From memory to exercise: research on life’s daily challenges

Contents

• Sweet wine, dry wine, weak wine – do we remember the difference?
• The impact of work addiction on problematic phone, internet and social media use
• The experiences of adolescent victims of cyberbullying during COVID-19: an IPA study
• Exercise as medicine

Sweet wine, dry wine, weak wine – do we remember the difference?

Part of our memory is made up of knowledge of concepts and the semantic links between them, which we use when, for example, we recall the synonym for “ember” when doing a crossword puzzle. However, we also have memories of specific situations, such as a garden cooking party where the embers were burning red under the kettle. As we get older, our knowledge base grows, but we may forget small details such as the colour of the wine we drank at the party. From their frequency, we can deduce the extent of similarity between certain terms so, for instance, we know quantitatively that “dry wine” is closer in meaning to “sweet wine” than “weak wine”. In this research project, conducted by the Lifespan Memory Development Lab at ELTE PPK and the Brain Imaging Centre at HUN-REN TTK, older and younger people read and tried to memorise word associations, but the beginning of some previous word associations was sometimes changed during the task, just like in the example above. The greater the similarity between the word associations, the more often they were confused by young and old alike, but the older people’s memory was much more sensitive to similarity. The results show that we tend to confuse our memories based on their meanings, and that although older people have more knowledge, they often find it harder to recall the details.

Ilyés, A., Paulik, B., & Keresztes, A. (2024). Discrimination of semantically similar verbal memory traces is affected in healthy aging. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 17971.

The impact of work addiction on problematic phone, internet and social media use

Work addiction can pose serious challenges to physical and mental health and to social relationships. With more and more of us using the internet and social media sites in the course of our work – or even beyond –, it is worth questioning to what extent technology-related addictions are involved in work addiction. In the framework of the Budapest Longitudinal Study, a representative sample of young adults was examined over a period of years at three set data collection dates to see how work addiction is related to other technological addictions. The results suggest that work addiction may have a slight negative effect on excessive mobile phone use but shows a stronger association with later problematic internet use and social media addiction. Of particular interest is the mediating role of rumination and worrying – i.e. excessively negative thought patterns – in the relationship between work addiction and technological addictions. This means that people who tend to worry a lot or indulge in negative thoughts are more likely to develop problematic internet or social media use, alongside work addiction. It is therefore worth paying particular attention to these negative thinking patterns when treating work addiction. Decreasing worrying and rumination can reduce not only the symptoms of work addiction, but also the problems associated with technological addictions.

Kun, B., Paksi, B., Eisinger, A., & Demetrovics, Z. (2024). A munkafüggőség és a technológiai függőségek kapcsolatának vizsgálata egy hazai reprezentatív, longitudinális kutatás tükrében. Magyar Pszichológiai Szemle.

The experiences of adolescent victims of cyberbullying during COVID-19: an IPA study

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of adolescents who were victims of cyberbullying and received counselling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ten semi-structured interviews were audio-recorded, followed by a verbatim transcript using purposive sampling. The researchers identified five themes of personal experience and eighteen subthemes from the analysis: 1) Increased emotional turmoil resulting from cyberbullying indicated that bullying triggered deep emotional and psychological distress among adolescents, particularly during the pandemic; 2) Navigating internal and external barriers to seeking support outlined the obstacles these adolescents faced in accessing counselling (e.g. privacy concerns and technical issues). 3) The theme of counselling as a key support system highlighted how counselling helps to address the effects of cyberbullying. 4) The development of self-awareness revealed positive changes in self-identity and emotional resilience that emerged during counselling. 5) The sense of continued development and personal growth illustrated the adolescents’ commitment to continue with further sessions. The study emphasises that, despite its limitations, virtual counselling was a vital resource for the personal growth and development of the participant adolescents during the pandemic.

Mahmood, S., & Kalo, Z. (2024). “Virtual Counseling was a Lifeline”-Lived experiences of Adolescent Cyberbullying Victims on Counselling Intervention during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

Exercise as medicine

This synthetic study, entitled Exercise as a cornerstone of lifestyle medicine, draws attention to an ancient remedy and a very serious public health problem. Sedentary lifestyles are responsible for the premature death of 5.3 million people worldwide and the development of certain chronic diseases is closely linked to unhealthy lifestyles. Obesity is a public health problem affecting nearly a third of the adult population in the country, and more than half of the population if also including those who are overweight. Unhealthy lifestyles are emerging as risk factors for many non-infectious chronic diseases, negatively affecting somatic and mental health, limiting living space and shortening life expectancy. Lifestyle medicine, more specifically regular physical activity, plays a prominent role as a low-intensity intervention. Regular physical activity is a widely available and effective preventive and therapeutic intervention, which plays a significant role in the development and long-term maintenance of both somatic and mental health, as well as improving quality of life and increasing life expectancy. Some somatic and mental illnesses remain undiagnosed and therefore untreated. This is why physical activity is crucial for preventing the development of diseases in all ages. Although the beneficial effects of regular physical activity have long been known, it is not found in the medical literature and, with few exceptions, is not included as a targeted therapeutic intervention in almost any treatment protocols. The aim of this synthetic study is to demonstrate how regular exercise, as one of the cornerstones of lifestyle medicine, can be used as a low-intensity intervention in primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.

Szeifert, N. M., Vágó, H., & Gonda, X. (2024). A testmozgás mint az életmódorvoslás alappillére. Orvosi Hetilap, 165(43), 1683-1693.