The Effects of the Emotional State on an Observer in the Face in the Crowd Paradigm

The face in the crowd paradigm refers to a particular visual search task in which participants are asked to identify target facial expressions in a crowd of distractors. Previous research in this vein has suggested performance is enhanced for angry faces, an anger-superiority effect. There is however disagreement in many of these findings, and this disagreement may partly be explained by a failure to recognize the role of observer mood, response bias, and discrimination ability in the paradigm. The present study used a face in the crowd visual search task and assessed participant mood state using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. We hypothesized that mood state would be congruent to facial expressions most efficiently perceived. Multivariate analyses of variance showed instead that positive mood is associated with faster response times in emotional crowds, and negative mood is associated with faster response times in neutral crowds. A strong “no target present” response bias was also associated with neutral crowds, and this response was exacerbated by negative mood. These results suggest that mood does play an important role in visual search, one that may explain contradictory findings in the previous literature

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability