Introduction and objective: Using the concepts of Ulrich’s theory of supportive design and Malkin’s healing environment, an eye tracking experiment was designed in order to measure respondents’ reactions while looking at visualisations of various interiors, with the aim of verifying...

Based on the concepts of Huber’s centrality of religiosity as psychosocial resource, a non-experimental, moderated mediation project was designed in a group of 176 women and 84 men, who voluntarily participated in an online study, analysing the relationship between the prayer and the fears (for health, economy/finances, social life and family relations) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the general tendency in dependencies between variables. Among the assessed components of religiousness crucial for alleviating the fears of the COVID-19 pandemic, two forms of prayer—Private Practice and Public Practice—turned out to be the most important. Private Practice seemed to appease the fears of threats to family and social relationships of persons assessed, while Public Practice was revealed as the predictor of intensifying of the general, summed up level of fears. The areas of health (illness threat) and financial security fears were not associated neither with prayer nor any other components of religiousness. It means a selective predictive associating of prayer with the appeasing of only specific types of fears, namely those of a social nature. The results obtained point to the importance of the addressed topic in the context of searching for psycho resources in coping with difficult situations and determining their impact.

Based on Huber’s centrality of religiosity concept, a non-experimental research project was designed in a group of 178 women and 72 men, voluntary participants in online studies, quarantined at home during the first weeks (the first wave) of the pandemic, to determine whether and to what extent religiosity, understood as a multidimensional construct, was a predictor of the worsening of PTSD and depression symptoms in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study made use of CRS Huber’s scale to study the centrality of religiosity, Spitzer’s PHQ-9 to determine the severity of depression, and Weiss and Marmar’s IES-R to measure the symptoms of PTSD. Our study, which provided interesting and non-obvious insights into the relationship between the studied variables, did not fully explain the protective nature of religiosity in dealing with pandemic stress. Out of five components of religiosity understood in accordance with Huber’s concept (interest in religious issues, religious beliefs, prayer, religious experience, and cult), two turned out to contribute to modifications in the severity of psychopathological reactions of the respondents to stress caused by the pandemic during its first wave. A protective role was played by prayer, which inhibited the worsening of PTSD symptoms, whereas religious experience aggravated them. This means that in order to interpret the effect of religiosity on the mental functioning of the respondents in a time of crisis (the COVID-19 pandemic), we should not try to explain this effect in a simple and linear way, because religious life may not only bring security and solace, but also be a source of stress and an inner struggle.

Currently, a very important thread of research on COVID-19 is to determine the dimension of the psychopathological emotional reactions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. A non-experimental online research project was designed to determine the predictors of the severity of psychopathological symptoms, such as depression and PTSD symptoms, and the nature of the feedback mechanism between them in groups of men, remaining in hospital isolation due to infection and at-home isolation during the COVID-19 epidemic. The presence of symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a sense of threat due to the pandemic were assessed using the following screening tests: IES-R by Weiss and Marmar, PHQ-9 by Spitzer et al., and a self-constructed sliding scale for assessing COVID-19 anxiety. The study was carried out on a group of 57 firefighting cadets, hospitalized in a COVID-19 isolation room (M_age = 23.01), staying in isolation due to SARS-CoV-2 virus infection and a control group of 57 healthy men (M_age = 41.38) staying at home during quarantine and national lockdown. COVID-19 pandemic causes many psychopathological reactions. The predictive models revealed that the predictors of symptoms of PTSD in isolated patients included depression and the experienced sense of COVID-19 threat resulting from the disease, while in the control group the symptoms of depression were the only predictor of PTSD. PTSD experiences are usually associated with depression. It may also be a form of the re-experiencing process or the effect of high affectivity, indirectly confirmed by the participation of hyperarousal in the feedback loop. Our findings highlight the importance of mental health aspects in patients treated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic requires social distancing, quarantine and isolation, which may cause psychopathological symptoms not only in affected people, but also in the general population. Moreover, the need for greater psychological support can be emphasized for both: the sick and the general population.

Most of the studies about donation decisions focus on some personality factors, self-esteem or some family characteristics as separate sources of influence and do not take into account interdependence of these variables. The study attempts to conceptualize and validate an integrative framework, based on SCT A. Bandura, incorporating personal, environmental and behavioural determinants of the decision to register as a potential bone marrow donor. The study hypothesizes and tests the interdependent variables model of personality traits, self-esteem, practical past prosocial behaviours and family functionality as the key determinants of the decision of registration as potential bone marrow donor (PBMD) on the sample of 305 Polish young adults aged 18–25 years. The study was conducted using Polish versions of the following questionnaires: TIPI by Gosling et al. for measurement of the Big Five personality traits, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), PBQ (based on the Self-Report Altruism Scale by Rushton) by Moroń, and Family Apgar scale by Smilkstein for assessing family function. The results obtained due to using a hybrid data-mining’ techniques LR and CART, allow the formulation of predictive equations defining the probability of making the decision to register as a potential bone marrow donor as a result of personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and self-esteem, as well as positive affect in family modelling and adaptation. However, the negative role of past prosocial behaviours, also demonstrated in research, requires further explanations. Although these methods may supplement the existing statistical models and contribute to the interpretation of factors of decision concerning the registration as a PBMD, further testing of the model according to the investigated variables requires the use of casual modelling methods in order to verify hypotheses concerning the occurrence of a specified structure of relationships between these variables.

The innovative Eye Movement Modelling Examples (EMMEs) method can be used in medicine as an educational training tool for the assessment and verification of students and professionals. Our work was intended to analyse the possibility of using eye tracking tools to verify the skills and training of people engaged in laboratory medicine on the example of parasitological diagnostics. Professionally active laboratory diagnosticians working in a multi-profile laboratory (non-parasitological) (n = 16), laboratory diagnosticians no longer working in this profession (n = 10), and medical analyst students (n = 56), participated in the study. The studied group analysed microscopic images of parasitological preparations made with the cellSens Dimension Software (Olympus) system. Eye activity parameters were obtained using a stationary, video-based eye tracker Tobii TX300 which has a 3-ms temporal resolution. Eye movement activity parameters were analysed along with time parameters. The results of our studies have shown that the eye tracking method is a valuable tool for the analysis of parasitological preparations. Detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis confirmed that the EMMEs method may facilitate learning of the correct microscopic image scanning path. The analysis of the results of our studies allows us to conclude that the EMMEs method may be a valuable tool in the preparation of teaching materials in virtual microscopy. These teaching materials generated with the use of eye tracking, prepared by experienced professionals in the field of laboratory medicine, can be used during various training, simulations and courses in medical parasitology and contribute to the verification of education results, professional skills, and elimination of errors in parasitological diagnostics.