• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.105-113
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• 2024

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a mind substraction meditation program on students' self-esteem, self-regulation, sustained attention, and self-control in an elementary school. Methods: From May 30, 2022 to June 30, 2022, the program was implemented in three elementary schools in the metropolitan city of G, with the permission of the school principal and parents. In each elementary school, one class students participated in the meditation program and the other class was a control group. There were 63 students in the intervention group and 78 in the control, with one grade in each of the three schools. There were no dropouts and no missing data. The effectiveness of the intervention and control groups was tested using paired t-tests. Results: The intervention and control groups were homogeneous on general characteristics and key variables except for sustained attention. Sustained attention was higher in the control group than in the intervention group. The effect of the meditation program in the intervention group was statistically significant for self-respect (t=-4.23, p<.001), self-regulation (t=-5.10, p<.001), sustained attention (t=-.13, p<.001), and self-control (t=-3.79, p<.001). Conclusion: This study suggested that the meditation program could be applied as part of character education in elementary schools. Therefore, it is suggested that various types of meditation programs be applied in elementary schools.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.49-58
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• 2012

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Mindfulness-based concentration qigong for children (MBCQ-C) in healthy children with subjective poor attention. Methods : This study examined the effects of MBCQ-C on healthy children with subjective poor attention, who vistied Korean medicine hospital neuropsychiatry outpatient clinic. The MBCQ-C was practiced with 11 participants, 2 of them quit in the middle of the program, and hence, they were excluded for data analysis. MBCQ-C consisted of 8 sessions, and each session took about 60 minutes. The outcome measurement was Frankfurter Aufmerksamkeits-Inventar (FAIR), which measured selective attention, self-control and sustained attention. Results : The results of this study showed that selective attention, and sustained attention were significantly improved. Self-control also improved, but without any statistical significance. These results indicate MBCQ-C was effective for the improvement of attention abilities, but self-control, including upper cognition area needs more consistent exercise. Conclusions : The MBCQ-C consisting of 8 sessions were shown to be an effective intervention in improving the attention abilities of healthy children with subjective poor attention.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.191-201
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• 2006

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the cognitive functions would be correlated with psychotic symptoms and whether antipsychotic treatments would affect the cognitive functions after 8 weeks. Methods : The thirty-five schizophrenic patients were conducted in this study. The psychopathology was measured using PANSS. The memory function, executive function, and sustained attention were measured using Memory Assessment Scale(MAS), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test(WCST), and Vigilance(VIG) and Cognitrone(COG) in Vienna Test System. After 8 weeks of antipsychotic treatment, we retested the cognitive tests. Results : 1) The cognitive tests after the 8 week's treatment showed significant improvements in memory and executive function in the schizophrenic patients. On the other side, sustained attention did not show improvement. 2) The change of PANSS were correlated with perseverative response, perseverative error and total correct in WCST at baseline. WCST scores at baseline were correlated with negative symptoms, but not positive ones. Conclusion : These study suggests that 1) the impaired sustained attention could be a vulnerability marker in schizophrenia, 2) memory & executive function deficit could be reversible after treatment, and 3) medication might have a benefit in improving the cognitive functions in schizophrenia. Furthermore, the data supports that the better premorbid executive function was, the more favorable was the treatment response in schizophrenic patients. Finally, this study indicates that executive function might be an index of treatment improvement.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.26-31
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• 1999

"Attention" is not defined sufficiently. This term incorporates several dimensions or complex information processes such as alertness, spatial distribution, focused attention, sustained attention, divided attention and supervisory attentional control. In practice, however, various aspects of attention cannot be assessed separately with a single test. Moreover, a particular test is never assessing attention only, because the several intervening variables may influence the attentional component. Therefore, one can only assess a certain aspect of human behavior with special interest for its attentional component. This paper attempted to clarify various concepts of attention, reviewed signal detection theories with receiver operating characteristic(ROC) curves, and listed practical methods for assessment of attention.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.179-189
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• 1996

Objective : This study was conducted to find out the electrophysiological abnormalities of the patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(abbr. ADHD) through identifying the profiles of the event-related potentials. Methods : Through measuring event-related potentials of 20 patients with ADHD and 16 normal control children using Oddball paradigm, we evaluated the latencies and amplitudes of each wave form. Results : In the group older than 9 years old, the latencies that reflect selective attention and discriminative capacity of the patients with ADHD were significantly longer than those of normal controls, which suggests that patients with ADHD be more distractible to non-significant stimuli and that they be in lark of sustained attention and discriminative ability. Conclusions : We concluded that the patients with ADHD are more distractible to trivial stimuli than normal children but they lack discriminative, sustained ability of attention.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.93-109
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• 2020

Developed from conventional concrete filled steel tubular (CFST) members, concrete-encased CFST has attracted growing attention in building and bridge practices. In actual construction, the inner CFST is erected prior to the casting of the outer reinforced concrete part to support the construction preload, after which the whole composite member is under sustained service load. The complex loading sequence leads to highly nonlinear material interaction and consequently complicated structural performance. This paper studies the full-range behaviour of concrete-encased CFST columns with initial preload on inner CFST followed by sustained service load over the whole composite section. Validated against the reported data obtained from specifically designed tests, a finite element analysis model is developed to investigate the detailed structural behaviour in terms of ultimate strength, load distribution, material interaction and strain development. Parametric analysis is then carried out to evaluate the impact of significant factors on the structural behaviour of the composite columns. Finally, a simplified design method for estimating the sectional capacity of concrete-encased CFST is proposed, with the combined influences of construction preload and sustained service load being taken into account. The feasibility of the developed method is validated against both the test data and the simulation results.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.19-23
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• 1997

Attention is a phenomenon hard to define, but can be conceptualized as a mental function ranging from sustaining readiness to perceive stimuli to understanding the nature and value and selecting stimuli that are most relevant to the given situation. Manifestations of attention include vigilance, and focused, directed, selective, divided, and sustained attentions. While basic attentional tone is controlled by the interaction among reticular activating system, thalamus and prefrontal cortex, direction and selection of attention is controlled by neural circuits of prefrontal, posterior parietal, and limbic cortex. It is expected that understanding of attention and its neural control could provide answers to the relationship between pathophysiology and clinical symptoms of some major psychiatric disorders. More efforts are required to develop tools to assess more detailed and various aspects of attention in Korea.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.199-209
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• 2017

Purpose: Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychostimulant. It is often adopted as a tool to modulate brain activations in fMRI studies. However, its pharmaceutical effect on task-induced deactivation has not been fully examined in fMRI. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of caffeine on both activation and deactivation under sustained attention. Materials and Methods: Task fMRI was acquired from 26 caffeine naive healthy volunteers before and after taking caffeine pill (200 mg). Results: Statistical analysis showed an increase in cognition-load dependent task activation but a decrease in load dependent de-activation after caffeine ingestion. Increase of attention and memory task activation and its load-dependence suggest a beneficial effect of caffeine on the brain even though it has no overt behavior improvement. The reduction of deactivation by caffeine and its load-dependence indicate reduced facilitation from task-negative networks. Conclusion: Caffeine affects brain activity in a load-dependent manner accompanied by a disassociation between task-positive network and task-negative network.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.66-73
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• 2019

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the trajectory of change of diverse attention and working memory in Koreans from 4 to 40 years of age. Methods: The data of 912 subjects from 4 to 15 years of age obtained from a previous standardization study of the computerized comprehensive attention test were merged with the newly obtained data of 150 subjects aged 16 to 40 years from this study. We evaluated the various kinds of attention, in which each subtest had five indicators. Working memory, with parameters such as number of correct responses and span, was also measured. Results: Our findings indicated that attention developed as age increased, and it decreased or was maintained after a certain age. Selective and sustained attention developed rapidly in children and adolescents, until mid-teens or 20 s when it ceased development. Divided attention, however, developed up to approximately age 20. In addition, working memory developed until mid-teens or 20 s. Conclusion: We presented the standardized data on diverse kinds of attention and working memory in children, adolescents, and adults in Korea. We could recognize any patterns of change in attention and working memory with increasing age.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.243-249
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• 2024

Objectives: This study verified the diagnostic validity of the Comprehensive Attention Test (CAT) for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: A total of 336 participants were recruited in this study, including 168 patients with ADHD and 168 control group participants who were one-to-one matched for sex and age. We measured selective attention (visual and auditory), sustained attention, interference-selective attention, divided attention, and working memory in the ADHD and control groups using the CAT. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the CAT were calculated. Results: In this study, it was found that the sensitivity and specificity of the CAT were 0.879 and 0.846 in children, 0.855 and 0.838 in adolescents, and 0.800 and 0.733 in adults, respectively. Conclusion: These results indicate that the CAT has a high diagnostic validity for ADHD from childhood to adulthood,