Loot boxes (LBs) are video game-related purchases with a chance-based outcome. Due to similarities with gambling, they have come under increasing scrutiny from media, academics and policymakers alike. Initial evidence suggested that LB engagement might be associated with both problem gambling (PG) and problem video gaming (PVG). We therefore conducted a systematic review of the evidence for associations between LB purchasing, PG and PVG. For LB/PG, 12 of 13 publications reported a positive relationship, with a moderately sized mean effect of r = .27. For LB/PVG, the mean effect was r = .40, although this finding was drawn from only six surveys in total. For PG/PVG, the mean effect was r = .21, with only 11 of 20 studies reporting significant effects. While further evidence is required to determine the direction of causality, the strength of relationships suggests that policy action on LBs may have benefits for harm minimisation.

To increase our understanding of auditory neurocognition in musicians, we compared nonmusicians with amateur band musicians in their neural and behavioral sound encoding accuracy. Mismatch negativity and P3a components of the auditory event-related potentials were recorded to changes in basic acoustic features (frequency, duration, location, intensity, gap) and abstract features (melodic contour and interval size). Mismatch negativity was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians for location changes whereas no statistically significant group difference was observed in response to other feature changes or in abstract-feature mismatch negativity. P3a was observed only in musicians in response to location changes. This suggests that when compared with nonmusicians, even amateur musicians have neural sound processing advantages with acoustic information most essential to their musical genre.

Foreign-language learning is a prime example of a task that entails perceptual learning. The correct comprehension of foreign-language speech requires the correct recognition of speech sounds. The most difficult speech–sound contrasts for foreign-language learners often are the ones that have multiple phonetic cues, especially if the cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. The present study aimed to determine whether non-native-like cue weighting could be changed by using phonetic training. Before the training, we compared the use of spectral and duration cues of English /i/ and /I/ vowels (e.g., beat vs. bit) between native Finnish and English speakers. In Finnish, duration is used phonologically to separate short and long phonemes, and therefore Finns were expected to weight duration cues more than native English speakers. The cross-linguistic differences and training effects were investigated with behavioral and electrophysiological methods, in particular by measuring the MMN brain response that has been used to probe long-term memory representations for speech sounds. The behavioral results suggested that before the training, the Finns indeed relied more on duration in vowel recognition than the native English speakers did. After the training, however, the Finns were able to use the spectral cues of the vowels more reliably than before. Accordingly, the MMN brain responses revealed that the training had enhanced the Finns' ability to preattentively process the spectral cues of the English vowels. This suggests that as a result of training, plastic changes had occurred in the weighting of phonetic cues at early processing stages in the cortex.

Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine the effect of native language on second-language (L2) cue weighting and, in particular, to explore whether perceptual training could help to improve accuracy in phoneme identification and discrimination. Two forms of stimuli were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited to ensure that duration could not be used as a cue in the tasks. Results show the Greek speakers performed poorly when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared with the native English speakers. After high-variability training, performance was improved for both Greek adult (20 –30 years) and child (7 –8 years) groups. However, the degree of improvement was most pronounced for children. This suggests enhanced plasticity for spoken language in this developmental stage. These data have impact on informing the strategies used for teaching spoken language in English as additional language (EAL) populations in different age groups.