Effect of Acute Aerobic Exercise on Ocular Measures of Attention to Emotionally Expressive Faces.

BACKGROUND: Mechanisms underlying exercise-induced mood enhancement are not well understood, but it is plausible that adaptive changes in attention to emotional stimuli underlie this effect. Thus, this study examined the effects of acute aerobic exercise on eye-tracking metrics while participants viewed emotionally expressive faces. METHODS: Thirty-four adults (18 women) aged 21.1 ± 1.4 years completed two counterbalanced 30-min conditions: vigorous running or seated rest. Eye tracking occurred pre- and 20-min post-condition. Participants viewed positive (n = 15), negative (n = 15), and neutral (n = 15) emotional facial expressions from the NimStim repository. Fixation duration, longest fixation, number of fixations, and scan path length were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs. RESULTS: Exercise improved mood, but had no effect on the dependent measures (all 3-way interactions p > 0.66). However, a main effect of emotionally expressive content for fixation duration (p = 0.04, η = 0.10) and a marginally significant effect for longest fixation (p = 0.06, ηp2 = 0.09) were detected, such that fixation duration and longest fixation were greatest for faces expressing positive emotions. CONCLUSION: These preliminary findings indicated that acute exercise did not alter the processing of expressive faces as indexed by eye-tracking metrics of attention. However, eye tracking effectively detected processing patterns indicative of a pleasure bias while viewing emotional facial expressions.

Design, Implementation, and Usability of the Electronic Medical Record Search Engine (EMERSE) Tool.

Free text forms of clinical documentation stored in electronic health records contain a trove of data for researchers and clinicians alike. However, often these data are challenging to use and not easily accessible. EMERSE, a clinical documentation search and data abstraction tool developed by the University of Michigan, helps users in the task of searching through free text notes in clinical documentation. This study evaluates the usability and user experience of the EMERSE system, and draws inferences for the design of such systems. The study was conducted in 3 phases. In Phase 1, interviews with site administrators investigated factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation and adoption of EMERSE. Phase 2 employed semi-structured interviews to understand the uses, benefits, and limitations of the system from the perspective of experienced users. In Phase 3, system-naive users performed a set of basic workflow tasks, then completed post-activity questions and surveys to evaluate the intuitiveness and usability of the system. Participants rated the system exceptionally high on usability, user interface satisfaction, and perceived usefulness. Feedback also indicated that improvements could be made in visual contrast, affordances, and scope of notes indexed. These results indicate that tools such as EMERSE should be highly intuitive, attractive, and moderately customizable. This paper discusses some aspects of what may contribute to a system having such characteristics.