Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are often used in movies, commercials and print advertisements with the intention of eliciting a humorous response from audiences. The portrayal of chimpanzees in unnatural, human-like situations may have a negative effect on the public's understanding of their endangered status in the wild while making them appear as suitable pets. Alternatively, media content tha...

BACKGROUND Empathy is an important component of physician competence that needs to be enhanced. AIM To test the hypotheses that medical students' empathy can be enhanced and sustained by targeted activities. METHODS This was a two-phase study in which 248 medical students participated. In Phase 1, students in the experimental group watched and discussed video clips of patient encounters mea...

BACKGROUND This survey determined the practices about television (video inclusive), videogames, and computer use in children and adolescents in Italy. METHODS A self-administered anonymous questionnaire covered socio-demographics; behaviour about television, videogames, computer, and sports; parental control over television, videogames, and computer. RESULTS Overall, 54.1% and 61% always at...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of instructor feedback and video tutorials on skill acquisition during proficiency-based laparoscopic suturing training. METHODS Performance data from a prospectively maintained database were reviewed for three groups of novices (n = 34 medical students) who completed the same proficiency-based laparoscopic suturing curriculum o...

[Purpose] The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of action observation training on the static balance and walking ability of patients who had suffered a stroke. [Subjects] Forty patients with hemiplegia resulting from a stroke were divided into an action observation gait training group (AOGT group, n=20) and a general gait training group (GGT group, n=20). [Methods] The AOGT gr...

In a randomized experiment using moment-to-moment audience analysis methods, we compared women's emotional responses with a narrative versus informational breast cancer video. Both videos communicated three key messages about breast cancer: (i) understand your breast cancer risk, (ii) talk openly about breast cancer and (iii) get regular mammograms. A community-based convenience sample of Afric...

Sophisticated three-dimensional animation and video compositing software enables the creation of complex multimedia instructional movies. However, if the design of such presentations does not take account of cognitive load and multimedia theories, then their effectiveness as learning aids will be compromised. We investigated the use of animated images versus still images by creating two version...

Human motor skills can be acquired by observation without the benefit of immediate physical practice. The current study tested if physical rehearsal and observational learning share common neural substrates within an action observation network (AON) including premotor and inferior parietal regions, that is, areas activated both for execution and observation of similar actions. Participants trai...

OBJECTIVE To determine the television-, DVD-, and video-viewing habits of children younger than 2 years. DESIGN A telephone survey of 1009 parents of children aged 2 to 24 months. SETTING Parents in Minnesota and Washington state were surveyed. PARTICIPANTS A random sample of parents of children born in the previous 2 years was drawn from birth certificate records. Households in which Eng...