scholarly journals Effects of Physical Activity Programs on the Improvement of Dementia Symptom: A Meta-Analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Suk Lee ◽  
Sun Wook Park ◽  
Yoo Jung Park

Objective. To confirm that physical activity program improves the symptoms of dementia and the most effective physical activity was selected to help establish exercise programs.Methods. Three databases, PubMed, Science Direct, and Willey online, were used to collect articles. The databases were published between January 2005 and December 2015. Keywords such as “dementia,” and “physical activity” were used in searching for papers. As a result, nine studies were selected in the second screening of the meta-analyses.Results. The improvement in the dementia symptom of physical capacity was 1.05 (high effect size, 95% CI: 0.03 to 0.73), ability of activity of daily living was 0.73 (slightly high effect size, 95% CI: 0.23 to 1.23), cognitive function was 0.46 (medium effect size, 95% CI: 0.26 to 0.66), and psychological state was 0.39 (lower than the medium effect size, 95% CI: 0.01 to 0.77).Conclusion. The physical activity for patients with dementia had an effect on the improvement of physical capacity and combined exercise was the most effective physical activity.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Simona A. PASCAL ◽  
Ioana R. PODINA ◽  
Cătălin NEDELCEA

Despite of several meta-analyses indicating that exposure-based treatments (EBT) are successful in addressing anxiety and fear symptoms, less is known whether this is also the case for disgust, which also accompanies anxiety disorders. Therefore, the aim of the current meta-analysis was to compare the efficacy of EBT on disgust and anxiety (emotional distress), against control condition. This meta-analysis included a total of eight studies. Overall, there was a medium effect size (g = .57, 95% CI: .26 to .88, p < .001) for emotional distress; a medium effect size for anxiety (g = .79, 95% CI: .24 to 1.34, p = .005), yet a small effect size for disgust (g = .36, 95% CI: .05 to .68, p = .024). These findings prompt that current EBT are not tailored to address disgust symptoms accompanying many forms of anxiety disorders, although literature points more and more to a need in this respect. We also examined potential moderator variables (the year of publication, the number of exposure sessions, age of the sample, and gender composition). Additionally, we discussed several strengths and limitations, one of the most important being the small number of studies regarding the subject and their heterogeneity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 353-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doreen W H Au ◽  
Hector W H Tsang ◽  
Paul P M Ling ◽  
Christie H T Leung ◽  
P K Ip ◽  
...  

Objective To evaluate the evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quantify the effects of acupressure on anxiety among adults. Methodology RCTs published between January 1997 and February 2014, comparing acupressure with sham control, were identified from the databases Science Citation Index/Social Sciences Citation Index, Scopus, PubMed and PsycINFO. Meta-analysis of eligible studies was performed and the magnitude of the overall effect size was calculated for the anxiety outcome. Revised STRICTA (the Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture) criteria were used to appraise the acupressure procedures, and the Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the methodological quality of the studies. Results Of 39 potentially relevant studies, seven RCTs met the inclusion criteria for review while five studies met the criteria for meta-analysis. All studies reported the positive effect of acupressure on relieving anxiety from the anticipation of surgery or treatment. EX-HN3 ( Yintang), HT7 ( Shenmen) were the commonest points selected and two studies used bilateral points. The acupressure procedure was generally well reported and studies had a low risk of bias. The combined results of the five trials showed a greater overall reduction in anxiety in the acupressure group than in the sham controls (standardised mean differences (SMD)=−1.11; 95% CI −1.61 to −0.61; p<0.0001 heterogeneity: I2=75%; χ2=16.17; p=0.003; r=0.485). Conclusions Acupressure seems to be effective in providing immediate relief of pretreatment anxiety among adults, and has a medium effect size. However, conflicting results were found for the improvements on physiological indicators. More rigorous reporting, including allocation concealment procedure, is needed to strengthen the results.


2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Platz ◽  
Reinhard Kopiez

the visual component of music performance as experienced in a live concert is of central importance for the appreciation of music performance. However, up until now the influence of the visual component on the evaluation of music performance has remained unquantified in terms of effect size estimations. Based on a meta-analysis of 15 aggregated studies on audio-visual music perception (total N = 1,298), we calculated the average effect size of the visual component in music performance appreciation by subtracting ratings for the audio-only condition from those for the audio-visual condition. The outcome focus was on evaluation ratings such as liking, expressiveness, or overall quality of musical performances. For the first time, this study reveals an average medium effect size of 0.51 standard deviations — Cohen's d; 95% CI (0.42, 0.59) — for the visual component. Consequences for models of intermodal music perception and experimental planning are addressed.


Author(s):  
Paul R. Peluso ◽  
Robert R. Freund

Although emotion has long been considered important to psychotherapeutic process, empirical assessment of its impact has emerged only recently. This chapter reports two meta-analyses on the association between therapist expression of emotion and psychotherapy outcome and client expression of emotion and psychotherapy outcome. A significant medium effect size was found between impact of therapist emotional expression and outcomes (d = 0.56, 13 studies) and a significant medium-to-large effect size client emotional expression and outcomes (d = 0.85, 43 studies). Third-party rating of emotional expression emerged as a significant moderator of outcomes. Limitations of the research, diversity considerations, and therapeutic practices conclude the chapter.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Said Baeza Torres ◽  
Sara Eugenia Cruz Morales ◽  
Jennifer Lira Mandujano

Introduction: In Mexico, marijuana consumption has increased in adults and university students, triggering problems in attention, concentration, anxiety, depression, dependence, and cardio-respiratory difficulties. Psychological interventions like brief motivational treatment (BMT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have reported some difficulties such as a low and medium effect size, decreased consumption without reaching abstinence, and heterogeneity in the use of both cognitive and behavioral techniques. The use of behavioral techniques in Behavioral Activation has reported effectiveness in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and recently in alcohol and tobacco. Objective: to evaluate the effect size of a Behavioral Activation treatment in abstinence of marijuana (BA-M) measured in units, occasions, and quantity of consumption. Method: in a sample of university students (n = 8), the intervention of behavioral activation was applied, which includes functional analysis, planning and goal setting, contingency management, skills training, and relapse prevention. It was carried out a multielement single case design with eight replications, calculating the effect size through the non-overlapping index of all pairs. Results: high effect size was obtained in the consumption pattern, ranging between 91.10% and 100%, 5 university students achieved abstinence. Discussion and conclusions: treatment in BA-M obtained a high effect size in abstinence and a decrease in marijuana abuse these results are similar to those reported in alcohol and tobacco.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar ◽  
Shinichi Nakagawa ◽  
Moisès Sánchez-Fortún ◽  
Dominic A. Martin ◽  
Sukanya Ramani ◽  
...  

AbstractThe status signalling hypothesis aims to explain conspecific variation in ornamentation by suggesting that some ornaments signal dominance status. Here, we use multilevel meta-analytic models to challenge the textbook example of this hypothesis, the black bib of house sparrows (Passer domesticus). We conducted a systematic review, and obtained raw data from published and unpublished studies to test whether dominance rank is positively associated with bib size across studies. Contrary to previous studies, our meta-analysis did not support this prediction. Furthermore, we found several biases in the literature that further question the support available for the status signalling hypothesis. First, the overall effect size of unpublished studies was zero, compared to the medium effect size detected in published studies. Second, the effect sizes of published studies decreased over time, and recently published effects were, on average, no longer distinguishable from zero. We discuss several explanations including pleiotropic, population- and context-dependent effects. Our findings call for reconsidering this established textbook example in evolutionary and behavioural ecology, raise important concerns about the validity of the current scientific publishing culture, and should stimulate renewed interest in understanding within-species variation in ornamental traits.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
*Zhonggen Yu ◽  
Liheng Yu

Social media applications such as Facebook have received wide attention in their use in education. However, it is still hard to arrive at a conclusion regarding whether a Facebook-assisted approach is effective in education and whether there are any significant gender differences in the learning outcomes. Based on rigid inclusion criteria, this study included 21 peer-reviewed high-quality journal articles. Through a meta-analysis using Reviewer Manager 5.3, the authors concluded that a Facebook-assisted approach could obtain significantly higher learning outcomes than the non-Facebook-assisted one with a medium effect size (d = 0.42) and that females could achieve significantly better learning outcomes than males with a very small effect size (d = -0.21) in the Facebook-assisted education. Future research could examine the effect of educational use of other social media applications, as well as in sociological, psychological, or educational dimensions.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele B. Nuijten ◽  
Marcel A. L. M. van Assen ◽  
Hilde Augusteijn ◽  
Elise Anne Victoire Crompvoets ◽  
Jelte M. Wicherts

In this meta-study, we analyzed 2,442 effect sizes from 131 meta-analyses in intelligence research, published from 1984 to 2014, to estimate the average effect size, median power, and evidence for bias. We found that the average effect size in intelligence research was a Pearson’s correlation of .26, and the median sample size was 60. Furthermore, across primary studies, we found a median power of 11.9% to detect a small effect, 54.5% to detect a medium effect, and 93.9% to detect a large effect. We documented differences in average effect size and median estimated power between different types of in intelligence studies (correlational studies, studies of group differences, experiments, toxicology, and behavior genetics). On average, across all meta-analyses (but not in every meta-analysis), we found evidence for small study effects, potentially indicating publication bias and overestimated effects. We found no differences in small study effects between different study types. We also found no convincing evidence for the decline effect, US effect, or citation bias across meta-analyses. We conclude that intelligence research does show signs of low power and publication bias, but that these problems seem less severe than in many other scientific fields.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 2423-2434 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Amlung ◽  
T. Petker ◽  
J. Jackson ◽  
I. Balodis ◽  
J. MacKillop

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies have investigated delay discounting (DD) in relation to obesity, but with mixed findings. This meta-analysis synthesized the literature on the relationship between monetary and food DD and obesity, with three objectives: (1) to characterize the relationship between DD and obesity in both case–control comparisons and continuous designs; (2) to examine potential moderators, including case–control v. continuous design, money v. food rewards, sample sex distribution, and sample age (<18 v. >18 years); and (3) to evaluate publication bias.MethodFrom 134 candidate articles, 39 independent investigations yielded 29 case–control and 30 continuous comparisons (total n = 10 278). Random-effects meta-analysis was conducted using Cohen's d as the effect size. Publication bias was evaluated using fail-safe N, Begg–Mazumdar and Egger tests, meta-regression of publication year and effect size, and imputation of missing studies.ResultsThe primary analysis revealed a medium effect size across studies that was highly statistically significant (d = 0.43, p < 10−14). None of the moderators examined yielded statistically significant differences, although notably larger effect sizes were found for studies with case–control designs, food rewards and child/adolescent samples. Limited evidence of publication bias was present, although the Begg–Mazumdar test and meta-regression suggested a slightly diminishing effect size over time.ConclusionsSteep DD of food and money appears to be a robust feature of obesity that is relatively consistent across the DD assessment methodologies and study designs examined. These findings are discussed in the context of research on DD in drug addiction, the neural bases of DD in obesity, and potential clinical applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Zammuto ◽  
Cristina Ottaviani ◽  
Fiorenzo Laghi ◽  
Antonia Lonigro

Theory of mind (ToM) is the human ability to infer the mental states of others in order to understand their behaviors and plan own actions. In the past decades, accumulating evidence has shown that heart rate variability (HRV), an index of parasympathetic control of the heart, is linked to behavioral regulation, social competence, and social cognition abilities, all implicated—to some extent—in ToM. This study aims to systematically review and meta-analyze the available studies, investigating the relation between ToM and HRV in typically developing people. Six studies were eligible for the meta-analysis, yielding a significant association between HRV and ToM of a small-to-medium effect size (g = 0.44). This result was not influenced by publication bias. Due to the small number of studies eligible for the meta-analysis, it was not possible to test for the effect of categorical moderators. The moderating role of sex and quality of the studies was examined by meta-regression analysis. Moderation analysis did not yield any significant effect; however, at a descriptive level, studies yielding the largest effect size were characterized by the use of high frequency-HRV assessment at rest and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to evaluate ToM abilities. The results preliminarily suggest that tonic HRV might be used as an indicator of the ability to understand the content of mind of others.


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