Be seen and heard being clean: A novel patient-centered approach to hand hygiene.

A quasiexperimental pre- and posttest design was used to evaluate hand hygiene (HH) rates on a medical-surgical unit. Data were collected by asking patients if they had seen or heard staff members cleaning their hands. Sixty-five percent of patients reported seeing or hearing staff perform HH preintervention and 93% reported observations postintervention (P < .001). Through incorporating an auditory cue we engaged patients while removing the burden placed on them to question health care worker behavior, and increased both staff and patient awareness of personal HH behavior.

The Effect of Realistic Contexts on Ontological Judgments of Novel Entities.

Although a great deal of research has focused on ontological judgments in preschoolers, very little has examined ontological judgments in older children. The present study asked 10-year-olds and adults (N = 94) to judge the reality status of known real, known imagined, and novel entities presented in simple and elaborate contexts and to explain their judgments. Although judgments were generally apt, participants were more likely to endorse imagined and novel entities when the entities were presented in elaborate contexts. When asked to explain their reasoning, participants at both ages cited firsthand experience for real entities and general knowledge for imagined entities. For novel entities, participants referred most to indirect experiences when entities were presented in simple contexts and to general knowledge when those entities were presented in elaborate contexts. These results suggest that rich contextual information continues to be an important influence on ontological judgments past the preschool years.

Watch and Learn? Infants Privilege Efficiency Over Pedagogy During Imitative Learning.

This experiment tested how 18-month-old infants' prior experience with an object affects their imitation. Specifically, we asked whether infants would imitate an adult who used her head to illuminate a light-box if they had earlier discovered that the light could be illuminated with their hands. In the Self-Discovery condition, infants had the opportunity to freely explore the light-box; all infants used their hands to activate the light-box at least once during this period. The experimenter then entered the room and, while providing explicit pedagogical cues, demonstrated illuminating the light-box using her forehead. In the Demonstration Only condition, infants just viewed the experimenter's demonstration. During a subsequent testing phase, infants in the Demonstration Only condition were more likely to use their foreheads to activate the light-box. Conversely, infants in the Self-Discovery condition were more likely to use their hands, suggesting that efficiency can "trump" pedagogy in some observational learning contexts.