Decision-making, cognitive functions, impulsivity, and media multitasking expectancies in high versus low media multitaskers

The Iowa Gambling Task: Men and Women Perform Differently. A Meta-analysis

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was designed to assess decision-making under conditions of complexity and uncertainty; it is currently one of the most widely used tests to assess decision-making in both experimental and clinical settings. In the original version of the task, participants are given a loan of play money and four decks of cards and are asked to maximize profits. Although any single card unpredictably yields wins/losses, variations in frequency and size of gains/losses ultimately make two decks more advantageous in the long term. Several studies have previously suggested that there may be a sex-related difference in IGT performance. Thus, the present study aimed to explore and quantify sex differences in IGT performance by pooling the results of 110 studies. The meta-analysis revealed that males tend to perform better than females on the classic 100-trial IGT (UMD = 3.381; p < 0.001). Furthermore, the significant heterogeneity observed suggests high variability in the results obtained by individual studies. Results were not affected by publication bias or other moderators. Factors that may contribute to differences in male and female performance are discussed, such as functional sex-related asymmetries in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala, as well as differences in sensitivity to wins/losses.

Psychosocial Basis of Human Sufferings and Poverty in Patients with Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders

Neurological disorders and psychiatric ailments often lead to cognitive disabilities and low attainment of education, pivoting misconceptions, myths, and misbeliefs. Poverty and low educational attainment are intriguingly associated with poor awareness and perception of these diseases that add to the suffering. Poverty goes parallel with a low level of education and is intricately associated with neuropsychiatric ailments, which have the potential to spread transgenerationally. Robust education policies, proper government rules and regulations against the spread of disease-related myths and misconceptions, uplifting medical education in its true sense, voices against consanguinity, and programs to raise scientific perception about diseases can help to throw light at the end of this dark tunnel. In this article, the authors intend to 1) decipher the potential psychosocial basis of human suffering and poverty in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders, and 2) discuss the apropos way-outs that would potentially mitigate suffering, and alleviate the economic burden and cognitive disabilities of families with neuropsychiatric diseases.

High media multitasking habit influences self-referential emotional memory

Previous research (Ophir et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 106(37):15583-15587, 10.1073/pnas.0903620106, 2009; Uncapher and Wagner in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115(40):9889-9896, 10.1073/pnas.1611612115, 2018; Wiradhany and Koerts in Media Psychol 24(2):276-303, 10.1080/15213269.2019.1685393, 2021) suggested that different groups (high, low, and moderate) of habitual media multitaskers process information differently. Most of these studies focused on comprehending the cognitive differences among them. But there is considerably less information on their differences in processing emotional stimuli. In this article, using self-referential emotional stimuli ('positive/likeable' and 'negative/dislikeable' words), we aim to examine whether there is any difference in the self-referential emotional memory among different groups of media multitaskers (HMM, MMM, and LMM) using a recall and recognition paradigm. We also investigate whether HMM, MMM, and LMM vary in an emotional categorization task. A total of 120 students (mean age = 20.9 years; males = 84) voluntarily participated and self-reported their preferences for media multitasking using a questionnaire (Ophir et al. 2009). A total of 50 self-referenced words (positive/likeable and negative/dislikeable) were presented to them on a computerized screen for an emotional categorization task. Afterward, they performed a surprise free recall and a recognition task of the same words. Results suggested that HMM were faster in liking 'positive/likeable' words over 'negative/dislikeable' words in emotional categorization tasks in comparison with LMM and MMM. HMM and MMM performed poorly in both the recall and recognition of 'positive/likeable' emotional words compared to LMM. No significant difference was observed in recall and recognition between HMM and MMM. The three groups did not differ significantly in the recall and recognition tasks related to 'negative/dislikeable' emotional words. These findings help understand the differences in processing self-related emotional stimuli among different groups of media multitaskers.

Understanding the multi-modal affective expression of net language in computer-mediated communication

The fast development of technology and the popularity and prevalence of social media are constantly changing people's way of living especially their communication patterns. Computer-mediated communication facilitates human contact. Meanwhile, net language becomes widely accepted by computer-mediated communicators. Originating from the text-based form, net language evolves into a multi-modal physical form with a combination of texts, symbols, emojis, pictures and other forms of messages. The multi-modality of net language gives rise to difficulties for hearers or readers of the computer-mediated communication to understand the hidden message due to the ambiguous and polysemic nature of symbols. To clarify hearer's understanding and ensure the smooth conduct of computer-mediated communication, the conceptual blending theory will be useful in processing the multi-modal net language. With a four-space network and three operation mechanism, the emergent meaning will be constructed.