Neighbourhood environments and cognitive health in the longitudinal Personality and Total Health (PATH) through life study: A 12-year follow-up of older Australians.

Background: Urban neighbourhood environments may impact older adults' cognitive health. However, longitudinal studies examining key environmental correlates of cognitive health are lacking. We estimated cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of neighbourhood built and natural environments and ambient air pollution with multiple cognitive health outcomes in Australian urban dwellers aged 60+ years.

Associations of the neighbourhood built and natural environment with cardiometabolic health indicators: A cross-sectional analysis of environmental moderators and behavioural mediators.

Background: Most studies examining the effects of neighbourhood urban design on cardiometabolic health focused solely on the built or natural environment. Also, they did not consider the roles of neighbourhood socio-economic status (SES) and ambient air pollution in the observed associations, and the extent to which these associations were mediated by physical activity and sedentary behaviours.

Methods: We used data from the AusDiab3 study (N = 4141), a national cohort study of Australian adults to address the above-mentioned knowledge gaps.

Nurses' cognitive and perceptual bias in the identification of clinical deterioration cues.

Background: Perception and processing of clinical cues have rarely been investigated in the nursing literature despite their relevance to the early identification and management of clinical deterioration.

Aim: This study used a hypovolemic shock scenario from the Feedback Incorporating Review and Simulation Techniques to Act on Clinical Trends (FIRST2ACT) virtual simulation program, equipped with an eye tracker, to investigate cue processing during the management of patient deterioration.

Result: The study revealed that attention deviation distorted interpretation of subsequent cues, causing 63% of participants to exhibit a cognitive bias (heightened sensitivity to specific but noncritical cues) and 65% to exhibit at least one episode of nonfixation on clinically relevant cues.

Video strategies improved health professional knowledge across different contexts: a helix counterbalanced randomized controlled study.

Objective: This study aimed to apply a novel helix counterbalanced randomized controlled trial design to evaluate the effectiveness of video vs. written knowledge translation strategies for improving health professional knowledge of evidence provided in scientific journal articles.

Study Design And Setting: A Helix counterbalanced randomized controlled trial was used to compare the impact of delivering research information via video or written modalities compared to a no-information control across three health contexts.

Emotional Awareness and Decision-Making in the Context of Computer-Mediated Psychotherapy.

Emotional awareness has been previously investigated among clinicians. In this work, we bring to the fore of research the interest to uncover emotional awareness of clinicians during the tele-mental health session. The study reported here aimed at determining whether clinicians process their own emotions, as well as those of the client, in a computer-mediated context.

Simulated versus traditional occupational therapy placements: A randomised controlled trial.

Background/aim: Professional practise placements in occupational therapy education are critical to ensuring graduate competence. Australian occupational therapy accreditation standards allow up to 200 of a mandated 1000 placement hours to include simulation-based learning. There is, however, minimal evidence about the effectiveness of simulation-based placements compared to traditional placements in occupational therapy.

Inattentional blindness and pattern-matching failure: The case of failure to recognize clinical cues.

Eye-tracking methodology was used to investigate lapses in the appropriate treatment of ward patients due to not noticing critical cues of deterioration. Forty nursing participants with different levels of experience participated in an interactive screen-based simulation of hypovolemic shock. The results show that 65% of the participants exhibited at least one episode of non-fixation on clinically relevant, fully visible cues that were in plain sight.

Clinical deterioration of ward patients in the presence of antecedents: A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

Aim: The aim of this review was to identify and synthesise published accounts of recognising and responding to patient deterioration in the presence of deterioration antecedents.

Design: The systematic review canvassed four electronic databases/search engines for studies of adult ward patients who had altered physiological parameters before developing major adverse events.

Synthesis Methods: The findings were synthesised using a narrative approach.

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of embedded simulation in occupational therapy clinical practice education: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Clinical placements are a critical component of the training for health professionals such as occupational therapists. However, with growing student enrolments in professional education courses and workload pressures on practitioners, it is increasingly difficult to find sufficient, suitable placements that satisfy program accreditation requirements. The professional accrediting body for occupational therapy in Australia allows up to 200 of the mandatory 1000 clinical placement hours to be completed via simulation activities, but evidence of effectiveness and efficiency for student learning outcomes is lacking.

Measuring teamwork performance: Validity testing of the Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) with clinical resuscitation teams.

Aim: To test the resuscitation non-technical Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) for feasibility, validity and reliability, in two Australian Emergency Departments (ED).

Background: Non-technical (teamwork) skills have been identified as inadequate and as such have a significant impact on patient safety. Valid and reliable teamwork assessment tools are an important element of performance assessment and debriefing processes.

Can you tickle yourself if you swap bodies with someone else?

The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated "tickle" sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations.

Population based case-control study of serious non-fatal motorcycle crashes.

Background: Motorcycle sales, registration and use are increasing in many countries. The epidemiological literature on risk factors for motorcycle injury is becoming outdated, due to changes in rider demography, licensing regulations, traffic mix and density, road environments, and motorcycle designs and technologies. Further, the potential contribution of road infrastructure and travel speed has not yet been examined.

Touch can be as accurate as passively-guided kinaesthesis in length perception.

Two experiments were designed to investigate the contribution of touch and kinaesthesis to haptic perception of the length of raised lines. Experiment 1 showed that judgements based on kinaesthetic information were not more accurate than those based on cutaneous information. Instead, kinaesthetic and cutaneous inputs appear to be weighted almost equally in the haptic percept, with haptic performance more closely approximated by cutaneous performance than by kinaesthetic.

Capture of kinesthesis by a competing cutaneous input.

In four experiments, blindfolded participants were presented with pairs of stimuli simultaneously, one to each index finger. Participants moved one index finger, which was presented with cutaneous and/or kinesthetic stimuli, and this movement caused a raised line to move underneath the other, stationary index finger in a yoked manner. The stimuli were 180º rotations of each other (e.

Visual and haptic influence on perception of stimulus size.

In six experiments, subjects judged the sizes of squares that were presented visually and/or haptically, in unimodal or bimodal conditions. We were interested in which mode most affected size judgments in the bimodal condition when the squares presented to each mode actually differed in size. Three factors varied: whether haptic exploration was passive or active, whether the choice set from which the subjects selected their responses was visual or haptic, and whether cutaneous information was provided in addition to kinesthetic information.

Components of haptic information: skin rivals kinaesthesis.

Four components of the haptic system were investigated, in isolation and in various combinations, during passive-guided exploration of raised-line drawings. The components were kinaesthesis, cutaneous input from the presence of a raised line, shear forces from relative movement between the skin and a textured surface, and attenuated distortions at the fingertip resulting from relative movement between the fingertip and a surface. Although the presence of kinaesthetic information was found to be positively correlated with performance in a task of identifying raised-line letters, conditions involving touch alone yielded performance equivalent to that when kinaesthesis was involved.

Intrasensory attention: kinaesthetic versus cutaneous inputs.

Blindfolded participants felt pairs of raised-line drawings simultaneously, one with each index finger. The stimuli presented at each fingertip were 180 degrees rotations of each other (eg 6 and 9). One finger moved (either actively or passively), and this in turn caused movement of a matched raised line underneath the stationary finger on the other hand, in a yoked manner.

Active and passive movements give rise to different judgments of coldness.

When the right index fingertip of twelve subjects was moved across a cold (15 degrees C) tile by a machine (passive-guided condition), the subjects rated the temperature of the tile as being colder than when they moved the finger across the stimulus themselves (active condition). Results confirmed that active movements were associated with an attenuation of 'coldness'. When these findings are considered alongside those of earlier experiments (see VanDoorn et al, 2005 Perception 34 231 236), it may be concluded that intentionality of movement plays some role in this attenuation.

Modification of magnitude estimations in thermotactile perception during self-generated and externally generated movements.

Fourteen participants felt a 'cold' stimulus move across a fingertip. When movement was self-controlled, the stimulus was reported as feeling less 'cold' than when movement was externally generated.