Restrictions and distress in daily, social, and sexual functioning, and intimate relationships in women with pelvic floor complaints: A mixed-method study.

Women with pelvic floor complaints experience restrictions and distress in their daily, social, and sexual functioning, and their intimate relationships. We interviewed forty-eight women to unravel differences between women receiving and not receiving pelvic physical therapy and between pregnant, parous, and nulliparous women in preparation for theory development. We analyzed data in a mixed-method design using NVivo and Leximancer. Sexual dysfunction, relationship dynamics, the nature and severity of restrictions and distress, and coping strategies appear to vary between women receiving and not receiving therapy. Specific combinations of restrictions and distress are present in pregnant, parous, and nulliparous women, and might influence women's decision to seek help.

Facial and jaw-elevator EMG activity in relation to changes in performance level during a sustained information processing task.

This study was undertaken as a further evaluation of spontaneous facial EMG activity as an index of mental effort. We investigated whether concordant alterations in task performance level and EMG amplitude existed during a sustained information processing task. The EMG of six different facial and jaw-elevator muscles was recorded in 21 subjects performing a 20 min externally paced visual two-choice serial reaction task and in 24 other subjects performing a self-paced version of this task. In both conditions, a post-hoc division was made between subjects with stable task performance parameters and subjects with a decline in performance throughout the task period. In all subject groups, there was a gradual increase in EMG activity of frontalis, corrugator, and orbicularis oris inferior muscles following task onset. As in earlier studies, this increase was interpreted as a sign of growing compensatory mental effort. In the subject groups with declining performance, however, the initial EMG increase passed into a decreasing trend towards the end of the task period whereas in the groups with stable performance, EMG increased uninterruptedly. These results were interpreted as further support for the hypothesis that EMG activity in particular facial muscles is related to the mobilization of aspecific energetic resources.

Divided attention in experienced young and older drivers: lane tracking and visual analysis in a dynamic driving simulator.

A simulated driving task that required the simultaneous execution of two continuous visual tasks was administered to 12 healthy young (mean age 26.1 years) and 12 healthy older (mean age 64.4 years) experienced and currently active drivers. The first task was a compensatory lane-tracking task involving a three-dimensional road display. The second task was a timed, self-paced visual analysis task involving either a vocal or manual binary response to dot patterns projected within the road display. Using adaptive tasks, single-task difficulty was individually adjusted for each subject. To control for individual differences in attention allocation strategy, the dual task was performed according to three different sets of instructions based on the relative importance of each task. Compared with young adults, older adults showed a significantly decreased ability to divide attention. This effect was apparent in lane tracking and in the accuracy of visual analysis. The impairment of divided attention was less pronounced in the vocal condition than in the manual one. This suggests that difficulty in integrating responses may be an important determinant of poor dual-task performance in old age.