Strategies to support the psychosocial well-being of older adults living in aged-care are needed; and evidence points toward music listening as an effective, non-pharmacological tool with many benefits to quality of life and well-being. Yet, the everyday listening practices of older adults living in residential aged-care remain under-researched. The current study explored older adults’ experiences of music listening in their daily lives while living in residential aged-care and considered how music listening might support their well-being. Specifically, what might go into (...) autonomous listening activities? 32 Australian residents living in two Australian care facilities participated in semi-structured interviews. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed three themes pertaining to “previous music experiences and interest,” “current music listening,” and “barriers to listening.” While an interest in and access to music did not necessarily result in everyday listening practices, of those participants who did listen to music, perceived benefits included outcomes such as entertainment, enjoyment, relaxation, and mood regulation. Drawing on Ruud’s notion of music as a “cultural immunogen” supporting well-being and Self-Determination Theory, theoretical implications of the findings are addressed, relating to how to create and support music activities in aged-care facilities so that they are engaging, meaningful, and promote emotional regulation, community, and well-being. (shrink)

A recent surge of research has begun to examine music participation and well-being; however, a particular challenge with this work concerns theorizing around the associated well-being benefits of musical participation. Thus, the current research used Self-Determination Theory to consider the potential associations between basic psychological needs (competence, relatedness, and autonomy), self-determined autonomous motivation, and the perceived benefits to well-being controlling for demographic variables and the musical activity parameters. A sample of 192 Australian residents (17-85, Mage = 36.95), who were currently (...) participating in a musical activity at the time, completed an online questionnaire. Results indicated that females were more likely to perceive benefits to their well-being; and that how important an individual considers music in their life was positively related to perceived well-being. Importantly, the analyses also revealed that the basic needs of competency and relatedness were related to overall perceived well-being as well as specifically social, cognitive, and esteem dimensions of well-being. Autonomous motivation demonstrated significant associations with both an overall well-being score as well as four of five specific well-being subscales measured. Collectively, the findings indicate that Self-Determination Theory offers a useful theoretical framework to understanding the relationship between musical participation and well-being. Further, the pattern of findings reiterates the positive associations between musical participation and one’s psychosocial well-being, with broad implications for people involved in the facilitation of musical activity. (shrink)

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, (...) opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence. Key Words: exceptional ability; expertise; gift; innate capacity; music; potential; prodigy; specific ability; talent. (shrink)

This exploratory study engages with eight case studies of music performances broadcast online to investigate the role of music in facilitating social cohesion, intercultural understanding and community resilience during a time of social distancing and concomitant heightened racial tensions. Using an online ethnographic approach and thematic analysis of video comments, the nature of audience engagement with music performances broadcast via YouTube during COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 is explored through the lens of ritual engagement with media events and models of social (...) capital. The eight case studies featured virtual choirs, orchestras and music collaborations of various genres, including classical, pop and fusion styles drawing from European, Asia Minor, South African, West African, North African, Arabic, South Asian, and East Asian cultural origins. Five overarching themes resulted from thematic analysis of video comments, including Interaction, Unity, Resilience, Identity, and Emotion. The paper contributes important theorisation that ritual engagement and social learning fosters intercultural understanding through engaging with music both cognitively and emotionally, which can in turn shape both individual and collective identity. Online platforms provide scope for both bonding and bridging opportunities. Community resilience is supported through the sharing of knowledge, sustaining music practice during social distancing, as well as emotional support shared among audience participants, with potential wellbeing outcomes. (shrink)

This Response addresses eight issues raised in the commentaries: (1) the question of how innate talents should be defined; (2) relationships between the talent account and broader views concerning genetic variability; (3) the quality of the empirical evidence for and against the talent account; (4) the possible involvement of innate influences on specific abilities; (5) the possibility of talent-like phenomena in autistic savants; (6) alternative explanations of exceptional expertise at skills; (7) practical and educational implications of the talent account and (...) alternative positions. Finally, (8), we conclude by discussing the impact of the commentaries on our own views. (shrink)

The lateralized ERP N2pc component has been shown to be an effective marker of attentional object selection when elicited in a visual search task, specifically reflecting the selection of a target item among distractors. Moreover, when targets are known in advance, the visual search process is guided by representations of target features held in working memory at the time of search, thus guiding attention to objects with target-matching features. Previous studies have shown that manipulating working memory availability via concurrent tasks (...) or within task manipulations influences visual search performance and the N2pc. Other studies have indicated that visual vs. spatial working memory manipulations have differential contributions to visual search. To investigate this the current study assesses participants' visual and spatial working memory ability independent of the visual search task to determine whether such individual differences in working memory affect task performance and the N2pc. Participants completed a visual search task to elicit the N2pc and separate visual working memory and spatial working memory assessments. Greater SPWM, but not VWM, ability is correlated with and predicts higher visual search accuracy and greater N2pc amplitudes. Neither VWM nor SPWM was related to N2pc latency. These results provide additional support to prior behavioral and neural visual search findings that spatial WM availability, whether as an ability of the participant's processing system or based on task demands, plays an important role in efficient visual search. (shrink)

Perhaps the question “What is philosophy?” can only be posed late in life, when old age has come, and with it the time to speak in concrete terms. It is a question one poses when one no longer has anything to ask for, but its consequences can be considerable. One was asking the question before, one never ceased asking it, but it was too artificial, too abstract; one expounded and dominated the question, more than being grabbed by it. There are (...) cases in which old age bestows not an eternal youth, but on the contrary a sovereign freedom, a pure necessity where one enjoys a moment of grace between life and death, and where all the parts of the machine combine to dispatch into the future a trait that traverses the ages: Turner, Monet, Matisse. The elderly Turner acquired or conquered the right to lead painting down a deserted path from which there was no return, and that was no longer distinguishable from a final question. In the same way, in philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Judgment is a work of old age, a wild work from which descendants will never cease to flow.We cannot lay claim to such a status. The time has simply come for us to ask what philosophy is. And we have never ceased to do this in the past, and we already had the response, which has not varied: philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts. But it was not only necessary for the response to take note of the question; it also had to determine a time, an occasion, the circumstances, the landscapes and personae, the conditions and unknowns of the question. One had to be able to pose the question “between friends” as a confidence or a trust, or else, faced with an enemy, as a challenge, and at the same time one had to reach that moment, between dog and wolf, when one mistrusts even the friend. Gilles Deleuze was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes-St.-Denis, until his retirement in 1987. Among his books translated into English are the two-volume Capitalism and Schizophrenia , the two-volume Cinema , The Logic of Sense , and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza . Daniel W. Smith is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is at work on a study of the philosophy of Deleuze, and is translating Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Arnold I. Davidson, executive editor of Critical Inquiry, teaches philosophy at the University of Chicago and is currently Marta Sutton Weeks Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. (shrink)

In substituting aesthetic criteria for the time-honoured yardsticks of reliability, validity and generalization, narrative researchers are sometimes criticized for devaluing the notion of truth. This paper suggests that what is an issue here is not so much empirical quantitative truth as rather artistic literary truth. The latter notion of truth is characterized in terms of ‘authenticity’ and the ramifications of authentic truth for narrative research are posited and explored. Only such an understanding of truth and the resolve seriously to apply (...) it will garner narrative researchers the epistemic respectability they seek. (shrink)

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy of Education, Department of Educational Foundations.

In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in Philosophy of Education, Department of Educational Foundations.

It is often argued that human emotions, and the cognitions that accompany them, involve refinements of, and extensions to, more basic functionality shared with other species. Such refinements may rely on common or on distinct processes and representations. Multi-level theories of cognition and affect make distinctions between qualitatively different types of representations often dealing with bodily, affective and cognitive attributes of self-related meanings. This paper will adopt a particular multi-level perspective on mental architecture and show how a mechanism of subsystem (...) differentiation could have allowed an evolutionarily “old” role for emotion in the control of action to have altered into one more closely coupled to meaning systems. We conclude by outlining some illustrative consequences of our analysis that might usefully be addressed in research in comparative psychology, cognitive archaeology, and in laboratory research on memory for emotional material. (shrink)

This supplement to Prudentia 2003 contains a series of papers written by previous students and colleagues of professor Chris Dearden, former professor of classics at Victoria university of Wellington.

Stress is one of the most powerful experiences to influence health and disease. Through epigenetic mechanisms, stress may generate a footprint that propagates to subsequent generations. Programming by prenatal stress or adverse experience in parents, grandparents, or earlier generations may thus be a critical determinant of lifetime health trajectories. Changes in regulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) by stress may enhance the vulnerability to certain pathogenic factors. This review explores the hypothesis that miRNAs represent stress‐responsive elements in epigenetic regulation that are potentially (...) heritable. Recent findings suggest that miRNAs are key players linking adverse early environments or ancestral stress with disease risk, thus they represent useful predictive disease biomarkers. Since miRNA signatures of disease are potentially heritable, big data management platforms will be vital to harness multi‐generational information and capture succinct yet potent biomarkers capable of directing preventative treatments. This feature would offer a unique window of opportunity to advance personalized medicine. (shrink)

Refugees and asylum seekers may experience challenges related to pre-arrival experiences, structural disadvantage after migration and during resettlement requiring the need for special protection when participating in research. The aim was to review if and how people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds have had their need for special protection addressed in national and international research ethics guidelines. A systematic search of grey literature was undertaken. The search yielded 2187 documents of which fourteen met the inclusion criteria. Few guidelines addressed (...) specific ethical considerations for vulnerable groups much less people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. One guideline explicitly addressed vulnerability for refugees and asylums seekers. To ensure members of ethics committees and researchers consider the potential challenges of conducting research with these groups, guidelines may need to be supplemented with a refugee and asylum seeker specific research ethics framework. Such a framework may be necessary to optimally protect people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds in research. (shrink)

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

In some musical genres, professional performers play live shows many times a week. Arduous touring schedules bring encounters with wildly diverse audiences across many different performance ecologies. We investigate the kinds of creativity involved in such repeated live performance, kinds of creativity that are quite unlike songwriting and recording, and examine the central factors that influence musicians’ wellbeing over the course of a tour. The perspective of the professional musician has been underrepresented in research on relations between music and wellbeing, (...) with little attention given to the experience of touring. In this case study, we investigate influences on positive and negative performance experiences for the four professional musicians of Australian pop/rock band Cloud Control. Geeves conducted intensive cognitive ethnographic fieldwork with Cloud Control members over a two-week national Australian tour for their second album, Dream Cave (2013). Adapting a Grounded Theory approach to data analysis, we found the level of wellbeing musicians reported and displayed on tour to be intimately linked to their creative performance experiences through the two emergent, overarching and interdependent themes of Performance Headspace (PH) and Connection with Audience (CA). We explore these themes in detail and provide examples to demonstrate how PH and CA can feed off each other in virtuous ways that positively shape musicians’ wellbeing, or loop in vicious ways that negatively shape musicians’ wellbeing. We argue that their creative practice, in thus re-enacting musical performance afresh in each venue’s distinctive setting, emerges within unique constraints each night, and is in a sense a co-creation of the crowd and the band. (shrink)

This study analyzed consumers' willingness to pay for non-pirated computer software and examined how attitudes toward intellectual property rights and perceived risk affect WTPs. Two commonly used software products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, were used in the study as objects to reveal consumer assessed values. A consumer survey was administered in Taiwan and the total valid samples were 799. Respondents in this study included students from senior high schools, colleges, and graduate schools, and general consumers who were no longer (...) full-time students. The estimated average WTP for Windows was USD 58.55 and for Office was USD 53.49, much lower than the respective suggested retail prices in the market. Social norms had strong positive influences on willingness-to-pay for software products. The prosecution risk did not significantly increase WTPs for software products due to the reason that individuals who used pirated software were not at a high risk of being prosecuted. Performance risk was positively correlated to WTPs for software products. The respondents segmented into the low-WTP cluster were more likely to use pirated software than those in the high-WTP segment. Source reliability, legitimacy, technical support, and customer service were emphasized in decisions of respondents in the high-WTP segment and could be used in marketing strategies. (shrink)

This study analyzed consumers' willingness to pay for non-pirated computer software and examined how attitudes toward intellectual property rights and perceived risk affect WTPs. Two commonly used software products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, were used in the study as objects to reveal consumer assessed values. A consumer survey was administered in Taiwan and the total valid samples were 799. Respondents in this study included students from senior high schools, colleges, and graduate schools, and general consumers who were no longer (...) full-time students. The estimated average WTP for Windows was USD 58.55 and for Office was USD 53.49, much lower than the respective suggested retail prices in the market. Social norms had strong positive influences on willingness-to-pay for software products. The prosecution risk did not significantly increase WTPs for software products due to the reason that individuals who used pirated software were not at a high risk of being prosecuted. Performance risk was positively correlated to WTPs for software products. The respondents segmented into the low-WTP cluster were more likely to use pirated software than those in the high-WTP segment. Source reliability, legitimacy, technical support, and customer service were emphasized in decisions of respondents in the high-WTP segment and could be used in marketing strategies. (shrink)