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Increased task demand will increase the pilot mental workload (PMWL). When PMWL is increased, mental overload may occur resulting in degraded performance. During pilots' instrument flight rules (IFR) proficiency test, PMWL is typically not measured. Therefore, little is known about workload during the proficiency test and pilots' potential to cope with higher task demands than those experienced during the test. In this study, fighter pilots' performance and PMWL was measured during a real IFR proficiency test in an F/A-18 simulator. PMWL was measured using heart rate (HR) and heart rate variation (HRV). Performance was rated using Finnish Air Force's official rating scales. Results indicated that HR and HRV differentiate varying task demands in situations where variations in performance are insignificant. It was concluded that during a proficiency test, PMWL should be measured together with the task performance measurement.

The present study investigated the development of executive functions (EFs) and their associations with performance and behavior at school in 8–12-year-old children. The EFs were measured by computer-based n-back, Continuous Performance and Go/Nogo tasks. School performance was evaluated by Teacher Report Form (TRF) and behavior by TRF and Child Behavior Checklist. The studied dimensions of EF were cognitive efficiency/speed, working memory/attention and inhibitory control. Strong age effects were found for these cognitive abilities (p values

Motor retardation is a cardinal feature in adult depression. Limited information exists about motor activity in depressed children. The present study evaluated motor activity in depressed children compared to controls and investigated whether motor activity can be linked with the severity of symptoms in depressed children.Motor activity during both day- and night time was recorded by actigraphy in twenty-two depressed children and their controls. A K-SADS-PL interview of the child and his/her mother was used to diagnose depression. The depressed children filled in the Child Depression Inventory (CDI) as a self-report of the severity of depression. Parents and teachers of both depressed children and controls filled in the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Teacher Report Form (TRF).Motor activity was reduced during the daytime in depressed children compared to controls (p0.001). Depressed children spent more time in total immobility during the night time than their peers (p0.05). In depressed children motor activity was linked with the severity of self- (r=-0.45, p0.05) and teacher-reported (r=-0.52, p0.05) symptoms. Depressed children with suicidal ideation (n=10) differed significantly in motor activity compared to depressed children without suicidal ideation (n=12) and controls (n=22).Sample size was only moderate.Reduced motor activity is an important feature of childhood depression. Objectively measured motor activity can distinguish depressed children from their peers. Motor retardation can be linked with the severity of depression, especially suicidal ideation and possibly subtype depressed children into groups with different etiology, treatment needs and course of illness.

INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE (IBD), NAMELY CROHN DISEASE (CD) AND ULCERATIVE COLITIS (UC), IS MOST TYPICALLY DIAGNOSED IN LATE adolescence and early adulthood.1 The incidence of pediatric IBD is on the rise in many Western countries. In Finland, the incidence almost doubled from 1987 to 2003,2 and the same trend has been observed elsewhere.3–6 Primary causes of IBD or factors underlying the increasing incidence and geographic variation remain obscure.7 Symptoms of IBD, such as uncontrollable bowel function, rectal bleeding, diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss, fatigue, and, in CD, aphthous ulcers and fever, may be severe and may disturb sleep. Surprisingly, very few studies have investigated the quality of sleep and daytime tiredness in patients with IBD. A recent report on sleep disturbances compared adults with inactive IBD (n = 16) with patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) (n = 9) and healthy control subjects (n = 7).8 Patients with IBD did not differ significantly from patients with IBS with respect to sleep parameters assessed by a single night of polysomnography and questionnaires. However, sleep quality of both patient groups was lower than that of the control group. The 3 groups did not differ with respect to daytime dysfunction.8 Another questionnaire-based study of sleep disturbances among adult patients with inactive IBD (n = 80) showed prolonged sleep latency, frequent sleep fragmentation, higher rate of using sleeping pills, decreased daytime energy, increased tiredness, and poor overall sleep quality in IBD compared with healthy control subjects (n = 15).9 In this study, patient-reported sleep quality correlated with disease severity. Of the patients with IBD, 66% assessed their sleep as poor during the active state of the disease, and 49% believed disturbed sleep affected their inflammatory disease.9 Likewise, in a study focusing on extraintestinal symptoms in adults with IBD (n = 55), patients with IBD were noted to have significantly more sleep disturbances than control subjects, and diarrhea predicted sleep disturbances in these patients.10 In all of these studies, only adult patients were included. The sample sizes were small, and population-based control groups were lacking. Data on sleep disturbances in young patients with IBD are sparse. We found only 1 preliminary study on sleep disturbances among young patients with IBD (n = 41) in Israel, published as an abstract.11 This questionnaire-based study concluded that moderate and severe sleep disturbances are frequent among young patients with IBD. No correlation was found between sleep disturbance and disease characteristics of IBD (e.g., disease type, disease activity, or medication). No precise information was given about the method of collecting data on sleep or disease activity. For other inflammatory conditions, such as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), sleep quality and daytime tiredness have been explored in a few studies.12–16 These findings reveal that sleep is disrupted in children with JRA. For example, comparable child and parent questionnaires, the Sleep Self-Report (SSR) and the Children's Sleep Habit Questionnaire (CSHQ), were used in a retrospective study of 25 children with active JRA to assess sleep and its relationship to pain, dysfunction, and disease activity.15 Parents of patients with JRA reported significantly higher total scores on the CSHQ and on the subscales assessing nighttime waking, parasomnias, sleep anxiety, sleep-disordered breathing, and morning wakening/daytime sleepiness than did parents of healthy control subjects. However, the total score on the CSHQ did not correlate with disease severity; this was in contrast with the total score on the SSR, which correlated highly with pain but not with other arthritis-related variables.15 Lack of knowledge about the quality and quantity of sleep in pediatric patients with IBD warrants studies in these patients. Sleep disturbances may increase the risk for psychosocial symptoms or disorders such as tiredness and depression.17 Thus, more research is needed on sleep in adolescents with IBD and the association between sleep and IBD symptom severity. The first objective of the current study was to evaluate sleep problems, quality of sleep, and daytime tiredness among adolescents with IBD in comparison with population-based control subjects. The second objective was to evaluate the effect of the severity of IBD symptoms on sleep problems, quality of sleep, and daytime tiredness. This questionnaire-based study includes both parent and self-reports.

Background: The aim was to evaluate psychosocial symptoms and competence as reported by the parents and the adolescents themselves among patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in relation to population-based controls. Methods: Standardized Achenbach questionnaires—Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for the parents and Youth Self-Report (YSR) for the adolescents—were sent to Finnish families of adolescents with IBD (age 10–18 years), and their controls matched for age, gender, and place of residence. The final study group comprised 160 adolescents with IBD and 236 controls with their parents, respectively. Results: According to parent reports, adolescents with IBD had more symptoms of anxious/depressed mood (P < 0.001), withdrawn/depressed mood (P < 0.05), social problems (P < 0.05), thought problems (P < 0.001), somatic complaints (P < 0.001), and lower competence (P < 0.05) than population-based controls. Unexpectedly, there was no group difference in the amount of self-reported psychosocial symptoms, somatic complaints, or competence between adolescents with IBD and their peers. However, adolescents with severe IBD reported significantly more emotional problems (P < 0.001) than those with mild symptoms or controls. Conclusions: According to parents, adolescents with IBD have more emotional problems, social problems, thought problems, and lower competence than their population-based peers. Self-perceived severity of the IBD symptoms is associated with a larger amount of parent and self-reported emotional symptoms. Complementary methods should be used while assessing the psychosocial well-being of adolescents with IBD as questionnaires alone may be insufficient. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2010;)

To study emotional and behavioral problems and sleep and cognitive performance in snoring and nonsnoring 3- to 6-year-old children.As part of an epidemiological study of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in preschool-aged children, 43 snorers and 46 nonsnorers participated in a clinical study. Their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The children were assessed with Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Revised and subtests of the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment (NEPSY-A) representing aspects of attention, language skills, sensorimotor functions, memory, and learning.On the CBCL snoring children had significantly more parent reported internalizing symptoms (p.05) than the nonsnoring children, especially symptoms of anxious/depressed mood (p.01) and emotional reactivity (p.05). More children from the snoring group than from the nonsnoring group (22 vs 11%) scored in the subclinical or clinical range on the internalizing scale. Interestingly, no significant difference between the groups was found in the amount of externalizing symptoms. The amount of sleep problems other than snoring was higher in the snoring than in the nonsnoring group (p.01). On tests measuring auditory attention (p.01) and language skills (verbal IQ, p.05), the snoring group performed worse than the nonsnoring group.Our results support the view that SDB should be considered a possible risk factor for mood disorder symptoms and impaired cognitive performance in children.

A major problem in research on paranormal beliefs is that the concept of “paranormality” remains to be adequately defined. The aim of this study was to empirically justify the following definition: paranormal beliefs are beliefs in physical, biological, or psychological phenomena that contain core ontological attributes of one of the other two categories [e.g., a stone (physical) having thoughts (psychological)]. We hypothesized that individuals who believe in paranormal phenomena are slower in understanding whether sentences with core knowledge violations are literally true than skeptics, and that this difference would be reflected by a more negative N400. Ten believers and 10 skeptics (six men, age range 23–49) participated in the study. Event-related potentials (N400) were recorded as the participants read 210 three-word Finnish sentences, of which 70 were normal (“The house has a history”), 70 were anomalies (“The house writes its history”) and 70 included violations of core knowledge (“The house knows its history”). The participants were presented with a question that contextualized the sentences: “Is this sentence literally true?” While the N400 effects were similar for normal and anomalous sentences among the believers and the skeptics, a more negative N400 effect was found among the believers than among the skeptics for sentences with core knowledge violations. The results support the new definition of “paranormality”, because participants who believed in paranormal phenomena appeared to find it more difficult to construct a reasonable interpretation of the sentences with core knowledge violations than the skeptics did as indicated by the N400.