Beyond deliberate self-control: Habits automatically achieve long-term goals.

Habits are often beneficial to goal pursuit. They reduce the need for self-control by automating behavior, thereby streamlining decision-making and decreasing temptations and motivational interference. Given that habits outsource behavioral control to the environment, stable performance contexts are critical for habit formation and performance.

Leveraging Habits to Improve Adherence to Gout Medications: A Qualitative Study.

Objective: This study investigates patients' medication-taking routines and the feasibility of harnessing habit formation through context cues and rewards to improve medication adherence.

Methods: Semistructured qualitative interviews with patients with gout from an urban health care system were conducted to explore typical medication-taking behavior, experiences using electronic pill bottles, barriers to adherence, existing context cues, and potential cues and rewards for habit-forming behavior. Medication-taking patterns were recorded for six weeks using electronic pill bottles before interviews to inform discussion.

Development of consensus quality indicators for cancer supportive care: a Delphi study and pilot testing.

Background: High quality supportive care is fundamental to achieve optimal health outcomes for people affected by cancer. Use of quality indicators provides comparative information for monitoring, management, and improvement of care within and across healthcare systems. The aim of this Australian study was to develop and test a minimum viable set of cancer supportive care quality indicators that would be feasible to implement and generate usable data for policy and practice.

Distance to vaccine sites is tied to decreased COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

COVID-19 remains a leading cause of mortality in the United States, despite the widespread availability of vaccines. Conventional wisdom ties failure to vaccinate primarily to vaccine-skeptic beliefs (e.g.

Habits are not goal-dependent: Commentary on Buabang et al. (2023).

People sometimes commit action slips by absentmindedly repeating unwanted responses, such as entering an old password instead of the current one. Most accounts hold that such slips demonstrate stimulus-response habits in which familiar contexts directly trigger well-practiced but now-incorrect responses. In contrast, Buabang et al.

Measuring context-response associations that drive habits.

People achieve important life outcomes of health, financial security, and productivity by repeating operant behavior. To identify whether such operants reflect goal pursuit or habit, the present research introduces a new paradigm that yields objective measures of learning and controls for the motivations of goal pursuit. In two experiments, participants practiced a sequential task of making sushi and then completed a test of the strength of cue-response (habit) associations in memory.

Testing interventions to reduce clinical inertia in the treatment of hypertension: rationale and design of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial.

Background: Clinical inertia, or failure to intensify treatment when indicated, leads to suboptimal blood pressure control. Interventions to overcome inertia and increase antihypertensive prescribing have been modestly successful in part because their effectiveness varies based on characteristics of the provider, the patient, or the provider-patient interaction. Understanding for whom each intervention is most effective could help target interventions and thus increase their impact.

Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased.

Why do people share misinformation on social media? In this research ( = 2,476), we show that the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important than individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias-commonly cited drivers of misinformation. Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation.

Feasibility of an adaptive riding pilot study and acceptability to dementia care partners: "Your spirits are lifted".

Objectives: We sought to assess the feasibility and acceptability of an adaptive riding program with dyads (persons living with dementia, family care partners) and a gardening comparison condition.

Design: This is a two-arm (adaptive riding and adaptive gardening), mixed methods, convergent, feasibility study that occurred February 2019-June 2019.

Interventions: Upon enrollment, dyads (n=9) self-selected into either community-based adaptive riding (n=5) or adaptive gardening (n=4), two complementary interventions in Northern Colorado.

Americans discount the effect of friction on voter turnout.

Whether or not someone turns out to vote depends on their beliefs (such as partisanship or sense of civic duty) and on -external barriers such as long travel distance to the polls. In this exploratory study, we tested whether people underestimate the effect of friction on turnout and overestimate the effect of beliefs. We surveyed a representative sample of eligible US voters before and after the 2020 election ( = 1,280).

The Unintentional Nonconformist: Habits Promote Resistance to Social influence.

This research tests a novel source of resistance to social influence-the automatic repetition of habit. In three experiments, participants with strong habits failed to align their behavior with others. Specifically, participants with strong habits to drink water in a dining hall or snack while working did not mimic others' drinking or eating, whereas those with weak habits conformed.

Illusory Feelings, Elusive Habits: People Overlook Habits in Explanations of Behavior.

Habits underlie much of human behavior. However, people may prefer agentic accounts that overlook habits in favor of inner states, such as mood. We tested this misattribution hypothesis in an online experiment of helping behavior ( = 809 adults) as well as in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study of U.

Randomised controlled trial targeting habit formation to improve medication adherence to daily oral medications in patients with gout.

Introduction: Medication adherence for patients with chronic conditions such as gout, a debilitating form of arthritis that requires daily medication to prevent flares, is a costly problem. Existing interventions to improve medication adherence have only been moderately effective. Habit formation theory is a promising strategy to improve adherence.

Preliminary Efficacy of Occupational Therapy in an Equine Environment for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The purpose of this study was to identify appropriate outcome measures and assess preliminary efficacy of occupational therapy in an equine environment (OT HORSPLAY) for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-four youth with ASD aged 6-13 were randomized to 10 weeks of OT HORSPLAY or to a waitlist control condition, occupational therapy in a garden. Youth demonstrated significantly improved goal attainment and social motivation, and decreased irritability after OT HORSPLAY.

Habits and Goals in Human Behavior: Separate but Interacting Systems.

People automatically repeat behaviors that were frequently rewarded in the past in a given context. Such repetition is commonly attributed to habit, or associations in memory between a context and a response. Once habits form, contexts directly activate the response in mind.

Toward Robust Assessments of Student Knowledge of Occupation.

Importance: Occupational therapy students must master knowledge of occupation, yet how educators assess such knowledge has not been explored. In this study, we elucidate robust assessment practices that can help students master knowledge of occupation.

Objective: To examine practices that educators use to assess knowledge of occupation.

Conservative treatment for uncomplicated appendicitis in children: the CONTRACT feasibility study, including feasibility RCT.

Background: Although non-operative treatment is known to be effective for the treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis in children, randomised trial data comparing important outcomes of non-operative treatment with those of appendicectomy are lacking.

Objectives: The objectives were to ascertain the feasibility of conducting a multicentre randomised controlled trial comparing the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a non-operative treatment pathway with appendicectomy for the treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis in children.

Design: This was a mixed-methods study, which included a feasibility randomised controlled trial, embedded and parallel qualitative and survey studies, a parallel health economic feasibility study and the development of a core outcome set.

CONservative TReatment of Appendicitis in Children: a randomised controlled feasibility Trial (CONTRACT).

Objective: To establish the feasibility of a multicentre randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a non-operative treatment pathway compared with appendicectomy in children with uncomplicated acute appendicitis.

Design: Feasibility randomised controlled trial with embedded qualitative study to inform recruiter training to optimise recruitment and the design of a future definitive trial.

Setting: Three specialist paediatric surgery centres in the UK.

A comparison of quality of life indicators during two complementary interventions: adaptive gardening and adaptive riding for people with dementia.

Objectives: We sought to provide a fine-grain description and comparison of how people living with dementia responded to adaptive gardening and adaptive riding through durations of their observed participation and emotional well-being, two dimensions of quality of life.

Design: A descriptive case study design enabled in-depth description and comparison of participation and emotional well-being, two quality of life indicators, observed during four videotaped sessions of adaptive gardening and adaptive riding.

Interventions: Eight people living with dementia self-selected into one of two complementary interventions, community-based adaptive gardening (n = 4) or adaptive riding (n = 4), in Northern Colorado.

Optimal Terminology for Services in the United States That Incorporate Horses to Benefit People: A Consensus Document.

To recommend (1) the adoption of optimal terminology for referring to services in the United States that incorporate horses and other equines to benefit people, and (2) the discontinuation of especially problematic terminology. A diverse multidisciplinary consortium of individuals, including representatives of relevant national organizations, participated in an inclusive, systematic, and comprehensive 2-year consensus-building process. Twelve specific types of services were identified that relate to one of three broad areas of professional work: therapy, learning, or horsemanship.

Parental Perspectives of Occupational Therapy in an Equine Environment for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This paper reports on the qualitative phase of a mixed methods study of occupational therapy in an equine environment for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study's quantitative phase found that this intervention improved the occupational performance, social motivation, social communication, and self-regulation of some children with ASD. The study's qualitative phase, reported herein, subsequently aimed to describe parental perspectives on children's experiences of the intervention and its influences on everyday life.

Pilot Study: Occupational Therapy in an Equine Environment for Youth With Autism.

Despite growing prevalence, research investigating occupational therapy incorporating horses for youth with autism is limited. This study aimed to (a) pilot a screening, evaluation, and intervention protocol of occupational therapy in an equine environment and (b) assess preliminary effects on occupational performance goals, behavior, and social functioning of youth with autism. A multiple baseline single-case experimental design was used.

Hippotherapy: a systematic mapping review of peer-reviewed research, 1980 to 2018.

Purpose: Comprehensively and systematically map peer-reviewed studies of hippotherapy published over 30 years, from 1980 through 2018, from the perspective of a phased scientific approach to developing complex interventions as a guide to future research and practice.

Methods: A systematic mapping review of research of hippotherapy was conducted. Searches of nine databases produced 3,528 unique records; 78 full-text, English-written studies were reviewed, the earliest of which was published in 1998.