On the nature of fear and anxiety triggered by COVID-19

Emergencies that occur during natural disasters, such as avalanches, earthquakes, and floods, tend to be sudden, unexpected, and ephemeral and recruit defensive responses, similar to the ones recruited when faced with dangerous animals. Defensive behaviors are triggered by activity in survival circuits that detects imminent threats and fear is the conscious emotion of that follows immediately. But this particular threat (COVID-19) is useable and mysterious, triggering anxieties much more than fear. We conducted a literature search on May 1, 2020 in Google Scholar, PsychInfo, and PubMed with search terms related to COVID-19 fears and found 28 relevant articles. We categorized the papers into six groups based on the content and implications: fear of the unknown, social isolation, hypochondriasis, disgust, information-driven fears, and compliance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Executive attention modulates the facilitating effect of electronic storybooks on information encoding in preschoolers

Interactive features and multimedia elements in electronic storybooks might enhance knowledge acquisition in children due to the playful learning experience they provide. However, to date, there is no systematic research on the long-term efficacy of storybooks, and the individual cognitive factors that influence information processing when using these apps. Therefore, in Experiment 1, we focused on long-term improvements. Children (M = 5.55 years, SD = 0.51, N = 33) were divided into an Interactive App group (N = 16) and a Print Book group (N = 17), then they were exposed to a story. Their recall performance was measured immediately after the exposure and three weeks later. In Experiment 2, we focused on individual differences in cognitive factors (working memory and sustained attention). Children (M = 5.56 years, SD = 0.62, N = 32) were exposed to three stories with interactive, multimedia-only elements and an audio-only condition. Caregivers were asked to fill out the ADHD Rating Scale-IV regarding each child. According to our results, in Experiment 1, children in the Interactive App group performed better compared to the Print Book group and this improvement persisted over time. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1, however, children with poorer sustained attentional abilities performed worse in multimedia and interactive conditions compared to the audio-only condition. Our results indicate that electronic storybooks can facilitate learning because they enhance encoding efficacy. However, the benefit is only evident in children with good attentional control abilities. Our results guide parents and educators on how to choose and design age-appropriate applications for learning

Component-Based Hardware-Software Co-Design

The unbelievable growth in the complexity of computer systems poses a difficult challenge on system design. To cope with these problems, new methodologies are needed that allow the reuse of existing designs in a hierarchical manner, and at the same time let the designer work on the highest possible abstraction level. Such reusable building blocks are called components in the software world and IP (Intellectual Property) blocks in the hardware world. Based on the similarity between these two notions the authors propose a new system-level design methodology, called component-based hardware-software co-design, which allows rapid prototyping and functional simulation of complex hardware-software systems. Moreover, a tool is presented supporting the new design methodology and a case study is shown to demonstrate the applicability of the concepts

Electronic Information Management by Blind Persons

5ème conférence internationale sur le thème "Les ordinateurs viennent en aide aux personnes ayant des besoins spécifiques"International audienc

Finding an emotional face in the kindergarten – Happiness superiority effect for children faces in pre-schoolers

Previous studies investigating the advantage of emotional expressions in visual processing in preschool children only used adult faces. However, children perceive facial expression of emotions differently when displayed on adults’ compared to children’s faces. In the present study, pre-schoolers (N=43, Mean age=5.65) and adults (N=37, Mean age=21.8) had to find a target face displaying an emotional expression among eight neutral faces. Gender of the faces (boy and girl) were also manipulated. Happy faces were found the fastest across both samples. Children detected the angry face faster than the fearful one, while adults vice versa. However, an interaction in the adult sample suggests that this is only true for girls’ faces, while the difference was nonsignificant for boys’ faces. In both samples, the detection was faster with boys’ faces compare to girls’ for all emotions. It is suggested that the happy face could have an advantage in visual processing due to its importance in social situations

Immune phenotype in children with therapy-naïve remitted and relapsed Crohn’s disease

AIM: To characterize the prevalence of subpopulations of CD4+ cells along with that of major inhibitor or stimulator cell types in therapy-naïve childhood Crohn’s disease (CD) and to test whether abnormalities of immune phenotype are normalized with the improvement of clinical signs and symptoms of disease

Finding an emotional face in the kindergarten – Happiness superiority effect for children faces in pre-schoolers

Previous studies investigating the advantage of emotional expressions in visual processing in preschool children only used adult faces. However, children perceive facial expression of emotions differently when displayed on adults’ compared to children’s faces. In the present study, pre-schoolers (N=43, Mean age=5.65) had to find a target face displaying an emotional expression among eight neutral faces. Gender of the faces (boy and girl) were also manipulated. Happy faces were found the fastest, while children still detected the angry face faster than the fearful one. The detection was faster with boys’ faces compare to girls’ for all emotions. It is suggested that the happy face could have an advantage in visual processing due to its importance in social situations