Health literacy is important for patients’ comprehension of the health and medical messages conveyed to them and their meaning for them so that they can better manage their health. The aim of the study was to examine the level of health literacy within the elderly population. The hypothesis was that health literacy would be inadequate, and related to demographic variables. Sixty men and women over the age of 65 who volunteered to participate in the study completed a 13-item health literacy questionnaire. Overall, the level of health literacy among the participants was mostly inadequate. They reported difficulty in reading medical material in Hebrew and understanding the doctor, thus requiring assistance (20%); difficulty in reading medical documents, completing medical forms and understanding medical terms; difficulty in reading the leaflet attached to medications (33%), test results (40%) and medical information written in English (66%) and difficulty searching the internet for information (53.3%). The level of health literacy was associated with education while the best profile for adequate health literacy was for those who spoke Hebrew and completed secondary education. Medical teams have an obligation to be alert and attentive to the level of health literacy of elderly patients and to modify communication and information to an accommodating degree, so that elderly patients can better manage their health.

The writing process is a complex task involving dexterous manipulation of the writing instrument by the hand digits and biomechanical ergonomic factors that contribute to handwriting efficiency and productivity. We describe a pilot study using an instrumented writing apparatus – a sensor (pen) and a digitized writing surface (tablet) – to measure the pen-grip kinetics (digit forces) and the pen pressure applied to the tablet during a writing task. Eight elementary school students with no handwriting difficulties copied a short story. The mean digit forces on the pen were compared with the mean pen pressure on the tablet at five interval points. Results revealed that the digit forces on the pen were significantly stronger than the pen pressure on the tablet. Results also showed significantly less digit-force variability throughout the writing task than the pen-pressure variability on the writing surface, which significantly lessened toward the end of the writing task. Information on these properties can broaden understanding of the elements that influence nonproficient handwriting in children with dysgraphia. Results also indicate the possible efficacy of a therapeutic tool for handwriting assessment and intervention using objective measurements during writing, warranting future studies with children with and without dysgraphia.

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have particular difficulty in negotiating conflict. A randomized control trial (RCT) was carried out to determine whether the negotiation strategies of adolescents with ASD would be enhanced via a 6-week intervention based on a video modeling application. Adolescents with ASD, aged 12–18 years, were randomly divided into an intervention group (n = 36) and a non-treatment control group (n = 25). Participants’ negotiating strategies prior to and following the intervention were measured using the Five Factor Negotiation Scale (FFNS; Nakkula & Nikitopoulos, 1999) and the ConflicTalk questionnaire (Kimsey & Fuller, 2003). The results suggest that video modeling is an effective intervention for improving and maintaining conflict negotiation strategies of adolescents with ASD.

Recent studies have analyzed the writing metrics of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) using computerized systems. To date, the use of computerized visual feedback to improve handwriting has not been investigated. This study aimed to examine the effects of computerized visual feedback on handwriting performance in time, spatial orientation, and pressure indices for children with DCD. Twenty-seven children aged 7 to 12 years with DCD assessed by the Movement Assessment Battery for Children and the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire received one weekly intervention session for 8 weeks, during which they twice copied an excerpt onto a tablet. Once, they received visual feedback where the writing color corresponded to the degree of pressure on the writing surface, and once they received no visual feedback. The two conditions were counterbalanced throughout the sessions. Pre-intervention sessions were compared with post-intervention sessions and with new texts for time, spatial orientation, and pressure measures. The findings revealed significantly decreased total and mean letter writing, in-air, and writing time and increased capacity in the visual feedback condition. In the spatial variables, a significant decrease in letter height variance was found. Pressure increased significantly throughout the intervention with visual feedback, whereas it decreased post-test in the writing task in both conditions and was maintained in the new text. Visual feedback intervention can increase the kinesthetic–haptic feedback required to regulate pressure during writing, promoting more efficient feedforward processes and improving output quality and capacity. The training effectiveness was transferable, and the intervention accessibility could increase student autonomy.

Healthy older adults frequently complain on difficulty in recalling the locations of objects of everyday use. Cognitive abilities decline with normal aging; inefficiencies of information processing, as well as deterioration of neuronal structures, may impede the performance of complex cognitive skills such as spatial memory. Extraneous, task-irrelevant cognitive load in real environments is usually high and might interfere with spatial memory abilities of older adults. The purpose of this study was to determine (1) the extent to which older adults maintain their cognitive capacity during a spatial memory task as compared to young adults and (2) whether this capacity is affected by performance of the task in a real environment setting where the cognitive demands are similar to a simulation, but the physical demands (navigating via walking versus via a mouse) vary. In the museum, participants physically moved between display stations to locate hidden tokens performing a task in which an ongoing representation of previous searches had to be remembered. A comparable task was implemented via mouse actions on a computer simulation. Seventeen healthy older (60–80 years) and twenty younger (20–45 years) adults performed both tasks in a counterbalanced order. The younger group was superior to the older group in terms of success rate and completion time for both conditions. All participants performed better during the simulated task. The delta between the total performance score in the two settings of the older group was significantly larger as compared to the younger group, suggesting a differential impact of setting on the groups. Our results highlight the importance and feasibility of experimentation in ecologically relevant settings: differences were found in the way the cognitive performance of older and younger adults was affected by setting. Older adults appear to preserve basic cognitive abilities required for successful performance of object–location memory tasks. However, real museum setting appeared to impose higher demands on the older adults.