Visual context processing and its development in gamers and non-gamers

Visual context processing was investigated in both action video game players and nonplayers using the Ebbinghaus illusion task (N = 312, 39.4% female) in a cross-sectional study design. When presented in context, players showed markedly poorer target size discrimination accuracy compared with nonplayers in the 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-years old age groups, but this difference was reduced in 10-years old group and diminished in adults. When presented in isolation (no-context), the two groups displayed similar performance in all age groups. Furthermore, nonplayers (linear) and players (bell curve) showed profoundly different age-related differences in context processing. These findings provide evidence that players might have enhanced perceptual bias to process visual context in the transition from early childhood to early adolescence, and the differences between the two groups start at early ages and continue with distinct developmental profiles.     

Attitude toward women in Turkey: Combined effect of sex,place, and culture

Current Psychology - We examined the combined effect of sex and gender socialization, place and political orientation, and culture (individualism-collectivism) on Turkish students’ attitudes...     

Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech + gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker’s preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients’ speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker’s message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.     

Gender,Sacrifices, and Variability in Commitment: A Daily Diary Study of Pregnant Heterosexual Cohabitors and their Partners

We use interdependence theory and the inertia model to examine how gender and daily relational sacrifices predict daily variability in relationship commitment across a week in 43 U.S. couples who are unmarried cohabitors expecting their first child together (total of 455 days of data). We examined three variants of daily relational sacrifices: frequency, ease, and awareness for both individuals and partners, and we tested for gender differences. Using an Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM), we found that both women and men reported lower variability in commitment when men were perceived as highly aware of the sacrifices made for them. Additionally, women experienced lower variability in commitment when their male partners reported engaging in easier sacrifices. In contrast, women reported higher variability in commitment when they reported greater frequency of sacrifices for their partner. The results can be of practical use for practitioners working with expectant cohabitors and their partners given the unique role gender plays relative to how sacrifices shape variability in daily commitment.     

Neurobıology of Repressıon: A Hypothetıcal Interpretatıon

Freud lived in a time when technology was incapable of explaining the biological correlates of the mental processes he described in psychoanalytic theory. During the last two decades, advances in neuroimaging methods and neuroscience have provided new insights for understanding mind-brain collaboration. Neurobiological underpinnings of psychoanalytical concepts have been an area of interest in recent years. This paper will suggest a new hypothesis for neurobiology of repression. This hypothesis will be discussed with the help of our knowledge about neurobiological mechanisms underlying perception of the emotional significance of an event, memory formation of an emotionally arousing stimulus, role of prefrontal cortex in modulation of subcortical information, neural mechanisms of suppression and molecular mechanisms of memory erasure. We suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and especially its caudal part plays a major role for repression of childhood traumatic events. Possible molecular mechanism of memory erasure in repression is long term depression of glutamatergic neurotransmission between prefrontal cortex- thalamus- limbic system.     

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 600 Turkish words from four age groups

The main purpose of this study was to report age-based subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 600 Turkish words. A total of 115 children, 100 young adults, 115 middle-aged adults, and 127 older adults provided AoA estimates for 600 words on a 7-point scale. The intraclass correlations suggested high reliability, and the AoA estimates were highly correlated across the four age groups. Children gave earlier AoA estimates than the three adult groups; this was true for high-frequency as well as low-frequency words. In addition to the means and standard deviations of the AoA estimates, we report word frequency, concreteness, and imageability ratings, as well as word length measures (numbers of syllables and letters), for the 600 words as supplemental materials. The present ratings represent a potentially useful database for researchers working on lexical processing as well as other aspects of cognitive processing, such as autobiographical memory.     

The Soul,as an Uninhibited Mental Activity,is Reduced into Consciousness by Rules of Quantum Physics

This paper is an effort to describe, in neuroscientific terms, one of the most ambiguous concepts of the universe—the soul. Previous efforts to understand what the soul is and where it may exist have accepted the soul as a subjective and individual entity. We will make two additions to this view: (1) The soul is a result of uninhibited mental activity and lacks spatial and temporal information; (2) The soul is an undivided whole and, to become divided, the soul has to be reduced into unconscious and conscious mental events. This reduction process parallels the maturation of the frontal cortex and GABA becoming the main inhibitory neurotransmitter. As examples of uninhibited mental activity, we will discuss the perceptual differences of a newborn, individuals undergoing dissociation, and individuals induced by psychedelic drugs. Then, we will explain the similarities between the structure of the universe and the structure of the brain, and we propose that consideration of the rules of quantum physics is necessary to understand how the soul is reduced into consciousness.     

Drug Use and Self-Harming Behavior Among Incarcerated Men: Does Childhood Abuse,Anger, and Executive Function Make a Difference?

Childhood abuse, anger, drug-related problems, and self-harm are commonly seen among incarcerated individuals. Forty-three young incarcerated males from an Istanbul prison were assessed for childhood abuse, anger, drug use, self-harming behavior, and executive function (EF). Further, 58% of the sample was using drugs, and 60.5% showed self-harming behavior. Performing a backward stepwise binary logistic regression model, it was found that the likelihood of using drugs was determined by EF measured by the Trail Making Test form A, childhood abuse, anger, and self-harm. On the other hand, self-harm was determined by childhood abuse, anger, and drug use.