The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others

Human sweat odor serves as social communication signal for a person’s traits and emotional states. This study explored whether body odors can also communicate information about one’s self-esteem, and the role of applied fragrance in this relationship. Female participants were asked to rate self-esteem and attractiveness of different male contestants of a dating show, while being exposed to male participant’s body odors differing in self-esteem. High self-esteem sweat was rated more pleasant and less intense than low self-esteem sweat. However, there was no difference in perceived self-esteem and attractiveness of male contestants in videos, hence explicit differences in body odor did not transfer to judgments of related person characteristics. When the body odor was fragranced using a fragranced body spray, male contestants were rated as having higher self-esteem and being more attractive. The finding that body odors from male participants differing in self-esteem are rated differently and can be discriminated suggests self-esteem has distinct perceivable olfactory features, but the remaining findings imply that only fragrance affect the psychological impression someone makes. These findings are discussed in the context of the role of body odor and fragrance in human perception and social communication.

Representativeness of the PDOPPS cohort compared to the Australian PD population

Background: The Peritoneal Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (PDOPPS) is an international, prospective study following persons treated by peritoneal dialysis (PD) to identify modifiable practices associated with improvements in PD technique and person survival. The aim of this study was to assess the representativeness of the Australian cohort included in PDOPPS compared to the complete Australian PD population, as reported to the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant (ANZDATA) Registry. Methods: Adults with at least one PD treatment reported to ANZDATA Registry during the census period of PDOPPS Phase I (November 2014 to April 2018) were compared to the Australian PDOPPS cohort. The primary outcomes were the representativeness of centres and persons. Secondary outcomes explored the association of person characteristics with consent to study participation. Results: After data linkage, 511 PDOPPS participants were compared to 5616 Australians treated with PD. Within centres eligible for PDOPPS, selected centres were similar to other Australian centres. The PDOPPS participants’ cohort tended to include older persons, more males, a higher proportion of Caucasians and more persons with higher socioeconomic advantage compared to the Australian PD population. Differences in distribution across sex and ethnicities between the PDOPPS cohort and the overall PD population were in part due to the selection and consent processes, during which females and non-Caucasians were more likely to not consent to PDOPPS participation. Conclusion: Sampling methods used in PDOPPS allowed for good national representativeness of the included centres. However, representativeness of the unweighted PDOPPS sample was suboptimal in regard to some participant characteristics.

Differences in assistive technology installed for people with dementia living at home who have wandering and safety risks

Background Assistive Technology for people with dementia living at home is not meeting their care needs. Reasons for this may be due to limited understanding of variation in multiple characteristics of people with dementia including their safety and wandering risks, and how these affect their assistive technology requirements. This study therefore aimed to explore the possibility of grouping people with dementia according to data describing multiple person characteristics. Then to investigate the relationships between these groupings and installed Assistive Technology interventions. Methods Partitioning Around Medoids cluster analysis was used to determine participant groupings based upon secondary data which described the person characteristics of 451 people with dementia with Assistive Technology needs. Relationships between installed Assistive Technology and participant groupings were then examined. Results Two robust clustering solutions were identified within the person characteristics data. Relationships between the clustering solutions and installed Assistive Technology data indicate the utility of this method for exploring the impact of multiple characteristics on Assistive technology installations. Living situation and caregiver support influence installation of assistive technology more strongly than level of risk or cognitive impairment. People with dementia living alone received different AT from those living with others. Conclusions Results suggest that caregiver support and the living situation of the person with dementia influence the type and frequency of installed Assistive Technology. Reasons for this include the needs of the caregiver themselves, the caregiver view of the participants’ needs, caregiver response to alerts, and the caregiver contribution to the assistive technology assessment and selection process. Selection processes should be refined to account for the needs and views of both caregivers and people with dementia. This will require additional assessor training, and the development of validated assessments for people with dementia who have additional impairments. Policies should support the development of services which provide a wider range of AT to facilitate interventions which are focused on the needs of the person with dementia.

Negative Emodiversity is Associated with Emotional Eating in Adolescents: An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Dynamic Emotional Processes in Daily Life

Emotional eating is a mental disorder, common in adolescents, that develops as a result of their tendency to use high-energy food to regulate their fluctuating emotions. Due to unstable lifestyles, adolescents tend to have unique within-person profiles of emotional experiences that change across moments and days, often lost in global assessments of emotions. In an Ecological Momentary Assessment study, we examined three within-person characteristics (baseline levels, intra-individual variability, and emodiversity) of emotions in 158 adolescents, aged 14-17 years old, predicting emotional eating. Results indicated that higher negative emodiversity, baselines, and variability in stress were predictive of emotional eating in adolescents. When all considered together, negative emodiversity remained the only significant predictor of emotional eating. Methodological implications are further discussed.

A Taxonomic Review of Patient Complaints in Adult Hospital Medicine

Previous studies show that patient complaints can identify gaps in quality of care, but it is difficult to identify trends without categorization. We conducted a review of complaints relating to admissions on hospital internal medicine (HIM) services over a 26-month period. Data were collected on person characteristics and key features of the complaint. The complaints were also categorized into a previously published taxonomy. Seventy-six unsolicited complaints were identified, (3.5 per 1000 hospital admissions). Complaints were more likely on resident services. The mean duration between encounter and complaint was 18 days, and it took an average of 12 days to resolve the complaint. Most patients (59%) had a complaint in the Relationship domain. Thirty-nine percent of complaints mentioned a specific clinician. When a clinician was mentioned, complaints regarding communication and humaneness predominated (68%). The results indicate that the efforts to reduce patient complaints in HIM should focus on the Relationships domain.

A causal theory of error scores.

In Modern Test Theory, response variables are a function of a common latent variable that represents the measured attribute, and error variables that are unique to the response variables. While considerable thought goes into the interpretation of latent variables in these models (e.g., validity research), the interpretation of error variables is typically left implicit (e.g., describing error variables as residuals, i.e., as `whatever is unexplained by the model'). Yet, many psychometric assumptions are essentially assumptions about error and thus being able to reason about psychometric models requires the ability to reason about errors. We propose the causal theory of error as a framework that helps reasoning about errors in terms of the data-generating mechanism. In this framework, the error variable reflects all unique causes of the response variable that together with the latent variable determine the item responses. We show that different assumptions about error scores (1) imply different psychometric models, (2) have different implications for the chance experiment that underlies the notion of randomness in the model, and (3) have different implications for item bias and local homogeneity. In the causal theory of error, these assumptions concern the unique causes of the item response that may be person characteristics that have the sampling of people as their source of variability, or properties of the measurement circumstances that have the sampling of measurement occasions as their source of variability.

Differences in Assistive Technology Installed for People With Dementia Living at Home Who Have Wandering and Safety Risks

Background: Assistive Technology for people with dementia living at home is not meeting their care needs. Reasons for this may be due to limited understanding of variation in multiple characteristics of people with dementia including their safety and wandering risks, and how these affect their assistive technology requirements. To explore the possibility of grouping people with dementia according to data describing multiple person characteristics. Then to investigate the relationships between these groupings and installed Assistive Technology interventions.Methods: Partitioning Around Medoids cluster analysis was used to determine participant groupings based upon secondary data which described the person characteristics of 451 people with dementia with Assistive Technology needs. Relationships between installed Assistive Technology and participant groupings were then examined.Results: Two robust clustering solutions were identified within the person characteristics data. Relationships between the clustering solutions and installed Assistive Technology data indicate the utility of this method for exploring the impact of multiple characteristics on Assistive technology installations. Living situation and caregiver support influence installation of assistive technology more strongly than level of risk or cognitive impairment. People with dementia living alone received different AT from those living with others.Conclusions: Results suggest that caregiver support and the living situation of the person with dementia influence the type and frequency of installed Assistive Technology. Reasons for this include the needs of the caregiver themselves, the caregiver view of the participants’ needs, caregiver response to alerts, and the caregiver contribution to the assistive technology assessment and selection process. Selection processes should be refined to account for the needs and views of both caregivers and people with dementia. This will require additional assessor training, and the development of validated assessments for people with dementia who have additional impairments. Policies should support the development of services which provide a wider range of AT to facilitate interventions which are focused on the needs of the person with dementia.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF THE APPLICATION OF THE PROFILING METHOD

The article is devoted to the analysis of the origins of the method of profiling the identity of an unknown criminal. The development of the application of the possibilities of profiling the personality of a criminal and the practice of its application in the activities of law enforcement agencies in the investigation of crimes are investigated. Based on the concept of profiling, as from English. Profile is an integrated crime prevention technique by highlighting the characteristics of persons who committed a crime or are preparing to make it on the basis of psychological, criminological, criminalistic and sociological knowledge; a set of methods and techniques for assessing and predicting human behavior based on the analysis of the most informative signs, forensic portrait of a person, characteristics of appearance, non-verbal and verbal behavior, location, etc. We noted that there is a lot of research by foreign and Ukrainian scientists on the problems of using profiling technology, but not enough attention has been paid to the history of the practice of applying the profiling method. The main names of scientists and the features of their teachings were listed in the abstract, as the stages of development of the introduction of the profiling method in the practice of disclosing and investigating crimes by law enforcement agencies. We said that now the technology of the profiling method is not used as a mandatory measure in the investigation and disclosure of crimes. There are fundamentals of such activities, but it is too early to talk about the widespread use of profiling. At the same time, it can be noted that profiling was successfully used in the disclosure of some resonant crimes related to serial killings. We agreed with individual authors that research on forensic profiling and the behavioral aspects of crimes in Ukraine are in the early stages of development. We noted that since profiling is a young science, it is constantly evolving, and its fields of application are expanding. Today, profiling techniques are used in the field of preventive medicine to correct and prevent the emergence of diseases of psychosomatic etiology. There is also the so-called family profiling, with the help of which specialists try to help family members in solving their family problems. In addition to forensic, criminal and criminological, there is aviation, anti-terrorist, research, psychological, information security profiling, typological. Also, transport, hotel business profiling, personnel, banking and the like. We concluded that profiling technology is a universal comprehensive and modern tool that is advisable to use in law enforcement agencies in investigative, operational, personnel and administrative activities, etc. The history of its development is only gaining momentum. However, today, in law enforcement agencies, not only the profiling technique is not widely used. They do not use this term at all.