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ALF is an memory impairment in which the temporal lobe epilepsy patient has problems with memory retention during an interval of days or weeks, while performing normally in standardised memory tests. ALF has been found for verbal, visual and autobiographical material, but it seems not to be material specific. ALF is associated with older age and higher intelligence, but its causes are unknown. It seems that hippocampal abnormalities contribute to poor memory retention only 24 hours after initial learning. After this point epileptic discharges seem to be more important contributors. The results are contradictory, however, and it is possible that ALF is associated with abnormalities outside the hippocampal region. Treatment possibilities for ALF are unclear. Seizure control with antiepilectic medication and rehearsal of learned material seem to be the best suggestions in the light of current knowledge.

Objectives. Over the last few decades, the usage of various digital devices has increased significantly. As people spend time on digital media especially in the evenings before bedtime, there has been a growing interest in researching the potential effects of digital media usage on sleep. The association between digital media usage and negative sleep outcomes can be explained by three different mechanisms: circadian effects of exposure to light from screens, stimulation from media content, and displacement of time spent sleeping by time spent using devices. The objective of this thesis was to review recent randomized controlled experiments regarding the effects of pre-sleep digital media usage on sleep and compare their study designs and results. Methods. Experimental studies were searched on PubMed and Ovid Mediline databases using the terms digital media, electronic media, screen light, blue light and sleep. Seven randomized controlled experiments published within the last five years were selected. All the studies had controlled the use of digital media and used both subjective and objective sleep measures. Results and conclusions. Most of the studies indicated that the pre-sleep usage of digital media has a negative effect on sleep. There were associations between the usage of digital media and sleep architecture, sleep onset latency, suppression of melatonin secretion and subjective sleepiness. In addition, each of the three mechanisms were supported by the studies. However, there were notable differences in the study designs between the studies, which made it difficult to assess the significance of the individual factors. There is a need for laboratory experiments with larger sample sizes as well as real-life studies to increase ecological validity. This would help specify recommendations regarding the use of digital media in order to improve human health and wellbeing.

Objective. Cyberbullying affects children and adolescents around the world since today almost everyone has access to the internet. Cyberbullying can be defined as intentional, harmful and repetitive activity via electronic devices or internet, for example bullying via text messages and sharing or sending pictures or videos without permission. Depression is one of the most common mental disorders and it affects the functional ability of people worldwide. Based on current research literature, there seems to be a bidirectional association between traditional bullying and depressive symptoms, meaning that being bullied increases the risk for depressive symptoms and being depressed increases the risk for being bullied. Previous studies have also shown that there are sex differences in this association. Additionally, it is known that depression is more common amongst girls compared to boys. The association between cyberbullying and depressive symptoms has been researched considerably less. This thesis reviews studies on the association between cyberbullying victimisation and depressive symptoms and possible sex differences of this association, in that is the association bidirectional and are there differences between boys and girls. Methods. Studies were included in this thesis, if they assessed the association between cyberbullying victimisation and depressive symptoms and the sex difference of this association. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies were included. Results and conclusions. Adolescence cyberbullying victimisation was associated with depressive symptoms. Reviewed studies showed that cyberbullying victims reported significantly more depressive symptoms compared to non-victims and there were tentative results that the more cyberbullying is experienced, the more depressive symptoms there are. There were also tentative results on the bidirectionality of the association, but so far there are few longitudinal studies. Sex differences have also been researched in only a couple of studies so definitive conclusions cannot be drawn on whether the association differs between girls and boys. If cyberbullying victimisation really increases the risk for depressive symptoms, it is ever more important to develop actions against cyberbullying for example as a part of schools’ mental health programmes and further courage parents to supervise adolescents’ internet usage since it is known to reduce the risk for cyberbullying victimisation.

Tavoitteet. Aiempi tutkimustieto osoittaa, että autismikirjon häiriöön ja kehitykselliseen kielihäiriöön liittyy molempiin vaikeuksia kielellisissä taidoissa, mistä voi seurata haasteita ohjeiden ymmärtämisessä ja seuraamisessa. Häiriöiden oirekuvassa on paljon samankaltaisuutta, vaikka ne luokitellaankin erillisiksi. Molempia häiriöitä on tutkittu laajasti, mutta ohjausmenetelmien merkitystä autismikirjon häiriön tai kehityksellisen kielihäiriön lasten puheterapiassa on tutkittu tähän mennessä vasta vähän. Puheterapiassa käytettyjen ohjausmenetelmien tutkiminen on tärkeää kliinisen työn sujuvuuden ja tuloksellisuuden kannalta. Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena on tarkastella minkälaisten ohjausmenetelmien käyttö edistää puheterapiassa opittujen taitojen yleistymistä arkeen ja minkälainen ohjaus on näiden häiriöiden kohdalla hyödyllisintä. Menetelmät. Tutkimusmenetelmänä käytettiin integroivaa kirjallisuuskatsausta, jonka lopulliset aineistohaut tehtiin helmikuun 2024 aikana. Tiedonhaku tehtiin Scopus- ja Ovid Medline- tietokannoista, sekä kaksi tutkimusta valittiin aineistoksi käsipoiminnalla. Hakulausekkeita oli kaksi: autism* AND "speech therapy" AND (instruction* OR guidance*) / "developmental language disorder" AND (instruction* OR guidance*). Lopulliseen aineistoon valittiin mukaan kuusi tutkimuskysymysten kannalta relevanteinta tutkimusta saadun aineiston analyysin jälkeen. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Tutkimusartikkeleista saatujen tulosten perusteella voidaan todeta, että annetulla ohjaustavalla on vaikutusta puheterapiassa opittujen taitojen yleistymisessä arkeen. Yleistettävimpänä ohjausmenetelmänä voidaan pitää suoran ohjauksen (Direct Instruction) menetelmää. Autismikirjon kohdalla hyödyllisimpiä ohjausmenetelmiä olivat eksplisiittisiä ja implisiittisiä, eli suoria ja epäsuoria ohjausmenetelmiä hyödyntävät menetelmät. Kehityksellisen kielihäiriön kohdalla taas parhaita tuloksia saatiin ainoastaan eksplisiittisillä menetelmillä. Tulokset painottuivat hyödyllisten ohjausmenetelmien käsittelyyn, sillä hakulausekkeeseen ei ollut sisällytetty ”yleistettävyys”-termiä. Jatkotutkimusta kaivataankin erityisesti ohjausmenetelmien yhteydestä puheterapiassa opittujen taitojen yleistymiseen arkeen.

Goals: Symptom networks as a concept came to the research field only less than 10 years ago. Symptom network is a new statistical approach, where disorder’s symptoms are seen as separate mutually interacting elements, compared to predominant way of seeing symptoms as indicators of common background latent variable. There is only limited amount of reviews available on the topic. Goal of this thesis to review state of symptom network research, i.e. what and with which methodologies is researched with emphasis on the theoretical developments of the concept. At the same time possible and necessary future research avenues discussed. Methods: Thesis is literature review. Google Scholar was used as a search engine and search was done using expression ‘ “symptom network” psychology ’. Only research published after 2008 is included. Due to length limitations of the review, only results from two first result pages were used. After this, based on the found articles references some extra inquiries were performed. Results and conclusions: Main result is that there are very promising results within existing research and statistical methods and measures start to settle. However, there is need for more versatile research, as well as for reproduction of results. Slightly worrying observation is that lion share of symptom network research is done by one research group. This thesis provided quite good overview of the research field, though it is left on slightly non-specific level.

Goals. Gambling is a universal problem, which is particularly pronounced in Finland. The problems are not limited to pathological gambling, but gambling also harms a substantial group of non-pathological gamblers, referred to as problem gamblers in research literature. The purpose of the review was to explore differences between pathological and non-pathological gamblers in three different domains: cognition, neurophysiology and personality. The goal was to create a broad picture of psychological factors differentiating pathological gamblers from others in order to improve the understanding of risk factors associated with the development of non-pathological gambling towards pathology. To achieve this, problem gamblers were included in the comparison regarding the studies which had that separate group. Methods. Research articles were searched from Google Scholar and PubMed database with the tags non-pathological gambling and pathological gambling. The inclusion criteria were comparison of pathological gamblers to non-pathological ones and that the research topic fell under one of the three domains of the review. Results and conclusions. Regarding cognition, non-pathological and pathological gamblers seem to differ on several cognitive distortions and problem gambler resemble pathological gamblers more than they do non-problem gamblers. Emotional processing might also be weaker in pathological gamblers. In the domain of neurophysiology, the functioning of many different brain areas in gambling situations may differentiate pathological gamblers from others. Additionally, dampened HPA-axel responses appear to be associated with gambling pathology. Personality-wise pathological gamblers are particularly more impulsive, but also more neurotic than others. The personality of problem gamblers resembles that of non-problem gambler than pathological gamblers. Going forward, more studies including a separate group of problem gamblers are needed because they could provide valuable information on the development gambling pathology. Societally, it is important to recognize gambling as broader problem than just pathological gambling.

It is commonly known that physical activity and exercise have a positive effect on physical and psychological health. Previous studies with adults and elderly show that exercise can maintain or even improve cognitive capacity. Due to these results researchers have studied the effects of exercise and physical activity on children’s cognitive ability. Epidemically gro-wing concern with children and adolescent obesity has also had an impact on this field of re-search. Long term effects of exercise on children’s cognitive capacity have been studied with diffe-rent exercise interventions, which are typically organized at schools. Although, exercise in-terventions seem to have some effect it is still unknown what kind of exercise has the grea-test impact. In this thesis, I will study the effect of different kinds of physical activities on children's cognitive skills. This thesis was carried out as a literature review without empirical sample. Review systematically sums up the results from empirical intervention research do-ne. Due to exercise intervention research, getting more exercise during school days seems to have a positive effect on children’s cognitive skills or at least it doesn’t have a negative one. Research is focused on rather simple aerobic exercise interventions. Although, due to some studies covered in these thesis, more diverse aerobic exercises seem to have a greater ef-fect compared to simple ones. There is also some evidence that other than aerobic exercise seem to have an impact on children’s cognitive skills. It is still quite hard to compare the ef-fectiveness of different exercise intervention types due to lack of comprehensive research.

Psychopathy is an abnormality of personality characterized by, for example, superficiality of emotional life, glibness, manipulation, and antisociality. Psychopathic individuals burden each stage of the justice system, and they are overrepresented in prison. Psychopathic people fall into violent crimes and also repeat their crimes more often than others. Contradictory results have been obtained in the past for the treatment of psychopathic individuals, and sometimes the treatment may even have worsened psychopathy. There is a general perception that treating psychopathic individuals is impossible or at least very difficult. There are many limitations in previous studies and overall research on the topic is still quite limited. Psychopathy is not a diagnosis recognized by common diagnostic manuals. It can be reliably assessed by using the PCL-R checklist, which is the most widely used and accepted tool for assessing psychopathy. The aim of this review was to determine whether violent offenders who have been assessed psychopathic with the PCL-R checklist or it`s youth version PCL:YV, can be treated. Studies published in the 21st century on the response to treatment of psychopathic violent offenders were used as source literature. This review dealt with treatments for adults and adolescents separately. The results obtained from the treatment of adults were cautiously promising. In particular, treatment could contribute to the improvement of social skills and insight. Overall, the risk of violence was reduced through treatment, but among some psychopathic individuals, violent behavior increased. This could be the result of a repulsive attitude towards treatment or authorities. The results from the treatment of young people were more promising. Intensive care for adolescents halved the risk of violent crimes, and the number of psychopathic features was not found to affect the response to treatment. Long-term treatment gave the best results. The results are promising, especially for young people. However, the results are still preliminary. In order to draw more certain conclusions, more randomized and controlled trials should be made. In addition, the persistence of treatment outcomes should be investigated in follow-up studies with long follow-up periods.

The objective of this literature review is to examine the associations between student’s temperament and his/her adjustment and achievement in school context. It also considers how temperament-conscious knowledge could be taken into account in everyday schooling. Student’s temperament is related to his/her self-regulation skills and working style. It is also associated with the quality of teacher-student interaction and student’s innate ability to behave according to school expectations. So called “school temperament” (high task-orientation, high personal social flexibility and low reactivity) corresponds with teachers’ description of the “ideal student” and is associated with better school adjustment as well as academic performance. Temperament-conscious education encourages teachers to take into account and appreciate students’ individual differences in temperament. Learning environment which pays attention to student’s individual needs can best support his/her development and learning. Teachers are in a key position to promote their students’ positive school adaptation and academic achievement. Therefore, teacher education programs should educate future teachers about the associations of student’s temperament with teaching-learning-processes. Students’ adjustment and achievement in school context can be enhanced by training and practicing both students’ self-regulation skills and achievement-related behaviors. Furthermore, students should also have possibilities to use their own temperament-based strengths in learning. Positive and supportive relationships between teachers and students may have a buffering effect on students’ development. A relatively large body of previous research evidence suggests that temperament-conscious education could be part of the high-quality education.

Presenteeism (working despite feeling sick) has become a popular object for research in occupational psychology in the 21st century. It has been claimed that stressful psychosocial aspects of work (e.g. job demands) are connected to presenteeism. The purpose of this degree was to find out what can be said about these connections considering current scientific evidence. Another goal was to examine the directionality of these connections, although the causality from job demands to presenteeism was analyzed more thoroughly than the other possible directions. The cross-sectional evidence on connections between job demands and presenteeism is rather incomplete. There have been multiple studies in which the statistically significant correlation between these two phenomena have been found, but the direction of causality cannot be deduced from these studies. There are several ways to operationalize job demands and it has been concluded by a meta-analysis that the strongest connections to presenteeism seem to be with physical demands of work, understaffing, overtime work and general time pressure. There are few longitudinal studies on this issue but from these few studies there has arisen partial support for the idea that higher job demands can lead to presenteeism. The most relevant take-away message from these studies is that the connections between job demands and presenteeism may well be reciprocal and lead to a vicious circle. The biggest limitations in studies are related to the cross-sectionality, the sole use of self-report methods and the poor generalizability due to selected samples. In addition, there have been conversations about the reliability and validity of the self-report measures used in research. Due to these limitations, not much can be said about the connections between job demands and presenteeism. The correlative connections have been repeatedly replicated in various studies which indicates that there most likely is some sort of connection between these two phenomena. However, the prominent use of cross-sectional studies makes it impossible to draw conclusions about the direction of causality. Theoretical frameworks have been underutilized in the planning of studies and there hasn’t been enough research on specific hypotheses derived from these theories. The current scientific evidence is too general. Hence, it’s not possible to analyze the connections between job demands and presenteeism very precisely. These shortcomings can be mended in the future by focusing on well-designed longitudinal studies.