Jennifer Vendemia - US grants

Abstract
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0011132
Douglas H. Wedell

There is widespread use of assessment tools in our society. Performance
appraisal is one such tool that serves as a basis for important personnel
decisions, such as allocation of raises or recommendation for promotion or
termination. Because performance appraisal strongly relies on subjective
judgment, it is susceptible to systematic biases or distortions. One such
bias that has been repeatedly demonstrated in performance appraisal is
contextual contrast. This bias consists of the tendency to rate a person's
work performance higher after assessing other employees with poorer work
records than after assessing those with better work records. Such contextual
dependency represents a serious source of error in assessment, threatening its
reliability and validity.

This project explores different procedures designed to reduce or eliminate
contextual contrast in performance appraisal and thereby create more reliable
and valid assessment techniques. Materials consist of performance profiles of
hypothetical employees that include information on several facets of their
work records. In each experiment, the contrast bias is induced by having
participants evaluate different sets of materials prior to assessing a core
set of materials. The aim of the research is to develop assessment procedures
that will produce the same judgments of core materials across different
contexts. These procedures include manipulating category labels, types of
judgments, and training methods. Experiments will test the degree to which
including clear examples for the different category levels will reduce
contextual bias. Additional experiments will test the efficacy of two
alternative judgment tasks, comparative and similarity judgment, for
eliminating contrast effects. Finally, another series of experiments explores
the potential for different training regimens to eliminate contextual bias.
The aim of this research is to develop procedures that could be implemented in
business, education, and government to produce more reliable and valid
assessments.
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Abstract Despite a wide array of treatment options, the number of people whose acute painful back injuries progress to chronic pain states continues to grow at an alarming rate. The reasons for this rapid increase in persistent back pain-related symptoms remains unknown. However, based upon previous research, we believe that a primary cause for this failure of recovery relates to maladaptive neurophysiological changes that occur within the brain in response to low back injury and pain. Specifically, injury to the back often results in acute changes to functional movement. In the short-term these movement changes protect injured tissues and avoid further pain provocation. However, the movement adaptations may not resolve when symptoms decrease and will become maladaptive over time. They contribute to reinjury and in some cases the transition to chronic low back pain (LBP). The association between these altered trunk movement patterns and chronic LBP is strongly supported in the literature. In addition, an individual?s unconsciously acquired fear of pain can change behaviors (fear of movement) and their cognitive and emotional adaptations, can drive pain persistence and be associated with sensorimotor cortical changes. We believe that these maladaptive movement patterns are driven, in large part, by brain changes in the way sensorimotor cortical regions integrate somatosensory information. Our preliminary neuroimaging data supports our central hypothesis that, individuals with chronic LBP have altered cortical sensorimotor integration that are associated with back movements. We will use a cross-sectional design (50 chronic LBP; 50 asymptomatic individuals) and two novel neuroimaging protocols to assess differences in sensorimotor brain function (Aim 1). Our innovative fMRI protocols use direct sensory stimulation to the trunk, and trunk and pelvis movements performed in the scanner to assess sensorimotor integration. This approach allows us to capture brain activation in response to loads and stresses on both the musculoskeletal structures (e.g., muscles, joints) and sensory components (e.g., muscle spindles) of the trunk. We will also collect biomechanical data during tasks that challenge trunk posture and movement control, and clinical data related to pain, fear of movement, anxiety and depression. These measures will be used to evaluate the impact of altered sensorimotor brain function on control of trunk movements (Aim 2) and to explore the relationship between cortical systems and sensory-motor associations (conditioned fear behaviors), attention-monitoring (cognitive factors), and sensory expectations and emotional responses (acquired emotional states) (Aim 3). We expect an immediate impact of our findings on back rehabilitation programs as they will have direct implications for how back exercise and movement training is taught and practiced. Longer term impact will be realized by testing efficacy and dosing of treatment approaches for prevention of recurrence and progression to chronicity.