The Relationship between Working Memory and Cognitive Functioning in Children

One-hundred and forty-four Year 1 children (51% boys and 49% girls, mean age 6) from Queensland State primary schools participated in a study to investigate the relationship between working memory and cognitive functioning. Children were given two tests of cognitive functioning (the School-Years Screening Test for the Evaluation of Mental Status (SYSTEMS) and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT)) and six subtests of working memory from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) (Backward Digit Recall, Listening Recall, Digit Recall, Word List Matching, Word List Recall and Non-word List Recall). The two cognitive tests correlated at r = .50. Results showed a high correlation between SYSTEMS and the Phonological Loop (PL) component of working memory. The K-BIT also correlated highly with PL component. The SYSTEMS and K-BIT showed various levels of correlation with the working memory sub-tests. A measurement model utilising Confirmatory Factor Analysis method showed a strong relationship between working memory and cognitive functioning, the degree of fit for the model was very high at GFI = .996

Investigating Moderators of Test-Retest Reliability in Screening Children's Cognitive Functioning

This project examined some of the common constraints on reliable cognitive assessment for children over time. Repeated measures design (n = 133) was with younger (5 & 6 year old, n = 64) and older (7 & 8 year old, n = 69) children. Results showed that children’s self-concepts moderated the test-retest reliability over extended intervals for younger and older children. Social self-categorizations moderated slightly the test-retest reliability for both age groups. For younger children only, personal self-categorization and self-reported talking about items moderated the reliability. In contrast, there were no moderators of test-retest reliability for shorter retest intervals. Other experiences, including recall, recognition and self-reported reflection on the content, did not moderate the test-retest reliability

HBSC England National Report: Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) : World Health Organization Collaborative Cross National Study

Findings from the 2014 HBSC study for Englan

Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, we studied the long-term behaviour of Bayesian vector autoregressive state-space models for reef dynamics, incorporating among-site variability. We estimate that if there were no among-site variability, the total long-term variability would be approximately one third of its current value. Thus among-site variability contributes more to long-term variability in reef composition than does temporal variability. Individual sites are more predictable than previously thought, and predictions based on current snapshots are informative about long-term properties. Our approach allowed us to identify a subset of possible climate refugia sites with high conservation value, where the long-term probability of coral cover <= 0.1 was very low. Analytical results show that this probability is most strongly influenced by among-site variability and by interactions among benthic components within sites. These findings suggest that conservation initiatives might be successful at the site scale as well as the regional scale.Comment: 97 pages, 49 figure

Good functional recovery following intervention for delayed suprachoroidal haemorrhage post bleb needling: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Bleb needling is a recognised procedure in the management of patients with failing trabeculectomies. Suprachoroidal haemorrhage can occur as an unusual complication. We report a pseudophakic man who had early surgical intervention for this complication. This intervention may have contributed to the good recovery of his visual acuity and the minimum changes to his visual fields.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 79-year-old pseudophakic man with chronic open angle glaucoma presented with further deterioration of his right visual field despite maximum medical therapy and a previous trabeculectomy. The right visual acuity was 6/9 with an intraocular pressure (IOP) of 16 mmHg. Bleb needling with 5-fluouracil was performed in a standard manner. His postoperative IOP was 6 mmHg. Thirty-six hours later the visual acuity was reduced to hand movements and two large choroidal detachments where observed clinically, which progressed to suprachoroidal haemorrhages. Five days after the initial needling, the patient had complex surgery involving anterior chamber reformation, a bleb compression suture and drainage of the haemorrhagic suprachoroidal detachments. Subsequently, the patient had a right vitrectomy with endolaser following a vitreous haemorrhage. The final visual acuity was 6/9 with an intraocular pressure of 8 mmHg on travoprost and brinzolamide. The final visual field showed little change when compared with the pre-suprachoroidal haemorrhage visual field.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>It is important to consider the possibility of delayed suprachoroidal haemorrhage as a complication in bleb needling, and early surgical intervention may be beneficial.</p

Understanding young people’s experiences and perceptions of relational bullying: A qualitative study

© 2023 MA Healthcare Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licence, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Background: Bullying among young people has been acknowledged as a public health concern. Relational bullying is the systematic manipulation and damage of peer relationships; the way in which it is perceived can influence detection and interventions, in view of this, relational bullying warranted further exploration from the perspectives of young people. Aim: To understand the experience and perception of relational bullying among young people. Methods: A qualitative approach underpinned the undertaking of 11 face-to-face interviews with young people aged 12-18 years. Data was thematically analysed. Findings: Seven themes emerged: The complexity of defining bullying; The role of friends; Negative impacts; Social media; Normalisation; Personal resources to aid navigation; External resources to aid navigation. Conclusions: Factors that help and hinder the navigation of relational bullying were identified, the family playing a crucial role in mitigating the negative effects. The findings have the potential to be relevant to other forms of bullying.Peer reviewe

Changes in UK ophthalmology surgical training: analysis of cumulative surgical experience 2009-2015.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate changes in the patterns of cumulative surgical experience for ophthalmologists in the UK following the introduction of a new national training scheme. DESIGN: Retrospective review of all surgical training records submitted to the UK Royal College of Ophthalmologists by trainees for the award of Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) for the period 2009-2015. SETTING: Secondary level care, UK. PARTICIPANTS: 539 trainees achieving CCT over the 7-year study period. INTERVENTIONS: Higher specialist training or ophthalmology specialist training. OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of CCT awards by years and procedures performed for cataract surgery, strabismus, corneal grafts, vitreoretinal (VR) procedures, oculoplastics and glaucoma. RESULTS: Cataract surgical experience showed little change with median number performed/performed supervised (P/PS) 592, IQR: 472-738; mean: 631. Similarly, the median number of strabismus (P/PS 34), corneal grafts (assisted, 9) and VR procedures (assisted, 34) appeared constant. There was a trend towards increasing surgical numbers for oculoplastics (median 116) and glaucoma (57). Overall case numbers for ophthalmic specialist training (OST) trainees (7-year training programme) were higher than higher surgical training (HST) trainees (4.5-year programme) with the exception of squint (P/PS), corneal grafts (P/PS) and VR cases (P/PS). CONCLUSIONS: Overall case numbers reported at time of CCT application appear stable or with a marginal trend towards increasing case numbers. HST (4.5-year programme) case numbers do not include those performed before entry to HST, and although case numbers tended to be higher for OST trainees (7-year programme) compared with HST trainees, they were not proportionately so

Self-harm in Adolescence: Protective Health Assets in the Family, School and Community

© The Author(s) 2016 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0900-2Objectives and main purpose: The aim of this paper was to examine if the multiple environments of the adolescent including family, peers, school and neighbourhood might function as protective health assets against self-harming behaviour during adolescence. Methods: The present study utilised data collected from 1608 respondents aged 15 years as part of the HBSC England Study. Multilevel modelling was undertaken using the package MLwiN (version 2.33) to investigate the potential domains and dimensions of family life, school culture and environment, and neighbourhood factors that may operate as protective health assets. Results: The results indicated that while peer support did not appear to operate as a protective health asset in the context of self-harm, key dimensions of adolescent/ parent interaction and adolescent experience of the school culture and their neighbourhood were associated with reduced likelihood of self-harming behaviours during adolescence. Conclusions: The Findings highlight the significance of belonging and connectedness as important constituent elements of protective health assets for young people. Interventions that address the multiple environments of the young person, may offer an effective means to reduce the levels of self-harm.Peer reviewe

Analysis of relative abundances with zeros on environmental gradients: a multinomial regression model

Ecologists often analyze relative abundances, which are an example of compositional data. However, they have made surprisingly little use of recent advances in the field of compositional data analysis. Compositions form a vector space in which addition and scalar multiplication are replaced by operations known as perturbation and powering. This algebraic structure makes it easy to understand how relative abundances change along environmental gradients. We illustrate this with an analysis of changes in hard-substrate marine communities along a depth gradient. We fit a quadratic multivariate regression model with multinomial observations to point count data obtained from video transects. As well as being an appropriate observation model in this case, the multinomial deals with the problem of zeros, which often makes compositional data analysis difficult. We show how the algebra of compositions can be used to understand patterns in dissimilarity. We use the calculus of simplex-valued functions to estimate rates of change, and to summarize the structure of the community over a vertical slice. We discuss the benefits of the compositional approach in the interpretation and visualization of relative abundance data