An Internet-Based Psychological Intervention With a Serious Game to Improve Vitality, Psychological and Physical Condition, and Immune Function in Healthy Male Adults: Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Recently, internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) and serious gaming interventions have been suggested to enhance accessibility to interventions and engagement in psychological interventions that aim to promote health outcomes. Few studies, however, have investigated their effectiveness in the context of simulated real-life challenges.

Objective: We aimed to examine the effectivity of a guided ICBT combined with a serious gaming intervention in improving self-reported psychophysiological and immunological health endpoints in response to psychophysiological and immune-related challenges.

Editor's choice: Optimizing healthy food preferences by serious gaming.

Serious gaming is an upcoming and promising tool in prevention and health promotion. The aim of this experimental study was to examine whether health-related serious gaming could optimize food-related outcomes and physical activity. Eighty-one healthy participants (80% female) were randomly allocated to an experimental condition, in which participants played serious games based on transferring information, priming and evaluative conditioning, for half an hour, or a control condition, in which participants played non-health-related computer games.

Can verbal suggestions strengthen the effects of a relaxation intervention?

Short stress management interventions such as relaxation therapy have demonstrated preliminary effectiveness in reducing stress-related problems. A promising tool to strengthen the effectiveness of relaxation-based interventions is the use of verbal suggestions, as previous research provided evidence that verbal suggestions can induce positive outcome expectancies, facilitate adaptive responses to stress and improve health outcomes. The present experimental proof-of-concept study aimed to investigate the effects of a brief relaxation intervention and specifically the role of verbal suggestions on stress-related outcomes assessed by self-report questionnaires and psychophysiological data.

Effectiveness of Stress-Reducing Interventions on the Response to Challenges to the Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Review.

Background: There is consistent evidence showing an interplay between psychological processes and immune function in health and disease processes.

Objectives: The present systematic review and meta-analysis aims to provide a concise overview of the effectiveness of stress-reducing psychological interventions on the activation of immune responses in both healthy subjects and patients.

Methods: Included are 3 types of challenges: in vivo, in vitro, and psychophysiological.

The effects of a gamified approach avoidance training and verbal suggestions on food outcomes.

There is initial support for the effectiveness of approach-avoidance trainings in altering food-related health behaviors. Furthermore, outcome expectancies induced by verbal suggestions might optimize the effectiveness of these interventions, as shown in placebo research. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a gamified approach-avoidance training on food-related outcomes and whether verbal suggestions could strengthen those effects.

The effects of a psychological intervention directed at optimizing immune function: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Previous research has provided evidence for the link between psychological processes and psychophysiological health outcomes. Psychological interventions, such as face-to-face or online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and serious games aimed at improving health, have shown promising results in promoting health outcomes. Few studies so far, however, have examined whether Internet-based CBT combined with serious gaming elements is effective in modulating health outcomes.

Audio-visual speech in noise perception in dyslexia.

Individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) may experience, besides reading problems, other speech-related processing deficits. Here, we examined the influence of visual articulatory information (lip-read speech) at various levels of background noise on auditory word recognition in children and adults with DD. We found that children with a documented history of DD have deficits in their ability to gain benefit from lip-read information that disambiguates noise-masked speech.

Frontal EEG theta/beta ratio as an electrophysiological marker for attentional control and its test-retest reliability.

A robust finding is that resting-state frontal theta/beta ratio (TBR), a spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) frequency band parameter, is increased in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Accumulating evidence suggests that TBR might also provide an objective marker of executive cognitive control (and more specifically attentional control; AC) in healthy adults. The present study aimed to further investigate this conception by assessing EEG frequency band power and AC twice (with a one-week interval) in 41 young female adults.

Phonetic recalibration of speech by text.

Listeners adjust their phonetic categories to cope with variations in the speech signal (phonetic recalibration). Previous studies have shown that lipread speech (and word knowledge) can adjust the perception of ambiguous speech and can induce phonetic adjustments (Bertelson, Vroomen, & de Gelder in Psychological Science, 14(6), 592-597, 2003; Norris, McQueen, & Cutler in Cognitive Psychology, 47(2), 204-238, 2003). We examined whether orthographic information (text) also can induce phonetic recalibration.