Do categorically distinct stressors alter the attention to visual food cues?

Stressor exposure affects food intake as well as the preference for high or low palatability foods, but little is known about how stressor types impact the visual attention to food images. We used eye tracking methodology in humans to determine if activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system is associated with changes in attention to food images as determined by measuring changes in oculomotor activity. Specifically, we tested two questions: 1) Do categorically distinct stressors alter aspects of visual attention to food images as determined by oculomotor activity (i.e., saccade latency, gaze duration, and saccade bouts)? 2) Do categorically distinct stressors differentially affect visual attention to food images of high or low palatability? A total of sixty participants were randomly divided into one of three test groups: controls, an anticipatory stressor group, or a reactive stressor group. We measured salivary cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) before and after stressor exposure to confirm activation of the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system, respectively. Following stressor exposure participants performed an eye-tracking test using a standardized food picture database (Food-pics). We analyzed saccade latency, gaze duration, and saccade bouts in balanced pairs of food and non-food images. Salivary cortisol was elevated by both stressors, although the elevation in salivary cortisol to the reactive stressor was driven by women only. sAA was elevated only by the anticipatory stressor. There were main effects of image type for all three eye-tracking variables, with initial saccades of shorter latency to food images and longer gaze duration and more saccade bouts with food images. Participants exposed to the reactive stressor reduced gaze duration on food images relative to controls, and this affect was not linked to palatability or salivary cortisol levels. We conclude that the reactive stressor decreased time spent looking at food, but not non-food, images. These data are partly consistent with the idea that reactive stressors reduce attention to non-critical visual signals.

A Visual Interactive Narrative Intervention (VINI) for aphasia education: Can digital applications administer augmented input to educate stroke survivors with aphasia?

OBJECTIVE

Persons with aphasia (PWA) face additional barriers to proper healthcare due to inadequate patient education by health professionals unequipped to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The current study examines a digital application that evokes and sustains health information processing through AAC specifically aimed at increasing comprehension with augmented input (AI).

METHODS

A digital application designed to educate PWA about their health condition was compared to a video-recorded doctor providing oral-only education. Sixteen PWA received both education interventions in a crossover manner. Health information processing was assessed through heart rate (HR) and skin conductance levels (SCL), which were collected continually during each administration of education interventions.

RESULTS

PWA demonstrated greater cognitive processing of health information via HR and SCL indices during the digital application compared to the typical oral-only education intervention. The oral-only intervention led PWA to disengage with health information.

CONCLUSION

By combining visuographic materials and adapted language into a customizable narrative structure, digital applications can utilize AI to educate PWA about basic health information (i.e., diagnosis and prognosis).

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

The current study's AAC requires minimal training and can be used as an aided support in conjunction with other techniques that increase PWA's access to health information.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA's mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.