Social and demographic trends are placing an increasing number of adults at risk for loneliness, an established risk factor for physical and mental illness. The growing costs of loneliness have led to a number of loneliness reduction interventions. Qualitative reviews have identified four primary intervention strategies: 1) improving social skills, 2) enhancing social support, 3) increasing opportunities for social contact, and 4) addressing maladaptive social cognition. An integrative meta-analysis of loneliness reduction interventions was conducted to quantify the effects of each strategy and to examine the potential role of moderator variables. Results revealed that single group pre-post and non-randomized comparison studies yielded larger mean effect sizes relative to randomized comparison studies. Among studies that used the latter design, the most successful interventions addressed maladaptive social cognition. This is consistent with current theories regarding loneliness and its etiology. Theoretical and methodological issues associated with designing new loneliness reduction interventions are discussed.

We show that the relationship between loneliness and personality is largely explained by its relationship with Neuroticism, which is substantially genetic in nature.

Can social resilience be trained? We report results of a double-dissociative randomized controlled study in which 48 Army platoons were randomly assigned to social resilience training (intervention condition) or cultural awareness training (active control group). The same surveys were administered to all platoons at baseline and after the completion of training to determine the short-term training effects, generalization effects beyond training, and possible adverse effects. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that social resilience, compared with cultural awareness, training produced small but significant improvements in social cognition (e.g., increased empathy, perspective taking, & military hardiness) and decreased loneliness, but no evidence was found for social resilience training to generalize beyond these training foci nor to have adverse effects. Moreover, as predicted, cultural awareness, compared with social resilience, training produced increases in knowledge about and decreases in prejudice toward Afghans. Additional research is warranted to determine the long-term durability, safety, and generalizability of social resilience training.

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Autonomous agents are often tasked with operating in an area where feedback is unavailable. Inspired by such applications, this paper develops a novel switched systems-based control method for uncertain nonlinear systems with temporary loss of state feedback. To compensate for intermittent feedback, an observer is used while state feedback is available to reduce the estimation error, and a predictor is utilized to propagate the estimates while state feedback is unavailable. Based on the resulting subsystems, maximum and minimum dwell time conditions are developed via a Lyapunov-based switched systems analysis to relax the constraint of maintaining constant feedback. Using the dwell time conditions, a switching trajectory is developed to enter and exit the feedback denied region in a manner that ensures the overall switched system remains stable. A scheme for designing a switching trajectory with a smooth transition function is provided. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of control design.

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