Which cities promote an active lifestyle most in Hungary? In what way do radio plays support first and second language learning? How can school readiness be measured through movement tasks? What methods can help prevent spinal problems in competitive swimmers? ELTE PPK researchers answer these questions, among others, in their September publications.
Contents
- Creative dialogue: Therapeutic conversation as joint creation
- Skills to be developed and prediction of school readiness in preschool
- Effect of competitive swimming on the anatomical curvature of the spine
- People who pay more attention to their bodies experience fewer physical symptoms
- How does skiing affect postural stability?
- Hungarian cities of active lifestyle
- Spatial orientation and the developing mind
- How do autistic traits influence learning and decision making?
- Multiverse analysis to explore research degrees of freedom issues
- Intensive TikTok use is not equal to addiction
- Radio plays as educational methods
Creative dialogue: Therapeutic conversation as joint creation
The study discusses the helping conversation in a phenomenological and hermeneutical framework and analyses it as a process of shared creativity and creation. It briefly presents the theory of experience of one of the most influential phenomenologists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which he describes the specific plasticity of experience and the creative nature of speech along the concepts of chiasmus and wild reason. The role of language in dialogue and understanding is also a central tenet in the hermeneutics of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, who believes that in a conversation we necessarily create a common language that transforms the participants. The study outlines a possible phenomenological and hermeneutical description of the psychological helping conversation within this theoretical framework, focusing on the creative nature of the dialogue between the psychologist and the client, its language- and world-creating potential. During the joint interpretive act of the helper and the client, a new world is created, which the client can later enter independently - adopting the vision jointly developed in the helping relationship.
The study concludes that every helping relationship establishes a unique language and world created only in that relationship, which by the end of the process can become the client's own, adaptive "lifeworld".
Skills to be developed and prediction of school readiness in preschool
The basis of school readiness is that the nervous system has the appropriate organization to absorb the learning materials to be learned. The most obvious tool for checking the nervous system maturity of children is the measurement of motor and sensorimotor functions. One of the most complete assessment systems in Hungary is the test of the method named after Mihályné Kulcsár. Based on the results of the Complex Movement Therapy Test, the study shows which abilities are most in need of development and predict the occurrence of learning difficulties among large-group kindergarteners. The study involved 58 children, aged between 5 and a half and 7 years. The researchers analyzed four areas in more detail: sensory and sensorimotor functions, elementary movements, body perception and fine motor skills.
Effect of competitive swimming on the anatomical curvature of the spine
Swimming plays a significant role in preserving one’s health, but at the same time its effect on the spine is complex. This research compared the results of three studies, which examined the connections between regular swimming and spinal health. According to the results, torso asymmetry, scoliosis and lumbar pain are more common among competitive swimmers. For prevention, the authors recommend incorporating land-based training aimed at mobilizing and stabilizing the spine into athletes' routines.
People who pay more attention to their bodies experience fewer physical symptoms
A recent study by the Ádám György Psychophysiological Research Group at the Institute of Health Development and Sports Sciences at ELTE PPK examined bodily attention using laboratory measurements. This approach is unique because, although the importance of paying attention to one’s own body is explicitly emphasized or implicitly assumed in connection with many psychological constructs, there are only a few studies that primarily focus on its extent and characteristics.
During the research, participants had to press a button on a device attached to their upper arms that emitted vibrations of varying lengths and strengths when they perceived a vibration. The extent of bodily attention measured in this way was not related to self-reported bodily (or interoceptive) awareness. At the same time, the researchers found that those who reported fewer non-specific bodily symptoms perceived the vibrations on their skin more accurately. The tendency to non-specific bodily symptoms can be explained by a kind of perceptual bias, where so-called top-down information, such as attitudes, beliefs, memories. This bias results in less accurate bodily perception.
How does skiing affect postural stability?
The current study aimed to explore the potential beneficial effects of skiing on postural stability during a five-day ski camp. The experiment involved university students who had skied for a total of approximately 20 hours, and their posture was compared with that of their peers who had not participated in the camp. The researchers measured postural stability using the Balance Tracking System modified Clinical Test of Sensory Integration and Balance Protocol, which measures postural fluctuations in four static standing positions: with eyes open or closed, and on a stable or unstable surface. There were no significant differences between the groups for standard, proprioceptive, and vestibular postural stability, but there was a positive change in visual postural stability. The improvement was significant only for women. The authors explain that postural stability is task-specific and gender-specific, due to the characteristics of skiing and the differences in multisensory integration between women and men.
Hungarian cities of active lifestyle
The study of the relationship between sport and urban life is receiving increasing attention in international and domestic literature, as an active lifestyle contributes to improving public health and the liveability of cities. The aim of this research was to identify and characterize cities that support an active lifestyle in Hungary. The study was based on secondary databases, which consisted of international and domestic literature and the analysis of statistical data. The authors used the databases of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office and Eurostat during the analysis and evaluated surveys of domestic professional forums. Budapest and Debrecen are at the top of the ranking of sporty cities, with the number of sports facilities per capita being 3.5 and 3.2, respectively. The researchers also examined indicators that determined the ranking of sporty cities, such as the participation rate of the population in sports activities – this is 48% in Budapest. The research highlights that the existence of well-designed urban infrastructure and community sports programs is essential for supporting an active lifestyle.
Spatial orientation and the developing mind
We all have gotten lost at some point in our lives, experiencing just how important spatial orientation is. However, this ability of ours changes in multiple steps during our life. The study introduces the currently popular nervous and cognitive explanations of spatial orientation, examines the methods of examining orientation and the reference systems along which our minds maps space. It discusses in detail the concept of path integration, which allows us to calculate our current position relative to a starting point based solely on the direction and distance of our movement. The researchers also point out the contradictions that permeate the orientation literature - for example, why the ability to navigate independently of viewpoints appears at different ages in different studies - and show that in certain tasks we are able to operate both map-like and vectorial navigation modes simultaneously. According to the authors, these contradictions can be resolved in a more comprehensive model. They also discuss that children's navigational ability develops in close interaction with the development of social awareness, and that the examination of spatial navigation is also important in the diagnosis of cognitive decline in old age.
How do autistic traits influence learning and decision making?
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) influences how people think and process information. According to a theory, people with autism update their knowledge slower when receiving new information, however this is difficult to examine, as autistic traits are diverse. In this paper, the researchers used the spectrum approach, which states that autistic traits are present in different degrees in every person. An experiment was done with 296 adults not diagnosed with autism, to see how they can adapt to hidden patterns, without instructions. According to the results, the people with more autistic traits did not learn slower, but balanced speed and accuracy differently. This suggests that decision making strategies can be different on the autism spectrum. These results question the slower learning theory in autism and point to decision making strategies changing on the entire spectrum.
Multiverse analysis to explore research degrees of freedom issues
The study examined how different analytic decisions can alter cognitive psychological research. Researcher freedom in data analysis means that the researchers may choose between different analytical and data sorting and filtering methods in a way that any route taken can be right to test their hypothesis. Although the theory can be tested in all ways, not all routes are equally sensitive to the effect, and the rate of false positives is not the same. The researchers simulated data from a classic reaction time study and examined 50 different analytical decision combinations using the so-called multiverse method, performing a total of 1 million analyses. According to their results, certain analytical paths (e.g., stricter exclusion criteria or complex regression analyses) showed a false positive rate of up to 18-20% compared to the expected 5%. The above points out that although hypotheses do not determine the appropriate analytical decisions, different decision paths are not equally effective. Considering this, the authors also formulated specific recommendations for reaction time research in order to increase the reliability of future scientific results.
Intensive TikTok use is not equal to addiction
TikTok was the most downloaded app by users in 2024. The popularity of TikTok raises the question of how many young people may be at risk of addiction due to its widespread use, and where the line between intensive but fundamentally healthy use and problematic use is drawn. This question was sought to be answered by a Hungarian study of young TikTok users. As a result of an online questionnaire survey conducted with 618 participants, the authors found that the risk of problematic TikTok use among respondents was estimated at 3.07%. The appearance of depressive and anxiety symptoms was more strongly associated with problematic use than with time spent on the app. Browsing the “Explore” page and watching videos from content creators were only associated with problematic use, while they were not associated with time spent on the app. Both usage patterns were most strongly associated with browsing the “For You” page and reading comments under other people’s videos, among the activities performed on TikTok. The results highlighted some important qualitative differences between heavy and problematic use, as well as in-app activities that are riskier for problematic use.
Radio plays as educational methods
Audio drama – in German Hörspiel, or as it is often called in German-language literature “cinema in the head” or “stage in the head” – has been an important genre in the German-speaking world since the beginnings of radio broadcasting. Since radio drama has a long history in literature in Germany, it has gained a much more important role as an educational method in the teaching of the mother tongue, literature and foreign languages, alongside several other genres, which cannot be said about the practice in Hungary.
Based on the results of the analysis of methodological publications and aids supporting the teaching of German as a mother tongue (DaM), German as a first language (DaE) and German as a foreign language (DaF), this study presents the role that audio drama can play and how it can be used in the teaching of the mother tongue and foreign languages to develop receptive and productive language skills. The author points out that, in addition to the competencies that seem natural from the perspective of language teaching, such as listening comprehension or text creation, it also plays a role in the development of media competence, literary competence, aesthetic competence, imagination and creativity.