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The dichotomous classification of self-talk statements into goal-directed as a more controlled type of self-talk and spontaneous as a more uncontrolled type of self-talk might be an oversimplification. To address this issue, two studies were conducted aiming to explore the idea that the distinction between the two self-talk types should rather be proportional and not mutually exclusive. In Study 1, football players took part in a penalty competition and were subsequently asked to state the self-talk they had before and after the penalty. In Study 2, table tennis players took part in two activities (i.e., a precision task and a competitive set) and were subsequently asked to state the self-talk they had before the individual rounds in each activity. In both studies, the players subsequently rated for each self-talk statement the extent to which it was spontaneous and the extent to which it was goal-directed. The majority of self-talk statements were rated to some extent as both spontaneous and goal-directed. For Study 1, paired-sample t-tests showed that before a penalty kick self-talk was more goal-directed than spontaneous and after the penalty kick it was more spontaneous than goal-directed. In the more exploratory Study 2, multilevel regression analyses showed that the two types of self-talk could not predict sports performance. While the results support the usefulness of the distinction between spontaneous and goal-directed self-talk, treating the two types of self-talk as proportional rather than dichotomous might reflect more accurately the mental activity. Key words: dual-process, organic self-talk, self-regulation, System 1, System 2., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there is no competing financial interest or personal relationships that influenced the work reported in the paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new global challenges for teaching. We met these challenges as an international collaboration by adapting a collection of virtual patients for clinical reasoning training to this novel context., Competing Interests: Martin Adler is CEO of the Instruct gGmbH which develops the virtual patient system CASUS. The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2020 Hege et al.)

Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) are immature myeloid cells with immunosuppressive function. Compared to the level in healthy controls (HC), no elevation of MDSC in chronic hepatitis C (cHEP-C) patients was found, and there was no difference in MDSC based on genotype or viral load (P > 0.25). Moreover, MDSC of cHEP-C patients inhibited CD8 T cell function as efficiently as MDSC of HC did. Since we detected neither quantitative nor qualitative differences in MDSC of cHEP-C patients relative to those of HC, we postulate that MDSC in peripheral blood are most likely not significant regarding immune dysfunction in cHEP-C., (Copyright © 2014, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.)