A randomized, prospective study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of three individual mechanical modalities in the treatment of plantar fasciitis. Two hundred fifty-five subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: custom-made orthoses, over-the-counter arch supports, or tension night splints. Subjects were treated for 3 months, with follow-up visits at 2, 6, and 12 weeks. No statistically significant difference was noted among treatment groups with respect to final outcomes based on first-step pain or pain felt during the day. However, there was a statistically significant difference among the three groups with respect to early patient withdrawal from the study due to continued severe pain, noncompliance, or inability to tolerate the device. Patient compliance was greatest with the use of custom-made orthoses.
In the present study, the developmental differences and similarities in salience hierarchies of four dimensions were investigated. Modified versions of traditional salience tasks were presented to 408 children from 5 to 12 years of age. Several task measures were compared with respect to the relations between them and to the descriptive power provided by each. An identity task was also presented to determine the relation between the assessed hierarchy and performance on a simple problem-solving task. It was shown that hierarchies change with development and that the relative salience of a dimension is negatively associated with both reaction time of choice and number of errors on the identity task. The implications of the results for the role of perceptual salience in problem solving were discussed.When subjects are given the choice of matching or categorizing certain dimensional values to the exclusion of others, the differential frequency with which particular dimensions serve as the basis for selection may be considered a measure of their relative salience; the greater the frequency of choice, the higher the salience. This has been the standard approach taken in studies designed to assess the relative salience of certain dimensions for subjects at different developmental levels (e.
The pressure of a sound varies systematically with a listener's distance from a sound source, providing a useful cue for perceiving changes in the distance between a listener and a sound-producing object. The pressure-discrimination hypothesis predicts that thresholds for discriminating changes in distance are constrained by the underlying ability to discriminate the resulting changes in sound pressure--specifically, that the smallest discriminable change in distance should be about 5% of the reference distance. Previous studies reported thresholds of about 5% for reference distances greater than a few meters but surprisingly worse thresholds for closer reference distances. In the present study, thresholds at two close distances, 1 and 2 m, were within the 5% range predicted from the pressure-discrimination hypothesis. Moreover, thresholds were significantly worse in a control condition in which the pressure cue was removed. Results of previous studies were adjusted to take into account the possibility of conservative response tendencies by the subjects. These adjusted findings agree well with the results of the present study and the pressure-discrimination hypothesis. It is concluded that variations in sound pressure are very useful for perceiving changes in listener-source distances, even at close distances.
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