The impact of positive and negative testimony on children’s attitudes toward others

Children can identify who is benevolent or malevolent not only through first-hand experiences and observations but also from the testimony of others. In this study, we investigated whether 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 128) would form their attitudes toward others after hearing testimony about that person’s past moral behavior and whether the valence of testimony would differently influence the children. In the positive condition, half of the participants gained information about three puppets: puppet A’s prosocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B’s past prosocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C’s past neutral behavior. In the negative condition, the other half also learned information about the three puppets: puppet A’s antisocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B’s past antisocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C’s past neutral behavior. Then they engaged in tasks that measured their behavioral attitudes toward the puppets and evaluated the goodness of each puppet to assess their attitudes at a cognitive level. Our results concluded that the children form their behavioral attitudes toward others based on testimony starting at the age of 7, and attitude formation at the cognitive level based on testimony is seen at age 5. Negative testimony, rather than positive testimony, influences the children’s attitudes toward others. In addition, the 7-year-olds’ use of testimony differs depending whether they are the allocators or the receivers of rewards. Our findings deepen understanding of how children rely on the verbal information around themselves when they navigate interactions with others.

P-OGC66 Mental Health and Wellbeing Services for Patients with Upper GI Cancer

Background Cancer related distress has a major impact on quality of life. The psychosocial needs of patients post an oesophagectomy are significant and exacerbate the physical burden. The Upper GI MDT at our hospital aim to provide holistic patient centred care that equips patients mentally and physically for their treatment pathway. Formal or structured pyschoncology services are not routinely available to our patient cohort. The aim of the audit undertaken was to assess awareness of and subsequent engagement with available mental health services in patients undergoing a curative resection for oesophagogastric cancer. Methods Patients who underwent either a gastrectomy or oesophagectomy in the Upper GI Centre between Nov 2018 and May 2019 were included. They each received a questionnaire to complete anonymously. Responses were via prepaid post. Responses were collated and analysed. Results 36 questionnaires sent out with 21 patients responding (Response rate 58%). Average age:69 (age range 40-84). 18 of the 21 responses were male Time diagnosed with cancer: 57% were between 12 to 18 months post diagnosis and 43% between 6 to 11 months. Source of Information received: 43% reported verbal information provided and 38% reported written information was provided Current engagement with Mental Health Services: National, Community, and Exercise programmes were used by a very small number of patients - 6 in total out of 21 respondents Reasons for not engaging with Mental Health Services responses included ‘Not being interested or required' to ‘fearful' ‘No knowledge of service' to ‘Cant remember ' or ‘Plans to engage' 93% of respondents would recommend use of wellbeing or mental health services to someone with a diagnosis of an Upper GI Cancer Suggestions for improvements varied from use of information packs, information on life post op and more guidance needed surrounding availability of current mental health supports Conclusions Psychosocial issues need to be addressed and there is a huge deficit in current service provision. Current service is not meeting service user needs and not empowering patients how best to manage mental burden and thus contribute to maximising treatment outcomes. National Cancer Strategy acknowledges lack of access for cancer patients to pyschoncology services. The Cancer Centre is awaiting appointment of a Pyschoncology Consultant and Team in the coming months. The Upper GI MDT will seek access to this service once available for their patient cohort. In interim use limited national and community resources available. Provide education to wider team members to standardise approach providing both written and verbal information on available mental health and well being services, embed mental health awareness into daily practice with encouragement for early patient intervention if cancer related distress evident. Re Audit after introduction of these measures.

“The Cuscus has White Teeth”: The Verbal Information Pathway to Fear in Non-clinically Anxious Children: No Influence of Ambiguous Information or Trait Anxiety

<p>Twenty-nine non-clinically anxious children, aged 7-10 years old, completed the Fear Beliefs Questionnaire (FBQ; Field & Lawson, 2003) before and after the presentation of verbal ambiguous information about an unknown animal, while 32 similar children matched for trait anxiety did the same after hearing threat information. Behavioural avoidance of the animals was subsequently examined with an adaptation of the Nature Reserve Task (NRT; Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007). Children also completed a Reduced Evidence of Danger interpretation bias task (Muris, Merckelbach & Damsma, 2000c) for ambiguous stories with generalised anxiety and social anxiety content, prior to the FBQ and NRT. Verbal threat information substantially increased FBQ ratings and NRT distance from the tagged animal, whereas ambiguous information had no effect on these measures other than a subset of children showing an avoidance of the tagged animal in the NRT. Contrary to expectations, level of trait anxiety was not related to interpretation biases, or the effect of ambiguous or threat information. In the threat group, but not the ambiguous group, two bias measures for generalised anxiety stories were associated with relative increase in FBQ ratings for the tagged animal, and a third bias measure for social anxiety stories was associated with NRT score. The associations held when controlling for gender, age, and trait anxiety, including trait anxiety used as a moderator variable. These findings support the view that verbal threat information is sufficient to induce fear of animals in children. Results are inconsistent with the current view that the effects of the verbal information pathway increase as a function of trait anxiety and that ambiguous verbal information can lead to increased fear responding. The evidence for bias – verbal threat associations suggests that future studies should examine their role in the verbal information pathway to fear and anxiety, and clarify the influence of various internalising and externalising psychopathologies beyond trait anxiety.</p>

Nonprobative Photos Inflate the Truthiness and Falsiness of Claims

<p>When people evaluate claims they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls truthiness, judging claims using subjective feelings of truth, rather than drawing on facts. Over seven experiments I examined how nonprobative photos can manufacture truthiness in just a few seconds. I found that a quick exposure to a photo that relates to, but does not provide any probative evidence about the accuracy of claims can systematically bias people to conclude claims are true. In Experiments 1A and 1B, people saw familiar and unfamiliar celebrity names and, for each, quickly responded "true" or "false" to the claim "This famous person is alive" or (between subjects) "This famous person is dead." Within subjects, some names appeared with a photo of the celebrity engaged in his/her profession whereas other names appeared alone. For unfamiliar celebrity names, photos increased the likelihood that subjects judged the claim to be true. Moreover, the same photos inflated the truth of "Alive" and "Dead" claims, suggesting that photos did not produce an "alive bias," but a "truth bias." Experiment 2 showed that photos and verbal information similarly inflated truthiness, suggesting that the effect is not peculiar to photographs per se. Experiment 3 demonstrated that nonprobative photos can also enhance the truthiness of general knowledge claims (Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump). In Experiments 4-6 I examined boundary conditions for truthiness. I found that the semantic relationship between the photo and claim mattered. Experiment 4 showed that in a within-subject design, related photos produced truthiness, but unrelated photos acted just like the no photo condition. But unrelated photos were not always benign, Experiment 5 showed that their effects depended on experimental context. In a mixed design, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced falsiness. Although the effect of related photos was robust across materials and variation in experimental context, when I used a fully between-subjects design in Experiment 6, the effect of photos (related and unrelated) was eliminated. These effects add to a growing literature on how nonprobative information can influence people’s decisions and suggest that nonprobative photographs do more than simply decorate, they can rapidly manufacture feelings of truth. As with many effects in the cognitive psychology literature, the photo-truthiness effect depends on the way in which people process and interpret photos when evaluating the truth of claims.</p>

“The Cuscus has White Teeth”: The Verbal Information Pathway to Fear in Non-clinically Anxious Children: No Influence of Ambiguous Information or Trait Anxiety

<p>Twenty-nine non-clinically anxious children, aged 7-10 years old, completed the Fear Beliefs Questionnaire (FBQ; Field & Lawson, 2003) before and after the presentation of verbal ambiguous information about an unknown animal, while 32 similar children matched for trait anxiety did the same after hearing threat information. Behavioural avoidance of the animals was subsequently examined with an adaptation of the Nature Reserve Task (NRT; Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007). Children also completed a Reduced Evidence of Danger interpretation bias task (Muris, Merckelbach & Damsma, 2000c) for ambiguous stories with generalised anxiety and social anxiety content, prior to the FBQ and NRT. Verbal threat information substantially increased FBQ ratings and NRT distance from the tagged animal, whereas ambiguous information had no effect on these measures other than a subset of children showing an avoidance of the tagged animal in the NRT. Contrary to expectations, level of trait anxiety was not related to interpretation biases, or the effect of ambiguous or threat information. In the threat group, but not the ambiguous group, two bias measures for generalised anxiety stories were associated with relative increase in FBQ ratings for the tagged animal, and a third bias measure for social anxiety stories was associated with NRT score. The associations held when controlling for gender, age, and trait anxiety, including trait anxiety used as a moderator variable. These findings support the view that verbal threat information is sufficient to induce fear of animals in children. Results are inconsistent with the current view that the effects of the verbal information pathway increase as a function of trait anxiety and that ambiguous verbal information can lead to increased fear responding. The evidence for bias – verbal threat associations suggests that future studies should examine their role in the verbal information pathway to fear and anxiety, and clarify the influence of various internalising and externalising psychopathologies beyond trait anxiety.</p>

Nonprobative Photos Inflate the Truthiness and Falsiness of Claims

<p>When people evaluate claims they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls truthiness, judging claims using subjective feelings of truth, rather than drawing on facts. Over seven experiments I examined how nonprobative photos can manufacture truthiness in just a few seconds. I found that a quick exposure to a photo that relates to, but does not provide any probative evidence about the accuracy of claims can systematically bias people to conclude claims are true. In Experiments 1A and 1B, people saw familiar and unfamiliar celebrity names and, for each, quickly responded "true" or "false" to the claim "This famous person is alive" or (between subjects) "This famous person is dead." Within subjects, some names appeared with a photo of the celebrity engaged in his/her profession whereas other names appeared alone. For unfamiliar celebrity names, photos increased the likelihood that subjects judged the claim to be true. Moreover, the same photos inflated the truth of "Alive" and "Dead" claims, suggesting that photos did not produce an "alive bias," but a "truth bias." Experiment 2 showed that photos and verbal information similarly inflated truthiness, suggesting that the effect is not peculiar to photographs per se. Experiment 3 demonstrated that nonprobative photos can also enhance the truthiness of general knowledge claims (Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump). In Experiments 4-6 I examined boundary conditions for truthiness. I found that the semantic relationship between the photo and claim mattered. Experiment 4 showed that in a within-subject design, related photos produced truthiness, but unrelated photos acted just like the no photo condition. But unrelated photos were not always benign, Experiment 5 showed that their effects depended on experimental context. In a mixed design, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced falsiness. Although the effect of related photos was robust across materials and variation in experimental context, when I used a fully between-subjects design in Experiment 6, the effect of photos (related and unrelated) was eliminated. These effects add to a growing literature on how nonprobative information can influence people’s decisions and suggest that nonprobative photographs do more than simply decorate, they can rapidly manufacture feelings of truth. As with many effects in the cognitive psychology literature, the photo-truthiness effect depends on the way in which people process and interpret photos when evaluating the truth of claims.</p>

Emotion-sensitive voice-casting care robot in rehabilitation using real-time sensing and analysis of biometric information

An important part of nursing care is the physiotherapist’s physical exercise recovery training (for instance, walking), which is aimed at restoring athletic ability, known as rehabilitation (rehab). In rehab, the big problem is that it is difficult to maintain motivation. Therapies using robots have been proposed, such as animalistic robots that have positive psychological, physiological, and social effects on the patient. These also have an important effect in reducing the on-site human workload. However, the problem with these robots is that they do not actually understand what emotions the user is currently feeling. Some studies have been successful in estimating a person’s emotions. As for non-cognitive approaches, there is an emotional estimation of non-verbal information. In this study, we focus on the characteristics of real-time sensing of emotion through heart rates – unconsciously evaluating what a person experiences – and applying it to select the appropriate turn of phrase by a voice-casting robot. We developed a robot to achieve this purpose. As a result, we were able to confirm the effectiveness of a real-time emotion-sensitive voice-casting robot that performs supportive actions significantly different from non-voice casting robots.

Correction of Impaired Sound Pronunciation in Senior Preschoolers with Phonetic-Phonemic Speech Underdevelopment

The research featured senior preschoolers with phonetic-phonemic speech underdevelopment. The authors described the peculiarities of speech development in such children and analyzed related publications. As a rule, impaired sound pronunciation includes low tempo and weak voluntary regulation. The study featured substitutions, distortion, or absence of various sounds. The authors tested a set of measures aimed at correcting speech disorders in senior preschool children with phonetic-phonemic speech underdevelopment. The experiment revealed a combination of incorrect pronunciation with sounds that were partially consistent in a certain context. Cognitive parameters included difficulties in memorizing verbal information and poor auditory memory. The subjects failed active speech tests and could not remember oral information. The article also introduces data on the specifics of speech therapy of phonemic hearing.

Synchrony as a measure of conversation difficulty: Movement coherence increases with background noise level and complexity in dyads and triads

When people interact, they fall into synchrony. This synchrony has been demonstrated in a range of contexts, from walking or playing music together to holding a conversation, and has been linked to prosocial outcomes such as development of rapport and efficiency of cooperation. While the basis of synchrony remains unclear, several studies have found synchrony to increase when an interaction is made challenging, potentially providing a means of facilitating interaction. Here we focus on head movement during free conversation. As verbal information is obscured when conversing over background noise, we investigate whether synchrony is greater in high vs low levels of noise, as well as addressing the effect of background noise complexity. Participants held a series of conversations with unfamiliar interlocutors while seated in a lab, and the background noise level changed every 15-30s between 54, 60, 66, 72, and 78 dB. We report measures of head movement synchrony recorded via high-resolution motion tracking at the extreme noise levels (i.e., 54 vs 78 dB) in dyads (n = 15) and triads (n = 11). In both the dyads and the triads, we report increased movement coherence in high compared to low level speech-shaped noise. Furthermore, in triads we compare behaviour in speech-shaped noise vs multi-talker babble, and find greater movement coherence in the more complex babble condition. Key synchrony differences fall in the 0.2–0.5 Hz frequency bands, and are discussed in terms of their correspondence to talkers’ average utterance durations. Additional synchrony differences occur at higher frequencies in the triads only (i.e., >5 Hz), which may relate to synchrony of backchannel cues (as multiple individuals were listening and responding to the same talker). Not only do these studies replicate prior work indicating interlocutors’ increased reliance on behavioural synchrony as task difficulty increases, but they demonstrate these effects using multiple difficulty manipulations and across different sized interaction groups.

Use of audiovisual media to enhance patients' knowledge regarding the oral adverse effects of oncology treatment

Objective: the present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of didactic alternatives, namely the audiovisualmedia, in conveying information regarding the oral adverse effects of oncology treatment in cancer patients.Methods: cancer patients were randomly divided into two groups: control group (n = 40) and audiovisualgroup (n = 36). The control group received verbal information regarding the oral side effects of cancer treatment.Conversely, the audiovisual group received the same verbal information, along with an illustrativeaudiovisual media presentation. Additionally, questionnaires on the subject were administered before andafter the intervention by the dental team. Results: the current study employed Fisher’s exact test for statisticalanalysis, and the results showed statistical similarity between the two groups (P > 0.05). Both educational approaches achieved the intended objective. Conclusion: a well-conducted dialogue can create adequate awareness among cancer patients and improve adaptation. Optionally, the use of innovative techniques, such as audiovisual resources, was observed to be an accessible and efficient alternative that can also be used in patient education. Therefore, educational videos can be used to improve patients understanding, adherence to therapeutic regimens, and quality of life and contribute to a better prognosis.