• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.120-128
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• 1997

Clinical neuropsychological tests were developed originally for the diagnosis of neurological and neuro-surgical diseases. Recently, these tests are being introduced to psychiatric patients. Authors had the experience to use these tests in pychiatric outpatient clinic. Results were as follows. There was a significantly increase in language and attentional function in residual schizophrenia compared to normal control. In chronic neurosis, as visuospatial function was reduced, language and attentional functions were enhanced. With these results, authors suggest that application of neuropsychological tests in psychiatric patients may be very helpful in classifying the subgroups of disease, in selecting the modality of treatment, and in expecting prognosis.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.62-72
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• 2023

Objective: Although balance training has been used as an effective ankle injury rehabilitation program to restore neuromuscular deficits in patients with chronic ankle instability, it is not effectively used in terms of motor learning. Attentional focusing can be an effective method for improving ankle kinematics to prevent recurrent ankle injuries. This study aimed to 1) evaluate the effects of attentional focus, including internal and external focus, and 2) determine a more effective focusing method for patients with chronic ankle instability to learn balance tasks. Method: Twenty-four patients with chronic ankle instability were randomly assigned to three groups (external focus, internal focus, and no feedback) and underwent four weeks of progressive balance training. The three-dimensional ankle kinematics of each patient were measured before and after training as the main outcomes. Ensemble curve analysis, discrete point analysis, and post hoc pairwise comparisons were performed to identify interactions between groups and time. Results: The results showed that (1) the external focus group was more dorsiflexed and everted than the internal focus group; (2) the external focus group was more dorsiflexed than the no feedback group; and (3) the no feedback group was more dorsiflexed than the internal focus group. Conclusion: Because dorsiflexion and eversion are ankle motions that oppose the mechanism of lateral ankle sprain, using the external focus method during balance training may be more effective in modifying these motions, thereby reducing the risk of ankle sprain.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.104-110
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• 2009

In this driving simulation study, the impairing effects of various types of electronic devices usage(i. e., destination search by using in-vehicle navigation system, TV watching and dialing cellular phone) during driving on front-to-rear-end collision avoidance were investigated. Percentage of collisions, driving speeds when the drivers collided, and initial reaction time for collision avoidance were analyzed and compared as the dependent measures. The results indicated that (1) any types of electronic devices usage during driving induced more serious collision-related impairment than control condition where no additional task was required, and (2) in general, destination search task appeared to impair drivers collision avoidance performance more than the other task requirements in terms of percentage of collisions and initial reaction time for collision avoidance, but TV watching induced most serious collision impact. These results suggested that any types of electronic device usage could distract drivers attention from the primary task of driving, and be resulted in serious outcome in potentially risky situation of front-to-rear-end collision. In particular, mandatory use of eye-hand coordination and receiving feedback seemed to one of essential factor leading the drivers visual attentional distraction.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2007

The subjects, 114 mothers with infants from 6- to 24- months of age, were administered the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised(Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003), Adult Temperament Questionnaire(Derryberry & Rothbart, 1988) and Parenting Efficacy(Park & Rha, 2003; Lederman, Weigarten & Lederman, 1981) Boys were more distressed than girls in limitation and in falling reactivity/rate of recovery. Parenting efficacy was greater for mothers with daughters than mothers with sons. Infants' fear and distress to limitation correlated positively with mothers' sadness. Infants' attention span correlated positively with mothers' attentional control, inhibition control and positive control. Parenting efficacy was higher in mothers whose children fall asleep easily and have longer attention spans. Mothers' positive affect and activation control increased and frustration decreased parenting efficacy.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.197-208
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• 2003

Objective：In this study, we hypothesized that deficit in processing rapid linguistic stimuli is at the heart of Reading Disability(RD) and deficit in response inhibition is at the heart of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity(ADHD). We conducted experiments to identify the core cognitive characteristics of children either with RD or with ADHD or with both, using attentional tasks and phoneme differential tests. Method：In the study 1, 28 children with ADHD, 16 children with RD+ADHD were individually administered visual/auditory performance tests. Then, the differences of performance on attentional tasks between two groups were compared while IQs of two groups were controlled. In the study 2, 13 children with RD+ADHD/RD, 13 children with ADHD, and 13 normal children were administered computerized phoneme differential tests. Result：Visual attentional tasks did not distinguish an ADHD group from a RD+ADHD group. With auditory attentional tasks, however, the comorbid group showed significantly more difficulties, causing a large variance in reaction time. RD, RD+ADHD, and ADHD groups showed more errors in phoneme differential tests than a normal control group, and each group showed distinctive performance patterns. Discussion：An ADHD group had difficulty in response inhibition and sustained attention, and children who also had RD along with ADHD magnified the auditory attentional difficulties. Even though children with RD had more trouble with responding correctly to target stimuli, their responses were not significantly different from those of children with ADHD.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.19-23
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• 1997

Attention is a phenomenon hard to define, but can be conceptualized as a mental function ranging from sustaining readiness to perceive stimuli to understanding the nature and value and selecting stimuli that are most relevant to the given situation. Manifestations of attention include vigilance, and focused, directed, selective, divided, and sustained attentions. While basic attentional tone is controlled by the interaction among reticular activating system, thalamus and prefrontal cortex, direction and selection of attention is controlled by neural circuits of prefrontal, posterior parietal, and limbic cortex. It is expected that understanding of attention and its neural control could provide answers to the relationship between pathophysiology and clinical symptoms of some major psychiatric disorders. More efforts are required to develop tools to assess more detailed and various aspects of attention in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.349-354
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• 1996

SACOM(Simulation Analyser with Cognitive Operator Model) is being developed at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to simulate human operator's cognitive characteristics during the emergency situations of nuclear power plans. An operator model with error mechanisms has been developed and combined into SACOM to simulate human operator's cognitive information process based on the Rasmussen's decision ladder model. The operational logic for five different cognitive activities (Agents), operator's attentional control (Controller), short-term memory (Blackboard), and long-term memory (Knowledge Base) have been developed and implemented on blackboard architecture. A trial simulation with a scenario for emergency operation has been performed to verify the operational logic. It was found that the operator model with error mechanisms is suitable for the simulation of operator's cognitive behavior in emergency situation.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.166-170
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• 2019

Objectives: Attentional and memory functions are important aspects of neural plasticity that, theoretically, should be amenable to pharmacopuncture treatments. A previous study from our laboratory suggested that quantitative electroencephalographic (qEEG) measurements of theta/beta ratio (TBR), an index of attentional control, may be indicative of academic performance in a first-semester medical school course. The present study expands our prior report by extracting and analyzing data on frontal theta and beta asymmetries. We test the hypothesis that the amount of frontal theta and beta asymmetries (fTA, fBA), are correlated with TBR and academic performance, thereby providing novel targets for pharmacopuncture treatments to improve cognitive performance. Methods: Ten healthy male volunteers were subjected to 5-10 min of qEEG measurements under eyes-closed conditions. The qEEG measurements were performed 3 days before each of first two block examinations in anatomy-physiology, separated by five weeks. Amplitudes of the theta and beta waveforms, expressed in ${\mu}V$, were used to compute TBR, fTA and fBA. Significance of changes in theta and beta EEG wave amplitude was assessed by ANOVA with post-hoc t-testing. Correlations between TBR, fTA, fBA and the raw examination scores were evaluated by Pearson's product-moment coefficients and linear regression analysis. Results: fTA and fBA were found to be negatively correlated with TBR (P<0.03, P<0.05, respectively) and were positively correlated with the second examination score (P<0.03, P=0.1, respectively). Conclusion: Smaller fTA and fBA were associated with lower academic performance in the second of two first-semester medical school anatomy-physiology block examination. Future studies should determine whether these qEEG metrics are useful for monitoring changes associated with the brain's cognitive adaptations to academic challenges, for predicting academic performance and for targeting phamacopuncture treatments to improve cognitive performance.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.29-40
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• 2023

Anxiety is known to upset the balance of the attentional system and prioritize the stimulus-driven system over the goal-directed system; however, self-instruction induces goal-directed behavior with the self-regulation effect. This study verified the effects of meteorological and self-instruction conditions on pilot anxiety and flight task performance for in-service pilots in a virtual reality environment. The meteorological conditions were divided into visual meteorological and very low visibility conditions, and the flight tasks were conducted by varying whether or not self-instruction was performed. The experiment results reveal that anxiety and heart rate were higher, and the performance of the flight task was lower in the very low visibility condition. However, anxiety and heart rate were lower, and the performance of the flight task was higher in the self-instruction condition. This result suggests that accidents due to difficulty in flight may increase because of anxiety, but such accidents may decrease because of flight performance improvement by self-instruction.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Emotion and Sensibility Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.107-113
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• 2002

We examined the psychophysiological effects of navigation in a virtual reality (VR). Subjects were exposed to the VR, and required to detect specific objects. Ten electrophysiological signals were recorded before, during, and after navigation in the VR. Six questionnaires on the VR experience were acquired from 45 healthy subjects. There were significant changes between the VR period and the pre-VR control period in several psychophysiological measurements. During the VR period, eye blink, skin conductance level, and alpha frequency of EEG were decreased but gamma wave were increased. Physiological changes associated with cybersickness included increased heart rate, eye blink, skin conductance response, and gamma wave and decreased photoplethysmogram and skin temperature. These results suggest an attentional change during VR navigation and activation of the autonomic nervous system for cybersickness. These findings would enhance our understanding for the psychophysiological changes during VR navigation and cybersickness.