Attention is often conceived as a gateway to consciousness . Although endogenous spatial attention may be independent of conscious perception , exogenous spatial orienting seems instead to be an important modulator of CP . Here, we investigate the role of auditory alerting in CP in normal observers. We used a behavioral task in which phasic alerting tones were presented either at unpredictable or at predictable time intervals prior to the occurrence of a near-threshold visual target. We find, for the first (...) time in neurologically intact observers, that phasic alertness increases CP, both objectively and subjectively. This result is consistent with evidence showing that phasic alerting can ameliorate the spatial bias exhibited by visual neglect patients . The alerting network may increase the activity of fronto-parietal networks involved in top-down amplification required to bring a stimulus into consciousness. (shrink)

A patent is a property granted to any new shape, configuration or arrangement of elements, of any device, tool, instrument, mechanism or other object or part thereof, that allows for a better or different operation, use or manufacture of the object that incorporates it or that provides it with some utility, advantage or technical effect that it did not have before. As a document, a patent really is a title that recognizes the right to exploit the patented invention exclusively, preventing (...) others from making, selling or using it without the consent of the owner. The fact of making a patent is motivated by the fact of promoting creativity, hindering competition in the market as only one person holds the patent, thus protecting the initial investment and fighting against plagiarism. Patents are available to the public for dissemination and general knowledge. It is generally recognized in the specialized literature that patents can be used as an indicator to calculate the results generated by research and development activities, being a very useful indicator to measure various social, economic or technological aspects. For this reason, it is of relevant interest to have tools or systems that allow us to obtain the patents developed in a specific period of time and to carry out analyses of various economic and social factors. These analyses can serve to obtain a social perspective of society’s progress in the technological field, and this is why an analysis of patents is of our interest. This paper proposes a platform specifically designed to obtain knowledge about patents as an indicator of Spanish social, economic or technological aspects. For this purpose, the platform retrieves, analyses and visualizes functionalities that represent data on the landscape of patents obtained from the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office as a particular case of study. (shrink)

We used several cue–target SOAs and three different degrees of cue predictability , to investigate the role of awareness of cue–target predictability on cueing effects. A group of participants received instructions about the informative value of the cue, while another group did not receive such instructions. Participants were able to extract the predictive value of a spatially peripheral cue and use it to orient attention, whether or not specific instructions about the predictive value of the cue were given, and no (...) matter their ability to correctly report it in a post-test questionnaire. In the non-predictive block, bad estimators who received no instructions showed regular cueing effects, while good estimators exhibited smaller and non-significant facilitatory effects at the short SOA and an absence of significant IOR at longer SOAs. However, for the instructions group, the pattern of results reversed. (shrink)

In recent years, streaming music platforms have become very popular mainly due to the huge number of songs these systems make available to users. This enormous availability means that recommendation mechanisms that help users to select the music they like need to be incorporated. However, developing reliable recommender systems in the music field involves dealing with many problems, some of which are generic and widely studied in the literature while others are specific to this application domain and are therefore less (...) well-known. This work is focused on two important issues that have not received much attention: managing gray-sheep users and obtaining implicit ratings. The first one is usually addressed by resorting to content information that is often difficult to obtain. The other drawback is related to the sparsity problem that arises when there are obstacles to gather explicit ratings. In this work, the referred shortcomings are addressed by means of a recommendation approach based on the users’ streaming sessions. The method is aimed at managing the well-known power-law probability distribution representing the listening behavior of users. This proposal improves the recommendation reliability of collaborative filtering methods while reducing the complexity of the procedures used so far to deal with the gray-sheep problem. (shrink)

An Interview with Ana-Teresa Tymieniecka by Yvanka B. Raynova realized in December 1994 at the World Phenomenology Institute. It was published firstly in Bulgarian, and thereafter in English, on the homepage of the World Phenomenology Institute.

ABSTRACTHow do we perceive voices coming from different spatial locations, and how is this affected by emotion? The current study probed the interplay between space and emotion during voice percept...

The Totonac homegarden is a traditionally designed agroecosystem mixing different elements, such as cultivated and wild plants, and livestock. Our objective was to understand the role and importance of homegardens as a strategy for subsistence and natural resources management. Anthropological fieldwork was carried out in Coxquihui, Veracruz, Mexico, a Totonac community. Conventional sampling using a questionnaire yielded a sample of 40 individuals, each representing a family group. Personal interviews, life stories, observations, and field transects enriched survey information. Fieldwork permitted identification (...) of four types of Totonac homegardens: backyards, cropping fields, acahuales or fallow fields, and fences or field edges. Each of these gardens yields an array of products and services important for several cultural roles and natural resource management aims. Totonacs see land as the dominant and most critical resource. A great deal of terrain is steeply sloped and soils are poor. Homegardens play a key role in a production system that minimizes these site limitations, striking a balance between resource maintenance and subsistence needs. Their functions are ecological, to foster a multistrata vegetation cover, and a continuous supply of organic matter to the soil; economic, serving as living storehouses where diverse products (food, timber, firewood, forage, animals, ceremonial supplies, medicinal products), are kept through the annual cycle; and social, performing various social roles such as growing medicinal, ritual, and edible plants, thus supporting beliefs and culture continuity. Studies like this contribute to a better understanding of Totonac culture and native ecology, and give ideas for a better land management. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Flags are conceptual representations that can prime nationalism and allegiance to one’s group. Investigating children’s understanding of conflict-related ethno-national flags in divided societies sheds light on the development of national categories. We explored the development of children’s awareness of, and preferences for, ethno-national flags in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and the Republic of North Macedonia. Children displayed early categorization of, and ingroup preferences for, ethno-national flags. By middle-childhood, children’s conflict-related social categories shaped systematic predictions about other’s group-based preferences for flags. Children (...) of minority-status groups demonstrated more accurate flag categorization and were more likely to accurately infer others’ flag preferences. While most Balkan children preferred divided versus integrated ethno-national symbols, children in the Albanian majority group in Kosovo demonstrated preferences for the new supra-ethnic national flag. We discuss the implications of children’s ethno-national flag categories on developing conceptualizations of nationality and the potential for shared national symbols to promote peace. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

IntroductionCardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter.ResultsWe point out the need for strengthening the roles of healthcare personnel as educators and guidance counselors in order to meet the ends of medicine, as well as the need for an ethical discernment that is compatible with our results, namely, that the ethical values developed by healthcare professionals stem from their life history as well as their professional education.ConclusionWe establish the kind of actions, communication skills and empathy that are required to build a stronger patient-healthcare professional relationship, which at the same time improves prognosis, treatment efficiency and therapeutic adhesion. (shrink)