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| Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News |
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have created a nation of homebodies in the United States, a new study finds.
People are spending nearly an hour less each day doing activities outside the home, researchers reported Thursday in the Journal of the American Planning Association.
In essence, not going out has become the "new normal" post-COVID, experts say.
Since 2019, there's been an overall drop of about 51 minutes in the daily time spent on out-of-home activities, researchers found.
People also spend about 12 minutes less time on daily travel in cars or public transportation.
This decrease in time spent away from home appears to be a lasting consequence of the pandemic, researchers said, and it will affect society on many levels.
For example, cities will need to rethink their dependence on folks who commute in for their workdays, noted the researchers, who are urban planners.
"In a world where cities cannot rely on captive office workers and must work to attract residents, workers and customers, local officials might seek to invest more heavily in their remaining strengths," said lead study author Eric Morris, a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University in South Carolina.
"These include opportunities for recreation, entertainment, culture, arts and more," Morris added in a journal news release. "Central cities might shift toward becoming centers of consumption more than production."
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 34,000 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey, an annual review conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. --->READ MORE HERE
A study by Charles Darwin University (CDU) has leveraged the unique context of mandatory mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the relationship between stuttering, anxiety-related safety behaviors, and the challenge of maintaining open communication.
Led by CDU lecturer and speech pathologist Dr. Hamid Karimi, the research highlights how the fear of negative evaluation by listeners influences adults who stutter (AWS), leading some to conceal their stuttering behind a mask, while others choose to communicate openly despite it.
The study, "Behind the mask: Stuttering, anxiety, and communication dynamics in the era of COVID-19" was published in the International Journal of Language and Communications Disorders.
Most respondents reported masks interfered with non-verbal cues they would otherwise rely on to signal they were experiencing a speech block, leading to negative self-perception and reduced ability to engage with fluency-shaping techniques.
Fluency-shaping techniques assist with the management and severity of symptoms in AWS and include slowed speech rate, gentle speech initiation, soft voice onset and diaphragmatic breathing.
While some study participants saw masks as a plausible short-term means to conceal stuttering and anxiety, Dr. Karimi noted most preferred open communication long-term without the challenges posed by masks. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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