The impact of anticipated action effects on action planning

Three experiments with a total of 72 participants investigated the assumption that motor actions are planned in terms of their sensorial effects. Participants had to prepare a certain action A that consistently led to a sensorial effect (a tone of certain pitch). Instead of (in Experiment 1) or before (in Experiments 2 and 3) the execution of the prepared action, another response B had to be carried out, which either resulted in the same or in a different auditory effect (a tone of same or different pitch). It was found that a to-be-executed response B was in general initiated more quickly when it resulted in the same effect as a concurrently prepared response A. The results are considered as evidence for the basic notion that the preparation and initiation even of very simple actions is mediated by an anticipation of their reafferences.     

A person-oriented approach to hand hygiene behaviour: Emotional empathy fosters hand hygiene practice

Objectives: Adopting a social-psychological approach, this research examines whether emotional empathy, an affective reaction regarding another’s well-being, fosters hand hygiene as this affects other’s health-related well-being extensively.

Design: Three studies tested this notion: (a) a cross-sectional study involving a sample of health care workers at a German hospital, (b) an experiment testing the causal effect of empathy on hand hygiene behaviour and (c) an 11-week prospective study testing whether an empathy induction affected disinfectant usage frequency in two different wards of a hospital.

Main outcome measures: Self-reported hand hygiene behaviour based on day reconstruction method was measured in Study 1, actual hand sanitation behaviour was observed in Study 2 and disinfectant usage frequency in two different hospital wards was assessed in Study 3.

Results: Study 1 reveals an association of empathy with hand hygiene cross-sectionally, Study 2 documents the causal effect of empathy on increased hand sanitation. Study 3 shows an empathy induction increases hand sanitiser usage in the hospital.

Conclusions: Increasing emotional empathy promotes hand hygiene behaviour, also in hospitals. Besides providing new impulses for the design of effective interventions, these findings bear theoretical significance as they document the explanatory power of empathy regarding a distal explanandum (hand hygiene).     

Sympathetic nervous system and pain: a clinical reappraisal

The target article discusses various aspects of the relationship between the sympathetic system and pain. To this end, the patients under study are divided into three groups. In the first group, called "reflex sympathetic dystrophy" (RSD), the syndrome can be characterized by a triad of autonomic, motor, and sensory symptoms, which occur in a distally generalized distribution. The pain is typically felt deeply and diffusely, has an orthostatic component, and is suppressed by the ischemia test. Under those circumstances, the pain is likely to respond to sympatholytic interventions. In a second group, called "sympathetically maintained pain" (SMP) syndrome, the principal symptoms are spontaneous pain, which is felt superficially and has no orthostatic component, and allodynia. These symptoms, typically confined to the zone of a lesioned nerve, may also be relieved by sympathetic blocks. Since the characteristics of the pain differ between RSD and SMP, the underlying kind of sympathetic-sensory coupling may also vary between these cases. A very small third group of patients exhibits symptoms of both RSD and SMP. The dependence or independence of pain on sympathetic function reported in most published studies seems to be questionable because the degree of technical success of the block remains uncertain. Therefore, pain should not be reported as sympathetic function independent until the criteria for a complete sympathetic block have been established and satisfied.     

Caregivers of adults with cancer: Multidimensional correlates of psychological distress

The relationship between psychological distress and intrapersonal, family, and socioecological variables was examined in 77 caregivers of adults actively receiving cancer treatment. Results indicated that a sizable minority (29%) of caregivers was experiencing clinically significant psychological distress. Furthermore, family disturbances and maladaptive coping strategies were most predictive of psychological distress in this sample. The clinical implications of these findings in relation to the assessment and treatment of both patients and caregivers are discussed.     

Amplitude and Width Manipulations in Fitts' Paradigm: Comment on Heath et al. (2011) and Heath et al. (2016)

Heath, Weiler, Marriott, Elliott, and Binstead (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Heath, Samani, Tremblay, and Elliott (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have claimed that there are dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations in the Fitts' paradigm. This may to some extent be true, but the Heath et al. (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Heath et al. (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) data do not support that contention, as shown in this comment. It is shown that data from the research of Heath et al. is not in the range of index of difficulty where ongoing visual control would be used and hence their fits of data to Fitts' law are spurious. The data of Heath et al. (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for arm movements and for the primary eye saccade submovements of Heath et al. (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) are well correlated by the ballistic movement time equation of Hoffmann (1981 Hoffmann, E. R. (1981). An ergonomic approach to predetermined motion time systems. Proceedings of the 9th National Conference of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, Australia, 30–47. [Google Scholar]) and Gan and Hoffmann (1988 Gan, K.-C. &; Hoffmann, E. R. (1988). Geometrical conditions for ballistic and visually controlled movements. Ergonomics, 31, 829–839.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). When the ballistic equation is used to model data for constant amplitude and constant target width conditions, the effects of the amplitude and width manipulations disappear. Other research indicates that the independent effects of movement amplitude occur due to changes in the time for the distance-covering phase of the movement.     

Ontogenetic differences in the association of gustatory and tactile cues with lithium chloride and footshock

Using a double dissociation design with 15% sucrose solution and exposure to a heat lamp (34 degrees C) as CSs and 0.3 M LiCl and 1-mA footshock as USs, the present study found 15-day-old rats to show selective associations similar to those found in adults. Five-day-old pups, however, expressed similar sucrose aversions when this solution was paired with either LiCl or footshock, whereas they expressed heat aversions after heat-LiCl but not heat-shock pairings. Results are discussed with respect to previous data on selective associations in pups, current theories on selective associations, and ontogenetic differences in stimulus selection.