Joint Attention Virtual Classroom: A Preliminary Study

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies have suggested that a virtual classroom is immersive and ecologically valid neuropsychological assessment, but those studies have limited components for social attentions. Therefore, the objective in the current study is the development of a joint attention virtual reality (JA-VR) classroom to incorporate social attentions between a participant and a virtual avatar teacher. METHODS: Fifty-eight participants were recruited for current study (25 for pilot and 33 for main studies; 32.8% female, n=19; age: M=24.5, SD=4.0). We suggested a JA-VR classroom, and compared it with previous methods including a VR classroom without JA components. We conducted attention experiments with AX-version of continuous performance tasks. RESULTS: Our results suggest that the new JA-VR classroom had convergent validity with previous methods, and that the JA-VR classroom promoted attentional processing among participants better than both old VR and non-VR measures. CONCLUSION: We add an important social attention concept to the virtual classroom, and believe that this work is an methodological foundation for the study of social attention in school life. We hope it ultimately help people with mental handicaps in social attention.

Bladder Transitional Cell Carcinoma Masquerading as Tuberculous Contracted Bladder / 대한비뇨기과학회지

Bladder cancer is generally manifested with gross hematuria and this is the most common urinary tract neoplasm in Korea, but it is very rare to find it combined with a contracted bladder. A case of contracted bladder was suspected as being recurred urinary tuberculosis; because of her past history, the urine analysis and cystoscopic findings seemed to resemble the chronic inflammation associated with urinary tuberculosis, and the transurethral biopsy reported only chronic inflammation. Yet the final histopathologic report after cystectomy and urinary diversion revealed that there was no tuberculosis, but rather, there was bladder transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). Therefore, any contracted bladder found in an older age patient is considered to be a urinary TCC until proven otherwise. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of bladder TCC combined with contracted bladder.