How fear of falling can increase fall-risk in older adults: Applying psychological theory to practical observations

This article was made available through the Brunel Open Access Fund.It is widely reported that fear of falling (FOF) has a profound and largely detrimental effect on balance performance in older adults. However, the mechanisms by which FOF influence postural stability are poorly understood. In the current article, we use psychological theory to explain FOF-related changes to postural control. First, we review literature describing associations between FOF and the 'stiffening' strategies observed during control of posture, including observations of eye and head movements. Second, we present a framework illustrating the interactions between increased age, FOF, and altered attentional processes, which in turn influence balance performance and fall-risk. Psychological theory predicts that anxiety can cause attentional bias for threatening and task-irrelevant stimuli and compromise the efficiency of working memory resources. We argue that while the adoption of stiffening strategies is likely to be beneficial in avoiding a loss of balance during simple postural tasks, it will ultimately compromise performance in dynamic and highly demanding functional tasks. The adoption of stiffening strategies leads to inadequate acquisition of the sensory information necessary to plan and execute dynamic and interactive movements. We conclude with some suggestions for future research.This research was supported by The Royal Society (IE131576) and British Academy (SG132820)

Examining links between anxiety, reinvestment and walking when talking by older adults during adaptive gait

Falls by older adults often result in reduced quality of life and debilitating fear of further falls. Stopping walking when talking (SWWT) is a significant predictor of future falls by older adults and is thought to reflect age-related increases in attentional demands of walking. We examine whether SWWT is associated with use of explicit movement cues during locomotion, and evaluate if conscious control (i.e., movement specific reinvestment) is causally linked to falls-related anxiety during a complex walking task. We observed whether twenty-four older adults stopped walking when talking when asked a question during an adaptive gait task. After certain trials, participants completed a visual-spatial recall task regarding walkway features, or answered questions about their movements during the walk. In a subsequent experimental condition, participants completed the walking task under conditions of raised postural threat. Compared to a control group, participants who SWWT reported higher scores for aspects of reinvestment relating to conscious motor processing but not movement self-consciousness. The higher scores for conscious motor processing were preserved when scores representing cognitive function were included as a covariate. There were no group differences in measures of general cognitive function, visual spatial working memory or balance confidence. However, the SWWT group reported higher scores on a test of external awareness when walking, indicating allocation of attention away from task-relevant environmental features. Under conditions of increased threat, participants self-reported significantly greater state anxiety and reinvestment and displayed more accurate responses about their movements during the task. SWWT is not associated solely with age-related cognitive decline or generic increases in age-related attentional demands of walking. SWWT may be caused by competition for phonological resources of working memory associated with consciously processing motor actions and appears to be causally linked with fall-related anxiety and increased vigilance.This research was supported by The Royal Society (IE131576) and British Academy (SG132820)

Plan de negocio de una plataforma web de an?lisis del mercado laboral peruano en tiempo real orientado a las instituciones de capacitaci?n

En la actualidad existe una brecha entre las habilidades adquiridas por los profesionales y t?cnicos con aquellas solicitadas en el mercado laboral peruano. Por ello, las instituciones educativas y empresas de capacitaci?n requieren actualizar su oferta educativa constantemente. Para tal fin, utilizan distintos m?todos manuales como consulta a expertos, b?squeda por internet, comparaci?n con sus competidores y estudios de mercado, los cuales son costosos y demandan tiempo, resultando inaccesible en muchos casos. Datorch es una soluci?n de an?lisis de datos SaaS (software as a service) accesible desde computadoras de escritorio y dispositivos m?viles que, a trav?s de la recolecci?n y aplicaci?n de t?cnicas de Big Data a datos recolectados de anuncios laborales publicados en portales web de trabajo, muestra, en una aplicaci?n web amigable, estad?sticas, tendencias y gr?ficas del mercado laboral peruano. El p?bico objetivo comprende las instituciones educativas privadas y p?blicas, as? como las empresas de capacitaci?n del departamento de Lima, a las cuales se les brindar?, mediante suscripci?n anual, informaci?n relevante con la finalidad de actualizar su oferta educativa y reducir la incertidumbre en la apertura y culminaci?n de sus cursos con ?xito

Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) for Work-related Wellbeing and Job Performance: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Due to its potential to concurrently improve work-related wellbeing (WRW) and job performance, occupational stakeholders are becoming increasingly interested in the applications of meditation. The present study conducted the first randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of meditation on outcomes relating to both WRW and job performance. Office-based middle-hierarchy managers (n = 152) received an eight-week meditation intervention (Meditation Awareness Training; MAT) or an active control intervention. MAT participants demonstrated significant and sustainable improvements (with strong effect sizes) over control-group participants in levels of work-related stress, job satisfaction, psychological distress, and employer-rated job performance. There are a number of novel implications: (i) meditation can effectuate a perceptual shift in how employees experience their work and psychological environment and may thus constitute a cost-effective WRW intervention, (ii) meditation-based (i.e., present-moment-focussed) working styles may be more effective than goal-based (i.e., future-orientated) working styles, and (iii) meditation may reduce the separation made by employees between their own interests and those of the organizations they work for

Re-evaluating the measurement and influence of conscious movement processing on gait performance in older adults: development of the Gait-Specific Attentional Profile

Background. Recent decades have seen increased interest in how anxiety–and associated changes in conscious movement processing (CMP)–can influence the control of balance and gait, particularly in older adults. However, the most prevalent scale used to measure CMP during gait (the Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS)) is generic (i.e., non-gait specific) and potentially lacks sensitivity in this context. Methods. In a preliminary study, we first sought to evaluate if MSRS scores associated with the number of CMP-related thoughts self-reported by older adults while walking. The next aim was to develop and validate a new questionnaire (the Gait-Specific Attentional Profile, G-SAP) capable of measuring gait-specific CMP, in addition to other attentional processes purported to influence gait. This scale was validated using responses from 117 (exploratory) and 107 (confirmatory factor analysis) older adults, resulting in an 11-item scale with four sub-scales: CMP, anxiety, fall-related ruminations, and processing inefficiencies. Finally, in a separate cohort of 53 older adults, we evaluated associations between scores from both the GSAP CMP subscale and the MSRS, and gait outcomes measured using a GAITRite walkway in addition to participants’ fall-history. Results. MSRS scores were not associated with self-reported thoughts categorised as representing CMP. In regression analyses that controlled for functional balance, unlike the MSRS, the G-SAP subscale of CMP significantly predicted several gait characteristics including velocity (p=.033), step length (p=.032), and double-limb support (p=.015). Significance. The G-SAP provides gait-specific measures of four psychological factors implicated in mediating the control of balance and gait. In particular, unlike the MSRS, the G-SAP subscale of CMP appears sensitive to relevant attentional processes known to influence gait performance. We suggest that the G-SAP offers an opportunity for the research community to further develop understanding of psychological factors impacting gait performance across a range of applied clinical contexts

The Impact of Worry on Attention to Threat

Prior research has often linked anxiety to attentional vigilance for threat using the dot probe task, which presents probes in spatial locations that were or were not preceded by a putative threat stimulus. The present study investigated the impact of worry on threat vigilance by administering this task during a worry condition and during a mental arithmetic control condition to 56 undergraduate students scoring in the low normal range on a measure of chronic worry. The worry induction was associated with faster responses than arithmetic to probes in the attended location following threat words, indicating the combined influence of worry and threat in facilitating attention. Within the worry condition, responses to probes in the attended location were faster for trials containing threat words than for trials with only neutral words, whereas the converse pattern was observed for responses to probes in the unattended location. This connection between worry states and attentional capture by threat may be central to understanding the impact of hypervigilance on information processing in anxiety and its disorders

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for extraversion:Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium

Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion

Housing conditions affect rat responses to two types of ambiguity in a reward-reward discrimination cognitive bias task

Decision-making under ambiguity in cognitive bias tasks is a promising new indicator of affective valence in animals. Rat studies support the hypothesis that animals in a negative affective state evaluate ambiguous cues negatively. Prior automated operant go/go judgement bias tasks have involved training rats that an auditory cue of one frequency predicts a Reward and a cue of a different frequency predicts a Punisher (RP task), and then measuring whether ambiguous cues of intermediate frequency are judged as predicting reward ('optimism') or punishment ('pessimism'). We investigated whether an automated Reward-Reward (RR) task yielded similar results to, and was faster to train than, RP tasks. We also introduced a new ambiguity test (simultaneous presentation of the two training cues) alongside the standard single ambiguous cue test. Half of the rats experienced an unpredictable housing treatment (UHT) designed to induce a negative state. Control rats were relatively 'pessimistic', whilst UHT rats were quicker, but no less accurate, in their responses in the RR test, and showed less anxiety-like behaviour in independent tests. A possible reason for these findings is that rats adapted to and were stimulated by UHT, whilst control rats in a predictable environment were more sensitive to novelty and change. Responses in the new ambiguity test correlated positively with those in single ambiguous cue tests, and may provide a measure of attention bias. The RR task was quicker to train than previous automated RP tasks. Together, they could be used to disentangle how reward and punishment processes underpin affect-induced cognitive biases. © 2014 The Authors