Construction play frequency and relations with spatial ability and mathematics performance

The nature of the home mathematics environment (which includes numerical and spatial activities at home) is related to children's spatial and mathematics performance. The current study investigated concrete and digital construction play frequency and relations with spatial and mathematical skills. Participants aged 7-9 years (N = 634) reported their frequency of construction play (concrete and digital) and completed direct measures of spatial ability and mathematics performance. Correlations between measures revealed no association between construction play frequency and outcome measures. This suggests that quantity of construction play is not pertinent for spatial and mathematics skills, however future research should explore whether quality of play is an important factor.

Effects of physical exercise, LEGO, and Minecraft activities on anxiety in underserved children with autism: Study design and methodological strategies

Anxiety is a common comorbidity for individuals with ASD, and there is some preliminary data about the efficacy of physical exercise to alleviate anxiety. However, we are not aware of any studies that have compared the effects of a physical exercise program on anxiety in underserved children with ASD using a randomized controlled research design. This paper describes a method to evaluate and compare the efficacy of an 8-week physical exercise intervention with a sedentary play intervention to alleviate anxiety in young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) from underserved backgrounds. We assessed anxiety and its physical symptoms using the parent-rated Child Behavior Checklist DSM-5 anxiety (CBCL DSM-5) subscale, the child-rated Screen for Childhood Anxiety Related Emotional Disorder (SCARED), the parent-rated Child's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), and salivary cortisol. We also utilized the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C) to assess physical activity level and identify compounds. Unique components of this study include: •Implementation of novel physical exercise and sedentary play interventions that have been designed for children with ASD.•Recruitment of predominantly underserved and non-English speaking families.

Effectiveness of listening to music and playing with Lego on children's postoperative pain

PURPOSE

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of music and playing with Lego in postoperative management pain in children.

DESIGN AND METHODS

In this three-group quasi-experimental study, the participants in this interventional study were 96 children aged 6 to 12 years admitted to the pediatric surgery ward of Mofid Hospital and Medical Center in Tehran. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. They were then randomly placed into three intervention groups. Pain intensity was measured for the participants in all three groups before the intervention. The intervention was performed in two 15-min sessions with an interval of 5 min in three intervention groups. Then pain intensity was measured using the Oucher Pain Scale before the intervention and in four intervals: Immediately after the intervention, half an hour, one hour, and 3 h after the intervention, respectively. Pain intensity was also measured at the same time intervals for the participants in the control group. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS-25 software using descriptive statistics, the Bonferroni test, and Tukey's test.

RESULTS

The data showed that the three groups were identical in terms of demographic characteristics (p > 0.05).A comparison of the music listening group and the control group showed statistically significant difference in terms of postoperative pain (P < 0.05).However, the data showed significant differences between the control group and the Lego group in terms of pain intensity immediately after the intervention, half an hour, one hour, and 3 h after the intervention, respectively (p < 0.05).The data also revealed a significant difference between the children in the music group and the Lego group at all phases (p < 0.05), and the children in the Lego group reported less pain after the intervention compared to the children in the music listening group. Nevertheless, there was a statistically significant difference between the three groups in terms of reported pain intensity half an hour, one hour, and three hours after the intervention (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

The results showed that playing with Legos had a greater effect on reducing postoperative pain in children than listening to music. Thus, nurses are recommended to make arrangements for children to play with Legos after surgery.

PRACTICE IMPLICATION

Playing with Legos can be used to control postoperative pain in school-age children in medical centers and wards of pediatric hospitals.

Can Social Communication Skills for Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder Rehearsed Inside the Video Game Environment of Minecraft Generalize to the Real World?

In this paper, we outline opportunities within the video game environment for building skills applicable to real-world issues faced by some children. The game Minecraft is extremely popular and of particular interest to children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Although the game has been used by support communities to facilitate the social interaction of children and peer support for their parents, little has been done to examine how social skills developed within the game environment generalize to the real world. Social Craft aims to establish a framework in which key social communication skills would be rehearsed in-game with a view to facilitating their replication in a similarly contained real-world environment. Central to this approach is an understanding of the basic principles of behavior and the engagement of a sound methodology for the collection of data inside and outside the respective environments.

User-friendly freehand ultrasound calibration using Lego bricks and automatic registration

PURPOSE

As an inexpensive, noninvasive, and portable clinical imaging modality, ultrasound (US) has been widely employed in many interventional procedures for monitoring potential tissue deformation, surgical tool placement, and locating surgical targets. The application requires the spatial mapping between 2D US images and 3D coordinates of the patient. Although positions of the devices (i.e., ultrasound transducer) and the patient can be easily recorded by a motion tracking system, the spatial relationship between the US image and the tracker attached to the US transducer needs to be estimated through an US calibration procedure. Previously, various calibration techniques have been proposed, where a spatial transformation is computed to match the coordinates of corresponding features in a physical phantom and those seen in the US scans. However, most of these methods are difficult to use for novel users.

METHODS

We proposed an ultrasound calibration method by constructing a phantom from simple Lego bricks and applying an automated multi-slice 2D-3D registration scheme without volumetric reconstruction. The method was validated for its calibration accuracy and reproducibility.

RESULTS

Our method yields a calibration accuracy of [Formula: see text] mm and a calibration reproducibility of 1.29 mm.

CONCLUSION

We have proposed a robust, inexpensive, and easy-to-use ultrasound calibration method.