Effects of varying force levels and combinations of force application and release during an isometric pinch force task

Fine motor control is important for the completion of many activities of daily living, such as writing, eating, buttoning a shirt, and texting. All these tasks require a high amount of continuous coordination and regulation of increasing and decreasing forces between multiple digits using sub-maximal force levels to successfully accomplish the task. Thus understanding the coordination of force regulation by the thumb and index finger at these sub-maximal force levels is a relevant topic especially for rehabilitation and instrumentation. This study was designed to investigate how accuracy and smoothness of performance of an isometric pinch force tracking task is affected by changing the level of forces required to perform the task and by different combinations of application and release of force by the thumb and index finger. Twenty two healthy, right handed adult participants between the ages of 18-30 were asked to manipulate a cursor to track a moving target ball counterclockwise around a prescribed path using the thumb and index finger of the right hand only. The goal of the task was to keep the cursor as close as possible to the moving target throughout the entire trial. Each participant was given 50 practice trials: 25 at 24% MVC and 25 at 12% MVC. For the 40 experimental trials, participants returned 24 hours later to complete 10 trials at each of the following force levels: 4%, 8%, 16%, and 32%. RMSE and CVE were calculated for each digit (thumb and index finger) as well as the combined digits and were used as indicators of accuracy and smoothness, respectively. Results showed significant differences in all dependent variables with p-values less than 0.05. Task performance accuracy was found to decrease as force level increased, whereas smoothness was found to decrease as force level decreased for all three. These findings suggest that varying force levels and combinations of force application and force release can change performance of this fine motor task and should be further investigated in order to better understand mechanisms involved and for implementing new designs of equipment and diagnostic tools.Kinesiology and Health Educatio

Alien Registration- Lewis, Marie Anne (Eastport, Washington County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/1396/thumbnail.jp

One hill I\u27m willing to die on: Moral conviction as a catalyst for advocacy on behalf of controversial health- and public-policy-related attitudes

The grassroots spread of health and social movements is a highly important but largely understudied social process. Advocating on behalf of your beliefs to others violates the principles of Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978) and therefore poses social risk. However, people do advocate for these beliefs, to a degree; as noted by Skitka (2002), people seem to select a limited number of positions to incorporate into their self-concept, choosing some to represent the self as a symbolic act. She argues that some of these attitudes most deeply ingrained and most motivating to act are those that are moral mandates . Within this work, I discussed this construct of morality in the context of attitude structure (e.g. Teeny & Petty, 2018), attitude strength (e.g. Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005), observed behavioral intentions and effects (e.g. Cole Wright, Cullum, & Schwab, 2008), the self (discussing implication of Skitka, 2002), and regulatory orientation (Zaal, Laar, Ståhl, Ellemers, & Derks, 2011), focusing the discussion and subsequent research on the latter two. I then completed three empirical studies. In Study 1, I tested the factor structure of various operationalizations of morality, as well as attitude structure and strength, and their ability to predict outcomes previously associated with moral conviction. Moral conviction and moral acceptability were determined to be the most theoretically and predictively distinct conceptualizations, and evidence was found for basis being a significant interactor with morality in predicting the replicated outcomes. In Study 2, I examined how morality interacts with perceived controversy and majority status, to elucidate the nature of morality as a counteractive force to social risk. I found that majority significantly increased the positive effect of morality on advocacy, but also found significant 2- and 3-way interactions with attitude bases. In Study 3, I experimentally tested the effects of perceived morality on both intentions and actual advocacy behavior, manipulating the perceived regulatory orientation (i.e. risk sensitivity) and belief in the attitude as central to the self-concept. Alone, these manipulations had no significant effect. However, significant effects were found in interaction with basis. Conclusions focused on several keys areas. First, range restriction and potential fragile effects appeared to undermine consistency in determining significant effects. I strongly suggest the attitudes research field expand its use of stimulus sampling. on the nature of morality in interaction with basis. Different conceptions of morality interacted differently with cognitive and affective basis. Future work into the effect of morality on attitude outcomes should incorporate basis as a primary variable. Secondly, morality and high affect generally increased intent to advocate, however, at maximum levels the opposite was found, suppressing advocacy not necessarily through social pressures but likely an untenable amount of dissonance or a change in perceived utility. Finally, models utilizing frame manipulations left morality accounting for no significant variance. Future work should be done to determine the relationship between these frames and morality, as a mediating relationship remains a possibility

Attitudes Toward Police among College Students: Differences among Race, Social Work Status, and University History

Minority populations often have more negative attitudes toward the police than their White counterparts. This study explored the differences between Black college students’ attitudes towards the police in comparison to White college students. Using a sample of 1,108 students from a traditional flagship university and a Historically Black College University, the study sought to seek out differences in attitudes toward the police based on race, social work student status, and university history. Results indicated a significant difference between Black students’ attitudes toward the police when compared with their White student counterparts. Results also indicated a significant difference in attitudes toward the police when comparing university histor

Battle of the Bains: Tactical Bathing in Two Expository Texts, One Film and a Novella

In numerous articles and texts published within the arenas of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, much has been written on the trope of the shared bath-and even more specifically the hammam-as a space of orientalism. Although researchers such as Magreban sociologist Fatima Mernissi, Algerian writer Malek Alloula, and film scholars Serena Anderlini-DOnofrio and Elisabetta Girelli have offered images of le bain turc in expository texts, art and media, and films as those which offer \u27Turkish Dreams\u27 of orientalist fantasy, this paper focuses on the space as a loci of performative strategies and tactical moves, which abet social resistance. I argue that one can posit the hammam, and acts of shared bathing in two expository texts, a film and a novella as riposte: Le bain turc is as a pool of resistive, not passive, odalisques. In this work I draw on Victor Turner\u27s theories of Social Drama, and Michel de Certeau\u27s concepts of strategies and tactics. My intervention is that, despite often seeming orientalist, these baths also act as social spaces of politically reactive liminoid acts: \u27playful\u27 insurgency. Female participants use \u27tactical bathing\u27 to rebut patriarchal pressure and oppression, creatively

Phonological and Speech Motor Abilities in Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech and Phonological Disorder

This thesis investigated whether childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) differs from phonological disorder (PD) regarding their causal origin. After developing and validating measures targeting components of phonology and speech motor control, we explored if speech motor ability constrained phonological development in CAS more than in PD. This thesis demonstrated children with CAS show a distinct profile of speech impairments but little evidence that their motor deficit constrains phonological development in a way distinct from PD