Association between knee muscle strength, kinesiophobia and functional outcomes after ACL reconstruction in young non-athlete adults

ABSTRACT Background. Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most commonly injured ligament requiring surgical reconstruction. The relationship between functional outcomes and kinesiophobia after ACL injury rehabilitation remain unclear. Objective. To assess whether results from self-administered questionnaires such as Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia (TSK) and Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis score (KOOS) at different time points after reconstruction are associated with functional strength testing. Materials and methods. 56 patients (36 male, 20 female) who underwent an ACL reconstruction and subsequent rehabilitation according to our exercise laboratory protocol. This included multiple plyometric tests, isometric knee strength testing (angular momentum of 60°/s) and a 10-m walking speed measurement. In addition, all patients were asked to fill out TSK during their testing visit and KOOS at three, six and twelve months from reconstruction. Results. The mean TSK-FIN score was 34 (range 21-51) (male 35 (SD 6), female 32 (SD 7)). TSK-FIN scores did not correlate with any physical function tests. The mean KOOS scores at 1 year were 98 points for female and 95 points for male. When age, sex, single leg hop for distance, and potential meniscal repair were included into the linear model, female sex was associated with higher 1 year KOOS scores (p<0.001). Conclusion. No clinically significant correlation was found between TSK and KOOS scores and functional outcomes. Further research is needed on optimizing the patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) best suitable for ACL rehabilitation. Keywords: anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions, exercise laboratory, rehabilitations, patient reported outcome measure, functional tes

Designing and executing a security and usability testing plan: IdeaClick Prototype

The purpose of this thesis was to define, analyse and execute usability and security test-ing plans for an application prototype named IdeaClick. IdeaClick is a web application and its main purpose is to share ideas and provide a means to collaborate on them. The usability aspects of IdeaClick were tested and analysed based on two standard web user interface methodologies. The first method followed the black-box procedure, consisting of I/O data. The second one was a heuristic evaluation done by the testing facilitator responsible and the testers. The security of this prototype was tested follow-ing the OWASP guidelines for web application security testing. This non-profit organi-zation provides an extended guide on how to test a web application regarding various security vulnerabilities. As a result of this thesis, two individual testing plans were created. In addition, the study includes a description of the prototype and its features. The thesis concludes that the prototype functions well; however, the overall usability should be improved by investing more time in the further development of the user interface. Furthermore, some security flaws were found and they require attention as soon as possible

Designing and executing a security and usability testing plan: IdeaClick Prototype

The purpose of this thesis was to define, analyse and execute usability and security test-ing plans for an application prototype named IdeaClick. IdeaClick is a web application and its main purpose is to share ideas and provide a means to collaborate on them. The usability aspects of IdeaClick were tested and analysed based on two standard web user interface methodologies. The first method followed the black-box procedure, consisting of I/O data. The second one was a heuristic evaluation done by the testing facilitator responsible and the testers. The security of this prototype was tested follow-ing the OWASP guidelines for web application security testing. This non-profit organi-zation provides an extended guide on how to test a web application regarding various security vulnerabilities. As a result of this thesis, two individual testing plans were created. In addition, the study includes a description of the prototype and its features. The thesis concludes that the prototype functions well; however, the overall usability should be improved by investing more time in the further development of the user interface. Furthermore, some security flaws were found and they require attention as soon as possible

The Role of Executive Functions and Emotion Knowledge in Children’s Communication Repair

Young children often provide insufficient information when speaking with others, making the ability to identify miscommunications and repair inadequate messages essential skills within their set of communicative abilities. Previous work has investigated children’s ability to detect and repair miscommunications in response to verbal cues from their listeners, but no work has explored their ability to do so in response to nonverbal cues from a listener. Study 1 assessed children’s ability to detect and repair miscommunications in response to nonverbal cues provided by a listener. Children (ages 4 to 6) provided a virtual child listener with instructions on how to find a prize. If the child provided a uniquely identifying message, the listener looked happy after presumably finding the prize. If the child provided an ambiguous message, the listener appeared sad after presumably failing to find the prize. Children demonstrated awareness, through ratings, as to whether or not the listener found the prize on each trial, based solely on her facial expression. Children were also more likely to attempt to repair their messages on trials where the listener appeared sad. With respect to individual differences, children with stronger executive functioning (as indexed by a latent variable) and emotion knowledge were more accurate in their ratings of communicative success. Children with stronger emotion knowledge were also more likely to attempt to repair their messages when the listener appeared sad. Overall, findings from Study 1 suggest that children are able to make use of nonverbal cues from a listener to detect and repair miscommunications. Findings also suggest that executive functioning and emotion knowledge support children’s ability to detect and repair miscommunications. Study 2 compared children’s ability to detect miscommunications and immediately repair their messages in response to different types of listener feedback. That is, children were provided with an opportunity to respond directly following the listener’s affective response (rather than after questions) and prior to the listener’s selection of prize location. After providing an ambiguous message, children (ages 4 to 6) were provided with feedback indicating the listener was confused. Children were more likely to attempt to repair their messages following verbal cues from the listener compared to a baseline condition (i.e., a listener pause). Notably, nonverbal feedback (i.e., a confused facial expression) was no better than the baseline condition at eliciting communication repair. The combination of verbal and nonverbal cues was also no more effective at eliciting communication repair than verbal cues alone. Interestingly, children frequently attempted to repair their messages in the baseline condition, which consisted only of a listener pause. When executive functioning components were examined individually, working memory was found to be associated with children’s likelihood of attempting to repair their messages, and with the quality of children’s repairs. Emotion knowledge was found to be associated with the quality of children’s repairs. The findings of Study 2 suggest that children are able to repair their messages in response to nonverbal feedback (given that they attempted to repair even in the baseline condition), but that they are more likely to repair their messages in response to verbal feedback. Findings also highlight the important role of executive functioning and emotion knowledge in children’s communication. Results from these two studies have theoretical implications for children’s communicative development, as well as implications for research methodology, the measurement of executive functioning, and interventions targeted to improve children’s communication skills

The Role of Executive Functions in Children’s Communication Repair

Young children often provide ambiguous referential statements for their listeners. Thus, the ability to identify when miscommunication has occurred and subsequently repair messages is an essential component of communicative development. The present study examined the impact of listener feedback and children’s executive functioning in influencing children’s ability to repair their messages. Further, this work explored whether the cognitive demands of repair differed depending on the type of feedback provided by the listener. Children (ages 4 to 6) completed a referential communication task, in which they described target pictures amongst an array of similar distractors for a confederate. Stimuli were designed such that children would often provide initially ambiguous referential statements. Subsequently they were provided with feedback from the confederate indicating they had been misunderstood. Feedback was either detailed and specified the nature of the miscommunication, or was vague and did not. Children also completed executive functioning tasks assessing their working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Children with larger working memory capacities and better cognitive flexibility were found to provide more effective initial descriptions of the target pictures. Children with better cognitive flexibility were also more effective at repairing their statements in response to feedback indicating they had been misunderstood. While children provided more effective repairs following detailed feedback than vague feedback, this effect did not interact with the cognitive skills of the children. The practical implications of the results are discussed

Cognitive and behavioural predictors of adolescents' communicative perspective-taking and social relationships

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2017.01.004. © 2017. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Given the pivotal role that social interactions play for adolescents' well-being, understanding the factors that influence communication is key. The present study examined relations between adolescents' communicative perspective-taking, executive function skills, and ADHD traits and explored the role communicative perspective-taking plays in peer relations. Data was collected from a community sample of 15 to 19-years-olds (N = 46) in Waterloo, Canada. Two communicative perspective-taking tasks required participants to infer speakers' communicative intentions. A battery of tasks assessed adolescents' working memory and inhibitory control. Elevated ADHD traits were associated with weaker working memory, inhibitory control, and communicative perspective-taking. Working memory was the strongest predictor of communicative perspective-taking. Highlighting the importance of communicative perspective-taking for social interactions, adolescents with weaker skills in this area reported worse peer relations. Findings underscore the importance of communicative perspective-taking for adolescents' social relations and have relevance for understanding the social difficulties faced by adolescents with elevated ADHD traits

The relationship between children's executive functioning, theory of mind, and verbal skills with their own and others' behaviour in a cooperative context: Changes in relations from early to middle school-age

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Huyder, V., Nilsen, E., & Bacso, S. (2017). The relationship between children’s executive functioning, theory of mind, and verbal skills with their own and others’ behaviour in a cooperative context: Changes in relations from early to middle school-age. Infant and Child Development, 26(6), e2027. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2027, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2027. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Learning to behave in socially competent ways is an essential component of children's development. This study examined the relations between children's social, communicative, and cognitive skills and their behaviours during a cooperative task, as well as how these relationships change at different ages. Early school-age (5–8 years old) and middle school-age (9–12 years old) children completed tasks to assess their executive functioning (i.e., inhibitory control, working memory, and planning), theory of mind, and verbal skills and participated in an interactive cooperative task. Because children participated in pairs, dyadic data analysis was used to examine the effect of individual characteristics on children's own and their partners' social behaviour. Results indicated that better theory of mind was related to lower levels of the competitive behaviours demonstrated by younger children, as well as by partners. In contrast, for older children, planning and verbal skills related to lower levels of competitive behaviour. The associations of theory of mind and planning skills with behaviour were significantly different between the early and middle school-age groups. Findings suggest that children may utilize different skills at various developmental stages to guide their social behaviours. Findings have implications for theories of children's social development, as well as for interventions aimed at enhancing social skills

Laser-scanning cytometry can quantify human adipocyte browning and proves effectiveness of irisin

Laser-scanning cytometry is presented as a tool allowing population scale analysis of ex vivo human brown adipogenic differentiation. It combines texture analysis and detection of Ucp1 protein content in single brown adipocytes of mixed cell populations with gene expression pattern and functional characteristics of browning. Using this method we could validate mouse data in human samples demonstrating the effectiveness of irisin to induce “beige” differentiation of subcutaneous white adipocytes.EUR 1,165 APC fee funded by the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilo