DATE: June 12, 2024 at 03:15PM
SOURCE: Psychiatric Times
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DATE:
June 12, 2024 at 02:00PM
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TITLE:
Massive cross-cultural study finds participation with news is declining
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URL: https://www.psypost.org/massive-cross-cultural-study-finds-participation-with-news-is-declining/
<p>A massive cross-cultural study reported a 12% decline in overall news participation—including liking, sharing, and commenting on social media, and discussing news offline—a trend spanning 46 countries between 2015 to 2022. This research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241247822"><em>New Media & Society</em></a>.</p>
<p>“I was interested in news participation because in recent years many have expressed concerns about dark forms of participation, such as the sharing of ‘fake news’. Yet, what we see on social media isn’t a representative sample of reality,” said Sacha Altay (<a href="https://x.com/Sacha_Altay">@Sacha_Altay</a>), a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich in the department of political science. “For instance, we know that a small group of very active and vocal internet users drive most forms of dark participation online. I wanted to understand general trends in participation beyond these potentially unusual and unrepresentative cases.”</p>
<p>The research team used data from the Digital News Report surveys conducted by YouGov and its partners, which encompassed responses from 577,859 individuals across 46 countries over an eight-year period. These surveys were designed to be nationally representative, with quotas for age, gender, region, and, in some cases, education and political orientation.</p>
<p>Participants were asked about their engagement in various forms of news participation, such as talking about news face-to-face, sharing news on social media, commenting on news articles, sharing news via email, and so on. The researchers computed a participation score based on the sum of these activities. The study also gauged trust in news on a 5-point scale. At the country level, it included variables from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, including political polarization and freedom of discussion.</p>
<p>“The main takeaway is that in many countries, news participation is declining,” explained Altay. “For example, people report sharing, commenting, or liking news on social media less. This decline is not only confined to online spaces: people also report talking less about the news in face-to-face interactions with their friends or colleagues. The only form of participation that has increased is news sharing via private messaging applications such as WhatsApp.”</p>
<p>Specifically, sharing news on social media dropped by 29%, commenting decreased by 26%, and offline discussions fell by 24%. Conversely, sharing news through private messaging apps increased by 20%, suggesting a preference for private communication channels.</p>
<p>Participants with higher education levels, younger individuals, women, and those with a keen interest in news were more likely to participate in news activities. However, over time, the decline in participation was more pronounced among women, those without a bachelor’s degree, and individuals with low trust in news. This shift resulted in men eventually participating more than women, a reversal of the trend observed in 2015. Further, political polarization within countries was linked to lower levels of news participation, suggesting that increasing societal divides may discourage news engagement.</p>
<p>What questions still need to be answered? Altay said, “First, our findings suggest that we should pay more attention to the role that private messaging applications play in news participation. Second, we should try to understand why people seem to be moving away from public online spaces, and whether new forms of (online or offline) participation are emerging.”</p>
<p>The researcher noted a potential limitation. “We rely on self-reported measures of news participation, which is not ideal, but at the same time it’s the only way to conduct a longitudinal analysis of news participation in 46 countries. Moreover, rich countries of the Global North are over-represented in the data, so despite the cross-cultural scope of the dataset we cannot make claims about the whole world.”</p>
<p>“The decline in news participation that we document is likely a symptom of growing negative perceptions of the news: in the last seven years, trust in news has slowly but steadily declined, news avoidance has grown, and interest in news has fallen sharply,” Altay told PsyPost. “I see these trends as worrying given the role that the news plays in informing people and, among other things, holding politicians accountable.”</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241247822">News participation is declining: Evidence from 46 countries between 2015 and 2022</a>”, was authored by Sacha Altay, Richard Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen.</p>
DATE: June 12, 2024 at 01:00PM
SOURCE: Psychiatric Times
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Veterans paired with a service dog for 3 months were 66% less likely to be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. https://t.co/m3UhVhVEoNhttps://t.co/VLDzGqC8R2
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Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:01:24 +0000
TITLE:
Staff Perspective: The State of PTSD Treatment: Research is Important!
DESCRIPTION:
In the world of treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) there seems to be an insatiable desire for new and novel treatments. And there is a frequent refrain that “We need effective treatments for PTSD! ”
DATE:
June 12, 2024 at 10:00AM
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TITLE:
Alpha neurofeedback improves visual working memory, study finds
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URL: https://www.psypost.org/alpha-neurofeedback-improves-visual-working-memory-study-finds/
<p>A recent study in China found that alpha neurofeedback training improves visual working memory. The group that received this training improved both the capacity and accuracy of their visual working memory compared to the group that underwent sham training. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-024-00242-w"><em>npj Science of Learning</em></a>.</p>
<p>Biofeedback training is a therapeutic technique that uses real-time monitoring of physiological functions, such as heart rate, muscle tension, and brainwave activity, to help individuals learn to control these processes consciously. The idea behind biofeedback is that if constant and accurate information is provided to an individual about their heart rate or brainwave activity, they will be able to identify actions that affect these processes and, through that, learn to control them. This technique is generally applied to bodily processes that humans cannot easily monitor using their consciously available senses.</p>
<p>Alpha neurofeedback training is a type of biofeedback therapy that aims to help individuals learn to increase their alpha brainwave activity. Alpha waves, typically associated with a relaxed and meditative state, are prevalent when the brain is calm but alert. In this way, participants effectively learn to remain calm but alert. This training is used to reduce anxiety, improve focus or overall well-being, and for various other purposes.</p>
<p>Study author Wenbin Zhou and his colleagues wanted to explore whether alpha neurofeedback training might improve visual working memory. Visual working memory is the cognitive system responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating visual information, such as shapes, colors, and spatial relationships, to perform tasks like problem-solving and decision-making.</p>
<p>It generally works through two phases: encoding, when the memory is formed, and maintenance, when the memory is kept in a state that allows easy recall. The authors note that previous studies already indicated that alpha neurofeedback training improved visual working memory, but it remained unclear which phase of the memory process the training affects.</p>
<p>Study participants were 40 healthy volunteers recruited from Shanghai Normal University, with an average age of 24 years. The study authors randomly divided them into two groups. One group underwent alpha neurofeedback training for five days, in five daily sessions.</p>
<p>In these sessions, while participants worked on a cognitive task (a modified Sternberg task), electroencephalographic data were recorded about their brain activity. Alpha wave activity derived from this data was presented to study participants as a blue bar, the height of which depended on the amplitude of the participant’s alpha waves. Participants were asked to find a way to keep the bar as high as possible. The other group completed a sham neurofeedback training in which they were presented with feedback based on a random electroencephalography frequency band.</p>
<p>Additionally, study participants completed working memory tasks (a modified Sternberg task, block tapping task, color-recall task) at the start of the study, a day after the end of the training, and on day 14 after the start of the study.</p>
<p>Results showed that there were no differences between the two groups on the modified Sternberg task. However, the alpha neurofeedback training group showed increased visual working memory capacity on the Corsi-block tapping test. They also showed improved visual working memory precision in one of the conditions of the color-recall test.</p>
<p>“These results suggest that alpha NF [neurofeedback] training influences performance in working memory tasks involved in the visuospatial sketchpad. Notably, we demonstrated that alpha NF training improves the quantity and quality of visual working memory,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the effects of alpha neurofeedback training on visual working memory. However, it should be noted that the number of study participants was very small and they were all young people. Additionally, the effects were obtained on 2 of the 3 tests. It remains unknown whether the improvements are specific for these tasks or more general in nature.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-024-00242-w">Alpha neurofeedback training improves visual working memory in healthy individuals,</a>” was authored by Wenbin Zhou, Wenya Nan, Kaiwen Xiong, and Yixuan Ku.</p>
DATE: June 12, 2024 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: Psychiatric Times
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Social media content moderation for youth: check out this brief for clinicians. @JaneHarness9 https://t.co/7A1dBU6v8x
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Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news
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NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @[email protected]
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