Project description:Falls are common in mountain biking (MTB), and often involve high speeds, large descent heights, and rough landing terrains. However, most falls in MTB do not cause serious injury. This may be due, in part, to protective movements used by MTB riders to avoid injury. Such "safe-landing strategies" are commonly discussed in the MTB community. However, studies have not synthesized or examined the validity of the recommended strategies. Our goal in this study was to determine whether riders utilize recommended safe-landing strategies during real-life falls in MTB. To address this goal, we identified 11 recommended safe-landing strategies through online content analysis and experienced MTB rider surveys. We then analyzed videos of 300 real-life MTB falls using a structured questionnaire to determine whether riders utilized the recommended strategies. The most commonly used strategies were upper limb bracing (58.3 %), elbow flexion at landing (48.0 %), stepping (47.0 %), knee flexion at landing (43.0 %), and bike separation (40.0 %). The least utilized strategies were reach-to-grasp (4.7 %), use of the arms to shield the face (6.3 %) and dismounting from the bike (6.7 %). Moderately utilized strategies included body rolling (26.7 %), neck rotation (26.7 %), and tucking (18.3 %). In 96 % of falls, rider utilized at least 1 recommended landing strategy. On average, riders utilized 3.04 (SD 1.6) recommended landing strategies when falling. Our results indicate that falls in MTB elicit common movement strategies that align with recommended techniques for avoiding injury during falls. Future research should examine the role of exercise in enhancing safe-landing responses and preventing injuries in MTB.
Project description:Gaze direction is a common social cue implying potential interpersonal interaction. However, little is known about the neural processing of social decision making influenced by perceived gaze direction. Here, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method to investigate 27 females when they were engaging in an economic exchange game task during which photos of direct or averted eye gaze were shown. We found that, when averted but not direct gaze was presented, prosocial vs. selfish choices were associated with stronger activations in the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) as well as larger functional couplings between right STG and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Moreover, stronger activations in right STG was associated with quicker actions for making prosocial choice accompanied with averted gaze. The findings suggest that, when the cue implying social contact is absent, the processing of understanding others' intention and the relationship between self and others is more involved for making prosocial than selfish decisions. These findings could advance our understanding of the roles of subtle cues in influencing prosocial decision making, as well as shedding lights on deficient social cue processing and functioning among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Project description:Peoples' decision-making competence, defined as tendency to follow normative rational principles in their decision making, is important as it may influence the extent that requirements are met and levels of perceived stress. In addition, perceived stress could be influenced by social orientation and time style; for example, decisions need to comply with given deadlines and the expectations of others. In two studies, with students (n = 118) and professionals (police investigators, n = 90), we examined how the three individual difference features: decision-making competence, social orientation, and time approach relate to perceived stress. Results showed that social orientation and time approach were related to levels of perceived stress, but decision-making competence was not. These results indicate that social orientation and time approach are important to consider in relation to perceived stress, but the role of decision-making competence may be less important for perceived stress. However, the role of decision-making competence for perceived stress needs to be further researched.
Project description:Low back pain (LBP) is known to affect cyclists. This study aimed to describe perceived lumbar dysfunction and compare the pain sensation in recreational cyclists who practice road and mountain biking. Forty males were randomly assigned to carry out a 3-h road cycling (RC) and mountain biking (MTB) time trial (TT) at submaximal intensity. LBP and pain pressure threshold (PPT) were measured before and after the TT. A significant increment at the LBP was found after RC TT (p < 0.001; d = 2.61), similar to MTB TT (p < 0.001; d = 2.65). However, PPT decreased after completing the RC TT (p < 0.001; d = 1.73) and after MTB TT (p = 0.024; d = 0.77). There were no differences in the LBP evolution between both interventions (p > 0.01). Low back pain perception increases with cycling in recreational cyclists. Nevertheless, this increase appears to be more related to the traits of the cyclist than the modality practiced.
Project description:BackgroundEndometriosis, a systemic chronic inflammatory condition which has no cure, has a high symptom burden that can negatively impact every facet of life. Given the absence of a gold-standard treatment, the best symptom management regimen in endometriosis is heavily reliant on a patient's values and preferences, making shared decision-making (SDM) vital. However, a comprehensive patient decision aid (PtDA) intervention that could facilitate patient decision-making and promote SDM is lacking in endometriosis, and there is little research on the decisional support needs of individuals with this condition. This qualitative study aimed to explore healthcare professional (HP) perspectives of their clients' decisional support needs when choosing treatments to manage endometriosis symptoms, with a view to evaluating the need for a PtDA.MethodsAustralian HPs identified as specialising in endometriosis care (N = 13) were invited to participate in a short interview over the Internet by phone. Questions focussed on perceived facilitators and challenges of decision-making when choosing treatments for endometriosis. Transcribed qualitative data were thematically analysed and verified by multiple coders, using the template approach.ResultsFour themes were identified: (1) Identifying and setting priorities; (2) HPs' lack of time and perceived lack of knowledge; (3) Patient-centred care and SDM, including patient capacity; and (4) Decision-making blinded by hope. This is the first known study to explore HPs' perspectives on patient decision-making challenges in endometriosis.DiscussionFindings draw attention to the difficulties people with endometriosis experience when assessing and choosing treatments, highlighting the need for a comprehensive PtDA intervention to support this decision-making.
Project description:The work of McEwan (2016) has questioned the assumed homogeneity of mountain biking in terms of culture and sporting values, leading to the suggestion that there may be differing patterns of identity within the various formats of the sport. This is also supported by McEwan and Weston (2017) findings, which advanced knowledge of the mountain biking industry by defining the differing pluralized segments within the market and highlighting their hierarchical nature in relation to the cost of products. This therefore leads to a question over whether differing markets are reflected in differing identities among varying consumer groups within the sport of mountain biking. Thus, this study sought to establish what these identity characteristics are through an analysis of a sample of mountain biking magazine advertisements (N = 568). The analysis was conducted using a sequential Ethnographic Content Analysis (Altheide, 1987) followed by a Quantitative Content Analysis (Berelson, 1952) mirroring the approaches used by Williams et al. (2010) and Cann (2012) in their studies of the portrayal of identity within magazine advertisements. Results of this analysis highlighted five identity characteristics (places of play, equipment functionality, risk taking, competitiveness, activity aesthetics), three of which varied significantly between differing formats of mountain biking (risk taking, competitiveness, activity aesthetics). Activity aesthetic was established as a component of risk-taking rather than an independent identity characteristic and therefore risk taking along with competitiveness formed the basis of a refined four-format activity categorization within mountain biking and the production of a model of participant archetypes.
Project description:Social dysfunctions including emotional perception and social decision-making are common in patients with schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to determine the level of intimacy formation and the effect of intimacy on social decision in patients with schizophrenia using virtual reality tasks, which simulate complicated social situations. Twenty-seven patients with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls performed the 2 virtual social tasks: the intimacy task and the social decision task. The first one was to estimate repeatedly how intimate participants felt with each avatar after listening to what avatars said. The second one was to decide whether or not participants accepted the requests of easy, medium, or hard difficulty by the intimate or distant avatars. During the intimacy task, the intimacy rating scores for intimate avatars were not significantly different between groups, but those for distant avatars were significantly higher in patients than in controls. During the social decision task, the difference in the acceptance rate between intimate and distant avatars was significantly smaller in patients than in controls. In detail, a significant group difference in the acceptance rate was found only for the hard requests, but not for the easy and medium difficulty requests. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in emotional perception and social decision-making. Various factors such as a peculiarity of emotional deficits, motivational deficits, concreteness, and paranoid tendency may contribute to these abnormalities.
Project description:Schizophrenia is generally characterized by various positive and negative symptoms that are accompanied by significant social dysfunction. Various researchers investigated the functional impairments in schizophrenia including impaired theory of mind (TOM), poor integration of affective and cognitive information, and malfunctioning of adaptive and strategic learning process. However, most of the studies were limited to simplified cognitive tests or computerized choice games that exclude real social interaction. The aim of the current study was to investigate human strategies based on the incentives and particularly the cognitive and emotional motivations of free riding. We examined the decision patterns of 41 healthy subjects (HSs) and 37 schizophrenia patients (SZ) during the public goods game (PGG), one of the games simulating human cooperation and free riding in group interactions. Strategic decision processes during the iterative binary PGG were assessed in terms of cognitive understanding, loss sensitivity, and TOM. We found that greed and loss sensitivity both motivated free-riding behavior in the HS, but that they were more vulnerable to greedy incentives than to possible loss. More significantly, the SZ clearly displayed a lower prevalence of free riding and distinct decision patterns from HS. Nonstrategic and unexpectedly low free ridings in the SZ likely arise from poor integration of cognitive and affective information. We suggest that loss sensitivity and TOM as well as cognitive understanding are involved in regulation of the free riding and cooperative behavior.
Project description:ObjectivesThe objective was to describe perceptions of practicing emergency physicians (EPs) regarding the appropriateness and medicolegal implications of using shared decision-making (SDM) in the emergency department (ED).MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of EPs at a large, national professional meeting to assess perceived appropriateness of SDM for different categories of ED management (e.g., diagnostic testing, treatment, disposition) and in common clinical scenarios (e.g., low-risk chest pain, syncope, minor head injury). A 21-item survey instrument was iteratively developed through review by content experts, cognitive testing, and pilot testing. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted.ResultsWe approached 737 EPs; 709 (96%) completed the survey. Two-thirds (67.8%) of respondents were male; 51% practiced in an academic setting and 44% in the community. Of the seven management decision categories presented, SDM was reported to be most frequently appropriate for deciding on invasive procedures (71.5%), computed tomography (CT) scanning (56.7%), and post-ED disposition (56.3%). Among the specific clinical scenarios, use of thrombolytics for acute ischemic stroke was felt to be most frequently appropriate for SDM (83.4%), followed by lumbar puncture to rule out subarachnoid hemorrhage (73.8%) and CT head for pediatric minor head injury (69.9%). Most EPs (66.8%) felt that using and documenting SDM would decrease their medicolegal risk while a minority (14.2%) felt that it would increase their risk.ConclusionsAcceptance of SDM among EPs appears to be strong across management categories (diagnostic testing, treatment, and disposition) and in a variety of clinical scenarios. SDM is perceived by most EPs to be medicolegally protective.