Can Messages Make a Difference? The Association Between E‐Mail Messages and Health Outcomes in Diabetes Patients

This investigation examined the impact of social support messages on patient health outcomes. Forty‐one American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian patients received a total of 618 e‐mail messages from their healthcare provider (HCP). The e‐mail messages were divided into 3,565 message units and coded for instances of emotional social support. Patient glycosulated hemoglobin scores (HbA1c) showed significantly improved glycemic control and emotional social support messages were associated with significant decreases in HbA1c values. Patient involvement with the system, measured by system login frequency and the frequency of uploaded blood glucose scores to the HCP, did not predict change in HbA1c.     

Anxiety Influences the Perceptual-Motor Calibration of Visually Guided Braking to Avoid Collisions

We investigated whether anxiety influences perceptual-motor calibration in a braking to avoid a collision task. Participants performed either a discrete braking task (Experiment 1) or a continuous braking task (Experiment 2), with the goal of stopping before colliding with a stop sign. Half of participants performed the braking task after an anxiety induction. We investigated whether anxiety reduced the frequency of crashing and if it influenced the calibration of perception (visual information) and action (brake pressure) dynamically between-trials in Experiment 1 and within-trials in Experiment 2. In the discrete braking task, anxious participants crashed less often and made larger corrective adjustments trial-to-trial after crashing, suggesting that the influence of anxiety on behavior did not occur uniformly, but rather dynamically with anxiety amplifying the reaction to previous crashes. However, when performing continuous braking, anxious participants crashed more often, and their within-trial adjustments of deceleration were less related to visual information compared to controls. Taken together, these findings suggest that the timescale and nature of the task mediates the influence of anxiety on the performance of goal-directed actions.     

The Perceptual Basis of Vast Space

“Vast” is a word often applied to environmental terrain that is perceived to have large spatial extent. This judgment is made even at viewing distances where traditional metric depth cues are not useful. This paper explores the perceptual basis of vast experience, including reliability and visual precursors. Experiment 1 demonstrated strong agreement in ratings of the spatial extent of two-dimensional (2D) scene images by participants in two countries under very different viewing conditions. Image categories labeled “vast” often exemplified scene attributes of ruggedness and openness (Oliva & Torralba, 2001). Experiment 2 quantitatively assessed whether these properties predict vastness. High vastness ratings were associated with highly open, or moderately open but rugged, scenes. Experiment 3 provided evidence, consistent with theory, that metric distance perception does not directly mediate the observed vastness ratings. The question remains as to how people perceive vast space when information about environmental scale is unavailable from metric depth cues or associated scene properties. We consider possible answers, including contribution from strong cues to relative depth.     

Decomposing the relationship between cognitive functioning and self-referent memory beliefs in older adulthood: what’s memory got to do with it?

With advancing age, episodic memory performance shows marked declines along with concurrent reports of lower subjective memory beliefs. Given that normative age-related declines in episodic memory co-occur with declines in other cognitive domains, we examined the relationship between memory beliefs and multiple domains of cognitive functioning. Confirmatory bi-factor structural equation models were used to parse the shared and independent variance among factors representing episodic memory, psychomotor speed, and executive reasoning in one large cohort study (Senior Odyssey, N = 462), and replicated using another large cohort of healthy older adults (ACTIVE, N = 2802). Accounting for a general fluid cognitive functioning factor (comprised of the shared variance among measures of episodic memory, speed, and reasoning) attenuated the relationship between objective memory performance and subjective memory beliefs in both samples. Moreover, the general cognitive functioning factor was the strongest predictor of memory beliefs in both samples. These findings are consistent with the notion that dispositional memory beliefs may reflect perceptions of cognition more broadly. This may be one reason why memory beliefs have broad predictive validity for interventions that target fluid cognitive ability.     

Self-Reported Questionnaire Detects Family History of Cancer in a Pancreatic Cancer Screening Program

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a leading cause of cancer death; approximately 5–10% of PDAC is hereditary. Self-administered health history questionnaires (HHQs) may provide a low-cost method to detail family history (FH) of malignancy. Pancreas Center patients were asked to enroll in a registry; 149 with PDAC completed a HHQ which included FH data. Patients with FH of PDAC, or concern for inherited PDAC syndrome, were separately evaluated in a Prevention Program and additionally met with a genetic counselor (GC) to assess PDAC risk (n?=?61). FH obtained through GC and HHQ were compared using Wilcoxon signed-rank sum and generalized linear mixed models with Poisson distribution. Agreement between GC and HHQ risk-assessment was assessed using kappa (κ) statistic. In the Prevention Program, HHQ was as precise in detecting FH of cancer as the GC (all p?>?0.05). GC and HHQ demonstrated substantial agreement in risk-stratification of the Prevention Program cohort (κ?=?0.73, 95% CI 0.59–0.87.) The sensitivity of the HHQ to detect a patient at elevated risk (i.e., moderate- or high-risk) of PDAC, compared to GC, was 82.9% (95% CI 67.3–92.3%) with a specificity of 95% (95% CI 73.1–99.7%). However, seven patients who were classified as average-risk by the HHQ were found to be at an elevated-risk of PDAC by the GC. In the PDAC cohort, 30/149 (20.1%) reported at least one first-degree relative (FDR) with PDAC. The limited sensitivity of the HHQ to detect patients at elevated risk of PDAC in the Prevention Program cohort suggests that a GC adds value in risk-assessment in this population. The HHQ may offer an opportunity to identify high-risk patients in a PDAC population.     

Duck! Scaling the height of a horizontal barrier to body height

Recent research shows that the body is used to scale environmental extents. We question whether the body is used to scale heights as measured by real actions (Experiments 1 and 2) or by judgments about action and extent made from a single viewpoint (Experiments 3 and 4). First, participants walked under barriers naturally, when wearing shoes, or when wearing a helmet. Participants required a larger margin of safety (they ducked at shorter heights) when they were made taller. In follow-up experiments, participants visually matched barrier heights and judged whether they could walk under them when wearing shoes or a helmet. Only the helmet decreased visually matched estimates; action judgments were no different when participants’ eye height increased. The final experiment suggested that the change in matched estimates may have been due to lack of experience wearing the helmet. Overall, the results suggest that perceived height is scaled to the body and that when body height is altered, experience may moderate the rescaling of height.     

Skating down a steeper slope: fear influences the perception of geographical slant

Previous studies have shown that conscious awareness of hill slant is overestimated, but visually guided actions directed at hills are relatively accurate. Also, steep hills are consciously estimated to be steeper from the top than the bottom, possibly because they are dangerous to descend. In the present study, participants stood at the top of a hill either on a skateboard or a wooden box of the same height. They gave three estimates of the slant: a verbal report, a visually matched estimate, and a visually guided action. Fear of descending the hill was also assessed. Those participants who were scared (by the skateboard) consciously judged the hill to be steeper than unafraid participants. However, the visually guided action measure was accurate across conditions. These results suggest that explicit awareness of slant is influenced by the fear associated with a potentially dangerous action that could be performed on the hill.     

Seeing beyond the target: environmental context affects distance perception

It is commonly assumed that perceived distance in full-cue, ecologically valid environments is redundantly specified and approximately veridical. However, recent research has called this assumption into question by demonstrating that distance perception varies in different types of environments even under full-cue viewing conditions. We report five experiments that demonstrate an effect of environmental context on perceived distance. We measured perceived distance in two types of environments (indoors and outdoors) with two types of measures (perceptual matching and blindwalking). We found effects of environmental context for both egocentric and exocentric distances. Across conditions, within individual experiments, all viewer-to-target depth-related variables were kept constant. The differences in perceived distance must therefore be explained by variations in the space beyond the target.