Publications by authors named "Christopher Hand"

Research into relationships between victim-generated content, abuse received, and observer characteristics when considering Twitter abuse has been limited to male victims. We evaluated participant perceptions of female celebrity victims and abuse received on Twitter. We used a 3 (Initial Tweet Valence; negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Abuse Volume; low, high) repeated measures design and online survey method.

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Introduction: People often consume alcohol following trauma, particularly in response to distressing memories. To date, little is known about how post-encoding alcohol consumption influences episodic memory recall for negative events. Understanding these effects may help to improve support for trauma victims - for example, witnesses and victims of crimes.

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Article Synopsis
  • PCSOs (Persons Convicted of Sex Offences) face significant challenges when reintegrating into the community, including stigma, hostility, and difficulties with housing and employment.
  • An online survey showed that public attitudes toward PCSOs with mental illness or intellectual disabilities were more favorable than those toward neurotypical PCSOs, who were seen as posing a higher risk of reoffending.
  • Important demographic factors influenced perceptions, with women and older participants generally feeling more concern about the risks posed by PCSOs, underscoring the need for public education to promote better understanding and acceptance of neurodiverse individuals within this group.
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Evidence suggests that language processing in bilinguals is less left-lateralized than in monolinguals. We explored dual-task decrement (DTD) for mono-, bi- and multilinguals in a verbal-motor dual-task paradigm. We expected monolinguals to show greater DTD than bilingual participants, who would show greater DTD than multilingual participants.

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This qualitative exploratory study investigated the embodied experiences and the meanings of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) from the viewer's perspective. ASMR research has been sparse and largely quantitative, assuming it to be a predominantly fixed physiological response of "tingles", despite the acronym being rooted in pseudoscience. A qualitative research design was adopted to facilitate the exploratory nature of the study in this under-researched area.

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Countries have instigated different restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, nationwide, strict "lockdown" in Scotland was enacted with breaches punishable by law, whereas restrictions in Japan allowed for travel and interaction, with citizens rather than to conform. We explored the impact of these differential strategies on health behaviours and wellbeing.

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We investigated ASD-diagnosed adults' and neurotypical (NT) controls' processing of emoji and emoji influence on the emotionality of otherwise-neutral sentences. Study 1 participants categorised emoji representing the six basic emotions using a fixed-set of emotional adjectives. Results showed that ASD-diagnosed participants' classifications of fearful, sad, and surprised emoji were more diverse and less 'typical' than NT controls' responses.

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  • The study explored how COVID-19-induced social isolation affects cognitive function in the general population, focusing on a diverse sample aged 18-72.
  • Performance on cognitive tasks improved as social interactions increased, indicating that social isolation negatively impacts cognitive abilities.
  • The research highlights the importance of considering social isolation's effects on cognitive health, particularly during prolonged lockdowns.
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Approximately half of stalking victims were previously in an intimate relationship with the perpetrator, and attachment style is strongly correlated with intimate partner stalking (IPS). In the first study to investigate polyvagal theory in IPS, we examined 58 adult participants' attachment style, sex, history of IPS, vagal tone activity (i.e.

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The United Kingdom and Scottish governments instigated a societal lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, many experienced substantial lifestyle changes alongside the stresses of potentially catching the virus or experiencing bereavement. Stressful situations and poorer health behaviors (e.

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  • The study explores how having knowledge about the Harry Potter (HP) universe affects reading behaviors compared to other factors like context and word frequency.
  • Participants, both fans and non-fans, were tested on their reading of sentences with varying target words (HP, high-frequency, low-frequency) while their eye movements were tracked.
  • Results showed that fans read HP words faster than non-fans, indicating that prior knowledge enhances processing, while regression patterns revealed that non-fans struggled more with HP contexts than fans, supporting theories of how domain knowledge influences language processing.
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Background: Polyclonal FLCs can be used as a biomarker of inflammation and immune activation in a range of diseases. This study evaluated the performance of new FLC ELISAs (Seralite FLC ELISA) for the quantitation of polyclonal κ and λ FLC, including comparisons to existing assays.

Methods: Technical performance was assessed for the ELISA and reference ranges were generated using healthy donor serum (N = 91).

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Measurements of small fields continue to be a clinical challenge despite the recent work done to identify their characteristics. Due to this challenge, many physicists use representative data supplied by their vendors to verify their own measurements for small field output factors. However, with recent guidelines being released in IAEA TRS 483, the question remains if this representative data provides an accurate representation for small field dosimetry.

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Purpose: For patients who receive treatment for left breast cancer, cardiac toxicity increases with increased radiation dose to the heart. A new method was developed using 4-dimensional computed tomography (CT) scans to improve custom cardiac blocks to minimize heart dose.

Methods And Materials: Four-dimensional CT scans were acquired, and a maximum intensity projection (MIP) heart was contoured for 20 patients.

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Contextual constraint is a key factor affecting a word's fixation duration and its likelihood of being fixated during reading. Previous research has generally demonstrated additive effects of predictability and frequency in fixation times. Studies examining the role of parafoveal preview have shown that greater preview benefit is obtained from more predictable and higher frequency words versus less predictable and lower frequency words.

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Background: Serum free light chains (FLC) are sensitive biomarkers used for the diagnosis and management of plasma cell dyscrasias, such as multiple myeloma (MM), and are central to clinical screening algorithms and therapy response criteria. We have developed a portable, near-patient, lateral-flow test (Seralite®) that quantitates serum FLC in 10 min, and is designed to eliminate sample processing delays and accelerate decision-making in the clinic.

Methods: Assay interference, imprecision, lot-to-lot variability, linearity, and the utility of a competitive-inhibition design for the elimination of antigen-excess ('hook effect') were assessed.

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Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word's markedness-that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g.

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The present study examined how word-initial letters influence lexical access during reading. Eye movements were monitored as participants read sentences containing target words. Three factors were independently manipulated.

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A word's frequency of occurrence and its predictability from a prior context are key factors determining how long the eyes remain on that word in normal reading. Past reaction-time and eye movement research can be distinguished by whether these variables, when combined, produce interactive or additive results, respectively. Our study addressed possible methodological limitations of prior experiments.

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