The use of oral fluids to monitor key pathogens in porcine respiratory disease complex.

Background: The usefulness of oral fluid (OF) sampling for surveillance of infections in pig populations is already accepted but its value as a tool to support investigations of porcine respiratory disease complex (PRDC) has been less well studied. This study set out to describe detection patterns of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), swine influenza virus type A (SIV) and () among farms showing differing severity of PRDC. The study included six wean-to-finish pig batches from farms with historical occurrence of respiratory disease.

Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism.

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G.

Professionalism dilemmas, moral distress and the healthcare student: insights from two online UK-wide questionnaire studies.

Objective: To understand the prevalence of healthcare students' witnessing or participating in something that they think unethical (professionalism dilemmas) during workplace learning and examine whether differences exist in moral distress intensity resulting from these experiences according to gender and the frequency of occurrence.

Design: Two cross-sectional online questionnaires of UK medical (study 1) and nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and pharmacy students (study 2) concerning professionalism dilemmas and subsequent distress for (1) Patient dignity and safety breaches; (2) Valid consent for students' learning on patients; and (3) Negative workplace behaviours (eg, student abuse).

Participants And Setting: 2397 medical (67.

How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

Background: Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these.

The impact of self-efficacy, alexithymia and multiple traumas on posttraumatic stress disorder and psychiatric co-morbidity following epileptic seizures: a moderated mediation analysis.

This study investigated the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychiatric co-morbidity following epileptic seizure, whether alexithymia mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and psychiatric outcomes, and whether the mediational effect was moderated by the severity of PTSD from other traumas. Seventy-one (M=31, F=40) people with a diagnosis of epilepsy recruited from support groups in the United Kingdom completed the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 and the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale. They were compared with 71 people (M=29, F=42) without epilepsy.

Do stimulus--action associations contribute to repetition priming?

Despite evidence that response learning makes a major contribution to repetition priming, the involvement of response representations at the level of motor actions remains uncertain. Levels of response representation were investigated in 4 experiments that used different tasks at priming and test. Priming for stimuli that required congruent responses across 2 tasks was compared with that for stimuli requiring incongruent responses.

The role of working memory capacity in multiple-cue probability learning.

Multiple-cue probability learning (MCPL) involves learning to predict a criterion when outcome feedback is provided for multiple cues. A great deal of research suggests that working memory capacity (WMC) is involved in a wide range of tasks that draw on higher level cognitive processes. In three experiments, we examined the role of WMC in MCPL by introducing measures of working memory capacity, as well as other task manipulations.

Posttraumatic stress disorder following myocardial infarction: personality, coping, and trauma exposure characteristics.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the interrelationship between trauma exposure characteristics of myocardial infarction (MI), MI patients' personality traits, coping strategies, post-MI PTSD, and general psychological distress.

Method: One hundred and twenty MI patients were recruited from two general practices. The MI patients were interviewed using a MI experience questionnaire and completed the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS), the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28), the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the COPE Scale.

Trauma exposure characteristics, past traumatic life events, coping strategies, posttraumatic stress disorder, and psychiatric comorbidity among people with anaphylactic shock experience.

Objectives: This study investigated the interrelationship between trauma exposure characteristics, past traumatic life events, coping strategies, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and psychiatric comorbidity among people after anaphylactic shock experience.

Method: The design was cross-sectional in that 94 people with anaphylactic shock experience responded to a postal survey. They completed the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist, the General Health Questionnaire 28, and the COPE Scale.

Sizing up the associative account of repetition priming.

Three studies which test an associative account of repetition priming in a size comparison task are reported. Congruence of decision between priming and test affected performance when the priming task and test tasks were the same but not when they differed. This congruence effect was unaffected by the proportion of trials with congruent responses.

Medical students' attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine: further validation of the IMAQ and findings from an international longitudinal study.

Background: Current research mainly employs cross-sectional designs to examine changes in medical students' attitudes towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Aims: This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal study to further validate the Integrative Medicine Attitude Questionnaire (IMAQ) and examine changes in medical students' attitudes over 3 years.

Methods: A total of 154 medical students from four schools in three countries completed a modified version of the IMAQ during their first (T1) and fourth year (T2).

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition.

Macrae and Lewis (2002) showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features.

Content specificity: is it the full story? Statistical modelling of a clinical skills examination.

Objective: This study sought to determine the relative contributions made by transferable skills and content-specific skills to Year 2 medical student performance in a clinical skills examination.

Methods: Correlated trait-correlated method models were constructed to describe the performance of 2 year groups of students in examinations held in the summers of 2004 and 2005 at Peninsula Medical School in the UK. The transferable skills components of the models were then removed to indicate the contribution made to the fit of the models to the data.

The effects of local and global processing orientation on eyewitness identification performance.

Recent work has demonstrated that performance on a simultaneous target-present photographic line-up can be enhanced by prior global processing orientation, and hindered by prior local processing orientation induced by processing Navon letter stimuli. A series of studies explore the generality of this processing bias effect using either videotaped scenarios or live interactions. Five experiments demonstrate that these effects are seen across a range of test stimuli, test formats, and test instructions.

Halo effects in grading student projects.

Halo effects in rating specific pieces of work, as in educational grading, have received little attention. Grades awarded by 2 independent graders to undergraduate projects were analyzed with a correlated uniqueness model. Grades showed substantial halo despite being awarded by expert assessors at the time of reading the work.

Local temporal distinctiveness does not benefit auditory verbal and spatial serial recall.

In the present study, we examined the role of randomly arranged temporal intervals preceding and following items (pre- and postitem intervals, respectively) in auditory verbal and spatial recall tasks. The duration of the pre- and postitem intervals did not affect serial recall performance. This finding calls into question (1) the suggestion that the interval following an item permits the consolidation of information in memory, even in a relatively demanding spatial task, and (2) the prediction that temporal distinctiveness should improve performance.

Differentiating posttraumatic stress between elderly and younger residents.

This study aimed to differentiate between the posttraumatic stress responses of elderly and younger community residents who had been exposed to two technological disasters (a train collision and an aircraft crash). One hundred and forty-eight community residents were assessed using the Impact of Event Scale (IES) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The results showed that age differences were not affected by impact of disaster (IES), suggesting that elderly and younger community residents responded to the disasters similarly.

Multischool, international survey of medical students' attitudes toward "holism".

Purpose: Core and optional courses of study in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are being incorporated into medical curricula. The authors carried out this study to validate a tool to examine students' attitudes toward holism and CAM and explore the relationships between their attitudes and other demographic and education-related characteristics in a large, multischool, international sample of medical students.

Method: In 2003 the authors used a modified version of the Integrated Medicine Attitude Questionnaire (IMAQ) to survey students at a total of six medical schools in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Hong Kong, China.

Distribution patterns of mercury in lakes and rivers of northeastern North America.

We assembled 831 data points for total mercury (Hg(t)) and 277 overlapping points for methyl mercury (CH3Hg+) in surface waters from Massachussetts, USA to the Island of Newfoundland, Canada from State, Provincial, and Federal government databases. These geographically indexed values were used to determine: (a) if large-scale spatial distribution patterns existed and (b) whether there were significant relationships between the two main forms of aquatic Hg as well as with total organic carbon (TOC), a well know complexer of metals. We analyzed the catchments where samples were collected using a Geographical Information System (GIS) approach, calculating catchment sizes, mean slope, and mean wetness index.

A multiple-indicator multiple-cause model for posttraumatic stress reactions: personality, coping, and maladjustment.

Objective: This study aimed to develop a multiple-indicator multiple-cause model (MIMIC) to describe the relationship among posttraumatic stress (PTSD) responses, general health problems, death anxiety, personality factors, and coping strategies among community residents exposed to the technological disasters of aircraft and train crashes.

Materials And Methods: One hundred forty-eight community residents, after exposure to the aircraft or train crash, were assessed using the Impact of Event Scale, the General Health Questionnaire-28, the Death Anxiety Scale, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Ways of Coping Checklist. The control group (n = 90) comprised members of the general public, who had not been exposed to the disasters, from another city.

Approaches to learning and studying in medical students: validation of a revised inventory and its relation to student characteristics and performance.

Introduction: Inventories to quantify approaches to studying try to determine how students approach academic tasks. Medical curricula usually aim to promote a deep approach to studying, which is associated with academic success and which may predict desirable traits postqualification.

Aims: This study aimed to validate a revised Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory (ALSI) in medical students and to explore its relation to student characteristics and performance.

Oral alpha-tocopherol supplementation inhibits lipid oxidation in established human atherosclerotic lesions.

Background: Much experimental evidence suggests that lipid oxidation is important in atherogenesis and in epidemiological studies dietary antioxidants appear protective against cardiovascular events. However, most large clinical trials failed to demonstrate benefit of oral antioxidant vitamin supplementation in high-risk subjects. This paradox questions whether ingestion of antioxidant vitamins significantly affects lipid oxidation within established atherosclerotic lesions.

Associative processes in repetition priming.

Three experiments that investigated alternative accounts of repetition priming are reported. All 3 experiments used semantic comparison tasks and included trials in which each of the 2 words being compared had previously occurred on separate trials. In the re-pair match condition, the response required matched that on the 2 previous trials in which the words had occured.

Explicit and implicit processes in multicue judgment.

In two experiments, a multicue probability learning task was used to train participants in relating judgments to a criterion, on the basis of several cues that could or could not be relevant. The outcome feedback had 25% added noise to simulate real-world experience-based learning. Judgmental strategies acquired were measured by individual multiple linear regression analyses of a test phase (with no feedback) and were compared with self-ratings of cue relevance.