Women’s multiple uses of an overdose prevention technology to mitigate risks and harms within a supportive housing environment: a qualitative study

Background North America is amidst an opioid overdose epidemic. In many settings, particularly Canada, the majority of overdose deaths occur indoors and impact structurally vulnerable people who use drugs alone, making targeted housing-based interventions a priority. Mobile applications have been developed that allow individuals to solicit help to prevent overdose death. We examine the experiences of women residents utilizing an overdose response button technology within a supportive housing environment. Methods In October 2019, we conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 14 residents of a women-only supportive housing building in an urban setting where the overdose response button technology was installed. Data was analyzed thematically and framed by theories of structural vulnerability. Results While participants described the utility and disadvantages of the technology for overdose response, most participants, unexpectedly described alternate adoptions of the technology. Participants used the technology for other emergency situations (e.g., gender-based violence), rather than its intended purpose of overdose response. Conclusions Our findings highlight the limitations of current technologies while also demonstrating the clear need for housing-based emergency response interventions that address not just overdose risk but also gender-based violence. These need to be implemented alongside larger strategies to address structural vulnerabilities and provide greater agency to marginalized women who use drugs.

Neural activity precedes conscious awareness of being in or out of a transient hallucinatory state

SummaryAuditory verbal hallucinations, or “hearing voices”, is a remarkable state of the mind, occurring in psychiatric and neurological patients, and in a significant minority of the general population. An unexplained characteristic of this phenomenon is that it transiently fluctuates, with coming and going of episodes with time. We monitored neural activity with BOLD-fMRI second-by-second before and after participants indicated the start and end of a transient hallucinatory episode during the scanning session by pressing a response-button. We show that a region in the ventro-medial frontal cortex is activated in advance of conscious awareness of going in or out of a transient hallucinatory state. There was an increase in activity initiated a few seconds before the button-press for onsets, and a corresponding decrease in activity initiated a few seconds before the button-press for offsets. We identified the time between onset and offset button-presses, extracted the corresponding BOLD time-courses from nominated regions-of-interest, and analyzed changes in the signal from 10 seconds before to 15 seconds after the response-button was pressed, which identified onset and offset events. We suggest that this brain region act as a switch to turn on and off a hallucinatory episode. The results may have implications for new interventions for intractable hallucinations.

Disentangling semantic and response learning effects in color-word contingency learning

It is easier to indicate the ink color of a color-neutral noun when it is presented in the color in which it had been shown frequently before, relative to print colors in which it had been shown less often. This phenomenon is known as color-word-contingency learning. It remains unclear whether participants actually learn semantic (word-color) associations or/and response (word-button) associations. We here present a novel variant of the paradigm that can disentangle semantic and response learning, because word-color and word-button associations are manipulated independently. In four experiments, each involving four daily sessions, novel words (pseudowords such as enas, fatu or imot) were probabilistically associated either with a particular color, a particular response-button position, or with both. Neutral trials were also included, and participants’ awareness of the contingencies was manipulated. The data showed no impact of explicit contingency awareness, but clear evidence both for response learning and for semantic learning, with effects emerging swiftly. Deeper processing of color information, with color words presented in black instead of color patches to indicate response-button positions, resulted in stronger effects, both for semantic and response learning. Our data add a crucial piece of evidence lacking so far in color-word contingency learning studies: Semantic learning effectively takes place even when associations are learned in an incidental way.

Evaluation of Franz Marc’s Color Theory using Implicit Testing Procedures

In the early 20th century, the German expressionist painter Franz Marc formulated assumptions concerning the meanings of color, based on his individual sensations. He characterized the ‘cool’ blue as the ‘masculine principle’. Yellow represented the ‘feminine principle’ which he declared as ‘gentle, cheerful, and sensual’. This leaves red, the color he perceived as ‘brutal and heavy’. Here, we tested some of the color–meaning associations assumed by Franz Marc via implicit measures based on response times, using Single Category Implicit Association Tests. The participants had to classify words as belonging to one of two semantic categories (e.g., masculine or feminine) by pressing one of two response buttons. One of the semantic categories shared a response button with a hue (e.g., masculine–blue), and this button needed to be pressed whenever a color patch was presented on the screen. The results showed that response times were faster when related hues and meaning categories (according to Marc’s assumptions) shared the same response button, compared to when unrelated hues and meaning categories were assigned to the same button. The pattern of response times was compatible with the associations of blue–masculine, yellow–feminine, blue–cool and yellow–gentle as proposed by Marc. In addition, our data indicate associations of yellow–warm and red–warm, which were not explicitly formulated by Franz Marc. However, the proposed red–brutal association was not confirmed.

Temporal processing of self-motion: Translations are processed slower than rotations

Reaction times (RTs) to purely inertial self-motion stimuli have only infrequently been studied, and comparisons of RTs for translations and rotations, to our knowledge, are nonexistent. We recently proposed a model (Soyka et al., 2011) which describes direction discrimination thresholds for rotational and translational motions based on the dynamics of the vestibular sensory organs (otoliths and semi-circular canals). This model also predicts differences in RTs for different motion profiles (e.g., trapezoidal versus triangular acceleration profiles or varying profile durations). In order to assess these predictions we measured RTs in 20 participants for 8 supra-threshold motion profiles (4 translations, 4 rotations). A two-alternative forced-choice task, discriminating leftward from rightward motions, was used and 30 correct responses per condition were evaluated. The results agree with predictions for RT differences between motion profiles as derived from previously identified model parameters from threshold measurements. To describe absolute RT, a constant is added to the predictions representing both the discrimination process, and the time needed to press the response button. This constant is approximately 160 ms shorter for rotations, thus indicating that additional processing time is required for translational motion. As this additional latency cannot be explained by our model based on the dynamics of the sensory organs, we speculate that it originates at a later stage, e.g., during tilt-translation disambiguation. Varying processing latencies for different self-motion stimuli (either translations or rotations) which our model can account for must be considered when assessing the perceived timing of vestibular stimulation in comparison with other senses (Barnett-Cowan and Harris, 2009; Sanders et al., 2011).

The pleasant heat? A study of thermal-emotion associations

Recent studies demonstrated that the physical feeling of warmth could make people judge others more favorably, act more generously (Williams and Bargh, 2008) and induce greater social proximity (IJzerman and Semin, 2009). In the present study, we examined whether temperature is implicitly associated with positive or negative valence. In Experiment 1, subjects judged the valence of the emotion words and pictures with two response buttons, of which one is physically warm and the other is physically cold, and measured the reaction time. The response button assignment can be either congruent (warm-positive/cold-negative) or incongruent (warm-negative/cold-positive). We found that for emotion words, the warm-positive/cold-negative congruence holds. However, for emotion pictures, reverse results were obtained. To further examine the thermo-valence association, follow-up implicit association tests (IATs) were conducted with positive/negative words and warm/cold words in Experiment 2, and positive/negative pictures with warm/cold pads in Experiment 3. The results from Experiment 2 show a tendency towards warm-positive/cold-negative congruence. However, such tendency was not found in Experiment 3. In summary, our results indicate that when the valence is presented semantically, it is implicitly associated with both physical thermal experience (EXP 1) and abstract thermal concept (EXP 2), and the association follows the common expectation of warm-positive/cold-negative congruence. However, when the valence is presented visually, the association is not consistent (EXP 1 and EXP 3). These findings suggest that temperature might interact differently with valences being elicited by semantic and visual information.

Stimulus-Dependent Ear Asymmetry in a Dichotic Monitoring Task

Auditory lateralization was investigated in 26 right-handed and 26 left-handed, normal subjects using two dichotic monitoring tasks in each proband [dichotic consonant-vowel (CV) syllable monitoring once with the syllable /ta/ and once with the syllable /da/ as target]. Subjects were instructed to monitor for the presence of a target CV which could occur in either ear. They responded by depressing a response button; reaction time (RT) and hit rates were recorded. In right-handers the syllable /ta/ presented to the right ear was detected more frequently, on the average, than presented to the left ear. Also, RT was shorter for detection of /ta/ in the right ear than for detection in the left ear for both right- and left-handers. The detection of /da/ showed no ear advantage in hit rate and RT either for right-handers or for left-handers. These results demonstrate the existence of a right-ear advantage in dichotic monitoring of the target syllable /ta/ but not for the target syllable /da/. This difference in evoking a right-ear advantage is attributed to a difference in the difficulty of detection of both targets. It is argued that the detection of /da/ is too difficult to evoke phonetic processing, leading to a right-ear advantage.

Braille Tests with Tactual “Response Buttons” Allow for Unaided Test-Taking

To enable a blind subject to take tests without the use of a reader or recorder, the author has developed a system for forming a “response button” in the thermoformed plastic sheet on which the questions and choice of responses are reproduced in braille. The response buttons are formed by placing small wooden dowel-plugs on the master braille copy. The blind subject then merely depresses the domed button next to the response of his choice. The tests are re-usable; the dowel-plugs also can be re-used in the making of new tests.