Virtual enactment effect on memory in young and aged populations: a systematic review

Background: Spatial cognition is a critical aspect of episodic memory, as it provides the scaffold for events and enables successful retrieval. Virtual enactment (sensorimotor and cognitive interaction) by means of input devices within virtual environments provides an excellent opportunity to enhance encoding and to support memory retrieval with useful traces in the brain compared to passive observation. Methods: We conducted a systematic review with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines concerning the virtual enactment effect on spatial and episodic memory in young and aged populations. We aim at giving guidelines for virtual enactment studies, especially in the context of aging, where spatial and episodic memory decline. Results: Our findings reveal a positive effect on spatial and episodic memory in the young population and promising outcomes in aging. Several cognitive factors (e.g., executive function, decision-making, and visual components) mediate memory performances. Findings should be taken into account for future interventions in aging. Conclusions: The present review sheds light on the key role of the sensorimotor and cognitive systems for memory rehabilitation by means of a more ecological tool such as virtual reality and stresses the importance of the body for cognition, endorsing the view of an embodied mind

Incidental exposure to hedonic and healthy food features affects food preferences one day later

Memories acquired incidentally from exposure to food information in the environment may often become active to later afect food preferences. Because conscious use of these memories is not requested or required, these inciden‑ tal learning efects constitute a form of indirect memory. In an experiment using a novel food preference paradigm (n=617), we found that brief incidental exposure to hedonic versus healthy food features indirectly afected food preferences a day later, explaining approximately 10% of the variance in preferences for tasty versus healthy foods. It follows that brief incidental exposure to food information can afect food preferences indirectly for at least a day. When hedonic and health exposure were each compared to a no-exposure baseline, a general efect of hedonic exposure emerged across individuals, whereas health exposure only afected food preferences for high-BMI individu‑ als. This pattern suggests that focusing attention on hedonic food features engages common afective processes across the general population, whereas focusing attention on healthy food features engages eating restraint goals associated with high BMI. Additionally, incidental exposure to food features primarily changed preferences for infre‑ quently consumed foods, having less impact on habitually consumed foods. These fndings ofer insight into how hedonic information in the obesogenic food environment contributes to unhealthy eating behavior that leads to overweight and obesity. These fndings further motivate the development of interventions that counteract the efects of exposure to hedonic food information and that broaden the efects of exposure to healthy food information.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Developing and evaluating a situated assessment instrument for trichotillomania: The SAM2 TAI

Measuring trichotillomania is essential for understanding and treating it effectively. Using the Situated Assessment Method (SAM2), we developed a psychometric instrument to assess hair pulling in situations where it occurs. In two studies, pullers evaluated their pulling in relevant situations, along with how much they experience factors that potentially influence it (e.g., external triggers, reduction in negative emotion, negative self-thoughts). Individual measures of pulling, averaged across situations, exhibited high test reliability, construct validity, and content validity. Large differences between situations in pulling were observed, along with large individual-situation interactions (with limited evidence distinguishing focused versus automatic pulling subtypes). In linear regressions for individual participants, factors that influence pulling tended to correlate with pulling as predicted, explaining a median 74%–83% of its variance. By identifying factors that predict pulling for each individual across situations, the SAM2 Trichotillomania Assessment Instrument (TAI) offers a rich understanding of an individual’s pulling experience, potentially supporting individualized pulling interventions

Moving beyond the distinction between concrete and abstract concepts

From the perspective of the situated conceptualization framework, the primary purpose of concepts is for categorizing and integrating elements of situations to support goal-directed action (including communication and social interaction). To the extent that important situational elements are categorized and integrated properly, effective goal-directed action follows. Over time, frequent patterns of co-occurring concepts within situations become established in memory as situated conceptualizations, conditioning the conceptual system and producing habitual patterns of conceptual processing. As a consequence, individual concepts are most basically represented within patterns of concepts that become entrained with specific kinds of physical situations. In this framework, the concrete versus abstract distinction between concepts is no longer useful, with two other distinctions becoming important instead: (i) external versus internal situational elements, (ii) situational elements versus situational integrations. Whereas concepts for situational elements originate in distributed neural networks that provide continual feeds about components of situations, concepts for situational integrations originate in association areas that establish temporal co-occurrence relations between situational elements, both external and internal. We propose that studying concepts in the context of situated action is necessary for establishing complete accounts of them, and that continuing to study concepts in isolation is likely to provide relatively incomplete and distorted accounts. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain’