Quality of life and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: associations with loneliness and social isolation in a cross-sectional, online survey of 2,207 community-dwelling older Canadians.

BACKGROUND: The far-reaching health and social sequelae of the COVID-19 pandemic among older adults have the potential to negatively impact both quality of life (QoL) and well-being, in part because of increased risks of loneliness and social isolation. The aim of this study was to examine predictors of QoL and well-being among Canadian older adults within the context of the pandemic, including loneliness and social isolation. METHODS: This cross-sectional, online survey recruited older adult participants through community organizations and research participant panels. Measures included the: Older People's Quality of Life Scale-B, WHO-5, DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale, Lubben Social Network Scale and five COVID-19 specific items assessing impact on loneliness and social isolation. Multiple linear regression models were used to adjust for potential confounders. RESULTS: A total of 2,207 older Canadians (55.7% female, with a mean age of 69.4 years) responded to the survey. Over one-third strongly disagreed that the pandemic had had a significant effect on either their mental (35.0%) or physical health (37.6%). Different patterns of predictors were apparent for QoL and well-being. After adjusting for all variables in the models, the ability of income to meet needs emerged as the strongest predictor of higher QoL, but was not associated with well-being, except for those who chose not to disclose their income adequacy. Age was not associated with either QoL or well-being. Females were more likely to experience lower well-being (ß=-2.0, 95% C.I. =-4.0,-0.03), but not QoL. Reporting three or more chronic health conditions and that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on mental health was associated with lower QoL and well-being. Loneliness was a predictor of reduced QoL (ß=-1.4, 95% C.I. =--1.6, -1.2) and poor well-being (ß=-3.7, 95% C.I. =-4.3,-3.0). A weak association was noted between QoL and social isolation. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with differential effects among older adults. In particular, those with limited financial resources and those with multiple chronic conditions may be at more risk to suffer adverse QoL and well-being consequences. Loneliness may be a modifiable risk factor for decreased QoL and well-being amenable to targeted interventions.

Effect of Instructional Format on Veterinary Students' Task Performance and Emotional State during a Simulation-Based Canine Endotracheal Intubation Laboratory: Handout versus Video.

Video- versus handout-based instructions may influence student outcomes during simulation training and competency-based assessments. Forty-five third-year veterinary students voluntarily participated in a simulation module on canine endotracheal intubation. A prospective, randomized, double-blinded study investigated the impact of video (n = 23) versus handout (n = 22) instructions on student confidence, anxiety, and task performance. Students self-scored their confidence and anxiety before and after the simulation. During the simulation laboratory, three raters independently evaluated student performance using a 20-item formal assessment tool with a 5-point global rating scale. No significant between- or within-group differences (p > .05) were found for both confidence and anxiety scores. Video-based instructions were associated with significantly higher (p < .05) total formal assessment scores compared with handout-based instructions. The video group had significantly higher scores than the handout group on 3 of the 20 individual skills (items) assessed: placement of tie to the adaptor-endotracheal tube complex (p < .05), using the anesthetic machine (p < .01), and pop-off valve management (p < .001). Inter-rater reliability as assessed by Cronbach's α (.92), and Kendall's W (.89) was excellent and almost perfect, respectively. A two-faceted crossed-design generalizability analysis yielded G coefficients for both the handout (Ep2 = .68) and the video (Ep2 = .72) groups. Video instructions may be associated with higher performance scores than handout instructions during endotracheal intubation simulation training. Further research into skill retention and learning styles is warranted.

Children's Forgetting of Pain-Related Memories.

OBJECTIVE: Given that forgetting negative experiences can help children cope with these experiences, we examined their ability to forget negative aspects of painful events. METHODS: 86 children aged 7-15 years participated in a retrieval-induced forgetting task whereby they repeatedly retrieved positive details of a physically painful experience, and an experimental pain task (cold-pressor task). RESULTS: Repeatedly retrieving positive details of a prior pain experience produced forgetting of the negative aspects of that experience. Pain-related self-efficacy predicted retrieval-induced forgetting; children with a poorer belief in their ability to cope with pain experienced less forgetting. Children who had a more difficult time forgetting prior negative experiences were more anxious about the pain task and reported higher pain thresholds. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding children's memory for painful experiences may help improve their pain management and coping ability.

A quantitative assessment of the predictive utility of grit in sport.

In high-performance sport, an athlete's ability to overcome setbacks and sustain their pursuit of long-term goals is essential for success. Grit (i.e., passion and perseverance over long-terms) has been linked to success in a variety of domains but is often critiqued for its limited predictive utility when compared to other psychological variables including self-control, conscientiousness, and mental toughness. The purpose of this study was to examine whether grit predicted important athlete outcomes (i.e., various measures of sport performance and athlete well-being) beyond other determinants of success. Data from 214 collegiate student-athletes (111 women, 103 men; Mage = 21.02, SD = 2.26) from Western Canadian universities were analysed. When predicting performance, the addition of the grit subscales (i.e., consistency of interests, perseverance of effort, adaptability to situations) explained an additional 11% of variance (R2 = 0.37, F[7, 203] = 7.16, p < .001) beyond self-control, conscientiousness, and mental toughness in subjective sport performance perceptions; however, grit did not add unique variance when entered into models predicting athlete goal achievement perceptions or highest level of competition. When predicting well-being, addition of the grit subscales added 18% of unique variance (R2 = 0.43, F[7, 203] = 21.43, p < .001) beyond other determinants of success in eudaimonic well-being, and 5% (R2 = 0.17, F[7, 203] = 6.95, p < .001) in satisfaction with sport, but did not add any unique variance to the model predicting mood. The partial support of the predictive utility of grit illustrates the complexity of forecasting success in sport and offers evidence that grit should continue to be studied as a motivational disposition in the domain of sport.

Invariance of cognitive triage in the development of recall in adulthood.

Past research has demonstrated that cognitive triage (weak-strong-weak recall pattern) is a robust effect that optimises children's recall. The aim of the current research was to determine whether adults' free recall also exhibits triage and whether cognitive triage is less marked with older than younger adults' recall. Younger and older adults memorized 16 unrelated words until all items were recalled perfectly. The triage pattern existed for both the younger and older adults' recall and there was evidence for age differences in triage. Our results are consistent with claims of greater verbatim forgetting and increased susceptibility to output interference with age in adulthood. Further research is needed to determine whether fuzzy-trace theory adequately explains the ageing of triage and what factors play a role in the development of this pattern of recall in adulthood.

Language, visual working memory, and dot subtraction: What counts?

To investigate cognitive factors affecting subtraction of visual objects, we adapted the dot subtraction task developed by Pica, Lemer, Izard, and Dehaene (2004), who used it to investigate calculation by the Mundurukú, an indigene group in Brazil that has a limited number word vocabulary. In the dot subtraction task, briefly displayed arrays of moving dots are used to represent the quantities for subtraction. We tested 40 Canadian university students' dot enumeration, Arabic digit subtraction, visual working memory, and performance on the dot subtraction task with dot display durations of 2, 1.5, 1, and .5 s. In the 2 s condition, error rates were uniformly low, whereas in the .5 s condition, error rates increased sharply as the minuend increased from 4 to 8, as was observed with the Mundurukú. Individual differences in dot subtraction accuracy were predicted by dot enumeration skill with longer dot display durations but were predicted by visual working memory efficiency with shorter durations. Pica et al. (2004) attributed the Mundurukú participants' very poor subtraction to the absence of counting words, but our results show that a shift to reliance on visual working memory is a nonlinguistic factor that comes into play in the dot subtraction task when time to encode the dot arrays is limited.