Analysis of stress factors in medical university students based on the international classification of functioning and the use of “Restorative” herbal blend for their psychocorrection

A survey of medical university students was conducted (20 people, 45% worked with patients with coronavirus infection). We studied stress factors and the psychological effectiveness of the course medication intake of the "Restorative" herbal blend (oregano grass, thyme grass, blackberry leaf, echinacea leaf). The reception period is 20 days. The available stress factors were evaluated by a developed questionnaire, in which scaling was performed in the paradigm of the International Classification of Functioning. The psychological state before and after taking the herbal blend was assessed using the methods "Coping behavior in stressful situations", "Taylor's scale of anxiety manifestations", "Emotional burnout" by V. Boyko. The most significant challenges for respondents are caused by prolonged and intense psychoemotional loads, violations of the work and rest regime. After taking the herbal blend, mental resources increase, anxiety and depression decrease. The subjects begin to deal with stress productively, and not emotionally reacting. The emotional deficit, saving of mental resources, inadequate response to adverse factors are reduced, which indicates the general strengthening effect of the "Restorative" herbal blend not only on the body as a whole, but also on mental processes.

Cognitive constraints on advance planning of sentence intonation

Pitch peaks tend to be higher at the beginning of longer than shorter sentences (e.g., ‘A farmer is pulling donkeys’ vs ‘A farmer is pulling a donkey and goat’), whereas pitch valleys at the ends of sentences are rather constant for a given speaker. These data seem to imply that speakers avoid dropping their voice pitch too low by planning the height of sentence-initial pitch peaks prior to speaking. However, the length effect on sentence-initial pitch peaks appears to vary across different types of sentences, speakers and languages. Therefore, the notion that speakers plan sentence intonation in advance due to the limitations in low voice pitch leaves part of the data unexplained. Consequently, this study suggests a complementary cognitive account of length-dependent pitch scaling. In particular, it proposes that the sentence-initial pitch raise in long sentences is related to high demands on mental resources during the early stages of sentence planning. To tap into the cognitive underpinnings of planning sentence intonation, this study adopts the methodology of recording eye movements during a picture description task, as the eye movements are the established approximation of the real-time planning processes. Measures of voice pitch (Fundamental Frequency) and incrementality (eye movements) are used to examine the relationship between (verbal) working memory (WM), incrementality of sentence planning and the height of sentence-initial pitch peaks.

Working With Environmental Noise and Noise-Cancelation: A Workload Assessment With EEG and Subjective Measures

As working and learning environments become open and flexible, people are also potentially surrounded by ambient noise, which causes an increase in mental workload. The present study uses electroencephalogram (EEG) and subjective measures to investigate if noise-canceling technologies can fade out external distractions and free up mental resources. Therefore, participants had to solve spoken arithmetic tasks that were read out via headphones in three sound environments: a quiet environment (no noise), a noisy environment (noise), and a noisy environment but with active noise-canceling headphones (noise-canceling). Our results of brain activity partially confirm an assumed lower mental load in no noise and noise-canceling compared to noise test condition. The mean P300 activation at Cz resulted in a significant differentiation between the no noise and the other two test conditions. Subjective data indicate an improved situation for the participants when using the noise-canceling technology compared to “normal” headphones but shows no significant discrimination. The present results provide a foundation for further investigations into the relationship between noise-canceling technology and mental workload. Additionally, we give recommendations for an adaptation of the test design for future studies.

Detecting fake hospitality reviews through the interplay of emotional cues, cognitive cues and review valence

Purpose This paper aims to examine the dynamics of emotional cues and cognitive cues in review fakeness. Additionally, the boundary condition (i.e. review valence) for the dynamics between emotional cues and cognitive cues is investigated. Design/methodology/approach This research conducted two studies, which analyzed restaurant and hotel reviews collected from Yelp.com. The authors adopted linguistic inquiry and word count 2015 to code review contents and tested the hypotheses using logistic regression. Findings Fake reviews contain more emotional cues compared with authentic reviews. Moreover, the dynamics of emotional cues and cognitive cues are salient among negative reviews. Practical implications This research provides implications to identify fake online reviews based on linguistic cues. Originality/value This research contributes to the literature by revealing the competition of mental resources between emotional and cognitive systems when deception is for harming others. Grounded in interpersonal deception theory, this paper investigates the interactive effect and complements the literature, which mainly used emotional cues and cognitive cues individually to detect fake reviews.

Deriving Mental Energy From Task Completion

Many tasks in everyday life (e.g., making an accurate decision, completing job tasks, and searching for product information) are extrinsically motivated (i.e., the task is performed to gain a benefit) and require mental effort. Prior research shows that the cognitive resources needed to perform an extrinsically motivated task are allocated pre-task. The pre-task allocation of mental resources tends to be conservative, because mental effort is costly. Consequently, there are mental energy deficits when the use of mental resources exceeds the allocated amount. This research provides evidence for post-task mental energy replenishment. The amount of resource replenishment is a function of the size of the mental energy deficit and the favorability of the cost-benefit trade-off experienced at the completion of the task (i.e., the value of the reward given the energy investment). The findings have implications for how cognitive resources management influences the availability of mental energy on a moment-to-moment basis.

Brief and Indirect Exposure to Natural Environment Restores the Directed Attention for the Task

The mental fatigue elicited by working and studying consumed mental resources, thereby eliciting a declined performance and an increased mental stress. The long-term continuous work and study, which is typical for modern workers and students, can increase mental fatigue and health risks. Previous studies reported that the natural environment (i.e., forest and waterside) has a restorative of mental resources (i.e., attention) and reducing stress. However, it is difficult for urban workers and students to take sufficient breaks in real natural environment. We conducted an experiment to examine whether brief and indirect exposure to the natural environment elicits a restorative of attention and reducing stress. Twenty-five undergraduate and graduate students from the university of modern city participated in the experiment. The experiment involved measuring the changes in the task performance of the participants (i.e., sustained attention to response task) and the subjective mental workload (i.e., arousal, valence, and NASA-TLX), while the attention restoration was indexed from physiological response (i.e., skin conductance level, SCL) over time. The participants had two types of resting periods in the middle of the task, i.e., by looking at a blank display (simple break) or by watching a nature video having scenes of, e.g., a forest, small waterfall, and rustling leaves (nature break). The results indicate that the natural environment indirectly depicted through the nature videos does not affect the task performance and the subjective mental workload but decreases the SCL. The results of the physiological response suggest that having rest periods depicting the natural environment, even if indirectly and briefly, can restore the directed attention (i.e., mental resources) for the task. This experiment revealed a useful method of resting for urban workers and students to restore their attention to a task.

Modeling Growth and Resilience Among Military Personnel

The prospect that people can be resilient to—or even grow from—a stressful experience is an alluring possibility—especially so for soldiers and veterans. Some have proposed that deploying and military experiences provide soldiers with enduring mental resources and toughness that are protective for the rest of their lives. However, definitive evidence for growth and resilience among military personnel has proved elusive. Part of the unknowns about growth and resilience can be attributable to how people think about and model questions related to growth and resilience. In this chapter, the author provides two empirical examples—changes in depressive symptoms among veterans and changes in character strengths among deploying soldiers—to illustrate how different conceptualizations, methods, and analyses can dramatically change the inferences we make about growth and resilience. The demonstrations provide an increased understanding about methodological flexibility in the study of growth and resilience and some expectations about how and why individuals might change in response to adversity.

The Restorative Effect of the Presence of Greenery on the Classroom in Children’s Cognitive Performance

Studies developed in a scholar context report a restorative effect of nature on human beings, specifically in terms of the psychological recovery from attention fatigue and restored mental resources that were previously spent in activities that require attention. Studies usually compare the performance of children in schools with or without access to green spaces. In this study, the effect of introducing greenery into the classroom context was compared across time. The experiment was developed in two primary schools with pupils in different socioeconomic contexts, at three moments: before introducing an artificial green wall into the classroom, one month later, and one month after the introduction of vegetable pots. Results showed a significant increase in sustained and selective attention, and work memory between the experimental and the control group, notably in the third moment when vegetable pots were introduced. In the second moment (green walls), only the work memory (tested with the inversed number) showed a significant effect. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in terms of nature’s role both in terms of natural and artificial elements and the cumulative effect of direct interaction with natural elements.

White space interpretation in Hermann Rorschach’s inkblot test: An analysis of two male examinees’ responses

Introduction: There are numerous points of controversy over the psychological interpretation of the so-called S responses – namely, the interpretation of white space in the Rorschach test. The aim of my paper was to verify the position held by Charles P. Fonda, who claims that the meaning of S responses depends on the results of the test as a whole. Materials and methods: I have presented the responses of two young men and coded them according to the Comprehensive System developed by John E. Exner. I chose this way of processing data as the most precise, relatively well formalized, and detailed one. The two examinees gave an almost identical number of responses in the whole test and a similar number of S responses, similarly distributed across the cards of the test. Results: I assessed and compared the results of the two examinees in terms of the effectiveness of their cognitive processes, self-control ability, mental resources, social adjustment, and self-esteem. Finally, I looked closely at the contents of a few responses, as in my opinion they symbolically expressed the examinees’ basic problems. Discussion: I tried to avoid describing the examinees’ psyche in nosological terms and to focus on presenting the way in which they experienced the world, as well as on how this experience affected their behavior. Conclusions: I found that in Examinee 1 criticism towards other people may stem from an excessively idealistic attitude to the world and from the ensuing disappointments. Good cognitive functioning, resistance to stress, positive self-esteem, and the socialized emotional sphere make this man’s S responses a sign of creative engagement in the problems encountered rather than a sign of maladjustment. In the case of Examinee 2, S responses can be understood as defiance and a generalized attitude of negativism, which play the role of defense against the excessively complicated, not fully comprehensible, and inhospitable world; these responses may, in their turn, contribute to the intensification of problems and to an increase in maladjustment.

PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPONENTS OF DOMINANT ATTENTION AS THE LEADING PROFESSIONAL QUALITY OF THE ENSEMBLER

The article considers the psychological components that reveal the essence of the method of dominant attention in ensemble performance. The psychological factors concerning improvement of ensemble game are analyzed. Dominant in culture is identified with the main artistic ideas, values. In aesthetics – with the dominant ideal. In the literature – with ideas, context, concept, style characteristics. In design – with shape and space. In architecture – with the dominant element of the composition of space. Dominant – in music theory – V degree of the system relative to the main tone (tonic). The fifth degree of tonality is also called dominant. In European music, the dominant key has always been given a special role, the dominant meant a contrast to the main key. Among all related tonalities, the dominant was considered the dominant (hence the name), the most intense tone, which requires a solution. The professional qualities of an ensemble player are a system of appropriate psychophysiological and mental resources, namely attention, intuition, reflection, empathy, coordination, which is a chain of psychodial elements required for the formation of dominant attention as a generalizing link in the creative realization of a musician-ensemble player. Thus, the considered structural elements of dominant attention as the leading professional quality of the ensemble player, namely intuition, reflection, empathy, coordination are perceived by us as semantic unity. The components are analyzed in terms of content, and a chain of theoretical conclusions is presented, which embody the substantiation of the concept of «dominant attention» of a musician-ensemble player. Analysis of musical-cognitive processes and practical training of specialists contributes to the successful functioning of the dominant attention in the process of its creative realization. Further research may be related to the study of the intuitive component of the musician-ensemble.