A national survey of supervised toothbrushing programmes in England.

Introduction Supervised toothbrushing programmes (STPs) are a cost-effective public health intervention, reducing tooth decay and health inequalities in children. However, the uptake of STPs in England is unknown. This study aimed to establish the current provision of STPs across England and summarise the barriers and facilitators to their implementation.Methods An online survey was sent to dental public health consultants, local authority (LA) oral health leads, and public health practitioners across England. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Barriers and facilitators were analysed using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.Results Information was received for 141 LAs across England. Approximately half implemented an STP (n = 68/141). Most STPs were commissioned by LAs (n = 44/68) and adopted a targeted approach (n = 54/68). Barriers to implementation were: 1) acquiring funding; 2) poor communication and engagement between LAs, oral health providers and settings; 3) oral health not a priority; 4) logistically challenging to implement; and 5) lack of capacity. Facilitators were: 1) an integrated and mandated public health approach; 2) collaboration and ongoing support between LAs, oral health providers, and settings; 3) clarity of guidance; 4) flexible approach to delivery; 5) adequate available resources; and 6) ownership and empowerment of setting staff.Conclusion The current provision of STPs is varied, and although there are challenges to their implementation, there are also areas of good practice where these challenges have been overcome.

The Calgary semantic decision project: concrete/abstract decision data for 10,000 English words.

Psycholinguistic research has been advanced by the development of word recognition megastudies. For instance, the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) provides researchers with access to naming and lexical-decision latencies for over 40,000 words. In the present work, we extended the megastudy approach to a task that emphasizes semantic processing. Using a concrete/abstract semantic decision (i.e., does the word refer to something concrete or abstract?), we collected decision latencies and accuracy rates for 10,000 English words. The stimuli were concrete and abstract words selected from Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman's (2013) comprehensive list of concreteness ratings. In total, 321 participants provided responses to 1,000 words each. Whereas semantic effects tend to be quite modest in naming and lexical decision studies, analyses of the concrete/abstract semantic decision responses show that a substantial proportion of variance can be explained by semantic variables. The item-level and trial-level data will be useful for other researchers interested in the semantic processing of concrete and abstract words.

Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children's Lexical Processing.

Previous research showed an effect of words' rated body-object interaction (BOI) in children's visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (Wellsby and Pexman, 2014a). In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children's BOI experience (child-BOI). We examined effects of words' child-BOI and also words' imageability on children's responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6-7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children's auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.