Sedentary behaviour in non-ambulant children and young people with physical disabilities: a systematic search and review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Non-ambulant children and young people with physical disabilities are at high risk of experiencing negative health outcomes associated with sedentary time. A previous scoping review summarising evidence relating to sedentary behaviours of children with physical disabilities identified the need for validated methods of measuring physical activity of children who use wheelchairs and evaluation of interventions to reduce sedentary time. The scoping review did not assess the quality of evidence relating to this topic, therefore its validity remains unclear. No reviews focussing on non-ambulant children and young people up to the age of 25 years have been undertaken.The objectives of this systematic search and review are to:Identify all peer-reviewed articles relating to sedentary behaviour of non-ambulant children and young people.Categorise the articles according to study design and four subquestions relating to (i) measurement, (ii) patterns, (iii) associated risks and (iv) interventions to reduce sedentary time or behaviour.Critically appraise quality of the articles using established critical appraisal tools.Summarise the evidence for each subquestion. Describe its cumulative strength and identify knowledge gaps. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This protocol was developed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) checklist. The research questions, inclusion/exclusion criteria and search terms have been developed a priori using the 'Population, Concept and Context' framework. Online databases will be systematically searched to identify peer-reviewed articles published between 1996 and 2021. Two reviewers will screen, categorise and critically appraise the articles. Data extraction and analysis will be verified by the second reviewer.Results will be reported as a best evidence synthesis, with reference to the PRISMA checklist. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not required. The review will be submitted to an appropriate peer-reviewed journal. REGISTRATION: The review is registered on the Open Science Framework database. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SQXJB. Any protocol amendments will be recorded in the Open Science Framework database.

Cross-Domain Association in Metacognitive Efficiency Depends on First-Order Task Types.

An important yet unresolved question is whether or not metacognition consists of domain-general or domain-specific mechanisms. While most studies on this topic suggest a dissociation between metacognitive abilities at the neural level, there are inconsistent reports at the behavioral level. Specifically, while McCurdy et al. (2013) found a positive correlation between metacognitive efficiency for visual perception and memory, such correlation was not observed in Baird et al. (2013). One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that the former included two-alternative-forced choice (2AFC) judgments in both their visual and memory tasks, whereas the latter used 2AFC for one task and yes/no (YN) judgments for the other. To test the effect of task on cross-domain association in metacognitive efficiency, we conducted two online experiments to mirror McCurdy et al. (2013) and Baird et al. (2013) with considerable statistical power (n = 100), and replicated the main findings of both studies. The results suggest that the use of task could affect cross-domain association in metacognitive efficiency. In the third experiment with the same sample size, we used YN judgments for both tasks and did not find a significant cross-domain correlation in metacognitive efficiency. This suggests that the cross-domain correlation found in McCurdy et al. (2013) was not simply due to the same task being used for both domains, and the absence of cross-domain correlation in Baird et al. (2013) might be due to the use of YN judgments. Our results highlight the importance of avoiding confusion between 2AFC and YN judgments in behavioral tasks for metacognitive research, which is a common problem in many behavioral studies.

What Type of Awareness Does Binocular Rivalry Assess?

Recent experiments demonstrate that invisible stimulus features can induce binocular rivalry, indicating the phenomenon may be caused by differences in perceptual signal strength rather than conscious selection processes. Here, we clarify binocular rivalry's role in consciousness research by highlighting a critical difference between two distinct types of visual awareness.

Mechanisms of Choice Behavior Shift Using Cue-approach Training.

Cue-approach training has been shown to effectively shift choices for snack food items by associating a cued button-press motor response to particular food items. Furthermore, attention was biased toward previously cued items, even when the cued item is not chosen for real consumption during a choice phase. However, the exact mechanism by which preferences shift during cue-approach training is not entirely clear. In three experiments, we shed light on the possible underlying mechanisms at play during this novel paradigm: (1) Uncued, wholly predictable motor responses paired with particular food items were not sufficient to elicit a preference shift; (2) Cueing motor responses early - concurrently with food item onset - and thus eliminating the need for heightened top-down attention to the food stimulus in preparation for a motor response also eliminated the shift in food preferences. This finding reinforces our hypothesis that heightened attention at behaviorally relevant points in time is key to changing choice behavior in the cue-approach task; (3) Crucially, indicating choice using eye movements rather than manual button presses preserves the effect, thus demonstrating that the shift in preferences is not governed by a learned motor response but more likely via modulation of subjective value in higher associative regions, consistent with previous neuroimaging results. Cue-approach training drives attention at behaviorally relevant points in time to modulate the subjective value of individual items, providing a mechanism for behavior change that does not rely on external reinforcement and that holds great promise for developing real world behavioral interventions.