TY - JOUR A1 - Miklashevsky, Alex T1 - Catch the star! Spatial information activates the manual motor system JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Previous research demonstrated a close bidirectional relationship between spatial attention and the manual motor system. However, it is unclear whether an explicit hand movement is necessary for this relationship to appear. A novel method with high temporal resolution–bimanual grip force registration–sheds light on this issue. Participants held two grip force sensors while being presented with lateralized stimuli (exogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 1), left- or right-pointing central arrows (endogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 2), or the words "left" or "right" (endogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 3). There was an early interaction between the presentation side or arrow direction and grip force: lateralized objects and central arrows led to a larger increase of the ipsilateral force and a smaller increase of the contralateral force. Surprisingly, words led to the opposite pattern: larger force increase in the contralateral hand and smaller force increase in the ipsilateral hand. The effect was stronger and appeared earlier for lateralized objects (60 ms after stimulus presentation) than for arrows (100 ms) or words (250 ms). Thus, processing visuospatial information automatically activates the manual motor system, but the timing and direction of this effect vary depending on the type of stimulus. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262510 SN - 1932-6203 SP - 1 EP - 30 PB - PLOS CY - San Francisco, California, US ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sixtus, Elena A1 - Fischer, Martin H. T1 - Eine kognitionswissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Konzepte "Raum" und "Zahl" JF - Raum und Zahl im Fokus der Wissenschaften : eine multidisziplinäre Vorlesungsreihe Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-86464-082-7 SP - 35 EP - 62 PB - Trafo CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Shaki, Samuel A1 - Fischer, Martin H. T1 - Competing Biases in Mental Arithmetic BT - When Division Is More and Multiplication Is Less JF - Frontiers in human neuroscience N2 - Mental arithmetic exhibits various biases. Among those is a tendency to overestimate addition and to underestimate subtraction outcomes. Does such “operational momentum” (OM) also affect multiplication and division? Twenty-six adults produced lines whose lengths corresponded to the correct outcomes of multiplication and division problems shown in symbolic format. We found a reliable tendency to over-estimate division outcomes, i.e., reverse OM. We suggest that anchoring on the first operand (a tendency to use this number as a reference for further quantitative reasoning) contributes to cognitive biases in mental arithmetic. KW - heuristics and biases KW - numerical cognition KW - mental arithmetic KW - mental number line KW - operational momentum Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00037 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 11 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Warschburger, Petra A1 - Kröller, Katja T1 - Loss to follow-up in a randomized controlled trial study for pediatric weight management (EPOC) JF - BMC pediatrics N2 - Background Attrition is a serious problem in intervention studies. The current study analyzed the attrition rate during follow-up in a randomized controlled pediatric weight management program (EPOC study) within a tertiary care setting. Methods Five hundred twenty-three parents and their 7–13-year-old children with obesity participated in the randomized controlled intervention trial. Follow-up data were assessed 6 and 12 months after the end of treatment. Attrition was defined as providing no objective weight data. Demographic and psychological baseline characteristics were used to predict attrition at 6- and 12-month follow-up using multivariate logistic regression analyses. Results Objective weight data were available for 49.6 (67.0) % of the children 6 (12) months after the end of treatment. Completers and non-completers at the 6- and 12-month follow-up differed in the amount of weight loss during their inpatient stay, their initial BMI-SDS, educational level of the parents, and child’s quality of life and well-being. Additionally, completers supported their child more than non-completers, and at the 12-month follow-up, families with a more structured eating environment were less likely to drop out. On a multivariate level, only educational background and structure of the eating environment remained significant. Conclusions The minor differences between the completers and the non-completers suggest that our retention strategies were successful. Further research should focus on prevention of attrition in families with a lower educational background. KW - Attrition KW - Obesity KW - Child KW - Predictors KW - Weight management trial Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-016-0727-2 SN - 1471-2431 VL - 16 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Salzwedel, Annett A1 - Reibis, Rona Katharina A1 - Hadzic, Miralem A1 - Buhlert, Hermann A1 - Völler, Heinz T1 - Patients’ expectations of returning to work, co-morbid disorders and work capacity at discharge from cardiac rehabilitation JF - Vascular Health and Risk Management N2 - Objective: We aimed to characterize patients after an acute cardiac event regarding their negative expectations around returning to work and the impact on work capacity upon discharge from cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Methods: We analyzed routine data of 884 patients (52±7 years, 76% men) who attended 3 weeks of inpatient CR after an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or cardiac surgery between October 2013 and March 2015. The primary outcome was their status determining their capacity to work (fit vs unfit) at discharge from CR. Further, sociodemographic data (eg, age, sex, and education level), diagnoses, functional data (eg, exercise stress test and 6-min walking test [6MWT]), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and self-assessment of the occupational prognosis (negative expectations and/or unemployment, Würzburger screening) at admission to CR were considered. Results: A negative occupational prognosis was detected in 384 patients (43%). Out of these, 368 (96%) expected not to return to work after CR and/or were unemployed before CR at 29% (n=113). Affected patients showed a reduced exercise capacity (bicycle stress test: 100 W vs 118 W, P<0.01; 6MWT: 380 m vs 421 m, P<0.01) and were more likely to receive a depression diagnosis (12% vs 3%, P<0.01), as well as higher levels on the HADS. At discharge from CR, 21% of this group (n=81) were fit for work (vs 35% of patients with a normal occupational prognosis (n=175, P<0.01)). Sick leave before the cardiac event (OR 0.4, 95% CI 0.2–0.6, P<0.01), negative occupational expectations (OR 0.4, 95% CI 0.3–0.7, P<0.01) and depression (OR 0.3, 95% CI 0.1–0.8, P=0.01) reduced the likelihood of achieving work capacity upon discharge. In contrast, higher exercise capacity was positively associated. Conclusion: Patients with a negative occupational prognosis often revealed a reduced physical performance and suffered from a high psychosocial burden. In addition, patients’ occupational expectations were a predictor of work capacity at discharge from CR. Affected patients should be identified at admission to allow for targeted psychosocial care. KW - cardiac rehabilitation KW - return to work KW - work capacity KW - negative expectation KW - occupational prognosis Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2147/VHRM.S216039 SN - 1176-6344 SN - 1178-2048 VL - 15 SP - 301 EP - 308 PB - Dove Medical Press CY - Albany, Auckland ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Block, Andrea A1 - Bonaventura, Klaus A1 - Grahn, Patricia A1 - Bestgen, Felix A1 - Wippert, Pia-Maria T1 - Stress management in pre-and postoperative care amongst practitioners and patients in cardiac catheterization laboratory: a study protocol JF - Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine N2 - Background: As the number of cardiac diseases continuously increases within the last years in modern society, so does cardiac treatment, especially cardiac catheterization. The procedure of a cardiac catheterization is challenging for both patients and practitioners. Several potential stressors of psychological or physical nature can occur during the procedure. The objective of the study is to develop and implement a stress management intervention for both practitioners and patients that aims to reduce the psychological and physical strain of a cardiac catheterization. Methods: The clinical study (DRKS00026624) includes two randomized controlled intervention trials with parallel groups, for patients with elective cardiac catheterization and practitioners at the catheterization lab, in two clinic sites of the Ernst-von-Bergmann clinic network in Brandenburg, Germany. Both groups received different interventions for stress management. The intervention for patients comprises a psychoeducational video with different stress management technics and additional a standardized medical information about the cardiac catheterization examination. The control condition includes the in hospitals practiced medical patient education before the examination (usual care). Primary and secondary outcomes are measured by physiological parameters and validated questionnaires, the day before (M1) and after (M2) the cardiac catheterization and at a postal follow-up 6 months later (M3). It is expected that people with standardized information and psychoeducation show reduced complications during cardiac catheterization procedures, better pre- and post-operative wellbeing, regeneration, mood and lower stress levels over time. The intervention for practitioners includes a Mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) over 8 weeks supervised by an experienced MBSR practitioner directly at the clinic site and an operative guideline. It is expected that practitioners with intervention show improved perceived and chronic stress, occupational health, physical and mental function, higher effort-reward balance, regeneration and quality of life. Primary and secondary outcomes are measured by physiological parameters (heart rate variability, saliva cortisol) and validated questionnaires and will be assessed before (M1) and after (M2) the MBSR intervention and at a postal follow-up 6 months later (M3). Physiological biomarkers in practitioners will be assessed before (M1) and after intervention (M2) on two work days and a two days off. Intervention effects in both groups (practitioners and patients) will be evaluated separately using multivariate variance analysis. Discussion: This study evaluates the effectiveness of two stress management intervention programs for patients and practitioners within cardiac catheter laboratory. Study will disclose strains during a cardiac catheterization affecting both patients and practitioners. For practitioners it may contribute to improved working conditions and occupational safety, preservation of earning capacity, avoidance of participation restrictions and loss of performance. In both groups less anxiety, stress and complications before and during the procedures can be expected. The study may add knowledge how to eliminate stressful exposures and to contribute to more (psychological) security, less output losses and exhaustion during work. The evolved stress management guidelines, training manuals and the standardized patient education should be transferred into clinical routines KW - stress management KW - mindfulness-based stress reduction KW - psychoeducation KW - standardized patient information KW - stress intervention KW - distress KW - study protocol KW - cardiac catheterization (CC) Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.830256 SN - 2297-055X VL - 9 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Frontiers CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wippert, Pia-Maria A1 - Fliesser, Michael T1 - National doping prevention guidelines : Intent, efficacy and lessons learned BT - A 4-year evaluation JF - Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy N2 - Background Doping presents a potential health risk for young athletes. Prevention programs are intended to prevent doping by educating athletes about banned substances. However, such programs have their limitations in practice. This led Germany to introduce the National Doping Prevention Plan (NDPP), in hopes of ameliorating the situation among young elite athletes. Two studies examined 1) the degree to which the NDPP led to improved prevention efforts in elite sport schools, and 2) the extent to which newly developed prevention activities of the national anti-doping agency (NADA) based on the NDPP have improved knowledge among young athletes within elite sports schools. Methods The first objective was investigated in a longitudinal study (Study I: t0 = baseline, t1 = follow-up 4 years after NDPP introduction) with N = 22 teachers engaged in doping prevention in elite sports schools. The second objective was evaluated in a cross-sectional comparison study (Study II) in N = 213 elite sports school students (54.5 % male, 45.5 % female, age M = 16.7 ± 1.3 years (all students had received the improved NDDP measure in school; one student group had received additionally NADA anti-doping activities and a control group did not). Descriptive statistics were calculated, followed by McNemar tests, Wilcoxon tests and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Results Results indicate that 4 years after the introduction of the NDPP there have been limited structural changes with regard to the frequency, type, and scope of doping prevention in elite sport schools. On the other hand, in study II, elite sport school students who received further NADA anti-doping activities performed better on an anti-doping knowledge test than students who did not take part (F(1, 207) = 33.99, p <0.001), although this difference was small. Conclusion The integration of doping-prevention in elite sport schools as part of the NDPP was only partially successful. The results of the evaluation indicate that the introduction of the NDPP has contributed more to a change in the content of doping prevention activities than to a structural transformation in anti-doping education in elite sport schools. Moreover, while students who did receive additional education in the form of the NDPP“booster sessions” had significantly more knowledge about doping than students who did not receive such education, this difference was only small and may not translate to actual behavior. KW - Doping KW - Anti-doping program KW - Anti-doping guideline KW - Elite sports schools Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13011-016-0079-9 SN - 1747-597X VL - 11 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wippert, Pia-Maria A1 - Rector, Michael V. A1 - Kuhn, Gisela A1 - Wuertz-Kozak, Karin T1 - Stress and Alterations in Bones BT - An Interdisciplinary Perspective JF - Frontiers in endocrinology N2 - Decades of research have demonstrated that physical stress (PS) stimulates bone remodeling and affects bone structure and function through complex mechanotransduction mechanisms. Recent research has laid ground to the hypothesis that mental stress (MS) also influences bone biology, eventually leading to osteoporosis and increased bone fracture risk. These effects are likely exerted by modulation of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity, resulting in an altered release of growth hormones, glucocorticoids and cytokines, as demonstrated in human and animal studies. Furthermore, molecular cross talk between mental and PS is thought to exist, with either synergistic or preventative effects on bone disease progression depending on the characteristics of the applied stressor. This mini review will explain the emerging concept of MS as an important player in bone adaptation and its potential cross talk with PS by summarizing the current state of knowledge, highlighting newly evolving notions (such as intergenerational transmission of stress and its epigenetic modifications affecting bone) and proposing new research directions. KW - biomechanics KW - bone–brain–nervous system interactions KW - endocrine pathways KW - osteoporosis KW - exercise Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2017.00096 SN - 1664-2392 VL - 8 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wippert, Pia-Maria A1 - Fliesser, Michael A1 - Krause, Matthias T1 - Risk and protective factors in the clinical rehabilitation of chronic back pain JF - Journal of pain research N2 - Objectives: Chronic back pain (CBP) can lead to disability and burden. In addition to its medical causes, its development is influenced by psychosocial risk factors, the so-called flag factors, which are categorized and integrated into many treatment guidelines. Currently, most studies investigate single flag factors, which limit the estimation of individual factor significance in the development of chronic pain. Furthermore, factors concerning patients’ lifestyle, biography and treatment history are often neglected. Therefore, the objectives of the present study are to identify commonly neglected factors of CBP and integrate them into an analysis model comparing their significance with established flag factors. Methods: A total of 24 patients and therapists were cross-sectionally interviewed to identify commonly neglected factors of CBP. Subsequently, the impact of these factors was surveyed in a longitudinal study. In two rehabilitation clinics, CBP patients (n = 145) were examined before and 6 months after a 3-week inpatient rehabilitation. Outcome variables, chronification factor pain experience (CF-PE) and chronification factor disability (CF-D), were ascertained with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of standardized questionnaires. Predictors were evaluated using stepwise calculations of simple and multiple regression models. Results: Through interviews, medical history, iatrogenic factors, poor compliance, critical life events (LEs), social support (SS) type and effort–reward were identified as commonly neglected factors. However, only the final three held significance in comparison to established factors such as depression and pain-related cognitions. Longitudinally, lifestyle factors found to influence future pain were initial pain, physically demanding work, nicotine consumption, gender and rehabilitation clinic. LEs were unexpectedly found to be a strong predictor of future pain, as were the protective factors, reward at work and perceived SS. Discussion: These findings shed insight regarding often overlooked factors in the development of CBP, suggesting that more detailed operationalization and superordinate frameworks would be beneficial to further research. Conclusion: In particular, LEs should be taken into account in future research. Protective factors should be integrated in therapeutic settings. KW - yellow flags KW - life events KW - clinical pain research Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S134976 SN - 1178-7090 VL - 10 SP - 1569 EP - 1579 PB - Dove Medical Press CY - Albany, Auckland ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yang, Jingdan A1 - Kim, Jae-Hyun A1 - Tuomainen, Outi A1 - Rattanasone, Nan Xu T1 - Bilingual Mandarin-English preschoolers’ spoken narrative skills and contributing factors BT - A remote online story-retell study JF - Frontiers in Psyhology N2 - This study examined the spoken narrative skills of a group of bilingual Mandarin–English speaking 3–6-year-olds (N = 25) in Australia, using a remote online story-retell task. Bilingual preschoolers are an understudied population, especially those who are speaking typologically distinct languages such as Mandarin and English which have fewer structural overlaps compared to language pairs that are typologically closer, reducing cross-linguistic positive transfer. We examined these preschoolers’ spoken narrative skills as measured by macrostructures (the global organization of a story) and microstructures (linguistic structures, e.g., total number of utterances, nouns, verbs, phrases, and modifiers) across and within each language, and how various factors such as age and language experiences contribute to individual variability. The results indicate that our bilingual preschoolers acquired spoken narrative skills similarly across their two languages, i.e., showing similar patterns of productivity for macrostructure and microstructure elements in both of their two languages. While chronological age was positively correlated with macrostructures in both languages (showing developmental effects), there were no significant correlations between measures of language experiences and the measures of spoken narrative skills (no effects for language input/output). The findings suggest that although these preschoolers acquire two typologically diverse languages in different learning environments, Mandarin at home with highly educated parents, and English at preschool, they displayed similar levels of oral narrative skills as far as these macro−/micro-structure measures are concerned. This study provides further evidence for the feasibility of remote online assessment of preschoolers’ narrative skills. KW - narrative skills KW - Mandarin-English bilinguals KW - preschoolers KW - macrostructure KW - microstructure Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.797602 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 13 PB - Frontiers Media SA CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER -