Acoustical barriers to communication and hearing

This study examined the acoustical conditions, including the surface-dimension measurements, background noise levels, and reverberation times in classrooms in a metropolitan area. The data collected in this study will help school administrators realize that appropriate classroom acoustics are necessary for both hearing impaired and normal hearing students.

Do child cochlear implant users who are perceived unfavorably as communication partners have poor self-esteem?

This paper examines self-esteem issues with children who wear a cochlear implant.

Physical and perceived noise levels within the neonatal intensive care unit of St. Louis Children's Hospital

This paper studies the success of the renovation of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Louis Children's Hospital in reducing noise levels and improving the work environment.

Pre-empting technical barriers in the Single Market. CEPS Policy Brief No. 277, 11 July 2012

Effective enforcement and compliance with EU law is not just a legal necessity, it is also of economic interest since the potential of the Single Market will be fully exploited. Enforcement barriers generate unjustified costs and hindrances or uncertainty for cross-border business and might deprive consumers from receiving the full benefit of greater choice and/or cheaper offers. The EU has developed several types of enforcement efforts (preventive initiatives, pre-infringement initiatives and formal infringement procedures). More recently, the emphasis has been placed on effective prevention. This CEPS Policy Brief analyses the functioning of one preventive mechanism (the 98/34 Directive) and assesses its potential to detect and prevent technical or other barriers in the course of the last 25 years. Based on an empirical approach, it shows that this amazing mechanism has successfully prevented thousands of new technical barriers from arising in the internal goods market.

Breaking down the barriers to firm growth in Europe: The fourth EFIGE policy report. Bruegel Blueprint 18, 28 August 2012

Large firms contribute disproportionately to the economic performance of countries: they are more productive, pay higher wages, enjoy higher profits and are more successful in international markets. The differences between European countries in terms of the size of their firms are stark. Firms in Italy and Spain, for example, are on average 40 percent smaller than firms in Germany. The low average firm size translates into a chronic lack of large firms. In Italy and Spain, a mere 5 percent of manufacturing firms have more than 250 employees, compared to a much higher 11 percent in Germany. Understanding the roots of these differences is key to improving the economic performance of Europe’s lagging economies. So why is there so much variation in firm size in different European countries? What are the barriers that keep firms in some countries from growing? And which policies are likely to be most effective in breaking down those barriers? This policy report aims to answer these questions by developing a quantitative model of the seven European countries covered by the EFIGE survey (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the UK). The EFIGE survey asked 14,444 firms in those countries about their performance, their modes of internationalisation, their staffing decisions, their financing structure, and their competitive environment, among other topics.

Inclusion, social networks and resilience: strategies, practices and outcomes for disabled children and their families

This paper explores the strategies of service providers and the benefits reported by disabled children and their parents/carers in three Children's Fund programmes in England. Based on National Evaluation of the Children's Fund research, we discuss how different understandings of ‘inclusion’ informed the diverse strategies and approaches service providers adopted. While disabled children and families perceived the benefits of services predominantly in terms of building individual children's resilience and social networks, the paper highlights the need for holistic approaches which have a broad view of inclusion, support children's networks and tackle disabling barriers within all the spheres of children's lives.

Perceived controllability modulates the neural response to pain

The response to painful stimulation depends not only on peripheral nociceptive input but also on the cognitive and affective context in which pain occurs. One contextual variable that affects the neural and behavioral response to nociceptive stimulation is the degree to which pain is perceived to be controllable. Previous studies indicate that perceived controllability affects pain tolerance, learning and motivation, and the ability to cope with intractable pain, suggesting that it has profound effects on neural pain processing. To date, however, no neuroimaging studies have assessed these effects. We manipulated the subjects' belief that they had control over a nociceptive stimulus, while the stimulus itself was held constant. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that pain that was perceived to be controllable resulted in attenuated activation in the three neural areas most consistently linked with pain processing: the anterior cingulate, insular, and secondary somatosensory cortices. This suggests that activation at these sites is modulated by cognitive variables, such as perceived controllability, and that pain imaging studies may therefore overestimate the degree to which these responses are stimulus driven and generalizable across cognitive contexts. [References: 28]

Individual differences in the effects of perceived controllability on pain perception: critical role of the prefrontal cortex

The degree to which perceived controllability alters the way a stressor is experienced varies greatly among individuals. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural activation associated with individual differences in the impact of perceived controllability on self-reported pain perception. Subjects with greater activation in response to uncontrollable (UC) rather than controllable (C) pain in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), periaqueductal gray (PAG), and posterior insula/SII reported higher levels of pain during the UC versus C conditions. Conversely, subjects with greater activation in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in anticipation of pain in the UC versus C conditions reported less pain in response to UC versus C pain. Activation in the VLPFC was significantly correlated with the acceptance and denial subscales of the COPE inventory [Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283, 1989], supporting the interpretation that this anticipatory activation was associated with an attempt to cope with the emotional impact of uncontrollable pain. A regression model containing the two prefrontal clusters (VLPFC and pACC) predicted 64% of the variance in pain rating difference, with activation in the two additional regions (PAG and insula/SII) predicting almost no additional variance. In addition to supporting the conclusion that the impact of perceived controllability on pain perception varies highly between individuals, these findings suggest that these effects are primarily top-down, driven by processes in regions of the prefrontal cortex previously associated with cognitive modulation of pain and emotion regulation.

Communicating information about medication side effects: effects on satisfaction, perceived risk to health, and intention to comply

Previous research has shown that people's evaluations of explanations about medication and their intention to comply with the prescription are detrimentally affected by the inclusion of information about adverse side effects of the medication. The present study (Experiment 1) examined which particular aspects of information about side effects (their number, likelihood of occurrence, or severity) are likely to have the greatest effect on people's satisfaction, perception of risk, and intention to comply, as well as how the information about side effects interacts with information about the severity of the illness for which the medication was prescribed. Across all measures, it was found that manipulations of side effect severity had the greatest impact on people's judgements, followed by manipulations of side effect likelihood and then number. Experiments 2 and 3 examined how the severity of the diagnosed illness and information about negative side effects interact with two other factors suggested by Social Cognition models of health behaviour to affect people's intention to comply: namely, perceived benefit of taking the prescribed drug, and the perceived level of control over preventing or alleviating the side effects. It was found that providing people with a statement about the positive benefit of taking the medication had relatively little effect on judgements, whereas informing them about how to reduce the chances of experiencing the side effects had an overall beneficial effect on ratings.