Effect of action video games on the spatial distribution of visuospatial attention

The authors investigated the effect of action gaming on the spatial distribution of attention. The authors used the flanker compatibility effect to separately assess center and peripheral attentional resources in gamers versus nongamers. Gamers exhibited an enhancement in attentional resources compared with nongamers, not only in the periphery but also in central vision. The authors then used a target localization task to unambiguously establish that gaming enhances the spatial distribution of visual attention over a wide field of view. Gamers were more accurate than nongamers at all eccentricities tested, and the advantage held even when a concurrent center task was added, ruling out a trade-off between central and peripheral attention. By establishing the causal role of gaming through training studies, the authors demonstrate that action gaming enhances visuospatial attention throughout the visual field.     

Postnatal depression among mothers in the United Arab Emirates: socio-cultural and physical factors

Postnatal depression (PND) has been found to affect women in cultures around the world. This study sought to further identify the prevalence and related socio-cultural and physical factors in Arab women from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study involved a sample of Emirati women recruited in a government maternity hospital in Abu Dhabi who completed demographic questionnaires soon after giving birth (n=125) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) at 3 months (n=86) and 6 months postpartum (n=56). Data are presented in three categories of: No Depression (scores of 0-9), Borderline Depression (scores of 10-12) and Depression (scores of 13+). It was found that at 3 months, this sample had 22% of mothers falling into the Depression category and another 22% falling in the Borderline Depression category. At 6 months, this fell to 12.5% Depression category and 19.6% Borderline Depression category. Relationships between higher depression scores and risk factors included; not breastfeeding, giving birth to the first child, poor self body image and view of weight, poor relationship with mother-in-law, and an older age at marriage. Results are discussed in relation to UAE and Islamic culture.     

Level of functioning and recidivism risk among adolescent offenders

The assessment of offending youth is important in determining the most appropriate disposition for adolescents involved in the justice system. Recent studies have found a relationship between justice system involvement and level-of-functioning (LOF). This study investigated the relationship between LOF and recidivism risk among adolescents involved in a community-based, juvenile justice treatment program. The results document that conceptually similar domains are substantively correlated; however, a range of functioning was found among youth considered to have the same risk of recidivism. Overall, the results suggest that LOF measures may be associated with risk measures due to a convergence of areas assessed and that the two constructs also may have a relationship analogous to LOF and clinical diagnosis.     

An enriched teaching program for reducing resistance and indices of unhappiness among individuals with profound multiple disabilities

We evaluated an enriched teaching program for reducing resistance and indices of unhappiness displayed by 3 individuals with profound multiple disabilities during teaching sessions. The program involved presentation of preferred activities before, during, and after each teaching session, discontinuation of identified nonpreferred activities, and a brief break and preferred activity following occurrence of resistance. Implementation of the enriched teaching program was accompanied by reductions in resistance and indices of unhappiness for each participant. Results also indicated no negative impact of the program on participant performance of the teaching steps or staff teaching proficiency. Staff questionnaire responses provided a degree of social validation for the observed changes in that staff reported the participants liked the enriched teaching program more than the traditional teaching process. Directions for future research discussed include identifying critical aspects of the overall program and the potential relation between teaching proficiency and the program's enrichment effectiveness.     

Combined expectancies: event-related potentials reveal the early benefits of spatial attention that are obscured by reaction time measures

Visual spatial attention has been likened to a "spotlight" that selectively facilitates the perceptual processing of events at covertly attended locations. However, if participants have advance knowledge of the likely location of an impending target and the likely response it will require, facilitation in response performance does not occur for targets at the expected (or attended) location that require an unexpected response. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a discrimination task in which the most likely target location and target response were simultaneously cued prior to target onset. The ERPs showed evidence of enhanced perceptual-level processing for all targets at attended locations. These results suggest that the lack of response facilitation for unexpected targets at attended locations is likely due to postperceptual processes that are activated by the inclusion of nonspatial stimulus expectancies, response expectancies, or both.     

Development of Gender Differences in Children's Responses to Animated Entertainment

This study examined gender differences in children's responses to animated scenes from an action adventure versus a sad film, and to animated previews of a prototypical male versus female movie. Females were more likely than males to express sadness in response to the sad scene, and gender differences in intensities of sadness increased with age. Children were much more likely to stereotype the male preview as most liked by other boys, whereas the majority of children perceived the female preview as liked by either gender equally. In terms of enjoyment of the male and female previews, gender differences in enjoyment of the male preview were apparent only among children who perceived the film as more appealing to boys, and gender differences in enjoyment of the female preview were apparent only among children who perceived the film as more appealing to girls. Implications for children's programming are discussed.     

Imaging brain in search of mind

The fourth annual fMRI Experience was held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, on 3-14 May 2002. The conference was organized jointly by research fellows at the NIH and Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) in London, and benefited from financial support from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program, the NIMH Division of Intramural Training, and the Guarantors of Brain in association with the IoP.     

The Impact of Adolescent Deviance on Marital Trajectories

Marriage is a key life event that has numerous benefits. Recent research extends these benefits to include desistance from crime and drug use yet there has been little investigation regarding whether deviant behavior in adolescence impacts long-term marital patterns. Since rates of marriage are low among African Americans and rates of adolescent deviance and crime are high, we investigate the long-term relationship between the two drawing on longitudinal data from the Woodlawn cohort of urban African Americans. This article investigates whether serious adolescent delinquency and marijuana use predict marital trajectories, controlling for known correlates. Multivariate findings indicate that within this African-American population, deviance predicts the probability of marriage, stability of marriage, and timing of marriage for men yet deviance relates solely to the probability of marriage for women.     

The influence of indirect and direct emotional processing on memory for facial expressions

We used the Remember–Know procedure (Tulving, 1985 Tulving, E. 1985. Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26: 1–12. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to test the behavioural expression of memory following indirect and direct forms of emotional processing at encoding. Participants (N=32) viewed a series of facial expressions (happy, fearful, angry, and neutral) while performing tasks involving either indirect (gender discrimination) or direct (emotion discrimination) emotion processing. After a delay, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test. Our results revealed that indirect encoding of emotion produced enhanced memory for fearful faces whereas direct encoding of emotion produced enhanced memory for angry faces. In contrast, happy faces were better remembered than neutral faces after both indirect and direct encoding tasks. These findings suggest that fearful and angry faces benefit from a recollective advantage when they are encoded in a way that is consistent with the predictive nature of their threat. We propose that the broad memory advantage for happy faces may reflect a form of cognitive flexibility that is specific to positive emotions.