Examination of the PC-PTSD in previously deployed Air Force Medical Service personnel

This study assessed the performance of the PC-PTSD in diagnosing postdeployment posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a cohort of Air Force Medical Services personnel (N = 18,530). The prevalence of PTSD in the cohort was 5.18% based on medical record data. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.69, indicating poor classification accuracy. Sensitivity was 47.55%, specificity was 90.68%, positive predictive value was 21.79%, and negative predictive value was 96.94%. The positive and negative likelihood ratios were 5.10 and 0.58, respectively. Several risk factors were found to be associated with a diagnosis of postdeployment PTSD: being a nurse, being enlisted in the medical service career field, being enlisted in the mental health service career field, those over age 30, being a member of the Active Duty service component, and having one’s first deployment be to Iraq. Being an officer was found to be a protective characteristic. These factors could potentially improve screening for PTSD among Air Force healthcare personnel.     

The pursuit of missing information in negotiation

A large body of research has focused on how people exchange and use information during the negotiation process. This work tends to treat information as if it all were readily available upon request. The current research investigated how delays in the pursuit of missing information can influence people’s ex-ante priorities and the final settlements they reach. Study 1 found that negotiators achieved more value on an issue after seeking missing information about that issue compared to when the same information was readily accessible. Study 2 found that the effect of searching for information on outcomes was mediated by changes in how important negotiators perceived the issue to be. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Encoding the world around us: Motor-related processing influences verbal memory

It is known that properties of words such as their imageability can influence our ability to remember those words. However, it is not known if other object-related properties can also influence our memory. In this study we asked whether a word representing a concrete object that can be functionally interacted with (i.e., high-manipulability word) would enhance the memory representations for that item compared to a word representing a less manipulable object (i.e., low-manipulability word). Here participants incidentally encoded high-manipulability (e.g., CAMERA) and low-manipulability words (e.g., TABLE) while making word judgments. Using a between-subjects design, we varied the depth-of-processing involved in the word judgment task: participants judged the words based on personal experience (deep/elaborative processing), word length (shallow), or functionality (intermediate). Participants were able to remember high-manipulability words better than low-manipulability words in both the personal experience and word length groups; thus presenting the first evidence that manipulability can influence memory. However, we observed better memory for low- than high-manipulability words in the functionality group. We explain this surprising interaction between manipulability and memory as being mediated by automatic vs. controlled motor-related cognition.     

Behavioural state differentially engages septohippocampal cholinergic and GABAergic neurons in R6/1 Huntington's disease mice

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by progressive motor, psychological and cognitive decline. R6/1 HD transgenic mice model the clinical hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits observed in patients. Cholinergic and GABAergic septohippocampal projections play important roles in hippocampal-dependent cognition. The current study examined neuronal activity of cholinergic and GABAergic septohippocampal projections in response to arousal elicited during differing behavioural states. The different behavioural states examined were; home cage (controls), acute exploration of a novel enriched environment and either spontaneous wakefulness (dark phase) or spontaneous sleep (light phase). We employed triple-label immunohistochemistry using c-Fos as an indirect marker of neuron activation and parvalbumin and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) to label GABAergic and cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain, respectively. The Y-maze was used to assess short-term hippocampal-dependent memory independently during either the dark or light phase and revealed a memory deficit in R6/1 HD mice compared to wild types that was particularly prominent during the dark phase. Three-way ANOVA of basal forebrain cholinergic and GABAergic activity through co-expression of c-Fos revealed overt responses to differing behavioural states. Both genotypes increased cholinergic neuron activity in response to exploring a novel enriched environment and also an increase during the dark phase compared to the light phase. Novel enriched environment exploration caused a larger response of GABAergic neuron activity in R6/1 HD mice, which also failed to increase the activity of GABAergic neurons during the dark phase compared to the light phase as observed for wildtype mice. Basal levels of c-Fos-positive cells were greatly increased in the hippocampal granule cell layer of R6/1 HD mice during both circadian phases. The differential activation of septohippocampal cholinergic and GABAergic neurons in R6/1 HD mice in response to differing behavioural states may be associated with impaired hippocampal-dependent short-term memory.     

Treating disturbed emotional regulation in sexual offenders: The potential applications of mindful self-regulation and controlled breathing techniques

It has been noted that some offenders are characterized by problems in the appropriate regulation of emotional states. Deficits in emotional regulation are particularly pertinent in sexual offenders. Therefore, therapeutic programs should, in part, focus on the development of effective strategies for the control of emotional arousal. In this review, we will provide an outline of how anatomical structures including the amygdala and regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are involved in the appropriate regulation of emotion. It is argued in this paper that the effective control of emotional states may be helped through the adoption of a group of meditational practices, known as mindfulness techniques, which have emerged from Buddhist philosophy. These techniques involve slow, deep breathing and have been shown to affect vagal modulation of the heart and the functioning of specific neural circuits which are critically involved in emotional regulation.     

Text messaging amongst New Zealand drivers: Prevalence and risk perception

Recent work suggests that text messaging impairs simulated and actual driving performance and that this impairment exceeds that of conversing on a cell phone while driving. Additionally, research has shown that text messaging is common in several countries, and despite drivers acknowledging the high risk involved in doing so, drivers continue to engage in this behaviour – regardless of legislation banning it. A nationwide online survey in New Zealand, of 1057 respondents, collected anonymous self-report data regarding the frequency of cell phone use (conversing and text messaging) while driving, beliefs concerning the safety of conversing or text messaging while driving. This article presents part of the results of that study – focusing on text messaging behaviour and risk perception regarding text messaging while driving. Over half of respondents surveyed reported sending or reading between 1 and 5 text messages while driving in a typical week. Despite this, 89% of participants agreed that text messaging while driving in general impairs driving performance. There were no gender differences between the number of text messages read and sent. Age was found to be an important indicator of participant’s willingness to engage in text messaging while driving, with younger drivers more likely to engage in this behaviour. The implications of these findings for future research and countermeasure development are discussed.     

Harm to Future Persons: Non-Identity Problems and Counterpart Solutions

Non-Identity arguments have a pervasive but sometimes counter-intuitive grip on certain key areas in ethics. As a result, there has been limited success in supporting the alternative view that our choices concerning future generations can be considered harmful on any sort of person-affecting principle. However, as the Non-Identity Problem relies overtly on certain metaphysical assumptions, plausible alternatives to these foundations can substantially undermine the Non-Identity argument itself. In this paper, I show how the pervasive force and nature of Non-Identity arguments rely upon a specific adoption of a theory of modality and identity and how adopting an alternative account of modality can be used to reject many conclusions formed through Non-Identity type arguments. By using Lewis’s counterpart-theoretic account to understand ways we might have been, I outline the basis of a modal account of harm that incorporates a person-affecting aspect. This, in turn, has significant implications for ethical decision-making in areas such as reproductive choice and the welfare of future generations.     

Finding MAPs using strongly equivalent high order recurrent symmetric connectionist networks

Belief revision is the problem of finding the most plausible explanation for an observed set of evidences. It has many applications in various scientific domains like natural language understanding, medical diagnosis and computational biology. Bayesian Networks (BN) is an important probabilistic graphical formalism widely used for belief revision tasks. In BN, belief revision can be achieved by finding the maximum a posteriori (MAP) assignment. Finding MAP is an NP-Hard problem. In previous work, we showed how to find the MAP assignment in BN using High Order Recurrent Neural Networks (HORN) through an intermediate representation of Cost-Based Abduction. This method eliminates the need to explicitly construct the energy function in two steps, objective and constraints. This paper builds on that previous work by providing the theoretical foundation and proving that the resultant HORN used to find MAP is strongly equivalent to the original BN it tries to solve.     

The sideline behaviour of coaches at children’s team sports games

Objectives

This study aimed to establish the prevalence, pattern and nature of coaches’ verbal behaviour at children’s (ages 6-12 years) team sports events. The study draws upon the motivational model presented by Mageau and Vallerand (2003) to examine the influence of global (gender), contextual (sport related), and social (athlete gender) factors on coach comments.

Design

A cross-sectional observational study of coaches stratified across four team sports: Rugby Union, Netball, Association Football and Touch Rugby.

Method

The Observation Instrument at Sports Events was used to categorise covertly recorded verbal comments made by coaches at organised team sports games.

Results

Overall, 10,697 comments were recorded at 72 games at a rate of 3.71 comments/minute; 35.4% were categorised as positive, 21.6% as negative, and 43.0% as neutral. Significant differences in negative comments were identified between sport (p < .001) with rugby coaches recording the highest percentage of negative comments and the lowest percentage of positive comments; by coach gender (p < .001), with male coaches recording higher rates of negative comments; and by athlete gender (p < .001), with coaches of male-only teams recording higher rates of negative comments. When simultaneously included in a Poisson regression model the difference in negative comments between sports remained statistically significant (p < .001) whereas coach gender was no longer significant.

Conclusions

The ratio of negative coach comments for all sports gives cause for concern. These findings suggest that sports of national and cultural significance are a key driver of coaching behaviours in a competitive environment.