Team Processes and Outcomes During the AMADEE-18 Mars Analog Mission.

The aim of this study was to examine team functioning within the context of the AMADEE 18 Mars analog project, which took place in Oman in the winter of 2018. Five "Analog Astronauts" participated in this study. Each completed measures of individual-level variables, including demographics and personality, before the simulated Mars mission began. At several time points during the mission, and once at the end, participants completed measures of individual stress reactions, and teamwork-related variables, including several types of team conflict, citizenship behavior, in-role behavior, counterproductive behavior, and social loafing. Each participant also reported how well he or she felt the team performed. The results indicate an overall positive, successful teamwork experience. Factors including measurement issues, psychological simulation fidelity, and qualities of the team likely influenced these results. Measuring important team- and individual-level variables during additional space analog events, while considering factors related to psychological fidelity, will allow for the compilation of data to better understand the factors affecting teams in these unusual contexts.

Evidence for sex differences in morphological abnormalities in type I Chiari malformation.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Relatively little is known about the influence of individual difference variables on the presentation of macro-level brain morphology in type I Chiari malformation (CMI). The goal of the present study is to examine how case-control differences in Chiari are affected by patient sex. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patient-provided magnetic resonance images were acquired through the Chiari 1000 database. Twenty-four morphometric measurements were taken using mid-sagittal images of 104 participants (26 male CMI, 26 female CMI, 26 male controls, and 26 female controls) using internally developed and validated custom software, Morphpro. Case-control comparisons were conducted separately by sex using healthy controls matched by age and body mass index. Probability-based t-tests, effect sizes (Cohen's d), and confidence intervals were used to compare case-control differences separately by sex. RESULTS: Male and female case-control comparisons yielded largely the same trends of CMI-related morphometric abnormalities. Both groups yielded reductions in posterior cranial fossa (PCF) structure heights. However, there was evidence for greater PCF structure height reductions in male CMI patients as measured by Cohen's d. CONCLUSIONS: Case-control differences indicated strong consistency in the morphometric abnormalities of CMI malformation in males and females. However, despite the higher prevalence rates of CMI in females, the results from the present study suggest that male morphometric abnormalities may be greater in magnitude. These findings also provide insight into the inconsistent findings from previous morphometric studies of CMI and emphasize the importance of controlling for individual differences when conducting case-control comparisons in CMI.

Type I Chiari malformation, RBANS performance, and brain morphology: Connecting the dots on cognition and macrolevel brain structure.

BACKGROUND: Idiopathic descent of cerebellar tonsils into the cervical spine in Chiari malformation Type I (CMI) is typically associated with occipital headache. Accumulating evidence from experimental studies suggests cognitive effects of CMI. The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between cognition and CMI using a battery of standardized neuropsychological and symptom inventory instruments. METHOD: Eighteen untreated adults with CMI, and 18 gender, age, and education matched healthy controls completed the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), and standardized measures of pain, mood, and disability. Morphometric measurements of key neural and osseous elements were also obtained from structural brain magnetic resonance images, for correlation with symptom outcomes. RESULTS: CMI patients exhibited deficits in RBANS attention, immediate memory, delayed memory, and total score. After controlling for pain and associated affective disturbance, the significant group effect for RBANS attention remained. CMI patients also presented seven morphometric differences comprising the cerebellum and posterior cranial fossa compartment that differed from healthy controls, some of which were associated with self-reported pain and disability. Notably, group differences in tonsillar position were associated with self-reported pain, disability, and delayed memory. CONCLUSION: Adult CMI is associated with domain-specific cognitive change, detectable using a standard clinical instrument. The extent of cognitive impairment is independent of pain or affective symptomatology and may be related to the key pathognomonic feature of the condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Retrospective 2D Morphometric Analysis of Adult Female Chiari Type I Patients with Commonly Reported and Related Conditions.

Purpose: Researchers have sought to better understand Chiari type I malformation (CMI) through morphometric measurements beyond tonsillar position (TP). Soft tissue and bone structures within the brain and craniocervical junction have been shown to be different for CMI patients compared to healthy controls. Yet, several morphological characteristics have not been consistently associated with CMI. CMI is also associated with different prevalent conditions (PCs) such as syringomyelia, pseudotumor, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), scoliosis, and craniocervical instability. The goal of this study was two-fold: (1) to identify unique morphological characteristics of PCs, and (2) to better explain inconsistent results from case-control comparisons of CMI. Methods: Image, demographic, and PC information was obtained through the Chiari1000, a self-report web-accessed database. Twenty-eight morphometric measurements (MMs) were performed on the cranial MR images of 236 pre-surgery adult female CMI participants and 140 female healthy control participants. Custom software was used to measure 28 structures within the posterior cranial fossa (PCF) compartment, craniocervical junction, oral cavity, and intracranial area on midsagittal MR images for each participant. Results: Morphometric analysis of adult females indicated a smaller McRae line length in CMI participants with syringomyelia compared to those without syringomyelia. TP was reduced in CMI participants with EDS than those without EDS. Basion to posterior axial line was significantly longer in CMI participants with scoliosis compared to those without scoliosis. No additional MMs were found to differ between CMI participants with and without a specific PC. Four morphometric differences were found to be consistently different between CMI participants and healthy controls regardless of PC: larger TP and a smaller clivus length, fastigium, and corpus callosum height in CMI participants. Conclusion: Syringomyelia, EDS, and scoliosis were the only PCs that showed significant morphometric differences between CMI participants. Additionally, four midsagittal MR-based MMs were found to be significantly different between healthy controls and CMI participants regardless of the presence of one or more PCs. This study suggests that the prevalence of comorbid conditions are not strongly related to CMI morphology, and that inconsistent findings in the radiographic literature cannot be explained by varying prevalence of comorbid conditions in CMI study samples.

Disparity in organizational research: How should we measure it?

Researchers can use the coefficient of variation (CV), Gini coefficient, standard deviation (SD), Theil index, or relative mean deviation (RMD) to measure organizational disparity. Because these five measures have different properties, however, using them interchangeably may lead to inconsistent findings. Using simulated team pay data, we conducted two simulation studies to examine the similarities and potential differences among these measures. The results showed that CV, Gini, Theil, and RMD were strongly related in most circumstances and that interchanging them had little impact on their relations with outcome variables. Differences were observed, however, when interchanging any of these four measures (CV/Gini/Theil/RMD) with SD, especially when samples were characterized by a seriously skewed distribution, a wide pay gap, and a high sample disparity. Given that SD does not meet some of the properties of disparity, and that it may underestimate correlations between disparity and outcome variables, we suggest that researchers use CV, Gini, Theil, or RMD, rather than SD, to assess organizational disparity.

Examining workgroup diversity effects: does playing by the (group-retention) rules help or hinder?

Group diversity researchers are often faced with the problem of calculating diversity indices for groups that are incomplete due to participant nonresponse. Because participant nonresponse may attenuate the correlations that are observed between group diversity scores and outcome variables, some researchers use group-retention rules based on within-group response rates. With this approach, only those groups that have a within-group response rate at, or higher than, the rate prescribed by the group-retention rule are retained for subsequent analyses. We conducted two sets of experiments using computer simulations to determine the usefulness of group-retention rules. We found that group-retention rules are not a substitute for a high response rate and may decrease the accuracy of observed relations, and consequently, we advise against their use in diversity research.

The key to me: seniors' perceptions of relationship-building with in-home service providers.

Changing demographics and hospital downsizing have placed increasing demands on the home care sector. Many of those receiving in-home care are seniors whose chronic conditions require a collaborative approach. Both providers' paternalistic orientations toward senior clients and seniors' passivity within provider-client interactions have the potential to undermine relationship building. While the former has been documented, how seniors perceive relationship building within the home has received little attention. The purpose of this study was to explore seniors' perspectives on relationship building with in-home providers, focusing particularly on the facilitators of and barriers to this experience. Applying interpretive phenomenology, in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of senior clients and an immersion/crystallization analysis strategy was used to elicit the findings. Findings revealed that seniors perceived relationship building as a dynamic process that encompassed facilitators and barriers at both individual and contextual levels. The interpretive findings afford several insights into building provider-client relationships within the in-home context.

Assessing dissimilarity relations under missing data conditions: evidence from computer simulations.

The extensive research examining relations between group member dissimilarity and outcome measures has yielded inconsistent results. In the present research, the authors used computer simulations to examine the impact that a methodological feature of such research, participant nonresponse, can have on dissimilarity-outcome relations. Results suggest that using only survey responders to calculate dissimilarity typically results in underestimation of true dissimilarity effects and that these effects can occur even when response rates are high.

Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: the role of affect and cognitions.

To investigate the role of affect and cognitions in predicting organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and workplace deviance behavior (WDB), data were collected from 149 registered nurses and their coworkers. Job affect was associated more strongly than were job cognitions with OCB directed at individuals, whereas job cognitions correlated more strongly than did job affect with OCB directed at the organization. With respect to WDB, job cognitions played a more important role in prediction when job affect was represented by 2 general mood variables (positive and negative affect). When discrete emotions were used to represent job affect, however, job affect played as important a role as job cognition variables, strongly suggesting the importance of considering discrete emotions in job affect research.