A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Significance Communicating in ways that motivate engagement in social distancing remains a critical global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested motivational qualities of messages about social distancing (those that promoted choice and agency vs. those that were forceful and shaming) in 25,718 people in 89 countries. The autonomy-supportive message decreased feelings of defying social distancing recommendations relative to the controlling message, and the controlling message increased controlled motivation, a less effective form of motivation, relative to no message. Message type did not impact intentions to socially distance, but people’s existing motivations were related to intentions. Findings were generalizable across a geographically diverse sample and may inform public health communication strategies in this and future global health emergencies. Abstract Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

Effect of alirocumab on mortality after acute coronary syndromes. An analysis of the ODYSSEY OUTCOMES randomized clinical trial

Background: Previous trials of PCSK9 (proprotein convertase subtilisin-kexin type 9) inhibitors demonstrated reductions in major adverse cardiovascular events, but not death. We assessed the effects of alirocumab on death after index acute coronary syndrome. Methods: ODYSSEY OUTCOMES (Evaluation of Cardiovascular Outcomes After an Acute Coronary Syndrome During Treatment With Alirocumab) was a double-blind, randomized comparison of alirocumab or placebo in 18 924 patients who had an ACS 1 to 12 months previously and elevated atherogenic lipoproteins despite intensive statin therapy. Alirocumab dose was blindly titrated to target achieved low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) between 25 and 50 mg/dL. We examined the effects of treatment on all-cause death and its components, cardiovascular and noncardiovascular death, with log-rank testing. Joint semiparametric models tested associations between nonfatal cardiovascular events and cardiovascular or noncardiovascular death. Results: Median follow-up was 2.8 years. Death occurred in 334 (3.5%) and 392 (4.1%) patients, respectively, in the alirocumab and placebo groups (hazard ratio [HR], 0.85; 95% CI, 0.73 to 0.98; P=0.03, nominal P value). This resulted from nonsignificantly fewer cardiovascular (240 [2.5%] vs 271 [2.9%]; HR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.74 to 1.05; P=0.15) and noncardiovascular (94 [1.0%] vs 121 [1.3%]; HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.59 to 1.01; P=0.06) deaths with alirocumab. In a prespecified analysis of 8242 patients eligible for ≥3 years follow-up, alirocumab reduced death (HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.65 to 0.94; P=0.01). Patients with nonfatal cardiovascular events were at increased risk for cardiovascular and noncardiovascular deaths (P<0.0001 for the associations). Alirocumab reduced total nonfatal cardiovascular events (P<0.001) and thereby may have attenuated the number of cardiovascular and noncardiovascular deaths. A post hoc analysis found that, compared to patients with lower LDL-C, patients with baseline LDL-C ≥100 mg/dL (2.59 mmol/L) had a greater absolute risk of death and a larger mortality benefit from alirocumab (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.56 to 0.90; Pinteraction=0.007). In the alirocumab group, all-cause death declined wit h achieved LDL-C at 4 months of treatment, to a level of approximately 30 mg/dL (adjusted P=0.017 for linear trend). Conclusions: Alirocumab added to intensive statin therapy has the potential to reduce death after acute coronary syndrome, particularly if treatment is maintained for ≥3 years, if baseline LDL-C is ≥100 mg/dL, or if achieved LDL-C is low. Clinical Trial Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01663402

With a Little Help From My (Mostly White) Friends: Searching for Invisible Members of \u3cem\u3eSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u3c/em\u3e

I was 3 months short of 16 when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in the United States. It was the summer of 1967 and it seemed that this record was playing everywhere I went. My friends and I would join in with the playfully creative mood of the Sgt. Pepper genre and play air drums and guitar to the opening track or try to imitate the syncopated rhythms of the Indian drummers on Within You Without You

BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience

Written symbols such as letters have been used extensively in cognitive psychology, whether to understand their contributions to written word recognition or to examine the processes involved in other mental functions. Sometimes, however, researchers want to manipulate letters while removing their associated characteristics. A powerful solution to do so is to use new characters, devised to be highly similar to letters, but without the associated sound or name. Given the growing use of artificial characters in experimental paradigms, the aim of the present study was to make available the Brussels Artificial Character Sets (BACS): two full, strictly controlled, and portable sets of artificial characters for a broad range of experimental situations.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Cuban lexicon Lucumí and African language Yorùbá: musical and historical connections

Lucumí’s vocabulary is strongly related to Yorùbá in southwest Nigeria due to a historical connection stemming from the transatlantic slave trade. It is variously described as an Afro-Cuban language still spoken by contemporary religious devotees, aCuban dialectof Yorùbá, derived from amixtureof Yorùbá dialectsin southwestNigeria,an archaic formofYorùbáthat haspreservedtheNigerianpast in Cuba, and/or corrupted or incomplete Yorùbá. The word “lexicon,” however, rarely appears in Lucumí portrayals. Since inadequate linguistic research was undertaken in Cuba while African vernaculars were still spoken outside of ritual and musical contexts in the first decades of the twentieth century, Lucumí explanations are frequently highly presumptuous or speculative. Much contemporary research lacks scholarly rigor and has relied uncritically on anecdotal evidence collected from selected field respondents, whose narratives are frequently compromised by religious identity politics within a hierarchical and secretive spiritual tradition. A growing body of literature about Lucumí has been little challenged and continues to be uncritically recycled into new scholarship and the religious community itself. Along with critiquing existing literature about uttered Lucumí, this chapter draws on my ethnomusicological field work in Nigeria and Cuba since 1998 to arguethat Lucumí has been alexicon – a memorized corpus of words and phrases largely devoid of syntax – dependent on musical and ritual performance and written sources for almost a hundred years. While much Lucumí analysis has relied solely on transcribed text without any regard for the sonic dimensions of pitch, rhythm, and amplitude of uttered, sung, and drummed texts, I assert that musical structure can be more enduring than linguistic content. By drawing on empirical historical evidence and illustrating my argument with analyses of my field data, published song texts, and commercial recordings, I demonstrate how musical analysis can be harnessed as a powerful method of determining the vestigial relationship between the Lucumí lexicon in Cuba and the Yorùbá language in Africa

Illiterate to literate: Behavioural and cerebral changes induced by reading acquisition.

The acquisition of literacy transforms the human brain. By reviewing studies of illiterate subjects, we propose specific hypotheses concerning the core brain systems whose previous function is partially reoriented or “recycled” when learning to read. Literacy acquisition improves early visual processing and reorganizes the ventral occipito-temporal pathway: a left region increases its response to written characters, while responses to faces shift towards the right hemisphere. Literacy also modifies phonological coding and strengthens the functional and anatomic link between phonemic and graphemic representations. Literacy acquisition therefore provides a remarkable example of how the brain reorganizes to accommodate a novel cultural skill.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe