This mixed-methods, quasi-experimental pilot study examined whether the Nintendo Wii Sports (NWS) active video game (exergame) system could significantly improve the functional ability, physical activity levels, and quality of life of 34 older adults (4 men and 30 women, 83 ± 8 yr) living in 2 residential aged-care (RAC) centers. Change score analyses indicated the intervention group had significantly greater increases in bicep curl muscular endurance, physical activity levels, and psychological quality of life than the control group (p< .05). Analysis of the quotes underlying the 3 themes (feeling silly, feeling good; having fun; and something to look forward to) suggested that intervention group participants developed a sense of empowerment and achievement after some initial reluctance and anxiousness. They felt that the games were fun and provided an avenue for greater socialization. These results add some further support to the utilization of NWS exergames in the RAC context.

This study demonstrates how naturalistic decision-making (NDM) can be usefully applied to study 'decision inertia'-Namely the cognitive process associated with failures to execute action when a decision-maker struggles to choose between equally perceived aversive outcomes. Data assessed the response and recovery from a sudden impact disaster during a 2-day immersive simulated emergency response. Fourteen agencies (including police, fire, ambulance, and military) and 194 participants were involved in the exercise. By assessing the frequency, type, audience, and content of communications, and by reference to five subject matter experts' slow time analyses of critical turning points during the incident, three barriers were identified as reducing multiagency information sharing and the macrocognitive understanding of the incident. When the decision problem was non-time-bounded, involved multiple agencies, and identification of superordinate goals was lacking, the communication between agencies decreased and agencies focused on within-agency information sharing. These barriers distracted teams from timely and efficient discussions on decisions and action execution with seeking redundant information, which resulted in decision inertia. Our study illustrates how naturalistic environments are conducive to examining relatively understudied concepts of decision inertia, failures to act, and shared situational macrocognition in situations involving large distributed teams. Practitioner points Researchers can use NDM to explore the cognitive processing associated with failures to act/decision inertia. Complexities in the decision-making environment of a multiteam system (e.g., non-time-bounded choice, large team size, and lack of strategic goals) are associated with decision-making failures. Barriers cause decision inertia as teams focus on redundant intra-agency information seeking rather than cooperative interagency communications. Strategic direction is especially important for shifting multiteam system communication towards interagency discussions on action execution. If the behavioural implementation of making a decision is the execution of action (Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, 2001; Yates, 2003), then failing to make a decision (e.g., making an executive choice) is when action execution fails. Traditional decision-making

Major emergencies are high-stakes, ambiguous, dynamic and stressful events. Emergency response commanders rely on their expertise and training to mitigate these factors and implement action. The Critical Decision Method was used to interview n=31 commanders from the Police (n=12), Fire and Rescue (n=15) and Ambulance Services (n=4) in the UK about challenges to decision making. Transcripts were analysed in two ways: (i) using thematic analyses to categorise the challenges to incident command; and (ii) grounded theory to develop a theoretical understanding of how challenges influenced decision processing. There were nine core challenges to incident command, themed into two categories: (i) those relating to the perceived characteristics of the incident itself; and (ii) those relating to uncertainties about (inter)personal dynamics of the team(s) responding. Consideration of challenges featured prominently in decision makers' prospective modelling, especially when thinking about goal accomplishment (i.e., 'What if I deploy now? What if I don't?'). Commanders were motivated to 'save life' (attack/approach goal), yet also sought to 'prevent harm' (defend/avoid goal). Challenges led commanders to redundantly deliberate about what to do; their prospective modelling was related to the anticipation of potential negative consequences that might arise both for acting (attack) and not acting (defend). Commanders identified this difficult trade-off, yet described how experience and their 'responsibility as a commander' gave them confidence to overcome decision inertia. Future research is needed to identify whether decision making training on how to anticipate and overcome difficult cognitive trade-offs would lead to more flexible and expedient commanding. 1

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Abstract:The transition from jawless to jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) resulted in the reconfiguration of the muscles and skeleton of the head, including the creation of a separate shoulder girdle with distinct neck muscles. We describe here the only known examples of preserved musculature from placoderms (extinct armored fishes), the phylogenetically most basal jawed vertebrates. Placoderms possess a regionalized muscular anatomy differing radically from the musculature of extant sharks, which is often viewed as primitive for gnathostomes. The placoderm data suggest that neck musculature evolved together with a dermal joint between skull and shoulder girdle, not as part of a broadly flexible neck as in sharks, and that transverse abdominal muscles are an innovation of gnathostomes rather than of tetrapods. Main Text:The most fundamental anatomical divide among living vertebrates is that between the jawless cyclostomes (lampreys and hagfishes) and the jawed gnathostomes (all other vertebrates).Although early development in the two groups is similar, differences in migration and