructor methods, curricular factors, and technology affect students' use of scheduled live lectures that may impact faculty job satisfaction.
AIM
This study identified instructor methods and curriculum issues that influenced preclinical medical students' use of scheduled lectures as well as faculty perceptions of lectures and students' attendance.
METHODS
First- and second-year osteopathic medical students ( = 304) were invited to complete a voluntary, anonymous semantic differential scale, Likert scale, and dichotomous question survey, rating 22 lecturer methods and 9 curriculum factors that influence use of live lectures. Preclinical faculty ( = 35) were also asked to complete a differential scale survey, rating 17 issues regarding live lectures and student attendance. Student and faculty surveys were analyzed using the appropriate central tendency and variability measures.
RESULTS
Students that completed the survey ( = 144) rated the ability to explain complex concepts in an understandable manner as "Very Important" and wearing professional attire as "Not Important" for attending lectures, respectively. Availability of recorded lectures, time to an upcoming exam, and unscheduled time gaps between lectures were rated as Very Important curricular factors for attending lectures. Faculty completed the survey ( = 21) and agree that lectures should continue as a major mode of instruction, while the majority reported spending over 9 h preparing new lectures.
CONCLUSIONS
Faculty lecture methods and overarching curricular decisions greatly impact students' attendance of live lectures. Regardless, most students and faculty believe that scheduled lectures should continue as an option for students who prefer to attend live lectures.
PubMed: 34877072
DOI: 10.1007/s40670-021-01459-9 -
Discover Sustainability 2021Promoting sustainable lifestyles through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is part of the UN's . Earlier empirical studies proved direct interactions with and...
Promoting sustainable lifestyles through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is part of the UN's . Earlier empirical studies proved direct interactions with and in natural environments to be effective ESD methods. Pandemic-related lockdowns rendered such courses nearly impossible, which raised concerns about achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general. To evaluate what young learners know about the concept so far and how it can be taught effectively online, we designed an online learning module tackling sustainability issues and compared it with data from an on-site intervention module for Bavarian 5th graders (~ 10 years old). Cognitive learning as well as attitudinal preferences of 288 learners were monitored in a pretest-posttest design. The learning module comprised two sections: One about botany, plant characteristics, and plant families; the other about the advantages and disadvantages of traditional as well as sustainable farming methods. The customized cognitive test and semantic differentials for and produced three major findings: (1) A digital learning environment successfully and significantly increased sustainability knowledge (2) Learners clearly distinguished the concepts and (3) There is no direct correlation between semantic differential scores and learning outcome.
PubMed: 35425917
DOI: 10.1007/s43621-021-00041-y -
American Family Physician Dec 2010Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is one of the most common forms of dementia in persons younger than 65 years. Variants include behavioral variant FTD, semantic dementia,... (Review)
Review
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is one of the most common forms of dementia in persons younger than 65 years. Variants include behavioral variant FTD, semantic dementia, and progressive nonfluent aphasia. Behavioral and language manifestations are core features of FTD, and patients have relatively preserved memory, which differs from Alzheimer disease. Common behavioral features include loss of insight, social inappropriateness, and emotional blunting. Common language features are loss of comprehension and object knowledge (semantic dementia), and nonfluent and hesitant speech (progressive nonfluent aphasia). Neuroimaging (magnetic resonance imaging) usually demonstrates focal atrophy in addition to excluding other etiologies. A careful history and physical examination, and judicious use of magnetic resonance imaging, can help distinguish FTD from other common forms of dementia, including Alzheimer disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, and vascular dementia. Although no cure for FTD exists, symptom management with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, and galantamine has been shown to be beneficial. Primary care physicians have a critical role in identifying patients with FTD and assembling an interdisciplinary team to care for patients with FTD, their families, and caregivers.
Topics: Atrophy; Clinical Competence; Diagnosis, Differential; Frontal Lobe; Frontotemporal Dementia; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neuropsychological Tests; Physicians, Primary Care; Temporal Lobe
PubMed: 21121521
DOI: No ID Found -
International Journal of Environmental... Jul 2017This study aimed to clarify the physiological effects of touching wood with the palm, in comparison with touching other materials on brain activity and autonomic nervous...
This study aimed to clarify the physiological effects of touching wood with the palm, in comparison with touching other materials on brain activity and autonomic nervous activity. Eighteen female university students (mean age, 21.7 ± 1.6 years) participated in the study. As an indicator of brain activity, oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb) concentrations were measured in the left/right prefrontal cortex using near-infrared time-resolved spectroscopy. Heart rate variability (HRV) was used as an indicator of autonomic nervous activity. The high-frequency (HF) component of HRV, which reflected parasympathetic nervous activity, and the low-frequency (LF)/HF ratio, which reflected sympathetic nervous activity, were measured. Plates of uncoated white oak, marble, tile, and stainless steel were used as tactile stimuli. After sitting at rest with their eyes closed, participants touched the materials for 90 s. As a result, tactile stimulation with white oak significantly (1) decreased the oxy-Hb concentration in the left/right prefrontal cortex relative to marble, tile, and stainless steel and (2) increased ln(HF)-reflected parasympathetic nervous activity relative to marble and stainless steel. In conclusion, our study revealed that touching wood with the palm calms prefrontal cortex activity and induces parasympathetic nervous activity more than other materials, thereby inducing physiological relaxation.
Topics: Adult; Calcium Carbonate; Ceramics; Female; Heart Rate; Humans; Oxyhemoglobins; Parasympathetic Nervous System; Prefrontal Cortex; Quercus; Relaxation; Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared; Stainless Steel; Sympathetic Nervous System; Touch Perception; Wood; Young Adult
PubMed: 28718814
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph14070801 -
International Journal of Older People... May 2022The aims of the study were to investigate the four-factor structure of the German version of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) and to gain initial insights into the...
INTRODUCTION
The aims of the study were to investigate the four-factor structure of the German version of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) and to gain initial insights into the attitudes of nursing, medical and humanities students towards older people in Austria.
METHOD
A cross-sectional study design with a convenience sample was chosen.
RESULTS
The ASD was completed by 255 Austrian nursing, medicine, and humanities students, who described their attitudes towards persons who are 80 years of age and older. The applicability of the four-factor structure (instrumentality, autonomy, acceptability and integrity) of the German version was confirmed by performing a confirmatory factor analysis. The mean age of students in our sample was 23.6 years; 79% of these were female. The sample displayed negative attitudes regarding the factors of autonomy and instrumentality, but more positive attitudes regarding the factors integrity and acceptability. The attitudes of the students in the three study programmes differed, with the medical students displaying the most negative attitudes. Students who displayed positive attitudes had statistically significantly higher levels of knowledge about ageism and better possibilities to hold personal conversations with older people (80+) in the family or circle of friends.
CONCLUSION
We conclude that having more knowledge about ageism and close personal contacts to older persons can support positive attitudes towards older individuals.
Topics: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Aging; Attitude; Attitude of Health Personnel; Austria; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; Male; Semantic Differential; Students, Medical; Students, Nursing; Surveys and Questionnaires
PubMed: 34719117
DOI: 10.1111/opn.12430 -
NeuroImage. Clinical 2019Previous lesion studies suggest that semantic and phonological fluency are differentially subserved by distinct brain regions in the left temporal and the left frontal...
Previous lesion studies suggest that semantic and phonological fluency are differentially subserved by distinct brain regions in the left temporal and the left frontal cortex, respectively. However, as of yet, this often implied double dissociation has not been explicitly investigated due to mainly two reasons: (i) the lack of sufficiently large samples of brain-lesioned patients that underwent assessment of the two fluency variants and (ii) the lack of tools to assess interactions in factorial analyses of non-normally distributed behavioral data. In addition, previous studies did not control for task resource artifacts potentially introduced by the generally higher task difficulty of phonological compared to semantic fluency. We addressed these issues by task-difficulty adjusted assessment of semantic and phonological fluency in 85 chronic patients with ischemic stroke of the left middle cerebral artery. For classical region-based lesion-behavior mapping patients were grouped with respect to their primary lesion location. Building on the extension of the non-parametric Brunner-Munzel rank-order test to multi-factorial designs, ANOVA-type analyses revealed a significant two-way interaction for cue type (semantic vs. phonological) by lesion location (left temporal vs. left frontal vs. other as stroke control group). Subsequent contrast analyses further confirmed the proposed double dissociation by demonstrating that (i) compared to stroke controls, left temporal lesions led to significant impairments in semantic but not in phonological fluency, whereas left frontal lesions led to significant impairments in phonological but not in semantic fluency, and that (ii) patients with frontal lesions showed significantly poorer performance in phonological than in semantic fluency, whereas patients with temporal lesions showed significantly poorer performance in semantic than in phonological fluency. The anatomical specificity of these findings was further assessed in voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping analyses using the multi-factorial extension of the Brunner-Munzel test. Voxel-wise ANOVA-type analyses identified circumscribed parts of left inferior frontal gyrus and left superior and middle temporal gyrus that significantly double-dissociated with respect to their differential contribution to phonological and semantic fluency, respectively. Furthermore, a main effect of lesion with significant impairments in both fluency types was found in left inferior frontal regions adjacent to but not overlapping with those showing the differential effect for phonological fluency. The present study hence not only provides first explicit evidence for the anatomical double dissociation in verbal fluency at the group level but also clearly underlines that its formulation constitutes an oversimplification as parts of left frontal cortex appear to contribute to both semantic and phonological fluency.
Topics: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Brain Mapping; Female; Frontal Lobe; Humans; Language Tests; Male; Middle Aged; Phonetics; Semantics; Stroke; Temporal Lobe; Young Adult
PubMed: 31108458
DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101840 -
Current Issues in Personality Psychology 2022From 2014 to the present, Ukrainian military personnel have been fighting in Eastern Ukraine against illegal armed formations of separatists. The resulting combat stress...
BACKGROUND
From 2014 to the present, Ukrainian military personnel have been fighting in Eastern Ukraine against illegal armed formations of separatists. The resulting combat stress negatively affects servicemen's mental health status. This study aimed to examine the factor structure of a scale to assess the psychological safety of a soldier's personality (PSSP), taking into account changes in the conditions of military service to improve the professional and psychological training of military personnel.
PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE
The study involved 118 officers of the National Guard of Ukraine. The semantic differential method, expert judgment, and exploratory factor analysis were used to determine the factor structure of the PSSP.
RESULTS
The PSSP model to maintain combat readiness in daily activities includes four components: "Moral and communicative", "Motivational and volitional", "Value and meaning of life" and "Inner comfort". For activities in extreme conditions (during combat deployment), the personality potential of four structural components is used: "Moral and volitional regulation", "Coping strategies", "Value and meaning of life" and "Post-traumatic growth/regression".
CONCLUSIONS
The PSSP model consists of four components that have different content depending on the conditions for performance of professional tasks by military personnel. It is advisable to use the obtained results of the content of the PSSP model in the development of professional and psychological training programs for the purposeful formation of the resilience of military personnel, taking into account the conditions of their activities.
PubMed: 38013921
DOI: 10.5114/cipp.2021.108684 -
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology :... Jan 2022To investigate the differential ability of the "Test Relaties Abstracte Concepten" (TRACE), a Dutch test for abstract semantic knowledge, in frontotemporal dementia...
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the differential ability of the "Test Relaties Abstracte Concepten" (TRACE), a Dutch test for abstract semantic knowledge, in frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
METHODS
The TRACE was administered in patients with behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD; n = 16), nonfluent variant (nfvPPA; n = 10), logopenic variant (lvPPA; n = 10), and semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA; n = 9), and controls (n = 59). We examined group differences, performed correlational analyses with other neuropsychological tests and investigated discriminative ability. We compared the TRACE with a semantic association test for concrete stimuli (SAT).
RESULTS
All patient groups, except nfvPPA, performed worse on the TRACE than controls (p < .01). svPPA patients performed worse than the other patient groups (p < .05). The TRACE discriminated well between patient groups, except nfvPPA, versus controls (all p < .01) and between svPPA versus other patient groups with high sensitivity (75-100%) and specificity (86%-92%). In bvFTD and nfvPPA the TRACE correlated with language tests (ρ > 0.6), whereas in svPPA the concrete task correlated (ρ ≥ 0.75) with language tests. Patients with bvFTD, nfvPPA and lvPPA performed lower on the TRACE than the SAT (p < .05), whereas patients with svPPA were equally impaired on both tasks (p = .2).
DISCUSSION
We demonstrated impaired abstract semantic knowledge in patients with bvFTD, lvPPA, and svPPA, but not nfvPPA, with svPPA patients performing worse than the other subtypes. The TRACE was a good classifier between each patient group versus controls and between svPPA versus other patient groups. This highlights the value of incorporating semantic tests with abstract stimuli into standard neuropsychological assessment for early differential diagnosis of FTD subtypes.
Topics: Aphasia, Primary Progressive; Frontotemporal Dementia; Humans; Language; Neuropsychological Tests; Semantics
PubMed: 33856423
DOI: 10.1093/arclin/acab022 -
Behavioural Neurology 2015In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences is more severely impaired than other functional categories in persons with agrammatic aphasia. The underlying source of this verb tense impairment is less clear, particularly in terms of the relative contribution of conceptual-semantic and processing demands. This study aimed to provide a more precise characterization of verb tense impairment by examining if there is dissociation within tenses (due to conceptual-semantic differences) and an effect of experimental task (mediated by processing limitations). Two sources of data were used: a meta-analysis of published research (which yielded 143 datasets) and new data from 16 persons with agrammatic aphasia. Tensed verbs were significantly more impaired than neutral (nonfinite) verbs, but there were no consistent differences between past, present, and future tenses. Overall, tense accuracy was mediated by task, such that picture description task was the most challenging, relative to sentence completion, sentence production priming, and grammaticality judgment. An interaction between task and tense revealed a past tense disadvantage for a sentence production priming task. These findings indicate that verb tense impairment is exacerbated by processing demands of the elicitation task and the conceptual-semantic differences between tenses are too subtle to show differential performance in agrammatism.
Topics: Aphasia, Broca; Humans; Language; Speech
PubMed: 26457004
DOI: 10.1155/2015/983870