References

Title: Problematic internet use among Turkish university students: A multidimensional investigation based on demographics and internet activities

Topic: This study investigates the Turkish undergraduate university students’ problematic Internet use (PIU) levels and the relationship with different problems, like distraction.

Problem: According to the literature (e.g., Kubey, Lavin & Barrows, 2001; Ceyhan, 2008) university students who use the Internet at night are more likely to be unhealthy and problematic Internet users. Kubey et al. discuss that excessive Internet users usually stay up late, get less sleep, feel tired and have impaired academic performance. In addition, Ceyhan findings indicate that PIU levels of the Turkish university students who use the Internet mostly at night are notably higher than those of the students who use it in daytime.

Procedure: The participants were undergraduate university students at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey. The students at different faculties and schools at the university were asked randomly whether they want to participate in the research in Fall semester of 2009-2010 academic year. A sample of 705 undergraduate students was volunteers to fill out the questionnaire.

However, the data obtained from 95 students were excluded from the analyses since 68 students’ responses on the questionnaire were incomplete and 27 students did not use the Internet regularly at least between 1-5 hours a week. Thus, the data gathered from 610 undergraduate students.

A pencil-and-paper questionnaire consisting of two sections was used to collect data. The first section was used to gather demographic details (gender, age, school or faculty, Internet use by time of a day …). The second section of the questionnaire contains a Turkish version of the Online Cognition Scale (OCS) which is an assistive tool for multidimensional measure of PIU. This proof is for evaluate four aspects: social comfort, loneliness/depression, diminished impulse control and distraction (We are going to use the last one aspect).

Internet distraction involves using the Internet as activity of avoidance. In general, individuals use the Internet in order to be distracted from a stressful event, task or stream of thought.

The descriptive results in Table 2 indicates that 502 students out of 610 use the Internet for educational purposes such as finding and reading electronic educational papers, whereas 108 students have not used it for educational purposes.

We can say that many students waste them time using the internet bad, so is necessary to make something to have minus cases like this. The author proposes make the persons, the students, aware of their bad habit by conferences and talks, because they really are hurting themselves.

Reference: Tekinarslan, E., Gürer, M. D. (2011). Problematic Internet use among Turkish university students: A multidimensional investigation based on demographics and Internet activities. International Journal of Human Sciences [Online]. 8:1. Available: http://www.InsanBilimleri.com/En

2.

Title: Perceptions of the effects of clicker technology on student learning and engagement: a study of freshmen Chemistry students.

Topic: Most of the students populating classrooms in today’s universities and colleges were born in 1982 or later and are the first university cohort to be so constantly wired and connected to friends, to the media and to the Internet through cell phones, MP3

players and laptops

Problem: While technology in the form of laptops and cellphones may be the cause of much of the distraction in university and college classrooms, some, including the personal or classroom response system (PRS/CRS) or clicker, also present pedagogical opportunities to enhance student engagement.

Procedure: After receiving ethical clearance to conduct this study, a graduate research assistant unrelated to the course distributed a brief attitudinal and informational student survey to the 250 students registered in CHM1301 Principles of Chemistry (Fall 2009) during the last class of the semester. The professor was not involved in the distribution of the questionnaires and students were verbally informed that they were free to participate or not. They were collected by the research assistant and placed in a sealed envelope. The survey used both Likert-type and non-Likert type questions to evaluate the students’ perception of the clickers and their impact on student engagement. A total of 200 surveys (80%) were completed.

Reference: Lennox Terriona, J. & Aceti, V. (2012). Perceptions of the effects of clicker technology on student learning and engagement: a study of freshmen Chemistry students. Learning Technology. 20(16150). 1-11 doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.16150

3.

Title: “Distracters” do not always distract: visual working memory for angry faces is enhanced by incidental emotional words

Topic: We are often required to filter out distraction in order to focus on a primary task during which working memory (WM) is engaged.

Problem: Previous research has shown that negative versus neutral distracters presented during a visual WM maintenance period significantly impair memory for neutral information.

Procedure: In summary, each trial comprised a 2000 ms WM encoding phase, a 9000 ms WM maintenance phase, and a 3000 ms WM retrieval phase. On no-distracter trials (Experiment 1 only) participants simply viewed a central fixation cross during the 9000 ms maintenance phase. On trials in which a word was presented, within the maintenance phase there was a 3000 ms “distraction” period. A trial example is provided in Figure 1. The beginning of each trial was indicated by a fixation cross that temporarily grew in size. Two faces (both angry or both happy) were then presented on either side of fixation for 2000 ms for encoding into WM. The horizontal distance between the center of each face was 3.5 cm (approximately 3.3° of visual angle). The WM maintenance period began when the faces disappeared. For the first 3000–5000 ms of the maintenance period participants simply viewed the fixation cross in the center of the screen (this variable duration was selected at random to be 3000, 3500, 4000, 4500, or 5000 ms). Then a word was flashed in the center a total of three times; each word flash was visible on the screen for 500 ms, totaling a presentation duration of 1500 ms. There was a variable delay between the first and second and between the second and third word presentations (each delay was selected to be 500, 700, 800, or 1000 ms, with the sum of the two delays totaling 1500 ms each time).

Reference: Jackon, M. C., Linden, D. E. J. & Raymond, J. E. (2012) “Distracters” do not always distract: visual working memory for angry faces in enhanced by incidental emotional words. Frontiers in Psychology. 3(437), 1-9. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00437.

4.

Title: Working memory load attenuateds emotional enhancement in recognition memory.

Topic: Emotionally arousing stimuli are perceived and remembered better than neutral stimuli.

Problem: Under threat, this negativity bias is further increased. We investigated whether working memory (WM) load can attenuate incidental memory for emotional images. Two groups of participants performed the N-back task with two WM load levels. In one group, we induced anxiety using a threat of shock paradigm to increase attentional processing of negative information.

Procedure: Two groups of participants performed the N-back task with two WM load levels. In one group, we induced anxiety using a threat of shock paradigm to increase attentional processing of negative information. During task performance we incidentally and briefly flashed emotional distracter images which prolonged response times in both load conditions. A subsequent unannounced immediate recognition memory test revealed that when load at exposure had been low, recognition was better for negative items in both participant groups. This enhancement, however, was attenuated under high load, leaving performance on neutral items unchanged regardless of the threat of shock manipulation. We conclude that both in threat and in normal states WM load at exposure can attenuate immediate emotional memory enhancement

Reference: Miendlarzewka, E. A., van Elswijk, G., Cannistraci, C. V. & van Ee, R. (2013) Working memory load attenuateds emotional enhancement in recognition memory. Frontiers in Psychology. 4(112), 1-10. doi:10.3389/psyg.2013.00112.

5.

Title: Distraction of symbolic behavior in regular classrooms.

Topic: The purpose of the present study is to develop more precise methods to explore the interaction between contextual factors in teacher instructions in regular classroom settings and students' abilities to use symbolic information in the instruction.

Problem: The ability to easily show symbolic behavior could be expected to influence student's capacity to be active and participate. The present study examines distraction in students' shifts from the use of "non-symbolic" to "symbolic" behavior in regular classroom settings

Procedure: The 53 students (29 boys and 24 girls), ages 11-13 years old, who participated in the study were from three classes in the same Swedish compulsory regular school. Based on their test performances in a previous study, 25 students (47%) were defined as showing symbolic behavior (symbolic), and 28 students (53%) as not showing it (non-symbolic). In the present study, new test trials with distractors were added. Students from both the symbolic and non-symbolic groups scored significantly fewer correct answers on the post-training test trials with distraction stimuli (p < 0.05) than in post-training test trials without distraction. In the post-training test trials with competing arbitrary distractors, both groups were distracted significantly more than in the post-training test trials with competing non-arbitrary distractors (p < 0.05). The results indicate that a relatively easily administered and socially acceptable procedure seems to give observational data about variations in students' symbolic behavior in relation to contextual factors in regular classroom.

Reference: Billinger, S. (2012) Distraction of symbolic behavior in regular classrooms. Frontiers in Psichology. 3(521), 1-7. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00521.

6.

Title: Distraction by emotion in early adolescence: affective facilitation and interference during the attentional blink.

Topic: The extent to which early adolescents differ from adults in their sensitivity to attention capture by affective stimuli during rapid processing.

Problem: A rapid serial visual presentation paradigm (RSVP) was implemented as a dual task, requiring the report of two green target stimuli embedded in a stream of distractors.

Procedure: The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Konstanz and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was obtained from the parents of the students prior to the testing session; students gave their verbal assent. Assessment took place one participant at a time in a quiet room provided by the schools. Students completed three measures, including the standardized reading test (see section Participants), the AB task, and post-experimental affective stimulus ratings. Including breaks, a typical session lasted 60 min with the AB task averaging approximately 30 min. Instead of compensating each participant at the end of the session, a financial bonus was given to the class fund for common student projects.

Reference: Heim, S., benasich, A. A. & Keil, A. (2013) Distraction by emotion in early adolescence: affective facilitation and interference during the attentional blink. Frontiers in Psichology. 4(580), 1-10. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00580.