Evidence does not support the claim that observers universally recognize basic emotions from signals on the face. The percentage of observers who matched the face with the predicted emotion (matching score) is not universal, but varies with culture and language. Matching scores are also inflated by the commonly used methods: within-subject design; posed, exaggerated facial expressions (devoid of context); multiple examples of each type of expression; and a response format that funnels a variety of interpretations into one word specified by (...) the experimenter. Without these methodological aids, matching scores are modest and subject to various explanations. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought rapid changes to travel, learning environments, work conditions, and social support, which caused stress for many University students. Research with young people has revealed music listening to be among their most effective strategies for coping with stress. As such, this survey of 402 first-year Australian University students examined the effectiveness of music listening during COVID-19 compared with other stress management strategies, whether music listening for stress management was related to well-being, and whether differences emerged between domestic (...) and international students. We also asked participants to nominate a song that helped them to cope with COVID-19 stress and analyzed its features. Music listening was among the most effective stress coping strategies, and was as effective as exercise, sleep, and changing location. Effectiveness of music listening as a coping strategy was related to better well-being but not to level of COVID-19 related stress. Although international students experienced higher levels of COVID-19 stress than domestic students, well-being was comparable in the two cohorts. Nominated songs tended to be negative in valence and moderate in energy. No correlations were found between any self-report measure and the valence and energy of nominated coping songs. These findings suggest that although domestic and international students experienced different levels of stress resulting from COVID-19, music listening remained an effective strategy for both cohorts, regardless of the type of music they used for coping. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe examined the utility of a gaze cueing paradigm to examine sensitivity to differences among negatively valenced expressions. Participants judged target stimuli, the lo...

ABSTRACTPrevious research on the development of emotion recognition in music has focused on classical, rather than popular music. Such research does not consider the impact of lyrics on judgements...

Nicole Hassoun’s sufficientarian theory is based on a particular conception of caring, which she calls ‘care, simpliciter’. However, ‘care, simpliciter’ is not described in any detail. This essay tries to offer a critical revision of Hassoun’s concept of care in a way that would put the MGL theory on its strongest footing. To that end, I will contrast her view with a taxonomy of care that supplements the accounts of care provided by Stephen Darwall and Lori Gruen. I then (...) put forward a form of empathy that is best suited to the MGL theory, which fits the description of ‘care, simpliciter’. **Unpublished manuscript: feel free to cite.**. (shrink)

We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push the argument, when they had previously just made an appropriate body action (e.g., a push movement) (Experiment 1), or imagined making a specific body movement (Experiment 2), than when they first made (...) a mismatching body action (e.g., a chewing movement) or no movement. These findings support the idea that appropriate body action, or even imagined action, enhances people's embodied, metaphorical construal of abstract concepts that are referred to in metaphorical phrases. (shrink)

Background Residual dried blood spots (rDBS) from newborn screening programmes represent a valuable resource for medical research, from basic sciences, through clinical to public health. In Hong Kong, there is no legislation for biobanking. Parents’ view on the retention and use of residual newborn blood samples could be cultural-specific and is important to consider for biobanking of rDBS. Objective To study the views and concerns on long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening programmes among Hong Kong Chinese (...) parents. Methods A mixed-method approach was used to study the views and concerns on long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening programmes among Hong Kong Chinese parents of children 0–3 years or expecting parents through focus groups (8 groups; 33 participants) and a survey (n = 1012, 85% mothers) designed with insights obtained from the focus groups. We used framework analysis to summarise the themes as supportive factors, concerns and critical arguments for retention and secondary use of rDBS from focus group discussion. We used multiple logistic regression to assess factors associated with support for retention and secondary use of rDBS in the survey. Results Both in focus groups and survey, majority of parents were not aware of the potential secondary use of rDBS. Overall secondary use of rDBS in medical research was well accepted by a large proportion of Hong Kong parents, even if all potential future research could not be specified in a broad consent. However parents were concerned about potential risks of biobanking rDBS including leaking of data and mis-use of genetic information. Parents wanted to be asked for permission before rDBS are stored and mainly did not accept an “opt-out” approach. The survey showed that parents born in mainland China, compared to Hong Kong born parents, had lower awareness of newborn screening but higher support in biobanking rDBS. Higher education was associated with support in rDBS biobanking only among fathers. Conclusion Long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening for biomedical research and a broad consent for biobanking of rDBS are generally acceptable to Hong Kong parents given their autonomy is respected and their privacy is protected, highlighting the importance of an accountable governance and a transparent access policy for rDBS biobanks. (shrink)

The evolution of modern human life history has involved substantial changes in the overall length of the subadult period, the introduction of a novel early childhood stage, and many changes in the initiation, termination, and character of the other stages. The fossil record is explored for evidence of this evolutionary process, with a special emphasis on middle childhood, which many argue is equivalent to the juvenile stage of African apes. Although the “juvenile” and “middle childhood” stages appear to be the (...) same from a broad comparative perspective, in that they begin with the eruption of the first molar and the achievement of the majority of adult brain size and end with sexual maturity, the detailed differences in the expression of these two stages, and how they relate to the preceding and following stages, suggest that a distinction should be maintained between them to avoid blurring subtle, but important, differences. (shrink)

A paediatric clinical trial conducted in a developing country is likely to encounter conditions or illnesses in participants unrelated to the study. Since local healthcare resources may be inadequate to meet these needs, research clinicians may face the dilemma of deciding when to provide ancillary care and to what extent. The authors propose a model for identifying ancillary care obligations that draws on assessments of urgency, the capacity of the local healthcare infrastructure and the capacity of the research infrastructure. The (...) model lends itself to a decision tree that can be adapted to the local context and resources so as to provide procedural guidance. This approach can help in planning and establishing organisational policies that govern the provision of ancillary care. (shrink)

Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists and societal (...) actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface, each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance. (shrink)

The ability of adolescents to access safe and effective new products for HIV prevention and treatment is optimised by adolescent licensure at the same time these products are approved and marketed for adults. Many adolescent product development programmes for HIV prevention or treatment products may proceed simultaneously with adult phase III development programmes. Appropriately implemented, this strategy is not expected to delay licensure as information regarding product efficacy can often be extrapolated from adults to adolescents, and pharmacokinetic properties of drugs (...) in adolescents are expected to be similar to those in adults. Finally, adolescents enrolled in therapeutic HIV prevention and treatment research can be considered adults, based on US Food and Drug Administration regulations and the appropriate application of state law. The FDA permits local jurisdictions to apply state and local HIV/sexually transmitted infection minor treatment laws so that adolescents who are HIV-positive or at risk of contracting HIV may be enrolled in therapeutic or prevention trials without obtaining parental permission. (shrink)

In Tudor and Stuart Britain, women writers took active roles in negotiating cultural ideas and systems to gain power by participating in politics through writing, shaping the aesthetics of genre, and fashioning feminine gender, despite constraints on women. Through the lens of cultural studies, the authors explore the ways in which women of this era worked to actually create culture. Articles cover five areas: women, writing, and material culture; women as objects and agents in reproducing culture; women's role in producing (...) gender; popular culture and women's pamphlets; and women's bodies as inscriptions of culture. (shrink)

How Classification Works attempts to bridge the gap between philosophy and the social sciences using as a focus some of the work of Nelson Goodman. Throughout his long career Goodman has addressed the question: are some ways of conceptualizing more natural than others? This book looks at the rightness of categories, assessing Goodman's role in modern philosophy and explaining some of his ideas on the relation between aesthetics and cognitive theory. Two papers by Nelson Goodman are included in (...) the collection and there are analyses of his work by seven leading academics in anthropology, philosophy, sociology and musicology. (shrink)

Increasingly, functional and evolutionary research has highlighted the important contribution emotion processing makes to complex human social cognition. As such, it may be asked whether neural structures involved in emotion processing, commonly referred to as limbic structures, have been impacted in human brain evolution. To address this question, we performed an extensive evolutionary analysis of multiple limbic structures using modern phylogenetic tools. For this analysis, we combined new volumetric data for the hominoid (human and ape) amygdala and 4 amygdaloid nuclei, (...) hippocampus, and striatum, collected using stereological methods in complete histological series, with previously published datasets on the amygdala, orbital and medial frontal cortex, and insula, as well as a non-limbic structure, the dorsal frontal cortex, for contrast. We performed a parallel analysis using large published datasets including many anthropoid species (human, ape, and monkey), but fewer hominoids, for the amygdala and 2 amygdaloid subdivisions, hippocampus, schizocortex, striatum, and septal nuclei. To address evolutionary change, we compared observed human values to values predicted from regressions run through a) nonhuman hominoids and b) nonhuman anthropoids, assessing phylogenetic influence using phylogenetic generalized least squares regression.Compared with other hominoids, the volumes of the hippocampus, the lateral nucleus of the amygdala, and the orbital frontal cortex were, respectively, 50%, 37%, and 11% greater in humans than predicted for an ape of human hemisphere volume, while the medial and dorsal frontal cortex were, respectively, 26% and 29% significantly smaller. Compared with other anthropoids, only human values for the striatum fell significantly below predicted values. Overall, the data present support for the idea that regions involved in emotion processing are not necessarily conserved or regressive, but may even be enhanced in recent human evolution. (shrink)

While it is not explicitly included in capacity assessment tools, “consistency” has come to feature as a central concern when assessing patients’ capacity. In order to determine whether inconsistency indicates incapacity, clinicians must determine the source of the inconsistency with respect to the process or content of a patient’s decision-making. In this paper, we outline common types of inconsistency and analyze them against widely accepted elements of capacity. We explore the question of whether inconsistency necessarily entails a deficiency in a (...) patient’s capacity. While inconsistency may count as _prima_ _facie_ evidence of incapacity—enough evidence to justify a closer look—when making such determinations, it is important for clinicians to slow down, inquire about the reasons underlying the inconsistency and clearly show which of the elements of capacity the patient fails to satisfy. (shrink)

: The feminist ethic of care has often been criticized for its inability to address four problems--the problem of exploitation as it threatens care givers, the problem of sustaining care-giver integrity, the dangers of conceiving the mother-child dyad normatively as a paradigm for human relationships, and the problem of securing social justice on a broad scale among relative strangers. We argue that there are resources within the ethic of care for addressing each of these problems, and we sketch strategies for (...) developing the ethic more fully. (shrink)

While it is not explicitly included in capacity assessment tools, “consistency” has come to feature as a central concern when assessing patients’ capacity. In order to determine whether inconsistency indicates incapacity, clinicians must determine the source of the inconsistency with respect to the process or content of a patient’s decision-making. In this paper, we outline common types of inconsistency and analyze them against widely accepted elements of capacity. We explore the question of whether inconsistency necessarily entails a deficiency in a (...) patient’s capacity. While inconsistency may count as prima facie evidence of incapacity—enough evidence to justify a closer look—when making such determinations, it is important for clinicians to slow down, inquire about the reasons underlying the inconsistency and clearly show which of the elements of capacity the patient fails to satisfy. (shrink)

What if human joy went on endlessly? Suppose, for example, that each human generation were followed by another, or that the Western religions are right when they teach that each human being lives eternally after death. If any such possibility is true in the actual world, then an agent might sometimes be so situated that more than one course of action would produce an infinite amount of utility. Deciding whether to have a child born this year rather than next is (...) a situation wherein an agent may face several alternatives whose effects could well ramify endlessly on such suppositions, for the child born this year would be a different person—one who preferred different things, performed different actions, and had different descendants—from a child born next year. It has recently been suggested that traditional utilitarianism stumbles on such cases of infinite utility. Specifically, utilitarianism seems to require, for its application, that all experience of pleasure and pain cease at some time in the future or asymptotically approach zero.2 If neither of these conditions holds, then the utility produced by each of two alternative actions may turn out to be infinite, and utilitarianism thus loses its ability to discriminate morally between them. (shrink)

Alea, Bluck, Mroz and Edwards examine how the communication of autobiographical stories via face‐to‐face vs. instant message (IM) influences the extent to which social bonds form between strangers. The results of their study show that the in‐person communication of strangers’ autobiographical memories leads to greater engagement and higher empathy rates in the listener of those stories. That is, sharing autobiographical memories face‐to‐face (compared to IM) is positively correlated with positive feelings and closeness in the listener of those stories.

We discuss potential benefits of research in which attention is directed toward or away from a spoken channel and measures of the allocation of attention are used. This type of research is relevant to at least two basic, still-unresolved issues in cognitive psychology: the extent to which unattended information is processed and the extent to which unattended information that is processed can later be remembered. Four recent studies of this type that address these questions in various ways are reviewed as (...) illustrations. We conclude from these studies that unattended information appears to be partially processed automatically, though attention enhances the processing considerably, and the unattended information that is processed may not be retrievable in direct or many indirect memory tasks, though it remains possible that there is an automatically stored memory trace. (shrink)

Consumer demand for health information and health services has rapidly evolved to capture and even propel the movement to online health information seeking. Seventeen percent of health information internet users will look for information about memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. We examined the content of the 25 most frequently retrieved websites marketing AD dietary supplements. We found that the majority of websites and their products claimed AD-related benefits, including improvement and enhancement of function, treatment for AD, prevention of AD, (...) maintenance of function, delayed progression of AD, and decreased symptoms. Supplements were described as effective, natural, powerful or strong, dependable and pure or of high quality. Peer reviewed references to proper scientific studies were infrequent on websites. Statements highlighting the risks of dietary supplements were as common as statements mitigating or minimizing these risks. Different strategies were used to promote supplements such as popular appeals and testimonials. Further enforcement of relevant policy is needed and preparation of clinicians to deal with requests of patients and caregivers is indicated. (shrink)