Dusted community: piloting a virtual peer-to-peer support community for people with an asbestos-related diagnosis and their families.

Individuals with an asbestos-related diagnosis and their carers face burdens including debilitating and life-limiting physical symptoms and medico-legal stressors. Feelings of social isolation are common. Increasing social connectedness can lead to increased feelings of personal empowerment and may inhibit chronic stress responses. The authors report on the development, via a process of participatory action research, of an online peer-to-peer support group, and the first 30-day test phase of this virtual community. Initial indications are that individuals with an asbestos-related diagnosis and their carers can benefit, in psychosocial terms, from membership of an on-line support group comprised of experientially similar others.

Gender-selective neural populations: evidence from event-related fMRI repetition suppression.

Accurate recognition of gender in another individual is integral to successful human social interaction and to mate selection. When we encounter another person, we are effortlessly able to identify their gender, most often through the information conveyed by their facial features. Faces comprise the most abundantly encountered cue used to classify human gender. Considering the importance of facial information in gender perception, relatively little is known about the mechanisms involved in perceiving gender through human facial cues. We used an event-related fMRI repetition suppression paradigm to explore the neural circuitry underlying gender perception from facial information. Participants viewed brief consecutive images consisting of either gender-same face pairings (two male faces or two female faces) or images of gender-different face pairings (a male face preceded or followed by a female face), while attending to facial attractiveness in both conditions. Using a region-of-interest approach, we found repetition suppression on gender-same trials within the left ventral temporal fusiform gyrus and in the right collateral sulcus. Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses revealed selectivity for face gender again in the right collateral sulcus, in addition to the left cuneus and the right lateral occipital gyrus. Our results indicate that in addition to the face-selective FFA, cortical areas that are not traditionally considered to be "face-selective" are involved in the perception of gender-based facial cues.

Should anti-tobacco media messages be culturally targeted for Indigenous populations? A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

OBJECTIVE: To summarise published empirical research on culturally targeted anti-tobacco media messages for Indigenous or First Nations people and examine the evidence for the effectiveness of targeted and non-targeted campaigns. METHODS: Studies were sought describing mass media and new media interventions for tobacco control or smoking cessation in Indigenous or First Nations populations. Studies of any design were included reporting outcomes of media-based interventions including: cognitions, awareness, recall, intention to quit and quit rates. Then, 2 reviewers independently applied inclusion criteria, which were met by 21 (5.8%) of the studies found. One author extracted data with crosschecking by a second. Both independently assessed papers using Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN; quantitative studies) and Daly et al (qualitative studies). RESULTS: A total of 21 studies were found (4 level 1 randomised controlled trials (RCTs), 11 level 2 studies and 6 qualitative studies) and combined with narrative synthesis. Eight evaluated anti-tobacco TV or radio campaigns; two assessed US websites; three New Zealand studies examined mobile phone interventions; five evaluated print media; three evaluated a CD-ROM, a video and an edutainment intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Although Indigenous people had good recall of generic anti-tobacco messages, culturally targeted messages were preferred. New Zealand Maori may be less responsive to holistic targeted campaigns, despite their additional benefits, compared to generic fear campaigns. Culturally targeted internet or mobile phone messages appear to be as effective in American Indians and Maori as generic messages in the general population. There is little research comparing the effect of culturally targeted versus generic messages with similar message content in Indigenous people.

Aggression and violence in the ED: issues associated with the implementation of restraint and seclusion.

A number of surveys have reported that those who work in emergency departments (EDs) experience high levels of violence and aggression. Some suggest that 100% of emergency department nurses have, at some time, experienced workplace violence. This report summarises those data and highlights the under-reporting of violent incidents occurring in emergency departments. Current responses to such incidents are reviewed, with particular focus on the use of both unambiguous and ambiguous restraint practices and also on seclusion. Those practices are evaluated in the context of current policy. This review suggests that rather than continue with discussions about whether or not restraint and seclusion are appropriate management procedures in the emergency room, efforts should be directed towards development of best practice for initiating and managing the use of restraint when it is implemented.

Converging Evidence of Ubiquitous Male Bias in Human Sex Perception.

Visually judging the sex of another can be achieved easily in most social encounters. When the signals that inform such judgements are weak (e.g. outdoors at night), observers tend to expect the presence of males-an expectation that may facilitate survival-critical decisions under uncertainty. The present aim was to examine whether this male bias depends on expertise. To that end, Caucasian and Asian observers targeted female and male hand images that were either the same or different to the observers' race (i.e. long term experience was varied) while concurrently, the proportion of targets changed across presentation blocks (i.e. short term experience change). It was thus found that: (i) observers of own-race stimuli were more likely to report the presence of males and absence of females, however (ii) observers of other-race stimuli--while still tending to accept stimuli as male--were not prone to rejecting female cues. Finally, (iii) male-biased measures did not track the relative frequency of targets or lures, disputing the notion that male bias derives from prior expectation about the number of male exemplars in a set. Findings are discussed in concert with the pan-stimulus model of human sex perception.

Pilot study assessing the novel use of musculoskeletal ultrasound in patients with rheumatoid arthritis to improve patient attitudes and adherence to medication.

OBJECTIVE: To determine if showing patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) ultrasound (US) images of their inflamed joints: (i) increased belief in the necessity of medication; (ii) encouraged patient activation, that is, confidence and understanding in managing their health; and (iii) facilitated medication adherence. METHOD: Eighteen patients aged ≥ 18 years old with active RA (DAS28 [Disease Activity Score of 28 joints] > 2.6) requiring increased immunosuppression were included. The following questionnaires were administered at baseline (T1), 3 days post-US (T2) and 10 days post-US (T3): (i) Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ) to measure the cost-benefit analysis made by patients regarding the necessity versus concern of medication; (ii) Patient Activation Measure (PAM-13) to assess patient activation; (iii) Compliance Questionnaire-Rheumatology (CQR) to measure medication adherence; and (iv) Routine Assessment of Patient Index-3 (RAPID3) to assess physical function, pain and global status. US of ≥ 1 clinically affected joints was performed on one occasion with an explanation of findings. RESULTS: Patient cost-benefit decisions shifted positively following US, that is, favored belief in the necessity of medication with a mean ± SD cost-benefit ratio (possible range - 20 to + 20) at T1 of 1.17 ± 6.10 which increased to 2.54 ± 5.38 at T2 and 4.06 ± 5.76 at T3, P = 0.043 by analysis of variance (anova). PAM-13, CQR and RAPID3 scores remained stable (all P > 0.05 by anova). CONCLUSION: Showing patients with RA 'real-time' US images of clinically inflamed joints resulted in a more favorable cost-benefit analysis, that is, increased patient belief in the necessity of medication versus concern about taking medication. There was no change in patient activation, medication adherence or disease severity.

Medication adherence in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: the effect of patient education, health literacy, and musculoskeletal ultrasound.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease affecting <1% of the population. Incompletely controlled RA results in fatigue, joint and soft tissue pain, progressive joint damage, reduced quality of life, and increased cardiovascular mortality. Despite an increasing range of disease modifying agents which halt disease progression, poor patient adherence with medication is a significant barrier to management. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this review was to examine the effectiveness of measures to improve patient medication adherence. METHODS: Studies addressing treatment adherence in patients with RA were identified by trawling PsycINFO, Medline, Cochrane, Pubmed, and ProQuest for studies published between January 2000 and October 2014. Articles were independently reviewed to identify relevant studies. RESULTS: Current strategies were of limited efficacy in improving patient adherence with medications used to treat RA. CONCLUSION: Poor medication adherence is a complex issue. Low educational levels and limited health literacy are contributory factors. Psychological models may assist in explaining medication nonadherence. Increasing patient knowledge of their disease seems sensible. Existing educational interventions appear ineffective at improving medication adherence, probably due to an overemphasis on provision of biomedical information. A novel approach to patient education using musculoskeletal ultrasound is proposed.

An illusion of coherent global motion arising from single brief presentations of a stationary stimulus.

We describe a new illusion in which a single stationary stimulus appears to undergo coherent global motion. Contrast relationships between the stimulus elements suggest the illusion arises via processing of Off- and On-channel signals that remain independent until after passing through low-level motion detectors. We propose that patterns of activation resulting from biphasic temporal impulse response functions in the magnocellular pathway are the basis of the illusion, and describe a model to account for the illusory motion percept.

Correlation model for joint development of refined retinotopic map and ocular dominance columns.

We describe a modification to a standard correlation model for the development of the geniculocortical projection that relays visual input to the visual cortex. The modification is to include threshold-activation of cortical cells as opposed to linear activation and it is shown that this can account for topographic map refinement (TMR). This contrasts with other models that require cortical cells to compete for activation or for neurotrophic support. Simulations are conducted for the joint development of ocular dominance columns and TMR in normal animals and parameter variations are used to both confirm robustness and to simulate some experimental conditions.

Hands as sex cues: sensitivity measures, male bias measures, and implications for sex perception mechanisms.

Sex perceptions, or more particularly, sex discriminations and sex categorisations, are high-value social behaviours. They mediate almost all inter-personal interactions. The two experiments reported here had the aim of exploring some of the basic characteristics of the processes giving rise to sex perceptions. Experiment 1 confirmed that human hands can be used as a cue to an individual's sex even when colour and texture cues are removed and presentations are brief. Experiment 1 also showed that when hands are sexually ambiguous observers tend to classify them as male more often than female. Experiment 2 showed that "male bias" arises not from sensitivity differences but from differences in response biases. Observers are conservative in their judgements of targets as female but liberal in their judgements of targets as male. These data, combined with earlier reports, suggest the existence of a sex-perception space that is cue-invariant.

Seeing the world topsy-turvy: The primary role of kinematics in biological motion inversion effects.

Physical inversion of whole or partial human body representations typically has catastrophic consequences on the observer's ability to perform visual processing tasks. Explanations usually focus on the effects of inversion on the visual system's ability to exploit configural or structural relationships, but more recently have also implicated motion or kinematic cue processing. Here, we systematically tested the role of both on perceptions of sex from upright and inverted point-light walkers. Our data suggest that inversion results in systematic degradations of the processing of kinematic cues. Specifically and intriguingly, they reveal sex-based kinematic differences: Kinematics characteristic of females generally are resistant to inversion effects, while those of males drive systematic sex misperceptions. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Sex discriminations made on the basis of ambiguous visual cues can be affected by the presence of an olfactory cue.

BACKGROUND: Almost every interpersonal interaction is mediated by the sex of the individuals involved. Visual, auditory, and olfactory cues provide individuals with the opportunity to discriminate the sex of others from a distance and so prepare sex-appropriate behaviours for any impending interaction. The usefulness of that important social skill is mediated by the reliability of the sensory information. Sometimes cues in one domain will be ambiguous, and the perceptual processes mediating sex perceptions will need to integrate information from across the senses for better reliability. With that in mind, the experiment reported here was designed to explore the effect of olfactory-visual interactions on sex perceptions. METHODS: Observers were presented visually with point-light walkers that were sexually ambiguous (not unequivocally female or male). They were asked to judge, using a two-alternative forced choice paradigm, the sex of each walker. Tested on two occasions, observers unknowingly made sex judgements in the presence or absence of pads soaked in male sweat. RESULTS: The presence of male sweat was associated with higher proportions of 'male' judgements of both ambiguous female and ambiguous male walkers (F1,19 = 24.11, p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that olfactory cues can modulate visual sex discriminations made on the basis of biological motion cues. Importantly, they seem to do so even when the olfactory cue is not consciously perceived, suggesting these effects are mediated by perceptual rather than cognitive processes. These findings suggest that there exist cortical processes mediating sex perceptions that are capable of integrating visual and olfactory information. What is important is that this sensory integration takes place without conscious knowledge and that appropriate behaviour modifications may occur automatically.

"I like the way you move": how hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle affect female perceptions of gait.

BACKGROUND: Variations in hormone concentrations across the menstrual cycle affect human female mate preferences. It has been shown that around the time of ovulation human females prefer more masculine male voices, faces, and bodies while simultaneously preferring less faces that are more feminine. They prefer also displays of male dominance, males with more symmetrical faces, and the scent of males with high levels of body symmetry. The aim of the experiments reported here was to investigate whether there are changes in female preferences for walking gaits across the menstrual cycle. RESULTS: Experiment 1 showed female observers could discriminate between point-light walkers with low and high levels of fluctuating asymmetries in their gaits. Female observers were more sensitive to asymmetries in female gaits than they were for asymmetries in male gaits. Experiment 2 showed that level of gait asymmetry did not affect the abilities of observers to discriminate female from male walkers. Experiment 3 showed that female observers did not change their preference for low and high asymmetry walkers across their menstrual cycles. However, females showed a decreased preference for all female walkers at the time during which it was estimated observers were at peak fertility. That same change in preference was not observed for male walkers. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest female observers may not value gait asymmetry, as a mate selection cue, in the same way that they value asymmetries in faces and bodies. While only "average" gaits were used in these experiments, rather than the gaits of individual walkers, the types of asymmetries in gait tested here were not used in the same way as static cues for judging the apparent healthiness of individuals. Females do discriminate well average female gait asymmetries and do change their preferences for those gaits across their menstrual cycle. Doing so may reflect the operation of processes that equip females with an advantage when competing for mates at times of peak fertility.

Eye of the beholder: Symmetry perception in social judgments based on whole body displays.

External bilateral symmetry is a biological marker of normal development and is considered a signal of health and attractiveness across species. Because most human interactions are dynamic, it was hypothesized that observers would be able to perceive spatiotemporal symmetry-symmetry in motion-in human point-light walkers. It was also hypothesized that observers would rate symmetrical walkers as healthy and attractive. Symmetrical and asymmetrical figures were presented to adult participants (n = 22) in motion and as static images with motion implied. Static symmetry was readily perceived, and symmetrical figures were judged significantly healthier and more attractive than asymmetrical figures. However, observers were unable to discriminate symmetry in dynamic presentations. These data provide preliminary evidence of a temporal summation window for a dynamic symmetry perception.

Increasing impact of mental health presentations on New South Wales public hospital emergency departments 1999-2006.

OBJECTIVE: The percentage of mental health (MH) presentations to New South Wales (NSW) EDs in recent years has not been described at the statewide level. Evidence from other states suggests this burden might be increasing. The present study aims to evaluate recent trends in MH presentations to NSW EDs, including geographic variations and the spectrum of MH disorders encountered. METHODS: Data were sourced from the NSW Emergency Department Data Collection, which collates information from routine reporting undertaken in all NSW EDs. The database employs ICD-9 diagnostic descriptors. The present study retrospectively analyses presentations from 1999 to 2006 for patients who received an MH primary discharge diagnosis, as defined by ICD-9. In addition, rates of presentation for poisoning are considered. The percentage of MH presentations to the three largest hospital categories--principal referral, major metropolitan and rural base (i.e. major non-metropolitan)--is examined. RESULTS: During 1999 and 2006, there were 9,013,357 ED presentations at the study sites. Of these, 3.22% received an MH primary discharge diagnosis. An additional 0.93% received a diagnosis of poisoning. In 2006, there were 15,262 more MH presentations than in 1999, a 49.78% increase. Over this period, total annual ED presentations increased by 201,763 (19.30%). General population growth was 6.31%. Across the state, 32.0% of MH presentations were for psychotic conditions and 68.0% for neurotic illnesses. CONCLUSION: Mental health presentations to NSW EDs are increasing. There is a need to review emergency services to accommodate these changes. The reasons for this growth remain unclear and require formal prospective evaluation.

The facing bias in biological motion perception: Effects of stimulus gender and observer sex.

Under orthographic projection, biological motion point-light walkers offer no cues to the order of the dots in depth: Views from the front and from the back result in the very same stimulus. Yet observers show a bias toward seeing a walker facing the viewer (Vanrie, Dekeyser, & Verfaillie, 2004). Recently, we reported that this facing bias strongly depends on the gender of the walker (Brooks et al., 2008). The goal of the present study was, first, to examine the robustness of the effect by testing a much larger subject sample and, second, to investigate whether the effect depends on observer sex. Despite the fact that we found a significant effect of figure gender, we clearly failed to replicate the strong effect observed in the original study. We did, however, observe a significant interaction between figure gender and observer sex.

Snap! Recognising implicit actions in static point-light displays.

Johansson (1973 Perception & Psychophysics 14 201-211) suggested that point-light displays that are static -- so-called 'snapshots' -- contain little or no information about the actor or their action. Here we present data that suggest even naive observers can perceive such information from static point-light arrays. Observers were able, at rates better than chance, to discriminate the directions of facing of sagittally viewed static point-light walkers. The data show also that, without feedback, performances improved with experience. Our data have implications for assumptions made in designing experiments with point-light displays and for models of the neural mechanisms mediating biological motion perceptions.

The role of ON- and OFF-channel processing in the detection of bilateral symmetry.

We present evidence that grouping for luminance does not take precedence over the detection of bilaterally symmetrical patterns. Using single-axis and double-axis images, we found that element pairs within which luminance is held constant drive symmetry-detection mechanisms more effectively than pairs within which luminance varies. Moreover, the performance decrement observed for patterns defined by element pairs within which luminance varies is not specific to interchannel variation. Luminance variation within the ON and OFF channels has the same effect as variation between the channels on the performance of axis-orientation identification tasks. It is argued that this constitutes possible evidence for subchannels within the ON and OFF channels. One of the characteristics of the subchannels is that each processes only a limited range of luminance steps. The implications of this type of luminance processing for the detection of symmetry in the visual scene are discussed.