Cognitive Sciences

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the use of gamification in the classroom, in terms of its effects on attention, concentration, creativity, and generic capabilities, for university students enrolled in a Bachelor's degree program in Physiotherapy. METHODS: An experimental design was implemented, using three groups differentiated by their time of exposure to the game (0 min, 30 min, or 60 min per week). The sample consisted of 73 s-year students from a Bachelor's degree program in Physiotherapy...

This article concerns two types of word meanings: nonverbal meanings which appear to be associated with neurological representations and verbally-based meanings which appear to depend in part on other words to construct meanings. Using word use data from Hart and Risley's study of children aged 19 to 36 months, and word meaning knowledge data from Biemiller and Slonim's studies of children between aged 5 to 11, meanings were classified as nonverbal or verbally-based. Biemiller and Slonim used sampled word meanings reported known from grade levels 2 to 12 reported by Dale and O'Rourke in their Living Word Vocabulary...

INTRODUCTION: In the post-epidemic era, blended learning has become a social trend for the future of higher education, and scholars have endeavored to understand the factors that influence student learning in these blended communities. Communities of Inquiry is a conceptual framework that describes the components of blended learning environments, indicating teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. However, the framework fails to adequately explore how individual learning motivational factors influence student learning...

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The authors are both self-described congenital aphantasics, who feel they have never been able to have volitional imagined visual experiences during their waking lives. In addition, Loren has atypical experiences of a number of visual phenomena that involve an extrapolation or integration of visual information across space. In this perspective, we describe Loren's atypical experiences of a number of visual phenomena, and we suggest these ensue because her visual experiences are not strongly shaped by inhibitory feedback or by prior expectations...

INTRODUCTION: Interoception, the perception of the internal state of the body, has been shown to be closely linked to emotions and mental health. Of particular interest are interoceptive learning processes that capture associations between environmental cues and body signals as a basis for making homeostatically relevant predictions about the future. One method of measuring respiratory interoceptive learning that has shown promising results is the Breathing Learning Task (BLT). While the original BLT required binary predictions regarding the presence or absence of an upcoming inspiratory resistance, here we extended this paradigm to capture continuous measures of prediction (un)certainty...

BACKGROUND: Roma living in marginalized communities often face poor living conditions and material deprivation, which may negatively impact parenting. Our aim is to compare the parenting behavior (support, harsh discipline, and stimulation) of mothers from marginalized Roma communities and the majority population in Slovakia. We also examine the role of socioeconomic disadvantage and related worries in the differences in parenting behavior between these groups. METHODS: We obtained cross-sectional data from mothers of children aged 14-18 months using the first wave of the longitudinal RomaREACH study dataset...

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the mood of amateur runners and on their relationships with their partners and families. METHODS: Adult runners 18 years or older ( N  = 260) completed an online survey that included demographic information, standardized psychological assessments of Exercise Dependence (EDS-R) and mood (POMS), and, to measure relationship functioning, either the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) if they did not have children, or the Basic Family Evaluation Questionnaire (CERFB), measuring conjugal and parental relationships...

BACKGROUND: Building a path aimed at the wellbeing of workers in the education sector is the fundamental basis to encourage quality education. To fill the gap in knowledge and address this aspect by understanding the behavior of the study population, it was proposed as with the objective of determining if servant leadership, brand love and work ethic predict the general health in workers. METHODS: A non-probability sampling was applied for convenience. For this purpose, a sample of 509 workers from Peru was submitted to study, who completed a questionnaire consisting of: scale of servant leadership, work ethic, GHQ-12 and brand love...

Numerous studies have explored the effects of background music on reading comprehension, however, little is known about how native language (L1) lyrics and second language (L2) lyrics in background music influence reading comprehension performance for college students. The present study used a mixed experimental design to examine the effects of listening habits (between-participants variable: non-listeners or listeners), music type (between-participants variable: L1 (Mandarin) pop music, L2 (English) pop music or no music) and text language (within-participants variable: L1 or L2) on reading comprehension of college students in East China...

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of nonpharmacological interventions (NPIs) on poststroke depression (PSD) in stroke patients. METHODS: Computer searches were conducted on the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), and Wanfang databases from their establishment to December 2023. The selection was made using the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and 40 articles were included to compare the effects of the 17 NPIs on patients with PSD...

OBJECTIVE: Long-term alcohol consumption can cause organic damage to the brain, resulting in mental and nervous system abnormalities and intellectual impairment. Huanglian Jiedu decoction (HLJDD) is the classic representative of clearing heat and detoxifying. This study aimed to explore the effects and possible mechanisms of HLJDD on brain injury in chronic alcohol-exposed mice. METHODS: The alcohol-exposed mice were treated with different doses of HLJDD to observe behavioral changes, hippocampal Aβ1-42 deposition, number and ultrastructural changes of neurons in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, and expressions of synaptic proteins...

In the context of Alzheimer's disease (AD), timely identification is paramount for effective management, acknowledging its chronic and irreversible nature, where medications can only impede its progression. Our study introduces a holistic solution, leveraging the hippocampus and the VGG16 model with transfer learning for early AD detection. The hippocampus, a pivotal early affected region linked to memory, plays a central role in classifying patients into three categories: cognitively normal (CN), representing individuals without cognitive impairment; mild cognitive impairment (MCI), indicative of a subtle decline in cognitive abilities; and AD, denoting Alzheimer's disease...

Multimedia is extensively used for educational purposes. However, certain types of multimedia lack proper design, which could impose a cognitive load on the user. Therefore, it is essential to predict cognitive load and understand how it impairs brain functioning. Participants watched a version of educational multimedia that applied Mayer's principles, followed by a version that did not. Meanwhile, their electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Subsequently, they participated in a post-test and completed a self-reported cognitive load questionnaire...

Mental workload refers to the cognitive effort required to perform tasks, and it is an important factor in various fields, including system design, clinical medicine, and industrial applications. In this paper, we propose innovative methods to assess mental workload from EEG data that use effective brain connectivity for the purpose of extracting features, a hierarchical feature selection algorithm to select the most significant features, and finally machine learning models. We have used the Simultaneous Task EEG Workload (STEW) dataset, an open-access collection of raw EEG data from 48 subjects...

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have driven interest in its potential application for lie detection. Unfortunately, the current approaches have primarily focused on technical aspects at the expense of a solid methodological and theoretical foundation. We discuss the implications thereof and offer recommendations for the development and regulation of AI-based deception detection.

Post-stroke depression (PSD) is regarded as the consequence of multiple contributors involving the process of cognition, mood and autonomic system, with the specific mechanism unclear yet. As a common type of stroke-heart syndromes, post-stroke arrhythmia shared some common pathogenesis with PSD. We presumed that post-stroke arrhythmia might be an early distinguishable marker for the presence of PSD and aimed to verity their association in this study. Patients with first-ever ischemic stroke were enrolled. The presence of post-stroke ectopic arrhythmia and the symptoms of arrhythmia were recorded with anti-arrhythmia drugs prescribed when necessary...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can be used to non-invasively augment cognitive training. However, the benefits of tDCS may be due in part to placebo effects, which have not been well-characterized. The purpose of this study was to determine whether tDCS can have a measurable placebo effect on cognitive training and to identify potential sources of this effect. Eighty-three right-handed adults were randomly assigned to one of three groups: control (no exposure to tDCS), sham tDCS, or active tDCS...

Studying the oculomotor system provides a unique window to assess brain health and function in various clinical populations. Although the use of detailed oculomotor parameters in clinical research has been limited due to the scalability of the required equipment, the development of novel tablet-based technologies has created opportunities for fast, easy, cost-effective, and reliable eye tracking. Oculomotor measures captured via a mobile tablet-based technology have previously been shown to reliably discriminate between Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients and healthy controls...

BACKGROUND: Alcohol misuse is common and causes substantial harm. Internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) is effective in reducing alcohol misuse; however, the literature investigating how treatment outcomes are impacted by patients' preferences for therapist- versus self-guided ICBT for alcohol misuse is sparse. METHODS: In this preference trial, 74 eligible patients (who reported ≥ 14 drinks in the previous week and obtained scores suggesting hazardous or harmful drinking) chose between enrolling in either therapist- or self-guided ICBT for alcohol misuse...