Understanding the patterns and health impact of indoor air pollutant exposures in Bradford, UK: a study protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Relative to outdoor air pollution, there is little evidence examining the composition and concentrations of indoor air pollution and its associated health impacts. The INGENIOUS project aims to provide the comprehensive understanding of indoor air pollution in UK homes. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: 'Real Home Assessment' is a cross-sectional, multimethod study within INGENIOUS. This study monitors indoor air pollutants over 2 weeks using low-cost sensors placed in three rooms in 300 Born in Bradford (BiB) households. Building audits are completed by researchers, and participants are asked to complete a home survey and a health and behaviour questionnaire, in addition to recording household activities and health symptoms on at least 1 weekday and 1 weekend day. A subsample of 150 households will receive more intensive measurements of volatile organic compound and particulate matter for 3 days. Qualitative interviews conducted with 30 participants will identify key barriers and enablers of effective ventilation practices. Outdoor air pollution is measured in 14 locations across Bradford to explore relationships between indoor and outdoor air quality. Data will be analysed to explore total concentrations of indoor air pollutants, how these vary with building characteristics, and whether they are related to health symptoms. Interviews will be analysed through content and thematic analysis. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval has been obtained from the NHS Health Research Authority Yorkshire and the Humber (Bradford Leeds) Research Ethics Committee (22/YH/0288). We will disseminate findings using our websites, social media, publications and conferences. Data will be open access through the BiB, the Open Science Framework and the UK Data Service.

Autistic people's perspectives on stereotypes: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Autism stereotypes can often portray autistic people in a negative way. However, few studies have looked at how autistic people think they are perceived by others, and none have specifically asked autistic people what they think the autistic stereotypes are. Semi-structured interviews with 12 autistic adults (aged between 20 and 63 years) were conducted. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, three main themes emerged from the data. These were as follows: (1) the primary stereotype is that autistic people are 'weird'; (2) autistic stereotypes have negative effects and consequences; and (3) autistic people are heterogeneous. This study makes an important and novel contribution to understanding the experience of being autistic by exploring how autistic people feel they are perceived by others and identifying some of the ways in which negative stereotypes are believed to have negative consequences for autistic people.

The influence of emotional cues on prospective memory: a systematic review with meta-analyses.

Remembering to perform a behaviour in the future, prospective memory, is essential to ensuring that people fulfil their intentions. Prospective memory involves committing to memory a cue to action (encoding), and later recognising and acting upon the cue in the environment (retrieval). Prospective memory performance is believed to be influenced by the emotionality of the cues, however the literature is fragmented and inconsistent. We conducted a systematic search to synthesise research on the influence of emotion on prospective memory. Sixty-seven effect sizes were extracted from 17 articles and hypothesised effects tested using three meta-analyses. Overall, prospective memory was enhanced when positively-valenced rather than neutral cues were presented (d = 0.32). In contrast, negatively-valenced cues did not enhance prospective memory overall (d = 0.07), but this effect was moderated by the timing of the emotional manipulation. Prospective memory performance was improved when negatively-valenced cues were presented during both encoding and retrieval (d = 0.40), but undermined when presented only during encoding (d = -0.25). Moderating effects were also found for cue-focality and whether studies controlled for the arousal level of the cues. The principal finding is that positively-valenced cues improve prospective memory performance and that timing of the manipulation can moderate emotional effects on prospective memory. We offer a new agenda for future empirical work and theorising in this area.

Varying cognitive targets and response rates to enhance the question-behaviour effect: An 8-arm Randomized Controlled Trial on influenza vaccination uptake.

RATIONALE: The question-behaviour effect (QBE) refers to the finding that survey questions about a behaviour can change that behaviour. However, little research has tested how the QBE can be maximized in behavioural medicine settings. The present research tested manipulations of cognitive targets (questions about anticipated regret or beneficence) and survey return rates (presence vs. absence of a sticky note requesting completion of the questionnaire) on the magnitude of the QBE for influenza vaccination in older adults. METHOD: Participants (N = 13,803) were recruited from general practice and randomly allocated to one of eight conditions: control 1 (no questionnaire); control 2 (demographics questionnaire); intention and attitude questionnaire (with or without a sticky note); intention and attitude plus anticipated regret questionnaire (with or without a sticky note); intention and attitude plus beneficence questionnaire (with or without a sticky note). Objective records of subsequent influenza vaccination from general practice records formed the dependent variable. RESULTS: Intention-to-treat analyses indicated that receiving an influenza vaccination questionnaire significantly increased vaccination rates compared to the no questionnaire, OR = 1.17, 95% CI = 1.01, 1.36 and combined control conditions, OR = 1.13, 95% CI = 1.01, 1.25. Including the sticky note significantly increased questionnaire return rates, OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.04, 1.50. However, there were no differences in vaccination rates between questionnaires containing different cognitive targets, a sticky note or not, and no interactions. There were no significant differences in the per-protocol analyses, i.e. among respondents who completed and returned the questionnaires. CONCLUSION: The QBE is a simple, low-cost intervention to increase influenza vaccination rates. Increasing questionnaire return rates or asking anticipated regret or beneficence questions in addition to intention and attitude questions did not enhance the QBE.

The Impact of Asking Intention or Self-Prediction Questions on Subsequent Behavior: A Meta-Analysis.

The current meta-analysis estimated the magnitude of the impact of asking intention and self-prediction questions on rates of subsequent behavior, and examined mediators and moderators of this question-behavior effect (QBE). Random-effects meta-analysis on 116 published tests of the effect indicated that intention/prediction questions have a small positive effect on behavior (d+ = 0.24). Little support was observed for attitude accessibility, cognitive dissonance, behavioral simulation, or processing fluency explanations of the QBE. Multivariate analyses indicated significant effects of social desirability of behavior/behavior domain (larger effects for more desirable and less risky behaviors), difficulty of behavior (larger effects for easy-to-perform behaviors), and sample type (larger effects among student samples). Although this review controls for co-occurrence of moderators in multivariate analyses, future primary research should systematically vary moderators in fully factorial designs. Further primary research is also needed to unravel the mechanisms underlying different variants of the QBE.

The formation of novel social category conjunctions in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer?

Recent research (e.g., Hutter, Crisp, Humphreys, Waters, & Moffit; Siebler) has confirmed that combining novel social categories involves two stages (e.g., Hampton; Hastie, Schroeder, & Weber). Furthermore, it is also evident that following stage 1 (constituent additivity), the second stage in these models involves cognitively effortful complex reasoning. However, while current theory and research has addressed how category conjunctions are initially represented to some degree, it is not clear precisely where we first combine or bind existing social constituent categories. For example, how and where do we compose and temporarily store a coherent representation of an individual who shares membership of "female" and "blacksmith" categories? In this article, we consider how the revised multi-component model of working memory (Baddeley) can assist in resolving the representational limitations in the extant two-stage theoretical models. This is a new approach to understanding how novel conjunctions form new bound "composite" representations.

Why does asking questions change health behaviours? The mediating role of attitude accessibility.

OBJECTIVE: The question-behaviour effect (QBE) refers to the finding that measuring behavioural intentions increases performance of the relevant behaviour. This effect has been used to change health behaviours. The present research asks why the QBE occurs and evaluates one possible mediator-attitude accessibility. DESIGN: University staff and students (N = 151) were randomly assigned to an intention measurement condition where they reported their intentions to eat healthy foods, or to one of two control conditions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants completed a response latency measure of attitude accessibility, before healthy eating behaviour was assessed unobtrusively using an objective measure of snacking. RESULTS: Intention measurement participants exhibited more accessible attitudes towards healthy foods, and were more likely to choose a healthy snack, relative to control participants. Furthermore, attitude accessibility mediated the relationship between intention measurement and behaviour. CONCLUSION: This research demonstrates that increased attitude accessibility may explain the QBE, extending the findings of previous research to the domain of health behaviour.

Resolving conflicting social categories: the role of age-related executive ability.

We investigated the effect of age-related decline in executive ability on the application of emergent features to incongruent social category conjunctions (e.g., male midwife). When forming an impression of an incongruent conjunction, older adults used more emergent attributes (attributes associated exclusively with the category conjunction and not the constituents), relative to younger adults. Moreover, this relationship was mediated by a reduction in inhibitory ability (measured using a Stroop task) and processing speed (measured using a Digit Symbol Substitution Test, DSST). These findings are consistent with the notion that executive ability is pivotal in understanding social functioning in older adults. We discuss the implications of these findings for the continuing development of models outlining the processes and stages involved in perceiving social category conjunctions.

Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: a meta-analysis.

According to the strength model, self-control is a finite resource that determines capacity for effortful control over dominant responses and, once expended, leads to impaired self-control task performance, known as ego depletion. A meta-analysis of 83 studies tested the effect of ego depletion on task performance and related outcomes, alternative explanations and moderators of the effect, and additional strength model hypotheses. Results revealed a significant effect of ego depletion on self-control task performance. Significant effect sizes were found for ego depletion on effort, perceived difficulty, negative affect, subjective fatigue, and blood glucose levels. Small, nonsignificant effects were found for positive affect and self-efficacy. Moderator analyses indicated minimal variation in the effect across sphere of depleting and dependent task, frequently used depleting and dependent tasks, presentation of tasks as single or separate experiments, type of dependent measure and control condition task, and source laboratory. The effect size was moderated by depleting task duration, task presentation by the same or different experimenters, intertask interim period, dependent task complexity, and use of dependent tasks in the choice and volition and cognitive spheres. Motivational incentives, training on self-control tasks, and glucose supplementation promoted better self-control in ego-depleted samples. Expecting further acts of self-control exacerbated the effect. Findings provide preliminary support for the ego-depletion effect and strength model hypotheses. Support for motivation and fatigue as alternative explanations for ego depletion indicate a need to integrate the strength model with other theories. Findings provide impetus for future investigation testing additional hypotheses and mechanisms of the ego-depletion effect.