Incidental Task Research Articles

Fostering Character Education in Elementary Schools: The Impact of Extracurricular Activities

This study explores the role of effective extracurricular management in cultivating students who are creative, imaginative, and well-mannered. The primary aim of extracurricular activities is to complement the formal educational experience by offering opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge and practical skills gained in the classroom. The objective of this research is to enhance character education in elementary school students through participation in extracurricular activities. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study seeks to present a comprehensive overview of the current situation and to provide an in-depth description of the factors at play, offering the reader highly accurate insights. The research is conducted at SDI Lukmanul Hakim Sumenep, a school consistently recognized among the top in the region since 2013 by the Sumenep Regency administration. Data sources include key informants such as the school principal, deputy head of curriculum, teachers, and students. Findings suggest that extracurricular activities contribute significantly to the improvement of character education, instilling values such as religious observance, honesty, tolerance, discipline, and responsibility. These outcomes are achieved through regular activities like teacher and student picket duty and flag ceremonies, as well as spontaneous initiatives such as advising, correcting behavior, and providing assistance with incidental tasks. Furthermore, examples and conditioning activities, including environmental cleanliness and character education taglines, reinforce these values. The positive impacts of these activities include the development of social skills and communication abilities, with the school environment playing a crucial role in shaping students' character.

Identification of Secretary Duties at Bank Nagari Main Branch Padang West Sumatra

The secretary assists the leader in carrying out activities. At Bank Nagari, Main Branch Padang, West Sumatra, the chief secretary has routine duties, namely receiving incoming letters and dispositions to branch heads and distribution to related work units, carrying out mail and document storage, managing reception, receiving calls and answering calls, maintaining and managing harmony and cleanliness . Special tasks, namely having the task of managing and organizing the implementation of meetings, taking care of the leadership's official travel, providing information about the leadership. Special duties, namely having the task of providing and maintaining equipment, as a second source of information. The receptionist's job is to receive and answer telephones, receive guests and provide the best service. Social tasks have the task of holding family gatherings, sending congratulations, sending and replying to congratulations. Incidental tasks, namely having the task of representing the leadership in meetings. The business meeting task has the task of determining the time and place of the business meeting, providing equipment for the meeting, and preparing snacks. Creative tasks have the task of mastering the skills of using office equipment and preparing souvenirs for leaders and their organizational relations.

The Impact of Stressful Life Events after Bereavement: A Nationwide Cross-sectional Survey.

Bereaved family members sometimes experience distress due to stressful life events. However, the effects of this distress on depression and grief remain unclear. To clarify the degree of distress due to postbereavement stressful life events, its associated factors, especially social isolation, and its effects on major depressive disorder (MDD) and complicated grief (CG) risks among bereaved family members of patients with cancer. This cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in 2018 as part of the J-HOPE4 study. We recruited 1740 bereaved family members of patients with cancer who died from July to August of 2018. We assessed distress due to postbereavement stressful life events with the Bereavement Secondary Stressor Scale, social isolation with the Lubben Social Network Scale Short-Form, and the MDD and CG risk with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Brief Grief Questionnaire, respectively. Among the 913 (52.5%) respondents, 88%, 57%, 46%, 28%, and 19% experienced distress due to incidental tasks, daily life difficulties, financial problems, problems with other people, and deterioration of family relationships, respectively. More distress was associated with higher risks of MDD (odds ratio [OR]=2.5, P < 0.01) and CG (OR=2.5, P < 0.01). Social isolation and specific backgrounds were associated with more distress in response to stressful life events. Most family members experienced distress due to stressful life events, which were risk factors for MDD and CG. Assessing risk factors for maladaptation to post-bereavement life changes and enhancing readiness to adapt to them is important.

Characteristics of compensated mental disorders caused by overwork among drivers and non-drivers in the Japanese trucking industry

This study examined the characteristics of occupational mental disorders among those involved in the transport and postal activities in the trucking industry. We examined 237 out of 3,517 cases of occupational mental disorders, compensated between the fiscal years 2010 and 2017. An assessment was made for sex, "life-or-death" status at compensation, age at the onset and suicide, the diagnosis according to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, and other factors regarding occupational compensation. The participants were divided into two groups: truck drivers and non-truck drivers. Men accounted for approximately 90% of the cases. Depressive episode (F32) was the most common diagnosis in drivers and non-drivers, thus constituting 65 out of 149 and 48 out of 88 cases, respectively. The next most common type of mental disorder was adjustment disorders (F43.2), with 34 out of 149 drivers and 24 out of 88 non-drivers reporting them. Furthermore, the majority of drivers that had posttraumatic stress disorder (24 out of 27 cases) reported that they "suffered a serious illness or injury" and "experienced or witnessed a terrible accident or disaster." Occupational disasters due to long working hours were 52.4% for drivers and 73.9% for non-drivers. A total of 30.8% of the drivers reported working long hours since they joined the company. Drivers' long working hours entail waiting at the origin and cargo destination site, handling cargo, and incidental tasks other than driving. Thus, the reduction in work hours regarding these tasks needs to be a fundamental goal, and measures that include mental health care for accidents and miserable experiences must be implemented. However, long working hours for non-drivers are likely linked to job expansion/increase and reassignment/relocation. These findings highlight that to prevent overwork-related mental disorders, appropriate actions should be taken considering different sources of exposure for drivers or non-drivers.

Neural Reinstatement Tracks Spread of Attention between Object Features in Working Memory.

Attention can be allocated in working memory (WM) to select and privilege relevant content. It is unclear whether attention selects individual features or whole objects in WM. Here, we used behavioral measures, eye-tracking, and EEG to test the hypothesis that attention spreads between an object's features in WM. Twenty-six participants completed a WM task that asked them to recall the angle of one of two oriented, colored bars after a delay while EEG and eye-tracking data were collected. During the delay, an orthogonal "incidental task" cued the color of one item for a match/mismatch judgment. On congruent trials (50%), the cued item was probed for subsequent orientation recall; on incongruent trials (50%), the other memory item was probed. As predicted, selecting the color of an object in WM brought other features of the cued object into an attended state as revealed by EEG decoding, oscillatory α-power, gaze bias, and improved orientation recall performance. Together, the results show that attentional selection spreads between an object's features in WM, consistent with object-based attentional selection. Analyses of neural processing at recall revealed that the selected object was automatically compared with the probe, whether it was the target for recall or not. This provides a potential mechanism for the observed benefits of nonpredictive cueing in WM, where a selected item is prioritized for subsequent decision-making.

The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Negative Self-Representations in Social Anxiety Disorder-A Randomized Wait-List Controlled Trial.

This study examines the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) vs. wait list (WL) on the self-reference effect involving negative adjectives in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Eighty-five participants with SAD were randomly assigned to 12 weeks of MBSR or WL and completed an incidental SRE task that assessed treatment-related negative self-representations. Self-related negative adjectives were worse remembered in MBSR than in WL, and other-related negative adjectives were better remembered in MBSR than in WL. No differences emerged between the levels of self- and other-related processing for adjectives in MBSR. Moreover, the MBSR-related decreases in the difference in recognition memory performance between self and other conditions, that is, the treatment-related equilibrium, could predict the MBSR-related decreases in social anxiety symptoms. The selfless functioning and self-other control that can provide reasonable interpretations for these findings were discussed.

Children’s spatial representation of power during an incidental power evaluation task

There is growing evidence showing that power is represented as height in adults’ mind. However, it remains unknown at what age children can activate such spatial representation of power spontaneously during an incidental task without explicit power evaluation. This study investigated the development of the power-spatial representation during an incidental task without explicit power evaluation. Participants were Chinese children in primary school, children in high school and adults. The results revealed that vertical information interfered with semantic judgments of power words only for children in high school and adults. This might be due to the reason that explicit instructions about the power-space associations did not appear in textbooks before high school. The findings suggested that children did not have automatic access to the spatial representation of power until high school.

Reward anticipation selectively boosts encoding of gist for visual objects

Reward anticipation at encoding enhances later recognition, but it is unknown to what extent different levels of processing at encoding (gist vs. detail) can benefit from reward-related memory enhancement. In the current study, participants (N = 50) performed an incidental encoding task in which they made gist-related or detail-related judgments about pairs of visual objects while in anticipation of high or low reward. Results of a subsequent old/new recognition test revealed a reward-related memory benefit that was specific to objects from pairs encoded in the attention-to-gist condition. These findings are consistent with the theory of long-axis specialization along the human hippocampus, which localizes gist-based memory processes to the anterior hippocampus, a region highly interconnected with the dopaminergic reward network.

Attention is prioritised for proximate and approaching fearful faces

Attention is an important function that allows us to selectively enhance the processing of relevant stimuli in our environment. Fittingly, a number of studies have revealed that potentially threatening/fearful stimuli capture attention more efficiently. Interestingly, in separate fMRI studies, threatening stimuli situated close to viewers were found to enhance brain activity in fear-relevant areas more than stimuli that were further away. Despite these observations, few studies have examined the effect of personal distance on attentional capture by emotional stimuli. Using electroencephalography (EEG), the current investigation addressed this question by investigating attentional capture of emotional faces that were either looming/receding, or were situated at different distances from the viewer. In Experiment 1, participants carried out an incidental task while looming or receding fearful and neutral faces were presented bilaterally. A significant lateralised N170 and N2pc were found for a looming upright fearful face, however no significant components were found for a looming upright neutral face or inverted fearful and neutral faces. In Experiment 2, participants made gender judgements of emotional faces that appeared on a screen situated within or beyond peripersonal space (respectively 50 cm or 120 cm). Although response times did not differ, significantly more errors were made when faces appeared in near as opposed to far space. Importantly, ERPs revealed a significant N2pc for fearful faces presented in peripersonal distance, compared to the far distance. Our findings show that personal distance markedly affects neural responses to emotional stimuli, with increased attention towards fearful upright faces that appear in close distance.

Self-categorization as a basis of behavioural mimicry: Experiments in The Hive.

IntroductionDo we always do what others do, and, if not, when and under what conditions do we do so? In this paper we test the hypothesis that mimicry is moderated by the mere knowledge of whether the source is a member of the same social category as ourselves.MethodsWe investigated group influence on mimicry using three tasks on a software platform which interfaces with mobile computing devices to allow the controlled study of collective behaviour in an everyday environment.ResultsOverall, participants (N = 965) were influenced by the movements of confederates (represented as dots on a screen) who belonged to their own category in both purposive and incidental tasks.ConclusionOur results are compatible with collective level explanations of social influence premised on shared social identification. This includes both a heuristic of unintended mimicry (the acts of group members are diagnostic of how one should act), and communication of affiliation (based on a desire to make one’s group cohesive). The results are incompatible with traditional ‘contagion’ accounts which suggest mimicry is automatic and inevitable. The results have practical implications for designing behavioural interventions which can harness the power of copying behaviour, for example in emergency evacuations.

Intentional Training With Speech Production Supports Children's Learning the Meanings of Foreign Words: A Comparison of Four Learning Tasks.

To determine the best techniques to teach children foreign words, we compared the effectiveness of four different learning tasks on their foreign-word learning (i.e., learning word forms and word meanings). The tasks included incidental learning, intentional learning with production, intentional learning without production, and cross-situational statistical learning. We also analyzed whether children’s age and cognitive skills correlate with the learning of word forms and word meanings. Forty-four 5–8-year-old children participated in the study. The results reveal that the children were able to learn the correct word forms from all four tasks and no differences emerged between the effectiveness of the tasks on the learning of word-forms. The children also learned the word meanings with all four tasks, yet the intentional task with production was more effective than the incidental task. This suggests that the ability of children to learn foreign words benefited from them knowing that they were supposed to learn new words and producing them aloud while training. The age of the children correlated with their learning results for word forms and meanings on the intentional task without production. The older children learned more effectively than the younger children in this task. Children’s phonological processing skills were correlated with learning the word meanings from the incidental task, suggesting that children with better phonological skills were able to benefit from incidental learning more than children with poorer phonological skills. Altogether, the results suggest that children’s foreign-language learning benefits from intentional training with speech production regardless of their age or cognitive skills.

"What Was His Name, Again?": A New Method for Reducing Memory-Based Errors in an Adult False-Belief Task.

Despite considerable interest in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) during early childhood, until recently, there has been little consideration about whether and how ToM skills continue to change into adulthood. Furthermore, the false-belief task, which is believed to capture the underlying mechanisms of ToM, is rarely used in studies of ToM with adults; those tasks that do assess false-belief understanding may be confounded by incidental task demands, such as complex narratives and excessive memory requirements, making it difficult to isolate adults’ true ToM skills, much less to compare them with the skills of children. Here, we adapted a task developed by Valle, Massaro, Castelli, and Marchetti (2015, https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i1.829) to assess false-belief understanding in adults. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the reading condition, participants read a story about the unexpected transfer of a ball between three brothers. In the video condition, participants watched a video version of the same story. Finally, in the training condition, participants were first trained on the names of the characters, before watching the video. Although condition did not affect participants’ ability to correctly answer a standard false belief question (“Where does X think Y thinks the ball is?”), participants in the training condition used more mental state language to justify their responses (“Why does X think Y thinks the ball is here?”), and this improved performance was mediated by improved memory for the story details. We conclude that at least some “failures” of ToM use may be due to an inability to understand, recall, or communicate complex information in a ToM task, raising important questions about how best to measure ToM in adults (and children) in the future.

0111 Emotional Memory-Associated Voxel-Extent Reactivation During Episodic Memory Retrieval Varies as a Function of Post-Learning Sleep

Abstract Introduction Slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep enhance neutral and emotional memory consolidation, respectively. Emotional episodic memory retrieval is also enhanced when encoding-specific functional brain patterns are reactivated at retrieval, especially in ventral visual stream and frontal brain regions as well as amygdala. Here we investigate how sleep impacts the association between memory-dependent brain pattern reactivation and episodic memory retrieval. Methods Healthy adults (N = 22; 11F, 11M; age: 19–29 years) were scanned during an incidental encoding task and a surprise recognition memory task 24h later. Overnight sleep was monitored with polysomnography. During encoding, participants viewed line drawings of negative, neutral, and positive images, each followed by their full-colored photo. At recognition, participants distinguished new from encoded line drawings. Brain reactivation was measured at the single-subject level as the percentage of voxels activated at encoding that were also activated during successful recognition (reactivation%); this metric was calculated independently in whole-brain and 3 ROI-based maps (inferior temporal lobe (ITL), medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala). Multiple linear regression was performed to predict memory performance from functional brain reactivation and sleep physiology. Results In whole-brain analyses, the association between negative memory performance and reactivation% decreased with greater REM sleep amount. This interaction approached significance for positive, but was not significant for neutral, memory performance. Additionally, the association between neutral, but not emotional, memory performance and reactivation% decreased with greater amounts of SWS sleep. In ROI-based analyses, positive, but not negative or neutral, memory performance was independently predicted by REM sleep amount and ITL reactivation%. No effects of SWS amount were observed in ROI-based analyses. Conclusion Greater amounts of sleep decreased the association between brain reactivation and memory performance. Sufficient sleep may change cortical representations of episodic memories, resulting in less reliance on encoding-related reactivation during memory retrieval. Support NSF Grant BCS 1539361

0084 Sleep Consolidates Incidentally Encoded Information After Deep but Not Shallow Encoding

Abstract Introduction Slow wave sleep (SWS) strengthens declarative memory for information studied for a later test. However, research on the effect of sleep on information that is not intentionally remembered is scare. Previous research from our lab suggests sleep consolidates some, but not all, information that has been encoded incidentally, meaning that it has been acted on but not intentionally remembered. It remains unclear what determines which information benefits from sleep-dependent consolidation processes and what aspects of sleep are related to these mnemonic benefits. In two experiments, we test the hypothesis that sleep consolidates strong but not weak memory traces following incidental encoding, and assess the relationship between memory performance and objective sleep characteristics. Methods In Experiment 1, participants rated words one (weak traces) or three times (strong traces) in a deep or shallow incidental encoding task. Participants either rated words on a scale from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’ (deep) or counted the vowels in the words (shallow). Following a 12-hour period containing sleep or wakefulness, participants took a surprise memory test. In Experiment 2, participants rated words one or three times in the deep encoding task, received an 8-hour sleep opportunity with polysomnography, and took the surprise memory test. Results In Experiment 1, participants remembered words better after sleep than wake regardless of whether words were encoded one or three times, but only after deep encoding. Sleep did not consolidate information following shallow encoding. Experiment 2 is ongoing, but we predict that the amount of SWS will correlate positively with memory. Conclusion Results thus far suggest sleep may have consolidated information based on the strength of memory traces. Because deep encoding results in stronger memory traces than shallow encoding, this work is broadly consistent with theories of memory consolidation that predict sleep is more beneficial for strong memory traces than weak, such as the synaptic downscaling hypothesis. Support N/A

Work-life conflict, gender-based discrimination, and their associations among professionals in a medical university and affiliated hospitals in Japan: A cross-sectional study.

Objectives: To clarify (1) the prevalence and associating factors of work-life conflict (WLC);(2) the details of gender-based discrimination;and (3) the association between WLC and gender-based discrimination among various professionals in a medical university organization. Methods: This cross-sectional study, conducted in 2017, included all employees working at a public medical university and two affiliated hospitals that lie in provincial cities in Japan. The outcome of interest was time-based WLC in the work-to-family or family-to-work direction, measured with a shortened version of an existing scale. Gender-based discrimination was measured according to a three-point scale. Results: Among the 3,347 employees, complete data sets were available for 2,285 (complete response rate, 68.3%). Of these, approximately 30% of respondents had perceived WLC. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that faculty members, nurses, and employees between 30 and 39 years old had a greater risk of WLC regardless of gender. Men were more likely to perceive gender-based discrimination in the contents of their work and the number of incidental tasks, while women were more likely to perceive discrimination with promotions and evaluation of academic achievements. Both men and women respondents who perceived gender-based discrimination had an increased risk of WLC. Conclusions: When promoting organizational well-being in a medical university, increased attention should be paid to faculty members, nurses and employees between 30 and 39 years old, as they have a greater risk of WLC. Our results also suggest that promoting gender equality is important to help achieve appropriate work-life balance.

Mindfulness: Attenuating Self-Referential Processing and Strengthening Other-Referential Processing

Scientific interest in mindfulness is growing; yet, the mechanism of the modulation of the self by mindfulness is still unknown. This study aimed to investigate how mindfulness modulates self- and other-referential processing. Forty-five mindfulness meditators (MM) and 45 matched controls (MC) completed an incidental task examining self- and other-referential processing of traits and nouns. We assessed the levels of self- and other-referential processing (recognition memory) in MM and MC. In addition, the relationship between the total duration of meditation and the self-other bias in recognition memory (the difference in recognition memory performance between self and other trials) was examined. Self-referential traits were worse remembered in MM than MC whereas other-referential traits were better remembered in MM than MC. No differences emerged between the levels of self- and other-referential processing for traits in MM. In addition, the self-other bias in recognition memory for traits was negatively correlated with the total duration of meditation. These effects did not occur for nouns in MM. The results indicate that, relative to MC, self-referential processing is attenuated but other-referential processing is strengthened for traits in MM. Moreover, the longer the duration of meditation, the less the self-other bias. The effects implicate that mindfulness actualizes a balance between self- and other-referential processing. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Incidental image memorability

ABSTRACTRecent studies using intentional memory tasks showed that images differ consistently in memorability. Here, we used a surprise recognition memory test. We asked how incidental encoding would affect the consistency and ranking of the memorability scores. If memorability is truly an intrinsic property of the image, one should not expect large differences between incidental and intentional conditions. On the other hand, participants might process images differently when not anticipating a memory test, yielding different results. The study list of our incidental memory task was identical to our previous, intentional study. Participants were to watch the images of this list carefully as they appeared on the screen one by one (free viewing); supposedly for a study about eye movements. Afterwards, a surprise recognition memory test was administered. Despite the free viewing instructions during the study phase, the resulting incidental image memorability scores still showed high levels of consistency across participants. In addition, the overlap between the incidental and intentional memorability ranking was large. These results provide further support for the idea of memorability as an intrinsic image property and add to its ecological validity, as people rarely memorise images intentionally.

Current dysphoria, past major depression, and memory for affective facial expressions

Memory for others’ sad affective facial expressions may be relevant to depression risk, given that biases have been linked to major depression and transient sad mood states. However, no study has addressed whether stable, subclinical dysphoria is associated with similar biases, or whether depression history might moderate a relationship between dysphoria and memory for affective facial stimuli. These questions were examined in the present study. Participants completed an incidental encoding task involving sad, happy, and neutral facial expression stimuli, and then they later completed a recognition memory task. Results indicated that dysphoria alone was not associated with memory differences. Rather, past depression moderated the effect of dysphoria such that dysphoric individuals with past depression showed greater recognition memory for sad faces relative to dysphoric/never depressed and nondysphoric/formerly depressed individuals. Findings are partially consistent with cognitive models of depression and could have implications for interpersonal functioning in susceptible or resilient individuals.

Emotional valence may influence memory performance for visual artworks in Parkinson's disease.

Non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) include reduced reactivity to emotional stimuli. Visual artworks can evoke emotional responses. Motor, sensorial and cognitive networks implicated in the aesthetic experience and in the emotional-reward domain show a significant overlap with the pathological nigrostriatal, mesocortical and mesolimbic circuitry that characterises PD. Memory enhancement by emotional stimuli such as visual artwork-stimuli was explored in 12 right-sided and 12 left-sided non-demented-PD patients, 12 Alzheimer's disease patients (AD) and 13 healthy controls (HC). Ten emotional and 10 non-emotional stimuli were previously identified based on the ratings of the emotional impact provided by 45 non-PD subjects on 82 pictures of paintings. Only figurative artworks were included. Patients and HC were requested to rate on a 7-point scale the emotional impact of 20 pictures; they were then requested to recognise the 20 pictures amongst 20 distractors (incidental memory task). Recognition of emotional stimuli was more accurate compared to non-emotional stimuli in AD, left-sided PD and HC; right-sided PD did not show sensitivity to the emotional valence of the stimuli suggesting the involvement of the nigrostriatal, mesocortical and mesolimbic circuitry of the left hemisphere in the emotional-reward system related to the aesthetic experience.

Distraction by deviant sounds: disgusting and neutral words capture attention to the same extent

Several studies have argued that words evoking negative emotions, such as disgust, grab attention more than neutral words, and leave traces in memory that are more persistent. However, these conclusions are typically based on tasks requiring participants to process the semantic content of these words in a voluntarily manner. We sought to compare the involuntary attention grabbing power of disgusting and neutral words using them as rare and unexpected auditory distractors in a cross-modal oddball task, and then probing the participants’ memory for these stimuli in a surprise recognition task. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses converged to show that, compared to a standard tone, disgusting and neutral auditory words produced significant but equivalent levels of distraction in a visual categorization task, that they elicited comparable levels of memory discriminability in the incidental recognition task, and that the participants’ individual sensitivity to disgust did not influence the results. Our results suggest that distraction by unexpected words is not modulated by their emotional valence, at least when these words are task-irrelevant and are temporally and perceptually decoupled from the target stimuli.