Video game experience and its influence on visual attention parameters: An investigation using the framework of the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA)

Experts with video game experience, in contrast to non-experienced persons, are superior in multiple domains of visual attention. However, it is an open question which basic aspects of attention underlie this superiority. We approached this question using the framework of Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) with tools that allowed us to assess various parameters that are related to different visual attention aspects (e.g., perception threshold, processing speed, visual short-term memory storage capacity, top-down control, spatial distribution of attention) and that are measurable on the same experimental basis. In Experiment 1, we found advantages of video game experts in perception threshold and visual processing speed; the latter being restricted to the lower positions of the used computer display. The observed advantages were not significantly moderated by general person-related characteristics such as personality traits, sensation seeking, intelligence, social anxiety, or health status. Experiment 2 tested a potential causal link between the expert advantages and video game practice with an intervention protocol. It found no effects of action video gaming on perception threshold, visual short-term memory storage capacity, iconic memory storage, top-down control, and spatial distribution of attention after 15 days of training. However, observations of a selected improvement of processing speed at the lower positions of the computer screen after video game training and of retest effects are suggestive for limited possibilities to improve basic aspects of visual attention (TVA) with practice.     

Content and context in incremental processing: “the ham sandwich” revisited

The interplay of content and context is observable in a moment to moment manner as propositional content unfolds. The current contribution illustrates this through data from real-time language comprehension indicating that propositional content is not computed in isolation but relies in important ways on context during every step of the computation of meaning. The relevant notion of context that we have to adopt includes all aspects of possible worlds and draws on a variety of knowledge representations, which in a first processing phase serve to generate expectations for upcoming words. In a second phase, the discourse representation is assessed and if necessary updated by means of inferential reasoning and enrichment to reflect the speaker’s intended meaning.     

Task influences on the production and comprehension of compound words

Studies of compound word processing have revealed effects of the compound’s constituents in a wide variety of word production and comprehension tasks. Surprisingly, effects of the compound’s constituents were not found in a recent word production study using the picture-naming task. Here, we examined whether these contrasting constituent effects reflect methodological differences or whether they reflect the influence of task-specific characteristics on compound processing. A large set of compounds was used to elicit picture-naming latencies in Experiment 1 and visual lexical decision latencies in Experiment 2. Regression analyses revealed surface frequency effects in picture naming and lexical decision and constituent effects only in lexical decision. These results rule out methodological differences as the basis for the contrasting constituent effects observed between the various tasks and imply that constituent effects are best understood as arising out of task-specific characteristics.     

Anaphoric Pronouns and the Computation of Prominence Profiles

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Previous research has investigated anaphoric resolution at the anaphor. Using a self-paced reading study we show that prominence profiles, i.e. the ranking of...     

Gender Effects in Information Processing on a Nonverbal Decoding Task

Women typically outperform men on the ability to assess other people??s nonverbal behavior. This difference might occur because women are taught to be more sensitive to emotional and nonverbal cues at a very early age compared to men. As a consequence, women might use a more favorable cognitive processing style than men during nonverbal decoding. The present study investigated whether this gender difference is due to the use of different cognitive information processing styles (global or local). Participants (N?=?137) were Swiss undergraduate students that were randomly assigned to either a global (focusing on the whole) or a local (focusing on details) priming of information processing style, or to a control group. They then performed a nonverbal decoding task. Results showed that compared to the control group, local priming had beneficial and global priming detrimental effects for nonverbal decoding accuracy. This was due to an improved performance in men after the local priming; women??s performance was not significantly affected by the local priming. Global priming increased nonverbal decoding accuracy in men and decreased performance in women. We conclude that women already use the more beneficial local processing style by default and that men??s performance can be boosted when providing them a processing strategy.     

Daily management of work and family goals in employed parents

This study uses one-week time-sampling information from 104 employed parents with pre-school children to examine the association between daily workloads, control strategies, and goal progress. In addition, it examines relationships between work- and family-goal progress and important stress indices such as positive/negative affect and cortisol levels. Multilevel models indicate that family-specific control strategies fostered daily family-goal progress whereas work-specific control strategies were unrelated to daily work-goal progress. Furthermore, employed parents who successfully pursued their work and family goals as part of their daily life routines reported concurrent higher positive and lower negative affect. Only family-goal progress was associated with reduced cortisol secretion whereas work-goal progress was not. Our findings illustrate the usefulness of examining the dynamic interplay between daily workloads, control strategies, goal progress, and stress in the daily lives of employed parents and suggest that the underlying mechanisms may be domain-specific.     

Psychoedukation bei Personen mit erh?htem Psychoserisiko

Background

So far only few studies are available which have evaluated the effectiveness of psychoeducation for individuals at risk of psychosis in the early initial prodromal state (EIPS) whereas the benefit of psychoeducation in psychotic patients has been repeatedly confirmed. Thus the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of psychoeducation in individuals with increased risk of psychosis in the EIPS.

Method

A total of 128 help-seeking outpatients in the EIPS participated in a randomized controlled multicentre trial of 12 months of either psychoeducation as part of an integrated psychological intervention (IPI) or supportive counseling (SC). The time to transition to psychosis at 12-month and 24-month follow-up as well as the social adjustment at baseline, time of transition or post-treatment by means of the social adjustment scale (SAS?II) were assessed.

Results

The IPI was superior to SC in preventing progression to psychosis at 12-month (3.2% versus 16.9%, p?=0.008) and 24-month follow-up (6.3% versus 20.0%, p?=0.019). Both treatments resulted in significant pre-post improvements in SAS?II with no significant differences between the two groups.

Conclusions

Psychoeducation as part of an integrated intervention is effective for preventing the onset of psychosis over a 24-month time period in people in an EIPS. Moreover patients at risk of developing first episode psychosis seem to benefit from a specific psychoeducational intervention in the context of other treatments as well as from SC.     

Chronic psychosocial stress increases the risk for inflammation-related colon carcinogenesis in male mice

Patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) than the general population. Furthermore, chronic psychosocial stress increases the likelihood of developing IBD and multiple types of malignant neoplasms, including CRC. Here, for the first time, we investigate the effects of chronic psychosocial stress in male mice on an artificially induced CRC, by employing the chronic subordinate colony (CSC) housing paradigm in combination with the reliable azoxymethane (AOM)/dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) CRC model. Colonoscopy revealed that CSC mice showed accelerated macroscopic suspect lesions. In addition, more CSC mice developed low-grade dysplasia (LGD) and/or high-grade dysplasia (HGD) in the colonic tissue compared to the single-housed control mice (SHC). CSC mice showed an increased number of Ki67+ and a decreased number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling epithelial cells in colonic tissue. Colonic liver receptor homolog-1 (LRH-1), cyclooxygenase II (COXII), tumor necrosis factor, forkhead box P3 (FoxP3) mRNA as well as colonic ?-catenin, COXII, and LRH-1 protein expression were also increased in CSC compared with SHC mice. Although the number of CD4+ Th cells was increased, a tendency toward a decreased colonic interferon-γ (IFN-γ) mRNA expression was observed. Furthermore, despite an increased percentage of CD3+ cells and CD3+/FoxP3+ double-positive cells within mesenteric lymph node cells of CSC mice, IFN-γ secretion from these cells was unaffected. Altogether, our results suggest that chronic psychosocial stress increases the risk for AOM/DSS-induced and, thus, inflammation-related CRC. Finally, assessment of additional time points may test whether the shift from tumor-protective Th1 cell to regulatory T-cell immunity represents a consequence of increased carcinogenesis or a causal factor involved in its development.