The use of health technology and information: e-learning technological approach.

The Internet is becoming the preferred place for finding information. Millions of people go online in search of health and medical information. Likewise, health care professionals must be able to retrieve and manage information in an efficient, effective manner. The development of health technology and informatics (HTI) has been rapid, yet little is known about the knowledge and attitudes of nursing students with regard to using HTI. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to explore nursing students' knowledge of and attitudes toward using HTI and to use an e-learning workshop to enhance the effective use of HTI. In Phase I, 115 first-year full-time nursing students were invited to complete a 13-item questionnaire regarding knowledge of and attitudes toward computer and Internet use, knowledge of HTI, and attitudes toward the future development of HTI. Participants perceived themselves to be knowledgeable in computer and Internet use, while knowledge of HTI was perceived to be low and attitudes toward the future development of HTI were generally positive. Phase II was an e-learning HTI workshop; topics included an introduction to HTI, examples of HTI in use, and the application and implementation of various HTI projects. There were 30 participants in the E-learning workshop, and their feedback was positive. Nurses and all health care professionals must be prepared to participate in the development of health technology and informatics. Teaching and learning activities should be geared toward mastery of HTI in the nursing education curriculum in order to enhance health care quality and safety.     

An experimentally confirmed statistical model on arm movement

The purpose of this research work was to develop a methodology to model arm movement in normal subjects and neurologically impaired individuals through the application of a statistical modelling method. Thirteen subjects with Parkinson's disease and 29 normal controls were recruited to participate in an arm motor task. An infrared optoelectronic kinematic movement analysis system was employed to record arm movement at 50 times per second. This study identified the modified extended Freundlich model as one that could be used to describe this task. Results showed that this model fit the data well and that it has a good correspondence between the observed and the predicted data. However, verification of the model showed that the residuals contained a sizeable autocorrelation factor. The Cochrane and Orcutt method was applied to remove this factor, which improved the fit of the model. Results showed that Parkinson's disease subjects had a higher autocorrelation coefficient than the normal subjects for this task. A positive correlation (r(s) = 0.72, p < 0.001) was found between the Langton-Hewer stage and the autocorrelation coefficient of PD subjects. This finding suggests that if autocorrelation is positively correlated with disease progression, clinicians in their clinical practice might use the autocorrelation value as a useful indicator to quantify the progression of a subjects' disease. Significant differences in model parameters were seen between normal and Parkinson's disease subjects. The use of such a model to represent and quantify movement patterns provides an important base for future study.     

The contributions of static visual cues, nonvisual cues, and optic flow in distance estimation

By systematically varying cue availability in the stimulus and response phases of a series of same-modality and cross-modality distance matching tasks, we examined the contributions of static visual information, idiothetic information, and optic flow information. The experiment was conducted in a large-scale, open, outdoor environment. Subjects were presented with information about a distance and were then required to turn 180 before producing a distance estimate. Distance encoding and responding occurred via: (i) visually perceived target distance, or (ii) traversed distance through either blindfolded locomotion or during sighted locomotion. The results demonstrated that subjects performed with similar accuracy across all conditions. In conditions in which the stimulus and the response were delivered in the same mode, when visual information was absent, constant error was minimal; whereas, when visual information was present, overestimation was observed. In conditions in which the stimulus and response modes differed, a consistent error pattern was observed. By systematically comparing complementary conditions, we found that the availability of visual information during locomotion (particularly optic flow) led to an 'under-perception' of movement relative to conditions in which visual information was absent during locomotion.     

When children ask, "What is it?" what do they want to know about artifacts?

When children ask, "What is it?" are they seeking information about what something is called or what kind of thing it is? To find out, we gave 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (32 at each age) the opportunity to inquire about unfamiliar artifacts. An ambiguous question was answered with a name or with functional information, depending on the group to which the children were assigned. Children were inclined to follow up with additional questions about the object when they had been told its name, but seemed satisfied with the answer when they had been told the object's function. Moreover, children in the name condition tended to substitute questions about function for ambiguous questions over the course of the session. These results indicate that children are motivated to discover what kinds of things novel artifacts are, and that young children, like adults, conceive of artifact kinds in terms of their functions.     

A brief version of the geriatric depression scale for the chinese

Elderly persons (N=310) attending outpatient psychiatric clinics were given an interview on the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (T. L. Brink et al., 1982; J. A. Yesavage et al., 1983) and received an independent psychiatric evaluation. A 3-step binary logistic regression showed that 2 items measuring positive affect and 2 others measuring negative affect combined to produce diagnostic performance comparable with the full scale. This result was cross-validated on a different sample (N=134). A hierarchical measurement model in which the 4 items tapped 2 first-order factors (positive and negative affect), which in turn tapped a higher order construct of depression, provided excellent fit to the data.     

Factors associated with college student intent to engage in community service

Many universities in the United States highlight service as an integral component to their mission. Additionally, a growing pedagogical focus highlights the importance of community service as an integral component of student development. The current study was an investigation of the factors associated with college student intentions to engage in volunteer community service. University students (N = 403) at a comprehensive university located in the southern plains completed an anonymous Web-based questionnaire to assess community service attitudes and intentions. Subsequent to testing for statistical assumptions, results from multiple regression analysis suggest that a sense of community connectedness, cost and benefit considerations, and the seriousness of community needs are significant variables in explaining variance in the intent to engage in community service.     

Binocular shape constancy from novel views: the role of a priori constraints

We tested shape constancy from novel views in the case of binocular viewing, using a variety of stimuli, including polyhedra, polygonal lines, and points in 3-D. The results of the psychophysical experiments show that constraints such as planarity of surface contours and symmetry are critical for reliable shape constancy. These results are consistent with the results obtained in our previous psychophysical experiments on shape constancy from novel views in the presence of a kinetic depth effect (Pizlo & Stevenson, 1999). On the basis of these results, we developed a new model of binocular shape reconstruction. The model is based on the assumption that binocular reconstruction is a difficult inverse problem, whose solution requires imposing a priori constraints on the family of possible interpretations. In the model, binocular disparity is used to correct monocularly reconstructed shape. The new model was tested on the same shapes as those used in the psychophysical experiments. The reconstructions produced by this model are substantially more reliable than the reconstructions produced by models that do not use constraints. Interestingly, monocular (but not binocular) reconstructions produced by this model correlate well with both monocular and binocular performance of human subjects. This fact suggests that binocular and monocular reconstructions of shapes in the human visual system involve similar mechanisms based on monocular shape constraints.     

Background luminance and input devices on clicking performance with a tablet PC

This study investigated the effects of input devices and background luminance on clicking performance with a Tablet PC. The experiment was designed in complete block design within subjects. Participants were 19 men and 11 women, college students whose ages were 19 to 22 years (M=20.1 yr.). All had 0.8 corrected visual acuity or better and normal color vision. Three kinds of input devices, mouse, light pen, and touchpad, were used in this experiment. An analysis of variance showed that input devices significantly affected clicking performance as did background luminance (contrast ratio) on visual recognition (a higher contrast ratio gave better visual recognition).     

Effects of repetition on memory for pragmatic inferences

Social interaction requires active inferential processing on the part of the listener. Such inferences can affect memory. For example, after hearing the karate champion hit the cinder block, one might erroneously recollect having heard the verb broke (Brewer, 1977)--a reasonable inference, but one not logically necessitated. The mechanisms behind this type of erroneous recollection have not been much explored. Experiments in the present article assessed the influence of repetition, response deadline, and age (cf. Jacoby, 1999), in an effort to demonstrate the dual contributions of familiarity and recollection underlying this phenomenon. For older adults, repetition at encoding increased the later likelihood of erroneously recognizing pragmatic inferences. For younger adults, repetition exerted the opposite effect. Both age groups, however, benefited from a second study-test trial. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar interaction on a cued recall test for younger adults, whereby repetition exerted different influences as a function of time permitted during retrieval. Implications for theories of memory and discourse processing are considered.