An Investigation of Pulse Oximetry Levels During Swallowing in Healthy Adults and in Individuals with Severe and Very Severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

To compare pulse oximetry (PO) levels during swallowing in healthy adults and adults with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Participants included two groups of 60 healthy adults, balanced for gender. The young group ranged from 18 to 38 years, and the older group from 60 to 87 years. In addition, there were 11 participants with COPD aged 43 to 82 years. PO levels were collected as each participant swallowed 10 mL of water, 10 mL of applesauce, and a piece of diced pear (three trials each). Analyses for the healthy groups revealed neither statistically significant main effects for bolus type nor interactions between gender and age. For between-subject effects, there was no main effect for gender, but there was a large main effect for age, and a gender and age interaction. In the group with COPD, there were no significant differences across bolus types; however, PO measures were consistently lower than the healthy groups for all bolus types. Healthy adults exhibited stable PO levels across bolus types. Adults with COPD, although exhibiting significantly lower PO levels, also remained stable. For clinicians who monitor PO measures, these results offer a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of these measures during swallowing in these groups.

The Direct and Indirect Influences of Parenting: The Facets of Time-Perspective and Impaired Control Along the Alcohol-related Problems Pathway.

BACKGROUND: Social Learning Theory suggests how one conceptualizes time will be passed from parent to child (Bandura & Walters, 1963). Through the lens of Behavioral Economics Theory (Vuchinich & Simpson, 1998), impaired control may be characterized as consuming alcohol as a form of immediate gratification as a choice over more distal rewards. Because impaired control reflects a self-regulation failure specific to the drinking situation, it may be directly related to time-perspectives. OBJECTIVES: This investigation explored whether or not the indirect influences of perceived parenting styles on alcohol use and related problems is mediated by both facets of time-perspective (e.g. hedonism, present-fatalism, future, past-positive, past-negative) and impaired control over drinking. METHODS: We examined a structural equation model with 391 (207 women; 184 men) college student drinkers. We used an asymmetric bias-corrected bootstrap technique to conduct mediational analyses (MacKinnon, 2008). RESULTS: Higher levels of past-positive time-perspective were indirectly linked to both less alcohol use and fewer alcohol-related problems through less impaired control. In contrast, higher levels of present-fatalism were indirectly linked to more alcohol use through more impaired control. Higher levels of father permissiveness and mother authoritarianism were indirectly linked to both more impaired control and alcohol use through more present-fatalism. In addition, higher levels of father authoritarianism were indirectly linked to more alcohol use through more hedonism. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Our results support the notion that drinking beyond one's self-prescribed limits is associated with time-perspectives related to negative aspects of the parent-offspring socialization process, such as fatalism.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Ability Settings.

Previous research has demonstrated that one person's expectations can influence the behavior of another person, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. This study examined the effects of ability-based expectations in an experiment in which some participants ("coaches") were assigned false expectations of the basketball free-throw shooting ability of other participants ("players"). Coaches allocated more opportunities to players for whom the false expectation was positive, and fewer shots to players for whom the false expectation was negative. In turn, players who were allocated more shots made a higher percentage of them, thereby confirming their coaches' expectations about their shooting ability, and were more confident in their shooting ability following the task, than players who were allocated fewer shots.