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Frontiers in Psychology 2024
PubMed: 38947909
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1439041 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024
PubMed: 38947908
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1422543 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024Swearing, or the use of taboo language, has been repeatedly shown to induce hypoalgesia. While reliable hypoalgesic effects have been observed across studies, the... (Review)
Review
Swearing, or the use of taboo language, has been repeatedly shown to induce hypoalgesia. While reliable hypoalgesic effects have been observed across studies, the mechanisms by which swearing influences pain and the optimal dosage of swearing remain poorly understood. Plausible mechanistic rationale for swearing's impact on pain include sympathetic response, emotion, humor, distraction, aggression, state disinhibition, psychological flow, risky behavior, and self-confidence. It remains unknown how the intensity of the swear word, speech volume, frequency, or timing influences pain modulation. While the majority of evidence demonstrates the efficacy of swearing at attenuating acute pain responses, these studies have utilized healthy populations with controlled experiments in laboratory settings. Comparatively, less is known about how laboratory findings translate practically/clinically to diverse populations, various dosages, and different pain chronicities. A greater understanding of mechanistic underpinnings and practical implications are necessary to feasibly implement swearing as a therapeutic modality to combat pain. The purpose of the following mini-review is to provide an overview of the current evidence on swearing for the reduction of pain, speculate on plausible underlying mechanisms, and discuss the potential for optimization of swearing for real-world translation. Lastly, identifying knowledge gaps to aid in directing future research will be discussed.
PubMed: 38947907
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1416041 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024Theoretical developments on affordances have proliferated, resulting in a lack of conceptual stability and a potential compromise in scientific validity. However,... (Review)
Review
Theoretical developments on affordances have proliferated, resulting in a lack of conceptual stability and a potential compromise in scientific validity. However, affordances should not be discarded, given their centrality in post-cognitive theories and their widespread reuse across various research domains. Empirical research on affordances remains sparse, out of sync with theoretical advancements, and thus unable to contribute effectively to scientific progress due to its disarticulation with theoretical work. That is why re-articulating theoretical and empirical investigations on affordances is needed to pave a more fruitful path for the concept's advancement. To accomplish this objective, emphasis must be placed on empirical research, leveraging recent theoretical propositions and devising corresponding empirical methodologies. The proposed requirements and framework represent a step in this endeavor.
PubMed: 38947904
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1283168 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024Individuals diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been found to have impairments in multiple aspects of social cognition, thus including...
Individuals diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been found to have impairments in multiple aspects of social cognition, thus including the attentional processing of socially relevant stimuli such as eye-gaze. However, to date, it remains unclear whether only the social-specific but not the domain-general directional components, elicited by eye-gaze are affected by ADHD symptomatology. To address this issue, the present study aimed to investigate the impact of ADHD-like traits on the social-specific attentional processing of eye-gaze. To this purpose, we conducted an online experiment with a sample of 140 healthy undergraduate participants who completed two self-reported questionnaires designed to assess ADHD-like traits, and a social variant of an interference spatial task known to effectively isolate the social-specific component of eye-gaze. To make our research plan transparent, our hypotheses, together with the plans of analyses, were registered before data exploration. Results showed that while the social-specific component of eye-gaze was evident in the sample, no significant correlation was found between this component and the measured ADHD-like traits. These results appear to contradict the intuition that the attentional processing of the social-specific components of eye-gaze may be impaired by ADHD symptomatology. However, further research involving children and clinical populations is needed in order to clarify this matter.
PubMed: 38947900
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1377379 -
Patient Preference and Adherence 2024Psoriasis is a highly debilitating chronic inflammatory disease. Increased understanding of its pathophysiology has enabled development of targeted treatments such as...
PURPOSE
Psoriasis is a highly debilitating chronic inflammatory disease. Increased understanding of its pathophysiology has enabled development of targeted treatments such as biologics. Several medical treatments have been shown to be influenced by patients' experiences and expectations. However, only little is known about patients' experiences with and expectations towards biologics. Our objectives were to identify patients' treatment experiences and treatment expectations and assess their trajectories over the course of treatment with the IL-17A inhibitor secukinumab. Moreover, we aimed to document effects of psoriasis, factors that influence symptomatology, and prior treatment experiences.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
We conducted semi-structured interviews with = 24 patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis and employed a qualitative content analysis to derive thematic and evaluative codes. Findings were validated via peer debriefings with experienced dermatologists.
RESULTS
Patients reported burdensome physical and psychological psoriasis symptoms and identified factors that can improve or worsen symptomatology, including stress and self-efficacy. Prior treatment experiences were mostly negative. Past barriers to effective treatment included time constraints or limited access. Concerning secukinumab, patients initially expected complete to partial remission of symptoms and occurrence or absence of side effects. Closer inspection of expectations and experiences revealed three trajectories. For most patients, initial expectations were met and future expectations remained unchanged. For the other patients, however, the experience did not match their initial expectation. One group then adapted their future expectations according to their experience, while the other group did not.
CONCLUSION
To our knowledge, this is the first qualitative study to assess expectations towards treatment effectiveness and side effects, their trajectories, and interplay with experiences among psoriasis patients. Our findings highlight the value of further research on the subject in order to optimize care for psoriasis patients and to learn more about the trajectories and influence of treatment expectations in general.
PubMed: 38947870
DOI: 10.2147/PPA.S458643 -
IScience Jun 2024Classic findings of impaired allocentric spatial learning and memory following hippocampal lesions indicate that the hippocampus supports cognitive maps of one's...
Classic findings of impaired allocentric spatial learning and memory following hippocampal lesions indicate that the hippocampus supports cognitive maps of one's environment. Many studies assess navigation in vista space virtual reality environments and compare hippocampal-lesioned individuals' performance to that of small control samples, potentially stifling detection of preserved and impaired performance. Using the mobile app we examined navigation in diverse complex environments in two individuals with hippocampal lesions relative to demographically matched controls ( = 17,734). We found surprisingly accurate navigation in several environments, particularly those containing a constrained set of sub-goals, paths, and/or turns. Areas of impaired performance may reflect a role for the hippocampus in anterograde memory and more flexible and/or precise spatial representations, even when the need for allocentric processing is minimal. The results emphasize the value of combining single cases with big data and illustrate navigation performance profiles in individuals with hippocampal compromise.
PubMed: 38947515
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109977 -
IScience Jun 2024We sought to replicate and expand previous work showing that the more human-like a robot appears, the more willing people are to attribute mind-like capabilities and...
We sought to replicate and expand previous work showing that the more human-like a robot appears, the more willing people are to attribute mind-like capabilities and socially engage with it. Forty-two participants played games against a human, a humanoid robot, a mechanoid robot, and a computer algorithm while undergoing functional neuroimaging. We confirmed that the more human-like the agent, the more participants attributed a mind to them. However, exploratory analyses revealed that the perceived of an agent appeared to be as, if not more, important for mind attribution. Our findings suggest top-down knowledge cues may be equally or possibly more influential than bottom-up stimulus cues when exploring mind attribution in non-human agents. While further work is now required to test this hypothesis directly, these preliminary findings hold important implications for robotic design and to understand and test the flexibility of human social cognition when people engage with artificial agents.
PubMed: 38947497
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110070 -
Heliyon Jun 2024The correlation between sports participation and psychological well-being is well-documented, revealing a complex interplay influenced by competition level and cultural...
The correlation between sports participation and psychological well-being is well-documented, revealing a complex interplay influenced by competition level and cultural context. This is particularly relevant in Korea, where the university sports culture significantly impacts student life. This study evaluates how competitive versus non-competitive sports affect Korean university students' psychological well-being using a quantitative approach with SmartPLS 4 for multi-group analysis. Findings reveal that competitive sports significantly enhance mental toughness and stress management through structured coping mechanisms and robust social support, improving coping strategy effectiveness by 34 % compared to non-competitive sports. Conversely, participants in non-competitive sports experience greater general well-being with a 40 % higher use of informal support. These insights suggest that university sports programs could benefit from targeted interventions incorporating specific coping strategies and social support frameworks tailored to the competitive context. This research underscores the need for precise stress management techniques and resilience-building exercises in sports curricula to optimize psychological well-being across different sports environments in Korean universities.
PubMed: 38947484
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e32331 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2024Postpartum fatigue (PPF) can impair the physical and mental well-being of women. The aims of this study were to assess the associations between fatigue and maternal...
BACKGROUND
Postpartum fatigue (PPF) can impair the physical and mental well-being of women. The aims of this study were to assess the associations between fatigue and maternal health-related variables, specifically, sleep quality, depression symptoms, and resilience, and to explore the moderating role of resilience in the relationships between sleep quality, depression symptoms, and fatigue.
METHODS
This cross-sectional study used data collected from mothers during the postpartum period via an online platform. PPF was assessed using the Fatigue Severity Scale, whereas sleep quality and depression symptoms were assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, respectively. The Brief Resilience Scale was used to assess resilience. Simple and multiple binary logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the association of each independent variable with PPF and to determine the most significant predictors of PFF. The data were analyzed using SPSS, and structural equation modeling was performed using AMOS 23. A moderation analysis was performed to explore the moderating role of resilience using the Hayes PROCESS macro.
RESULTS
A total of 1,443 postpartum mothers were included in the analysis. The simple binary logistic regression analysis showed that having chronic disease (odds: 1.52; = 0.02), mother's age (odds: 0.97; = 0.03), mother's body mass index (BMI; odds: 1.03; = 0.01), depression symptoms (odds: 1.09; ≤ 0.0001), sleep quality (odds: 1.17; ≤ 0.0001), and resilience (odds: 0.42; p ≤ 0.0001) all contributed to fatigue during postpartum. Multivariate logistic regression showed that the mother's BMI, sleep quality, depression symptoms, and resilience were significant predictors of PPF. Moderation analyses showed that resilience was not a significant moderator between the main effects of sleep quality and fatigue (interaction effect: = 0.01, = 0.31, 95% CI: -0.01 to 0.04) or between the main effects of depression symptoms and fatigue during postpartum (interaction effect: = 0.01, = 0.82, 95% CI: -0.01 to 0.02).
CONCLUSION
Given the deleterious effects of PPF on maternal health outcomes, factors associated with PPF should be assessed regularly. In addition to mothers' BMI, sleep quality, and depression symptoms, resilience could also be a crucial factor in predicting fatigue severity during this critical time for mothers even though it was not a significant moderator among this sample.
Topics: Humans; Female; Cross-Sectional Studies; Adult; Fatigue; Resilience, Psychological; Postpartum Period; Mothers; Sleep Quality; Surveys and Questionnaires; Depression, Postpartum; Depression; Risk Factors; Logistic Models
PubMed: 38947349
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1394380