Joohan Kim

Cross-validation of reliability, convergent and discriminant validity for the problematic online game use scale

The main purpose of the present study is to develop a measure of problematic online game use by identifying underlying factors and testing external validities of the scale. The authors tested the scale with the three age groups: 5th, 8th, and 11th graders. Through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the present study confirmed that the POGU scale produced reliable and consistent factorial structures across the independent samples. The results supported convergent validity of the scale: POGU showed significant correlations with academic self-efficacy, anxiety, loneliness, and satisfaction with daily life. The results also supported the discriminant validity. The POGU scale did not redundantly measure any of individual difference constructs and was statistically distinguishable from the closely correlated constructs.

How Feeling Free to Talk Affects Ordinary Political Conversation, Purposeful Argumentation, and Civic Participation

Scholars have examined how specific opinion climates affect political discourse, but little attention has been given to how perceived freedom to talk in general is related to congenial political conversation in ordinary spaces or willingness to argue with an opponent—or how each mode of talk affects civic participation. Respondents in a nationwide survey felt free to talk about politics. Freedom to talk, issue-specific news, and newspaper use were most strongly related to ordinary political conversation. With argumentation, issue-specific news, issue-specific talk, and local opinion climate dominated. Ordinary political conversation was significantly related to conventional participation; argumentation was not.

Phenomenology of Digital-Being

This paper explores the ontology of digital information or the nature of digital-being. Even though a digital-being is not a physical thing, it has many essential features of physical things such as substantiality, extensions, and thing-totality (via Heidegger). Despite their lack of material bases, digital-beings can provide us with perceivedness or universal passive pregivenness (via Husserl). Still, a digital-being is not exactly a thing, because it does not belong to objective time and space. Due to its perfect duplicability, a digital being can exist at multiple locations simultaneously – that is, it defies normal spatiotemporal constraints. With digital beings on the Internet, we can establish intercorporeal relationships. The World Wide Web opens up new possibilities of Daseins “being-able-to-be-with-one-another” and new modes of “Being-with-others” (Mitsein). The new modes of communication based on digital-beings compel us to re-read Heideggers basic concepts such as “Dasein as Being-in-the-world,” since Dasein becomes the “Digi-sein as Being-in-the-World-Wide-Web.” By exploring the ontological characteristics of digital-being, this paper suggests that we conceive digital-beings as res digitalis – a third entity which is located somewhere between res cogitans and res extensa.

Aberrant neural responses to social rejection in patients with schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia often show abnormal social interactions, which may explain their social exclusion behaviors. This study aimed to elucidate patients’ brain responses to social rejection in an interactive situation. Fifteen patients with schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls participated in the functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment with the virtual handshake task, in which socially interacting contents such as acceptance and refusal of handshaking were implemented. Responses to the refusal versus acceptance conditions were evaluated and compared between the two groups. Controls revealed higher activity in the refusal condition compared to the acceptance condition in the right superior temporal sulcus, whereas patients showed higher activity in the prefrontal regions, including the frontopolar cortex. In patients, contrast activities of the right superior temporal sulcus were inversely correlated with the severity of schizophrenic symptoms, whereas contrast activities of the left frontopolar cortex were positively correlated with the current anxiety scores. The superior temporal sulcus hypoactivity and frontopolar hyperactivity of patients with schizophrenia in social rejection situations may suggest the presence of mentalizing deficits in negative social situations and inefficient processes of socially aberrant stimuli, respectively. These abnormalities may be one of the neural bases of distorted or paranoid beliefs in schizophrenia.

Multivariate Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling of the Reciprocal Longitudinal Relationship between Perceived Control and Academic Achievement

Although many studies have demonstrated positive associations between perceived control and academic achievement, few studies have actually explored which of the two constructs is the determinant of the other. There are only a few longitudinal studies on the relationship of perceived control and academic achievement. The present study examined the reciprocal longitudinal relation between perceived control and academic achievement. Further, considering the multiethnic background of the USA, this study investigated how the relationship between two constructs varies with ethnicity. Using a randomly selected sample of 1,500 students from Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White groups in the National Education Longitudinal Study data, Autoregressive Cross-lagged Modeling was performed to get a complete picture of the longitudinal relationship. Results showed a positive longitudinal effect of academic achievement on perceived control across the ethnic groups. Explanations for these findings are discussed.

Happier People Show Greater Neural Connectivity during Negative Self-Referential Processing

Life satisfaction is an essential component of subjective well-being and provides a fundamental resource for optimal everyday functioning. The goal of the present study was to examine how life satisfaction influences self-referential processing of emotionally valenced stimuli. Nineteen individuals with high life satisfaction (HLS) and 21 individuals with low life satisfaction (LLS) were scanned using functional MRI while performing a face-word relevance rating task, which consisted of 3 types of face stimuli (self, public other, and unfamiliar other) and 3 types of word stimuli (positive, negative, and neutral). We found a significant group x word valence interaction effect, most strikingly in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. In the positive word condition dorsal medial prefrontal cortex activity was significantly higher in the LLS group, whereas in the negative word condition it was significantly higher in the HLS group. The two groups showed distinct functional connectivity of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex with emotional processing-related regions. The findings suggest that, in response to emotional stimuli, individuals with HLS may successfully recruit emotion regulation-related regions in contrast to individuals with LLS. The difference in functional connectivity during self-referential processing may lead to an influence of life satisfaction on responses to emotion-eliciting stimuli.

The protective role of resilience in attenuating emotional distress and aggression associated with early-life stress in young enlisted military service candidates

Early life stress (ELS) may induce long-lasting psychological complications in adulthood. The protective role of resilience against the development of psychopathology is also important. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among ELS, resilience, depression, anxiety, and aggression in young adults. Four hundred sixty-one army inductees gave written informed consent and participated in this study. We assessed psychopathology using the Korea Military Personality Test, ELS using the Childhood Abuse Experience Scale, and resilience with the resilience scale. Analyses of variance, correlation analyses, and hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses were conducted for statistical analyses. The regression model explained 35.8%, 41.0%, and 23.3% of the total variance in the depression, anxiety, and aggression indices, respectively. We can find that even though ELS experience is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and aggression, resilience may have significant attenuating effect against the ELS effect on severity of these psychopathologies. Emotion regulation showed the most beneficial effect among resilience factors on reducing severity of psychopathologies. To improve mental health for young adults, ELS assessment and resilience enhancement program should be considered.

Repeatability of the accelerometric-based method to detect step events for hemiparetic stroke patients

This study is to evaluate the repeatability of the accelerometric-method to detect step events for hemiparetic stroke patients. To evaluate this method, four adults with chronic hemiparetic stroke were participated. The repeatability of this method using a single three-axis accelerometer was evaluated with a six optical camera motion capture system. The correlation statistics and Bland-Altman plot were then used to evaluate the agreement between the step-time differences from the accelerometer data and the reflective markers data. The correlation coefficient of each two data was 0.99 (p < 0.001) and retest result was 0.99 (p < 0.001). The mean ± standard deviation (SD) between each two data along with the 95% limits of agreement (LOA = ±1.96 SD) was 2.58±2.37 ms (LOA = −2.07 ms and 7.23 ms), and retest result was 3.73±2.02 ms (LOA = −0.22 ms and 7.68 ms). These results show that the suggested method is useful to detect step events for hemiparetic stroke patients.

The relationship between self-referential processing-related brain activity and anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia.

Despite the possible relationship between impaired self-referential processing and anhedonia, it has not yet been investigated. This study investigated an abnormality in brain activation associated with self-referential processing and its relationship with anhedonia in schizophrenia, specifically in self-related brain regions of interest. Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while rating the degree of relevance between faces (self, familiar other, or unfamiliar other) and words (positive, negative, or neutral). Brain activation in self-related regions, including the ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortices, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, and insula, were compared between groups and their correlations with anhedonia level were calculated. Compared to controls, patients were less likely to rate negative words as irrelevant for the self face. Patients showed significantly increased activation in the ACC and precuneus compared to controls, irrespective of conditions. ACC activity in the self-neutral word condition was positively correlated with anhedonia score in patients. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia may have an abnormality in the self-related cortical midline structures and particularly, abnormal ACC activation may be involved in anhedonia. Disrupted self-referential processing may be a possible cause of anhedonia in schizophrenia.

Effects of gratitude meditation on neural network functional connectivity and brain-heart coupling

A sense of gratitude is a powerful and positive experience that can promote a happier life, whereas resentment is associated with life dissatisfaction. To explore the effects of gratitude and resentment on mental well-being, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging and heart rate (HR) data before, during, and after the gratitude and resentment interventions. Functional connectivity (FC) analysis was conducted to identify the modulatory effects of gratitude on the default mode, emotion, and reward-motivation networks. The average HR was significantly lower during the gratitude intervention than during the resentment intervention. Temporostriatal FC showed a positive correlation with HR during the gratitude intervention, but not during the resentment intervention. Temporostriatal resting-state FC was significantly decreased after the gratitude intervention compared to the resentment intervention. After the gratitude intervention, resting-state FC of the amygdala with the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were positively correlated with anxiety scale and depression scale, respectively. Taken together, our findings shed light on the effect of gratitude meditation on an individual’s mental well-being, and indicate that it may be a means of improving both emotion regulation and self-motivation by modulating resting-state FC in emotion and motivation-related brain regions.