Biomechanical investigation of a custom-made insole to decrease plantar pain of children with flatfoot: A technical note.

OBJECTIVE: The abnormal plantar pressure of flatfoot patients is a common condition. The main objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of custom-molded insole on the plantar pain of flatfoot METHODS: 105 patients (representing 174 feet) participated in evaluating a custom-made orthotic insole from June 2018 to March 2019. The height of the navicular tubercle (HNT) and the deflection angle of calcaneus (DAC) in flatfoot patients after using orthotic insoles for 6 months were recorded by X-ray imaging and scanning measurements. Plantar pressure on metatarsals 1-5 was measured by using an RSscan system RESULTS: Without the use of an orthotic insole, mean HNT was 0.99±0.34 cm and mean DAC was 20.0 ± 3.78 ° during the bearing weight. After using the insole, mean HNT and DAC values reduced to 0.87±0.30 cm and 14.3 ± 3.45 °, respectively (P < 0.05). Hindfoot plantar pressure did not change significantly (P > 0.05). Furthermore, pressure at metatarsals 1-3 decreased by 48.5 %, 45.6 %, and 14.3 %, respectively; that at metatarsals 4-5 increased by 33.3 % and 137.5 %, separately, when using the custom-made insole CONCLUSIONS: Visual analog scale score for plantar pain was significantly reduced. These findings indicate that metatarsal pain of flatfoot patients might be the cause of load imbalance in plantar foot.

If They Won't Know, I Won't Wait: Anticipated Social Consequences Drive Children's Performance on Self-Control Tasks.

This research evaluated the hypothesis that the act of offering an incentive produces anticipated social benefits that are distinct from the benefits associated with the incentive itself. Across three preregistered studies, 3- to 5-year-old children in China (total N = 210) were given an opportunity to wait for an additional sticker (Studies 1 and 3) or an edible treat (Study 2). Rewards were dispensed via a timer-controlled box that allowed the experimenter's apparent ability to learn how long children waited to be manipulated experimentally. Children waited only about half as long when they believed the experimenter would not find out how long they waited. When children were offered three prizes for waiting, anticipated social benefits still drove behavior at least as much as the reward. The findings demonstrate that children as young as 3 years are sensitive to anticipated social rewards when responding to offers of incentives.

Stair-climbing wheelchair proven to maintain user's body stability based on AnyBody musculoskeletal model and finite element analysis.

The electric stair-climbing wheelchair is a beneficial mobile assistance device for older adults and disabled persons with poor walking ability, as it reduces the daily walking and climbing burden. In this paper, 11 older adults were tested when using a stair-climbing wheelchair in three environments: flat ground, slopes, and stairs. The kinematic and dynamic parameters of the lower limb joints were simulated by AnyBody 7.2 human model simulation software using Vicon 3D infrared motion capture, a 3D force table, and analyzed by ANSYS 19.2 Workbench. The joint force, joint moment, and muscle strength did not change significantly under the three environments when using the wheelchair. Through finite element analysis of the mechanical properties of the human body, when using the wheelchair, no significant differences in the overall stress distributions of the fifth lumbar spine, hip bone, or femur were found among the three environments, no significant differences in deformation and displacement were found, and the stress distribution was relatively stable. Therefore, the human body is stable enough to use the electric stair-climbing wheelchair in the three test environments, all of which will be commonly encountered in daily life.

Interference of unilateral lower limb amputation on motor imagery rhythm and remodeling of sensorimotor areas.

Purpose: The effect of sensorimotor stripping on neuroplasticity and motor imagery capacity is unknown, and the physiological mechanisms of post-amputation phantom limb pain (PLP) illness remain to be investigated. Materials and methods: In this study, an electroencephalogram (EEG)-based event-related (de)synchronization (ERD/ERS) analysis was conducted using a bilateral lower limb motor imagery (MI) paradigm. The differences in the execution of motor imagery tasks between left lower limb amputations and healthy controls were explored, and a correlation analysis was calculated between level of phantom limb pain and ERD/ERS. Results: The multiple frequency bands showed a significant ERD phenomenon when the healthy control group performed the motor imagery task, whereas amputees showed significant ERS phenomena in mu band. Phantom limb pain in amputees was negatively correlated with bilateral sensorimotor areas electrode powers. Conclusion: Sensorimotor abnormalities reduce neural activity in the sensorimotor cortex, while the motor imagination of the intact limb is diminished. In addition, phantom limb pain may lead to over-activation of sensorimotor areas, affecting bilateral sensorimotor area remodeling.

Guilt promotes honesty in preschoolers.

The current study examined the influence of guilt on young children's honesty about their transgression. Children (N = 192; 4-6 years of age; 49.5% male, 50.5% female; middle-income Chinese families) participated in a modified temptation resistance paradigm where they were asked not to peek at a toy in the absence of an experimenter. Next, the children were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) guilt condition, where children were induced with guilt using a revised mishap paradigm; (b) sadness condition, where children were induced with sadness by watching a video; and (c) baseline condition, where children did not participate in any additional emotion-inducing task. When later questioned about whether they peeked at the toy, children in the guilt condition were significantly less likely to lie compared with those in the sadness or baseline conditions. There was no significant difference between the sadness and baseline conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

An Adaptive EEG Classification Algorithm Based on CSSD and ELM_Kernel for Small Training Samples.

Rehabilitation technologies based on brain-computer interface (BCI) have become a promising approach for patients with dyskinesia to regain movement. In BCI experiment, there is often a necessary stage of calibration measurement before the feedback applications. To reduce the time required for initial training, it is of great importance to have a method which can learn to classify electroencephalogram (EEG) signals with a little amount of training data. In this paper, the novel combination of feature extraction and classification algorithm is proposed for classification of EEG signals with a small number of training samples. For feature extraction, the motor imagery EEG signals are pre-processed, and a relative distance criterion is defined to select the optimal combination of channels. Subsequently, common spatial subspace decomposition (CSSD) algorithm and extreme learning machine with kernel (ELM_Kernel) algorithm are used to perform the types of tasks classification of motor imagery EEG signals. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method produces a high average classification accuracy of 99.1% on BCI Competition III dataset IVa and 76.92% on BCI Competition IV dataset IIa outperforming state-of-the-art algorithms and obtains a good classification accuracy.

Delay of Gratification as Reputation Management.

Although delay-of-gratification tasks have long been used as measures of self-control, recent evidence suggests that performance on these tasks is also driven by rational decision processes. The present research examined whether the effects of rational decision processes extend beyond costs and benefits embedded in the task itself to include anticipated consequences for the child's reputation. Across two studies, 3- and 4-year-olds from China (N = 273) were assigned to a standard delay-of-gratification condition or to a reputation condition in which they were told that their teacher or a peer would find out how long they had waited. Children waited longer in the reputation conditions and longer in the teacher condition than in the peer condition. This is the first evidence that children's performance on a delay-of-gratification task is sensitive to reputational concerns and to the identity of potential evaluators of their behavior.

Apologies Repair Trust via Perceived Trustworthiness and Negative Emotions.

The present study examined whether perceptions of a transgressor's trustworthiness mediates the relationship between apologies and repaired trust, and the moderating role of negative emotions within this process. Chinese undergraduate students (N = 221) completed a trust game where they invested tokens in their counterpart, and either experienced no trust violation (i.e., half of the tokens returned), a trust violation (i.e., no tokens returned), or a trust violation followed by an apology. Participant's trust behavior was measured by the number of tokens they re-invested in their counterpart in a second round of the game. Participants also completed measures to assess perceptions of the transgressor's trustworthiness and emotional state. Results revealed that participants who received an apology were more likely to trust in their counterpart, compared to those who did not receive an apology, and this relationship was mediated by perceptions of the transgressor's trustworthiness. Further, the relationship between apologies and perceptions of the transgressors trustworthiness was moderated by negative emotions; apologies only improved perceptions of trustworthiness for participants who experienced less negative emotions.

Apologies repair children's trust: The mediating role of emotions.

The current study examined whether emotions mediate the relationship between apologies and repaired trust following a transgression. Children (9- and 11-year-olds; N = 180) completed a two-round trust game where if they invested tokens in their counterpart, the tokens tripled in value and the counterpart would decide how many tokens to return. Based on participants' condition, either half of the tokens were returned, none of the tokens were returned, or none were returned followed by an apology. Children's investment in their counterpart in the second round of the trust game was a measure of trusting behavior. In addition, children completed an emotion evaluation measure of their feelings toward their counterpart. Results demonstrate that children who received an apology following a transgression were significantly more likely to demonstrate trusting behaviors and positive emotions compared with children who received no apology. In addition, both positive and negative emotions were found to mediate the effect of an apology on trust.

Generalized trust predicts young children's willingness to delay gratification.

Young children's willingness to delay gratification by forgoing an immediate reward to obtain a more desirable one in the future predicts a wide range of positive social, cognitive, and health outcomes. Standard accounts of this phenomenon have focused on individual differences in cognitive control skills that allow children to engage in goal-oriented behavior, but recent findings suggest that person-specific trust is also important, with children showing a stronger tendency to delay gratification if they have reason to trust the individual who is promising the future reward. The current research builds on those findings by examining generalized trust, which refers to the extent to which others are generally viewed as trustworthy. A total of 150 3- to 5-year-olds in China were tested. Participants were given the opportunity to obtain one sticker immediately, or wait for 15 min for two stickers. Results showed that participants with high levels of generalized trust waited longer even after controlling for age and level of executive function. These results suggest that trust plays a role in delaying gratification even when children have no information about the individual who is promising the future reward. More broadly, the findings build on recent evidence that there is more to delay of gratification than cognitive capacity, and they suggest that there are individual differences in whether children consider sacrificing for a future outcome to be worth the risk.

Promoting honesty in young children through observational learning.

The observational learning approach, developed more than a half century ago, suggests that it is possible to promote desirable social behaviors through peer observation. However, this idea has yet to be put to a rigorous empirical test. The current research sought to fill this gap by examining whether honesty can be promoted in children by allowing them to observe a peer's display of honest behavior. The dependent measure was whether 5-year-old children who had cheated by peeking in a guessing game would confess to it. Study 1 showed that simply observing a classmate confess to peeking did not promote honesty. However, children who observed a classmate confess to peeking and receive praise and a small prize from an experimenter did became more honest. Study 2 replicated the effect with a weaker manipulation that involved praise for the confessing peer but no prize, which suggests that verbal feedback alone was a sufficient benefit. These findings point to new strategies for promoting honesty in young children and demonstrate that young children's observations of the social consequences of others' sociomoral behavior can help them to guide their own behavior.

Children's Facial Trustworthiness Judgments: Agreement and Relationship with Facial Attractiveness.

This study examined developmental changes in children's abilities to make trustworthiness judgments based on faces and the relationship between a child's perception of trustworthiness and facial attractiveness. One hundred and one 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds, along with 37 undergraduates, were asked to judge the trustworthiness of 200 faces. Next, they issued facial attractiveness judgments. The results indicated that children made consistent trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments based on facial appearance, but with-adult and within-age agreement levels of facial judgments increased with age. Additionally, the agreement levels of judgments made by girls were higher than those by boys. Furthermore, the relationship between trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments increased with age, and the relationship between two judgments made by girls was closer than those by boys. These findings suggest that face-based trait judgment ability develops throughout childhood and that, like adults, children may use facial attractiveness as a heuristic cue that signals a stranger's trustworthiness.

Parental Monitoring, Parent-Adolescent Communication, and Adolescents' Trust in Their Parents in China.

PURPOSE: Trust is an important aspect of interpersonal relationships, but little is known about adolescents' interpersonal trust. The aim of the present study was to examine the associations among parental monitoring, parent-adolescent communication, and adolescents' trust in their parents in China. METHODS: Data in this study were collected as part of the cross-sectional study of children in China. 3349 adolescents (female 48.6%, age range of 12-15 years) were randomly selected from 35 secondary schools in April, 2009 and administered to the Adolescent Interpersonal Trust Scale, the Parental Monitoring Scale, and the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale. RESULTS: Adolescents' trust in their parents was positively related to parental monitoring and parent-adolescent communication. Furthermore, parent-adolescent communication mediated the association between parental monitoring and adolescents' trust in their parents. The mediation model fit data of both genders and three age groups equally well. CONCLUSIONS: Parental monitoring and parent-adolescent communication play an importance role in fostering adolescents' trust in their parents.

CHILDREN'S AND ADULTS' JUDGMENTS OF FACIAL TRUSTWORTHINESS: THE RELATIONSHIP TO FACIAL ATTRACTIVENESS.

Existing research suggests that adults make effective trustworthiness judgments based on facial attractiveness during initial interactions. However, little is known about how children judge trustworthiness from faces. The present study examined the facial features that contributed to judgments of trustworthiness and attractiveness by three groups of Chinese children aged 8 years old (n=34; 17 boys), 10 years old (n=34; 17 boys), and 12 years old (n = 34; 17 boys) and a comparison group of 37 undergraduates (M age=20.2 yr.; 16 men). Using FaceGen Modeler 3.1, a total of 400 East Asian adult faces (200 male, 200 female) portraying neutral emotions with direct gazes were generated. The faces were represented by 61 shape features and were presented for a maximum of 3,000 msec. in the center of the computer screen in randomized order. The participants were asked to judge whether each person was trustworthy and to rate the level of trustworthiness; 1 month later, the attractiveness of the same faces was judged using a similar procedure. The children and the adults used similar facial features to judge trustworthiness (e.g., the brow ridge, nose, and chin). Some of the facial features used by the different age groups as the basis for the trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments were similar. Facial attractiveness accounted for roughly 30 to 60% of the variance in the groups' trustworthiness judgments. Thus, facial attractiveness may serve as a heuristic property that signals trustworthiness and guides adaptive social decisions. More importantly, even children as young as 8 years old use a strategy similar to that of adults to make trustworthiness judgments, although some differences in the use of specific facial features were observed among the age groups.

Seroprevalence of hepatitis E virus infection in psychiatric patients and control subjects in Shandong Province, eastern China.

OBJECTIVE: Hepatitis E, caused by the hepatitis E virus (HEV), is an important global public health concern. There are conflicting reports in regard to the association of HEV infection and psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we investigated this association in a Chinese population through a case-control seroprevalence study. METHODS: A case-control study of 445 psychiatric patients and 445 control subjects was conducted between June 2011 and July 2013 to estimate the seroprevalence and potential risk factors associated with acquiring HEV infection in psychiatric patients in China. Demographic and clinical data and blood samples were collected, and anti-HEV IgG and IgM antibodies were measured by ELISA method. RESULTS: The prevalence of anti-HEV IgG in psychiatric patients (27.19%) was higher than that in healthy controls (19.55%) (p=0.07). In addition, there were significant differences in seroprevalences of HEV infection according to the type of psychiatric disorder. Sex, age, contact with dogs and cats, and exposure to soil were found to be risk factors for HEV infection. CONCLUSIONS: Psychiatric patients have a higher prevalence of HEV infection than control subjects in China. Considering the promotion of public health, psychiatric patients should be considered a specific group of HEV infection.

Similarities and differences in Chinese and Caucasian adults' use of facial cues for trustworthiness judgments.

BACKGROUND: All cultural groups in the world place paramount value on interpersonal trust. Existing research suggests that although accurate judgments of another's trustworthiness require extensive interactions with the person, we often make trustworthiness judgments based on facial cues on the first encounter. However, little is known about what facial cues are used for such judgments and what the bases are on which individuals make their trustworthiness judgments. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that individuals may use facial attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for judging another's trustworthiness due to the lack of other more informative and in-depth information about trustworthiness. Using data-driven statistical models of 3D Caucasian faces, we compared facial cues used for judging the trustworthiness of Caucasian faces by Caucasian participants who were highly experienced with Caucasian faces, and the facial cues used by Chinese participants who were unfamiliar with Caucasian faces. We found that Chinese and Caucasian participants used similar facial cues to judge trustworthiness. Also, both Chinese and Caucasian participants used almost identical facial cues for judging trustworthiness and attractiveness. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The results suggest that without opportunities to interact with another person extensively, we use the less racially specific and more universal attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for trustworthiness judgments.

Chinese children's evaluations of white lies: weighing the consequences for recipients.

This research examined how Chinese children make moral judgments about lie telling and truth telling when facing a "white lie" or "politeness" dilemma in which telling a blunt truth is likely to hurt the feelings of another. We examined the possibility that the judgments of participants (7-11 years of age, N=240) would differ as a function of the social context in which communication takes place. The expected social consequences were manipulated systematically in two studies. In Study 1, participants rated truth telling more negatively and rated lie telling more positively in a public situation where telling a blunt truth is especially likely to have negative social consequences. In Study 2, participants rated truth telling more positively and rated lie telling more negatively in a situation where accurate information is likely to be helpful for the recipient to achieve future success. Both studies showed that with increased age, children's evaluations became significantly influenced by the social context, with the strongest effects being seen among the 11-year-olds. These results suggest that Chinese children learn to take anticipated social consequences into account when making moral judgments about the appropriateness of telling a blunt truth versus lying to protect the feelings of another.