Task-irrelevant sounds can be distracting, impairing speech recognition and increasing listening effort. One way to measure distraction is to evaluate performance differences between trials that do and do not contain task-irrelevant sounds. Poorer performance following irrelevant sounds is interpreted as evidence of distraction. Using this general approach, previous work has demonstrated that the degree to which irrelevant non-speech sounds are distracting is related to stimulus valence. That is, unpleasant and pleasant sounds are more distracting than neutral ones. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of the presence of task-irrelevant, human vocalizations on word repetition performance and behavioral listening effort. Eighteen adults with normal hearing participated in a dual-task paradigm where the primary task was word repetition, and the secondary task was word categorization speed, with speed being interpreted as a measure of behavioral listening effort. Immediately before 45% of the target words, a task-irrelevant vocalization was presented. Each list contained trials with and without irrelevant vocalizations; the difference in performance between trial types was interpreted as distraction. Conditions varied by background noise (quiet, noise) and by valence of the vocalization (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral). Conditions were blocked such that testing with each list of words was completed with a single combination of noise and valence vocalization. Data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects modeling to evaluate the effect of task-irrelevant vocalization presence, vocalization valence, and background noise on word repetition performance and behavioral listening effort. As expected, background noise negatively affected word repetition performance (~6 percentage points) and increased behavioral listening effort (119 msec slowing of secondary task response times). The valence of the task-irrelevant sound within a condition did not affect word repetition performance, but did affect behavioral listening effort. Response times were longer (~40 msec longer) during the conditions with pleasant or unpleasant vocalizations than during conditions when neutral vocalizations were interleaved with target words. No distraction was noted in word recognition performance; performance was similar for trials with and without task-irrelevant vocalizations. Distraction effects were evident in behavioral listening effort; response times were ~30 msec longer in trials preceded by task-irrelevant vocalizations than in trials without task-irrelevant vocalizations. The calculated distraction effects were similar across conditions. Although the valence of the vocalizations generally increased listening effort, slowing secondary task times in conditions with valenced task-irrelevant vocalizations, the calculated distraction effects within a condition did not depend on valence or the presence of background noise. Moreover, the task-irrelevant vocalizations increased behavioral listening effort in quiet and in noise, despite minimal changes in word repetition performance. Future work is warranted to disentangle the methodological differences and the differences in effect sizes between the present study and previous work with non-speech sounds. The findings have implications for listening in complex, real-world environments, where distraction and valenced sounds are likely to co-occur.
The rise of social media has significantly impacted public health programs, with platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and, more recently, TikTok being used to promote health information, raise awareness about disease outbreaks, and support disease prevention programs. However, the diverse and often unverified nature of the content on social media can make it challenging to discern accurate information, contributing to user uncertainty, which may in turn contribute to low vaccination rates in some regions. This is especially true in Louisiana as its COVID-19 vaccination rates were among the lowest in the country in 2022. Therefore, understanding public sentiment on social media and developing targeted campaigns to counter unverified information is essential for advancing public health campaigns. The goal was to gain insights into the underlying factors that contribute to Louisiana's low vaccination rates for routine immunizations by (1) performing social media listening to develop an infodemic management plan and (2) promoting accurate information via a social media campaign. Social media listening was conducted using Meltwater, a media monitoring and social media listening platform, supplemented by Google Alerts and Google News to identify if vaccine-related stories or sentiments were attracting unusual attention. Additionally, a social media campaign aimed at educating Louisiana residents about disease manifestation, symptoms, vaccines available for disease prevention, and potential side effects was developed. Posts were published 2 to 3 times a week and boosted for 7 days. From November 13, 2023, to June 11, 2024, social media listening identified at least 15 unique, noteworthy stories that signified sentiment spikes. These conversations were predominantly related to vaccine hesitancy, with users expressing opposition to vaccines or reluctance to engaging with vaccine-related information. Sentiment spikes included themes related to mistrust of vaccines and concerns about their safety and efficacy. The social media campaign received 69,600 impressions, reached 43,429 users, and received 652 reactions and likes, 62 shares, and 105 comments. Most of the audience was female, with higher engagement from older users on Facebook and younger users on Instagram. Finally, posts related to hepatitis B, rotavirus, and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines received the most attention. Social media has become a key tool for digital health, helping to implement disease prevention programs and promoting advances in medicine. However, unverified information remains a major reason for the aversion to vaccination despite the dissemination of information from reputable public health organizations, health professionals, hospitals, and medical centers. To address this, information that is accessible, understandable, and culturally competent must be circulated to mitigate disinformation and improve attitudes toward vaccination. More research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of social media campaigns in reducing vaccine hesitancy and improving willingness to adopt public health recommendations to increase vaccination rates.
The lack of consistent information and frequent provision of unsolicited advice create challenges for women when making decisions about being physically active during pregnancy and post-partum. Despite the benefits of physical activity, pregnant women are often inactive. Many women experience a conflict between maintaining their own and their unborn child's health through physical activity and societal expectations to slow down. This study offers a novel insight into the perspectives of women who remained active throughout pregnancy. To explore the facilitators and barriers to physical activity from the perspective of women who remained active during their pregnancies. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with five women living in several countries. Interpretative phenomenology framed the data collection and analysis. The women's experiences are reflected through four superordinate themes: Listening to my body to know what to do, Experience of control over my pregnant body, Having a sense of accomplishment, and Support and surveillance: navigating social expectations. The themes highlight a lack of advice, negative societal judgements, and unsolicited comments. Despite these challenges, the women ignored external pressures to reduce activity. Women described several factors that contributed to their decisions to remain active. Crucial to these were the support of key social contacts, reliance on internal signals, and wanting to remain in control. Despite barriers and societal expectations, the women remained active during pregnancy. Lack of commentary regarding advice from health care professionals suggests clear and consistent guidance could help women manage external expectations and support women to remain active during pregnancy and postpartum.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Habitual use of personal listening devices is an increasing source of recreational noise exposure and may lead to early auditory dysfunction despite normal hearing thresholds. This study examined spectral profile analysis and speech perception in noise in habitual earphone users and their association with listening habits. Seventy-five young adults with normal audiometric hearing were classified as moderate-level earphone users, high-level earphone users, and nonusers. Participants underwent an audiological evaluation. Spectral profile analysis was performed at 250, 500, 750, and 1000 Hz to assess auditory stream segregation. Speech perception in noise was evaluated using the Quick Speech-in-Noise test to obtain signal-to-noise ratio at the 50% performance level (SNR50) values. Listening habits, including years of earphone use and average daily listening duration, were obtained through structured interviews and verified using real-ear measurements. Group differences and relationships between auditory measures and listening habits were analyzed. High-users demonstrated significantly higher spectral profile analysis thresholds at 1 kHz than mod-users and nonusers ( P < 0.001), whereas lower frequencies showed no group differences. Both earphone user groups exhibited poorer speech-in-noise performance than non-users, with the greatest deficits observed in high users. Spectral profile thresholds at 1 kHz were positively correlated with SNR50 values ( P < 0.001). Longer listening duration and greater daily exposure were associated with poorer performance. Habitual earphone use, particularly at higher listening levels, was associated with poorer speech-in-noise performance and elevated spectral profile analysis thresholds in young adults with normal hearing. Further longitudinal and physiological studies are needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms and clinical significance.
People use social cues to determine which, among the wealth of information in the world, is worth attending to. Notably, social cues indicate not only what information is worth remembering but also what information is not. Indeed, research with adults shows that people are more likely to selectively forget information based on cues from an ingroup member than an outgroup member, suggesting that the cognitive process of forgetting can be socially driven. In the current work, we examine whether such a group-dependent process of selective forgetting is apparent already in children. Specifically, Arab-Israeli children (N = 98) aged 8-13 were introduced to a presentation with information about a summer camp program and later listened to either an ingroup (Arab-Israeli) or an outgroup (Jewish-Israeli) member repeat certain details while omitting others. Following this, participants were asked to recall the information from the presentation. We found that listening to an ingroup member impaired children's recall of unmentioned, related items more than unmentioned, unrelated items, whereas after listening to an outgroup member children were equally likely to forget both types of information. Of note, the strength of children's ethnic identification and parents' ethnic socialization goals did not impact group-dependent selective forgetting, suggesting that the effect may be led by social categorization rather than identification. The findings indicate that the cognitive process of forgetting can be socially driven already in childhood and that children's personal memory can change through interaction with ingroup members, arguably, as part of the process of developing group-shared knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) offers significant potential to increase efficiency in hospitals, particularly in the context of demographic change and staff shortages. Generative and agent-based AI enable the automation of complex clinical and administrative processes, including ambient listening, AI scribes, reporting and voice input, medical letter writing, guideline support as well as capacity management and coding. To sustainably realize these potentials, consistent operationalization, integration into existing processes, addressing regulatory hurdles and safeguarding medical expertise are required. By taking over time-consuming routine tasks, AI creates cognitive space for patient care and complex decision-making, thereby measurably contributing to relieving clinical staff and optimizing hospital workflows. Der Einsatz von künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) bietet im Krankenhaus ein erhebliches Potential zur Effizienzsteigerung, insbesondere aufgrund des demografischen Wandels und des Fachkräftemangels. Generative und agentenbasierte KI ermöglichen die Automatisierung komplexer klinischer und administrativer Prozesse, zum Beispiel mithilfe von Ambient Listening, AI-Scribes, Befundung und Spracheingabe, Arztbriefschreibung, Leitlinienunterstützung sowie Kapazitätsmanagement und Kodierung. Um diese Potentiale nachhaltig zu realisieren, sind die konsequente Operationalisierung, die Integration in bestehende Prozesse, die Bewältigung regulatorischer Hürden und die Sicherung ärztlicher Expertise erforderlich. Durch die Übernahme zeitintensiver Routineaufgaben schafft KI kognitiven Freiraum für die Patientenversorgung und komplexe Entscheidungsprozesse und kann einen messbaren Beitrag zur Entlastung von Klinikpersonal und zur Optimierung der Krankenhausabläufe leisten.
Music listening's role in mood regulation is widely documented, and visual imagery has been suggested as a key mechanism by which music influences listeners' affective states. However, evidence that music-evoked visual imagery can reduce negative affect is limited, and it remains unclear whether spontaneous and deliberate forms differ with regard to the effects they have. The current study thus combined probe-caught experience sampling methodology with electroencephalography and skin conductance measurements to explore the extent to which music-evoked visual imagery may play a role in stress reduction. In each of three blocks, thirty participants underwent a multicomponent stress induction task before experiencing one of three extended auditory tracks: a relaxing music track, a non-relaxing music track, or a radio show podcast (active control listening track). State anxiety was measured before stress induction, after stress induction, and after the presentation of the track. Importantly, during each track, instances and the rate of spontaneous, deliberate and no visual imagery were captured thanks to the probe-caught experience sampling method. Our findings show that music-evoked visual imagery is associated with enhanced stress reduction (as captured by self-report and physiological measures) beyond the role of the music's acoustic features. We also replicate and extend previous findings that visual imagery is associated with posterior alpha and fronto-central gamma suppression, and associate, for the first time, deliberate/spontaneous imagery with frontal theta suppression/enhancement. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that visual imagery has benefits for reducing anxiety and stress-related states and expand understanding of how neural correlates of music-evoked visual imagery may differ as a function of intentionality.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly proposed for use in health and health care systems. Beyond technical performance, public perceptions and affective responses influence whether AI technologies are accepted and adopted in real-world contexts. Social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) provide large-scale, real-time insight into public discourse surrounding emerging technologies, yet remain underused for examining how health AI is discussed, evaluated, and emotionally framed. This study aimed to develop and apply large language model (LLM)-based methods for exploratory social listening on health AI. This is the first study to map large-scale sentiment, emotional expressions, and confidence-related signals in online discussions of applications of AI to health. We collected 786,750 English-language posts from X (Twitter) published between January 1 and December 5, 2023, using health- and AI-related keywords. We benchmarked an LLM-based annotation framework by using OpenAI's GPT-3.5-Turbo and GPT-4, comparing model classifications with trained human researchers. Annotations included overall sentiment and 6 evaluative domains frequently referenced in the literature surrounding attitudes toward health AI-usefulness, safety, privacy, ethics, quality, and trust. After cleaning, GPT-3.5-Turbo used the best-performing prompts to label 388,009 posts. A subset (n=268,347) was further analyzed using Emollama-7b, an open-source model fine-tuned from Meta's LLaMA2-7B, for emotion detection, and latent Dirichlet allocation for thematic analysis. Comparisons were made across World Health Organization regions. Compared against human annotations, optimized prompts achieved weighted F1-scores above 0.60 across evaluative domains and sentiment classification. Global discourse about health AI was 65.26% (95% CI 65.11%-65.4%) positive and 83.62% (95% CI 83.48%-83.76%) emotionally optimistic, although substantial regional variation was observed in sentiment (P<.001). The Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia regions expressed significantly higher levels of positive sentiment and evaluative agreement in the studied features of health AI, alongside frequent discussion of the tech industry and commercial development. In comparison, the Western Pacific region expressed lower confidence and significantly more mentions of research topics (19.27%, 95% CI 18.5%-20.07%). Privacy was the most prominent global concern, with 33.31% (95% CI 32.98%-33.66%) of privacy-related posts expressing perceived risks. In the Region of the Americas, 18.19% (95% CI 17.92%-18.44%) of posts discussed algorithms and data governance, significantly higher than overall. This study offers the first systematic characterization of online health AI discourse at scale, mapping stances toward key features of AI, emotional tone, and discussion topics across regions. LLM-powered social listening is demonstrated as a feasible approach for identifying dominant narratives and regionally distinct concerns, capable of surfacing opinions absent from traditional media. This can extend to studying discourse on other evolving health technologies where public surveying is limited. While methodological refinement and multilingual expansion are needed, this framework can inform timely policy development, risk communication, and responsible health AI governance.
To enable reliable smartphone-based hearing assessments by developing methods to estimate device calibration offsets using categorical loudness scaling (CLS). Calibration offsets were simulated from a Gaussian distribution. Two prediction models-a Bayesian regression model and a nearest neighbour model-were trained on CLS-derived parameters and data from the Oldenburg Hearing Health Record (OHHR). CLS was chosen because it provides level-independent measures (e.g., dynamic range) that remain robust despite calibration errors. The dataset comprised CLS results from N = 847 participants with a mean age of 70.0 years (SD = 8.7), including 556 male and 291 female listeners with diverse hearing profiles. The Bayesian regression model achieved median absolute errors (MAEs) of about 5 dB between the estimated and "true" calibration offsets. Calibration uncertainty was reduced by factors between 0.41 and 0.79, demonstrating greater robustness in uncontrolled environments. CLS-based models show potential to compensate for missing calibration in our simulation study, but validation using uncalibrated mobile-device listening tests with real listeners is still needed. This approach provides a practical alternative to threshold-based methods, supporting the use of smartphone-based tests outside laboratory settings and expanding access to reliable hearing healthcare in everyday and resource-limited contexts.
Admission to the intensive care unit represents a profound psychological ordeal for patients' family members. Far beyond the initial shock related to the severity of the illness, the hospital experience exposes families to a cumulative burden of stress, including prolonged uncertainty, confrontation with medical technology, physical exhaustion, loneliness, opaque medical language, and a sense of helplessness. Numerous studies show that during the months following an ICU stay, up to 70% of relatives experience symptoms of anxiety, 35% symptoms of depression, and nearly one third symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. To name this specific burden, we propose the concept of HILLY (healthcare-associated family mental injury). HILLY does not pathologize families' experiences nor does it assign individual blame; rather, it highlights the often-unintentional role of certain care-delivery and organizational practices in the emergence of an avoidable trauma, which adds to that of critical illness itself. Restricted visiting policies, fragmented or jargon-laden communication, lack of dedicated spaces for listening, and insufficient recognition of the role of relatives all contribute to exacerbating this injury. The COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated the consequences of family exclusion, leading to complicated grief and heightened psychological symptoms among both relatives and healthcare professionals. Preventing HILLY requires a systemic approach: acknowledging this injury, training teams in communication skills, integrating family mental health into quality indicators, valuing relational time, and organizing structured follow-up after ICU discharge. Thinking HILLY means broadening the ethical framework of care to include those who accompany patients, and recognizing that caring for a patient also means caring for their family. La réanimation constitue une épreuve psychique intense pour les proches des patients. Bien au-delà du choc initial lié à la gravité de la maladie, l’expérience hospitalière expose les familles à une accumulation de stress : incertitude prolongée, confrontation à la technologie, fatigue, solitude, langage médical opaque et sentiment d’impuissance. De nombreuses études montrent qu’au cours de l’année suivant un séjour en réanimation, jusqu’à 70 % des proches présentent des symptômes anxieux, 35 % des symptômes dépressifs et près d’un tiers des symptômes de stress post-traumatique. Pour nommer cette souffrance spécifique, nous proposons le concept de HILLY pour healthcare-associated family mental injury, ou blessure psychique des familles induite par le système hospitalier. HILLY ne pathologise pas le vécu des proches et ne désigne pas des responsables individuels ; il met en lumière le rôle, souvent involontaire, de certaines modalités d’organisation des soins dans la survenue d’un traumatisme évitable, qui s’ajoute à celui de la maladie critique elle-même. Restrictions de visites, communication fragmentée ou jargonnesque, absence d’espaces d’écoute et faible reconnaissance du rôle des proches aggravent cette blessure. La pandémie de Covid- 19 a illustré de façon aiguë les conséquences de l’exclusion des familles : deuils compliqués, symptômes psychiques majorés chez les proches comme chez les soignants. Prévenir le HILLY suppose une approche systémique : reconnaître cette blessure, former les équipes à la communication, intégrer la santé mentale des proches aux indicateurs de qualité, valoriser le temps relationnel et organiser un suivi après la réanimation. Penser HILLY, c’est élargir l’éthique du soin à ceux qui accompagnent, et reconnaître que soigner un patient, c’est aussi prendre soin de sa famille.
To investigate the impact of music and white noise on the pain caused by cosmetic botulinum toxin injections. Seventy-six participants between the ages of 18 and 45 who requested cosmetic botulinum toxin application to the upper face were enrolled in the study in three groups: favorite music (20), white noise (31), and control (25). The first and second groups listened to their favorite music and white noise, respectively, during and 10 min after the procedures, while the control group was exposed to background noise only. The participants rated their pain levels during the procedure and the impact of the sound on their stress level using a visual analog scale ranging from 0 to 10. Additionally, the participants in both the music and white noise groups were surveyed regarding their preferences for sound intervention for future botulinum toxin procedures. The pain scores (95% confidence interval) for the control, music, and white noise groups were 6.80 [6.37-7.23], 5.7 [5.13-6.27], and 5.52 [4.99-6.04], respectively. Both the white noise group and the music group had significantly lower pain scores compared to the control group. Furthermore, individuals receiving botulinum toxin for the first time reported significantly higher pain scores than those who had prior experience with the treatment. Listening to white noise or music during cosmetic botulinum toxin injections can effectively reduce procedure-related pain. However, further studies are required to reveal the mechanism of action of sound applications in pain management during cosmetic procedures and to determine the selection of appropriate candidates and specific application conditions.
Age-related hearing loss is a complex phenomenon. The earliest-onset degenerative event is the gradual loss of neural connections between the cochlea and auditory brainstem. To probe for perceptual deficits that might arise from this loss, cochlear synaptopathy was induced pharmacologically in young-adult gerbils, which were then tested in a challenging listening task for the perception of temporal fine structure. Treated gerbils behaved no differently than normal-hearing, young-adult animals. In contrast, old gerbils, which typically express many cochlear and central-neural pathologies, showed impaired perception. To probe for the underlying mechanisms, single-unit responses were obtained from the auditory nerve to the same test stimuli. Responses from old gerbils showed no impairment in temporal locking to the stimulus fine structure. However, responses were significantly more driven by slower temporal fluctuations of the stimulus envelope, suggesting that the central auditory system may be unable to extract the relevant information for discrimination from such altered inputs.
Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among Jordanian women. Breast self-examination (BSE) plays a vital role in the early detection of breast cancer, improving survival rates. Despite its proven benefits, BSE remains underutilized in Jordan. This study aimed to explore the factors influencing BSE practices among married Jordanian women aged 20-49 years, utilizing data from the Jordan Population and Family Health Survey (JPFHS). The study analyzed data from the 2023 JPFHS, encompassing a representative sample of 12,595 Jordanian women aged 15-49. The study examined various socioeconomic, demographic, behavioral, and geographic variables. Socioeconomic and demographic factors included age, education level, wealth index, employment status, marital status, parity, and current pregnancy status. Behavioral factors encompassed smoking frequency and media consumption habits, such as internet use, the frequency of watching television, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers or magazines. Geographic variables included the type of residence (urban or rural) and the governorates where participants lived. Associations between these variables and BSE were assessed using multivariable logistic regression. Among the 12,304 married women included in the analysis, 9,851 women reported not performing BSE, while 2,453 women indicated that they had. Multivariate analysis revealed that significantly better BSE practice was observed among older women (e.g., age 45-49 vs 20-24: AOR 3.08, p < 0.001), those with higher education levels (e.g., secondary vs no education: AOR 2.41, p = 0.027), and wealthier women (e.g., richest vs poorest: AOR 1.54, p = 0.023). Additionally, multiparous women, daily smokers, and women with frequent internet use and frequent reading of newspapers or magazines were also more likely to practice BSE. Regional differences showed that women in Ajloun, Aqaba, and Balqa were more likely to perform BSE, while women in Irbid and Mafraq had lower rates of BSE practice. To improve BSE rates among married women in Jordan, targeted health campaigns should focus on younger, less educated, and economically disadvantaged women, particularly in Irbid and Mafraq. Culturally sensitive education, digital platforms, and community outreach can raise awareness and address barriers like stigma and misconceptions, promoting proactive breast health practices nationwide. Future researchers are encouraged to further investigate cultural barriers toward BSE.
Recent studies on the socio-cognitive abilities of animals, including elephants, have highlighted their aptitude to perceive and respond to human cues, particularly in captive settings. These abilities are crucial for fostering positive interspecies relationships and improving animal welfare in zoos. Previous research has shown that Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar humans through various sensory cues, such as visual and olfactory signals. Additionally, familiarity with caregivers reduces elephants' stress and has been linked to more cooperative behaviour and better task performance, highlighting its importance for the management and welfare of animals under human care. Yet the role of vocal communication in shaping these effects remains poorly understood, and less is known about how the type of speech caregivers use might affect elephants' behaviour. In the present study, we investigated how captive Asian elephants react to keepers' voices, focusing on the effects of voice familiarity, speech type and the interaction between the two variables on their behavioural response. We played recorded stimuli of familiar and unfamiliar voices speaking in either Elephant-Directed Speech (EDS), characterised by a high pitch and varied intonation, or Adult-Directed Speech (ADS), which does not present these acoustic characteristics. Our data show that vocal stimuli of any kind increased elephant arousal. Moreover, the elephants turned their bodies towards the doors used by the keepers - which we interpreted as behaviour indicative of a search for the keeper when listening to EDS compared to ADS, or when the voice was uttered by a familiar rather than an unfamiliar keeper. However, no significant differences were found for the interaction between the speech type and familiarity for the duration of any behaviour analysed. Additionally, elephants engaged in aggressive displays more rapidly in response to ADS than to EDS, and initiated search-for-keeper behaviour significantly faster when exposed to EDS from a familiar keeper compared to EDS from an unfamiliar keeper. Overall, our results suggest that elephants can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar voices and between two types of speech register with different acoustic features and therefore respond differently. Our work opens a window on the cognitive skills of the elephants.
Everyday communication is dynamic and multisensory, often involving shifting attention, overlapping speech, and visual cues. Yet, most neural attention tracking studies are still limited to highly controlled lab settings, using clean, often audio-only stimuli and requiring sustained attention to a single talker. This work addresses that gap by introducing a novel dataset from 24 normal-hearing participants. We used a wearable electroencephalography (EEG) system (44 scalp electrodes and 20 cEEGrid electrodes) in an audiovisual (AV) paradigm with three conditions: sustained attention to a single talker in a two-talker environment, attention switching between two talkers, and unscripted two-talker conversations with a competing single talker. Analysis included temporal response functions (TRFs) modeling, optimal lag analysis, selective attention classification with decision windows ranging from 1.1 to 35 s, and comparisons of TRFs for attention to AV conversations versus side audio-only talkers. Key findings show significant differences in the attention-related P2 peak between attended and ignored speech across conditions for scalp EEG. Interestingly, our results revealed strong cross-condition generalization, with models trained in one condition maintaining good performance when evaluated on the other two. No significant change in performance between switching and sustained attention suggests robustness for attention switches. Optimal lag analysis revealed a narrower peak for conversation compared to single-talker AV stimuli, reflecting the additional complexity of multi-talker processing. Classification of selective attention was consistently above chance (55%-70% accuracy) for scalp EEG, whereas cEEGrid data yielded lower correlations, highlighting the need for further methodological improvements. These results demonstrate that wearable EEG can reliably track selective attention in dynamic, multisensory listening scenarios and provide guidance for designing future AV paradigms and real-world attention tracking applications.
To evaluate the effects of different types of music (instrumental Turkish music and Western music without lyrics) played during wound care on pain, anxiety, and patient satisfaction among individuals with venous ulcers. In this randomized controlled trial, 97 patients with venous ulcers were assigned to three groups: Western music ( n  = 32), Turkish music ( n  = 32), and Control ( n  = 33). Patients in the music groups listened to their assigned music during routine wound dressing, while all patients received individualized, evidence-based care. Pain and anxiety were measured using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory before, during, and after dressing, and patient satisfaction was assessed with the VAS post-procedure. The mean age was 56.5 ± 8.5 years; 61% were female ( n  = 59) and 39% male ( n  = 38). Between-group comparisons revealed a significant effect of music on anxiety ( F (2.94) = 27.771, P < 0.001, η2  = 0.371). These findings indicate that listening to music significantly reduced anxiety levels, with Turkish music producing a stronger effect than Western music. Music had a pain-reducing effect during dressing, with Turkish music significantly lowering pain compared to the control group ( F (4.188) = 9.039, P < 0.001, η2  = 0.161). Although pain levels decreased in the Western music group, this reduction did not reach statistical significance. Patient satisfaction was also higher in the music groups ( P < 0.001). In this study, Turkish music was particularly effective, demonstrating greater reductions in anxiety and pain, as well as higher patient satisfaction compared to both Western music and the control group. The findings emphasize the importance of cultural characteristics and patient preference in music-based interventions; they demonstrate that music is an effective nursing intervention that can be applied independently by nurses, is low-cost, and is non-invasive.
The article focusses on the use coercion in acute psychiatric wards for children and adolescents in Norway. The purpose of this article is to provide insight into how coercion within a continuum of formal and informal coercion is embedded in psychiatric treatment of children and adolescents. This integrated focus on multiple forms of coercion is critical for raising professional awareness regarding the effects of coercion on children's wellbeing, trust in professionals and future access to mental health services. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in three acute wards in Norway conducted in 2023-2024. The research is part of a larger mixed-methods study focusing on the complexities of coercion in Norwegian child and adolescent psychiatry, which in addition to fieldwork includes interviews and surveys with clinical staff and patients in 18 acute wards. The study shows how formal and informal coercion is embedded in routine therapeutic practices in child and adolescent acute wards. Three forms of informal coercion are highlighted: misinformation or withholding information, the use of leverage to obtain treatment compliance, and the threat of formal coercion to secure treatment compliance. In clinical practice, the use of formal and informal coercion is interrelated. Children experience distress, frustration and exhibit forms of withdrawal when exposed to coercion. The study concludes that providing transparency in treatment activities and plans, listening to children's perspectives on treatment needs, and showing respect for their autonomy, also when they are admitted on parental consent, is vital for their wellbeing, recovery and future access to mental health care and other support systems.
This study presents an audio stimulus corpus consisting of 444 Western popular music drum and bass patterns called the Lucerne Groove Library. Common requirements for stimuli in music psychological research, particularly studies on the experience of groove, are outlined, followed by a description of how these criteria are addressed in the presented corpus. For example, the corpus is designed to combine ecological validity with high manipulability, facilitating the use of the corpus in a variety of experimental settings. The methods section provides a detailed account of material selection, audio creation, and measures. Ground-truth behavioural data for the stimuli were obtained through a listening experiment (e.g., participant's ratings on the urge to move in response to the stimuli, and style assignments ). Several structural data (e.g., tempo and event density) and audio features (e.g., low-frequency sub-band flux) were measured for each stimulus, and an overview over all data is provided. Potential applications of the corpus in future studies are discussed, including variables along which stimuli can be selected or manipulated. The corpus is published in different formats and with a range of accompanying data, all of which can be found in the online repository.