If not me, then who? Responsibility and replacement.

How do people hold others responsible? Responsibility judgments are affected not only by what actually happened, but also by what could have happened if things had turned out differently. Here, we look at how replaceability - the ease with which a person could have been replaced by someone else - affects responsibility. We develop the counterfactual replacement model, which runs simulations of alternative scenarios to determine the probability that the outcome would have differed if the person of interest had been replaced.

Characteristics Associated with Relationship-Centred and Task-Focused Mealtime Practices in Older Adult Care Settings.

To assess care home and staff characteristics associated with task-focused (TF) and relationship-centred care (RCC) mealtime practices prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Staff working in Canadian and American care homes were invited to complete a 23-item online survey assessing their perceptions of mealtime care, with one item assessing 26 potential care practices from the Mealtime Relational Care Checklist (relationship-centred = 15; task-focused = 11) reported to occur in the home prior to the pandemic. Multivariate linear regression evaluated staff and care home characteristics associated with mealtime practices.

"Nobody But a Family Member Can Do It Quite the Same Way": Understanding the Meaning of Mealtimes to Residents and Families in Long-Term Care Homes During the Pandemic.

Background And Objectives: Meals in long-term care (LTC) are essential to residents not only for nutrition and their physical well-being but also for their social interactions supporting resident quality of life. This study aims to understand the mealtime experiences of residents and family care partners during the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic when restrictions were put in place in LTC and retirement homes.

Research Design And Methods: Interpretive description analysis of qualitative interviews in LTC and retirement homes, with 17 family care partners and 4 residents.

Multi-Level Factors Associated with Relationship-Centred and Task-Focused Mealtime Practices in Long-Term Care: A Secondary Data Analysis of the Making the Most of Mealtimes Study.

Mealtimes in long-term care (LTC) can reinforce relationships between staff and residents through relationship-centred care (RCC) practices; however, meals are often task-focused (TF). This cross-sectional study explores multi-level contextual factors that contribute to RCC and TF mealtime practices. Secondary data from residents in 32 Canadian LTC homes were analyzed ( = 634; mean age 86.

Disruptions in Relational Continuity: The Impact of Pandemic Public Health Measures on Families in Long-Term Care.

Although the value of family caregivers' involvement with relatives in long-term care (LTC) is well recognized, tensions remain regarding their role. Such tensions were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic as strict public health measures restricted family access to LTC homes. Using interpretive description, we examined the impact of visitation restrictions on family caregivers' experiences caring for a relative in LTC between March 2020 and June 2021.

Reimagining Nutrition Care and Mealtimes in Long-Term Care.

Poor food and fluid intake and subsequent malnutrition and dehydration of residents are common, longstanding challenges in long-term care (LTC; eg, nursing homes, care homes, skilled nursing facilities). Institutional factors like inadequate nutrition care processes, food quality, eating assistance, and mealtime experiences, such as staff and resident interactions (ie, relationship-centered care) are partially responsible and are all modifiable. Evidence-based guidelines on nutrition and hydration for older adults, including those living with dementia, outline best practices.

Too Many Cooks: Bayesian Inference for Coordinating Multi-Agent Collaboration.

Collaboration requires agents to coordinate their behavior on the fly, sometimes cooperating to solve a single task together and other times dividing it up into sub-tasks to work on in parallel. Underlying the human ability to collaborate is theory-of-mind (ToM), the ability to infer the hidden mental states that drive others to act. Here, we develop Bayesian Delegation, a decentralized multi-agent learning mechanism with these abilities.

Word Order Predicts Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Production of Redundant Color and Number Modifiers.

When asked to identify objects having unique shapes and colors among other objects, English speakers often produce redundant color modifiers ("the red circle") while Spanish speakers produce them less often ("el circulo (rojo)"). This cross-linguistic difference has been attributed to a difference in word order between the two languages, under the incremental efficiency hypothesis (Rubio-Fernández, Mollica, & Jara-Ettinger, 2020). However, previous studies leave open the possibility that broad language differences between English and Spanish may explain this cross-linguistic difference such that English speakers may generally produce more modifiers than Spanish speakers, including redundant ones, irrespective of word order.

Relationship-Centered Mealtime Training Program Demonstrates Efficacy to Improve the Dining Environment in Long-Term Care.

Objectives: Mealtimes in residential care tend to be task-focused rather than relationship-centered, impacting resident quality of life. CHOICE+ uses participatory approaches to make mealtimes more relationship-centered. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of the 12-month external-facilitated implementation of CHOICE+ to improve the mealtime environment.

Hungry for more: Low resident social engagement is indirectly associated with poor energy intake and mealtime experience in long-term care homes.

Mealtimes in long-term care (LTC) homes provide social engagement and nutritional intake to residents. Psychosocial challenges may detract from the mealtime experience, resulting in low food intake and increased risk of malnutrition. This study explores the independent effects of psychosocial factors on energy intake among LTC residents.

Family member eating assistance and food intake in long-term care: A secondary data analysis of the M3 Study.

Aim: To determine if protein and energy intake is significantly associated with a family member providing eating assistance to residents in long-term care homes as compared with staff providing this assistance, when adjusting for other covariates.

Background: Who provides eating support has the potential to improve resident food intake. Little is known about family eating assistance and if this is associated with resident food intake in long-term care.