The 9th annual INDUS-EM 2013 Emergency Medicine Summit, “Principles,Practices, and Patients,” a level one international meeting,Kerala University of Health Sciences and Jubilee Mission Medical College and Research Institute,Thrissur, Kerala,India, October 23–27, 2013

INDUS-EM is India’s only level one conference imparting and exchanging quality knowledge in acute care. Specifically, in general and specialized emergency care and training in trauma, burns, cardiac, stroke, environmental and disaster medicine. It provides a series of exchanges regarding academic development and implementation of training tools related to developing future academic faculty and residents in Emergency Medicine in India. The INDUS-EM leadership and board of directors invited scholars from multiple institutions to participate in this advanced educational symposium that was held in Thrissur, Kerala in October 2013.     

Weightlifting exercise and the size–weight illusion

In the size–weight illusion (SWI), large objects feel lighter than equally weighted small objects. In the present study, we investigated whether this powerful weight illusion could influence real-lift behavior—namely, whether individuals would perform more bicep curls with a dumbbell that felt subjectively lighter than with an identically weighted, but heavier-feeling, dumbbell. Participants performed bicep curls until they were unable to continue with both a large, light-feeling 5-lb dumbbell and a smaller, heavy-feeling 5-lb dumbbell. No differences emerged in the amounts of exercise that participants performed with each dumbbell, even though they felt that the large dumbbell was lighter than the small dumbbell. Furthermore, in a second experiment, we found no differences in how subjectively tired participants felt after exercising for a set time with either dumbbell. We did find, however, differences in the lifting dynamics, such that the small dumbbell was moved at a higher average velocity and peak acceleration. These results suggest that the SWI does not appear to influence exercise outcomes, suggesting that perceptual illusions are unlikely to affect one’s ability to persevere with lifting weights.     

Dual processes of emotion and reason in judgments about moral dilemmas

We report the results of two experiments that show that participants rely on both emotion and reason in moral judgments. Experiment 1 showed that when participants were primed to communicate feelings, they provided emotive justifications not only for personal dilemmas, e.g., pushing a man from a bridge that will result in his death but save the lives of five others, but also for impersonal dilemmas, e.g., hitting a switch on a runaway train that will result in the death of one man but save the lives of five others; when they were primed to communicate thoughts, they provided non-emotive justifications for both personal and impersonal dilemmas. Experiment 2 showed that participants read about a protagonist's emotions more quickly when the protagonist was faced with a personal dilemma than an impersonal one, but they read about the protagonist's decision to act or not act equally quickly for personal and impersonal dilemmas.     

A Preliminary Study of COVID-19-related Stressors,Parenting Stress,and Parental Psychological Well-being Among Parents of School-age Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial health, social, and economic effects on families. Consequent lockdowns and school closures heightened the burden on...     

Sensory laterality in affiliative interactions in domestic horses and ponies (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Equus caballus</Emphasis>)

Many studies have been carried out into both motor and sensory laterality of horses in agonistic and stressful situations. Here we examine sensory laterality in affiliative interactions within four groups of domestic horses and ponies (N?=?31), living in stable social groups, housed at a single complex close to Vienna, Austria, and demonstrate for the first time a significant population preference for the left side in affiliative approaches and interactions. No effects were observed for gender, rank, sociability, phenotype, group, or age. Our results suggest that right hemisphere specialization in horses is not limited to the processing of stressful or agonistic situations, but rather appears to be the norm for processing in all social interactions, as has been demonstrated in other species including chicks and a range of vertebrates. In domestic horses, hemispheric specialization for sensory input appears not to be based on a designation of positive versus negative, but more on the perceived need to respond quickly and appropriately in any given situation.     

Implicit memory bias,explicit memory bias,and anxiety

Abstract

Normals high, medium, and low in trait anxiety performed two encoding tasks (one predominantly data-driven and the other conceptually driven) on threat-related and neutral words, followed by tests of word completion, cued recall, and free recall. Memory performance indicated the existence of negative memory biases in the high trait-anxious group, but it was generally not possible to decide whether the biases were associated with trait anxiety rather than with depression. The biases were obtained mainly when there was a match between the processes at encoding and those at the time of test, whether the matching processes were predominantly data-driven or conceptually driven. Implications of these findings for implicit and explicit memory biases associated with high trait anxiety are discussed.     

Visual laterality in the domestic horse (Equus caballus) interacting with humans

Most horses have a side on which they are easier to handle and a direction they favour when working on a circle, and recent studies have suggested a correlation between emotion and visual laterality when horses observe inanimate objects. As such lateralisation could provide important clues regarding the horse’s cognitive processes, we investigated whether horses also show laterality in association with people. We gave horses the choice of entering a chute to left or right, with and without the passive, non-interactive presence of a person unknown to them. The left eye was preferred for scanning under both conditions, but significantly more so when a person was present. Traditionally, riders handle horses only from the left, so we repeated the experiment with horses specifically trained on both sides. Again, there was a consistent preference for left eye scanning in the presence of a person, whether known to the horses or not. We also examined horses interacting with a person, using both traditionally and bilaterally trained horses. Both groups showed left eye preference for viewing the person, regardless of training and test procedure. For those horses tested under both passive and interactive conditions, the left eye was preferred significantly more during interaction. We suggest that most horses prefer to use their left eye for assessment and evaluation, and that there is an emotional aspect to the choice which may be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances. We believe these results have important practical implications and that emotional laterality should be taken into account in training methods.     

Testing a new cognitive behavioural treatment for obesity: A randomized controlled trial with three-year follow-up

It is remarkably difficult for people with obesity to maintain a new lower weight following weight loss. The aim of the present study was to examine the immediate and longer-term effects of a new cognitive behavioural treatment that was explicitly designed to minimise this post-treatment weight regain. One hundred and fifty female participants with obesity were randomized to the new treatment, behaviour therapy (the leading alternative psychological treatment) or guided self-help (a minimal intervention). Both of the main treatments resulted in an average weight loss of about ten percent of initial weight whereas weight loss was more modest with guided self-help. The participants were subsequently followed-up for three years post-treatment. The great majority regained almost all the weight that they had lost with the new treatment being no better than the behavioural treatment in preventing weight regain. These findings lend further support to the notion that obesity is resistant to psychological methods of treatment, if anything other than a short-term perspective is taken. It is suggested that it is ethically questionable to claim that psychological treatments for obesity “work” in the absence of data on their longer-term effects.     

The efficacy of couples-based interventions for panic disorder with agoraphobia

From this systematic literature review it was concluded that panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA) can sometimes occur in conjunction with marital problems. Couples-based treatments for PDA – partner-assisted exposure and marital therapy – can be an effective treatment for the condition. It is as effective as individually based cognitive behaviour therapy. Involving partners of people with PDA in therapy may be appropriate in some cases, particularly those in which there are marital difficulties. Couple-focused interventions may enhance the maintenance of treatment gains by facilitating interactions that positively reinforce and perpetuate attempts by people with PDA to enter feared situations and cope with these effectively. People with PDA who have good marital relationships show a better response to both individual and couples-based treatment programmes. In some instances effective couples-based treatment leads to improvement in marital adjustment as well as in PDA symptomatology.