This article presents and reflects upon the results of a survey involving a sample of women who have experienced gender-based violence and who have turned to an institutional centre to tackle their situation. In aiming to move beyond a descriptive treatment, we consider the plurality of user types and their remote use patterns in relation to the resources offered by virtual feminist communities designed to promote increased sociopolitical mobilisation in the fight against violence against women. We will observe the progressive (...) emergence of protest actions organised by Spanish virtual feminist communities, which make use of new technologies to contribute productively to the debate and to political action in innovative organisations and formats. The article discusses how feminist virtual communities are using digital spaces for their work combatting violence against women, and whether this work is apparent to those who experience this violence. Finally, we tackle the implications of this work for online feminist activism in terms of a more interactive and social constructivist model of activism, as well as considering its relationship to institutional-legal discourse and public policies that require women to recognise themselves as victims. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives Given the increasing prevalence of cataract and demand for cataract extraction surgery, patients must often wait to undergo this procedure. We validated a previously developed priority scoring system in terms of clinical variables, pre-intervention health status, appropriateness of surgery and gain in visual acuity (VA) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).Methods Explicit prioritization criteria for cataract extraction created by a variation of the Research and Development (RAND) and University of California Los Angeles appropriateness methodology were retrospectively (...) applied to a prospective cohort of 5257 patients on waiting lists to undergo cataract by phacoemulsification at 17 hospitals in Spain. Demographic data, clinical data and data related to surgical technique were collected by trained ophthalmologists. Patients were evaluated by their ophthalmologist before the intervention and 6 weeks afterward. They also completed, by mail, the Visual Function Index (VF-14) before the intervention and 3 months afterward.Results High-priority patients experienced greater improvement in VA and HRQoL than those classified as intermediate or low-priority (P < 0.0001), even after adjusting by VA and the VF-14 score at baseline. The time to intervention was the same for high-priority patients as it was for intermediate and low-priority patients.Conclusions The priority score we developed identified patients most likely to experience the greatest improvements from cataract extraction. Use of this tool could provide a fairer and more rational way to prioritize patients for cataract extraction. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo expone los principios de la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM por sus siglas en inglés), originalmente propuesta por Wierzbicka (1972. Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenaeum) y luego desarrollada en una serie de trabajos por Anna Wierzbicka y Cliff Goddard, además de otros académicos que trabajan en el campo. El objetivo es presentar cómo esta teoría se ha aplicado al estudio de la semántica y de la pragmática para analizar distintos aspectos de los hábitos lingüísticos de un (...) determinado grupo cultural sin recurrir a modelos de universalidad, sino más bien trabajando desde dentro de la lengua estudiada para reconocer conceptos claves y estilos comunicativos que le son propios. El artículo presenta los conceptos de explicaciones semánticas y guiones culturales, que son explicaciones redactadas con la metodología de paráfrasis reductora a través de la herramienta de la NSM. La NSM es un minilengua compuesta por una serie de conceptos muy básicos y traducibles a todas las lenguas que sirven como punto de partida para explicar conceptos más complejos. Esta teoría ha sido complementada por Cliff Goddard con el concepto de lengua mínima, que también se presentará en el artículo. El artículo concluye con una exposición de las similitudes y diferencias que existen entre esta forma de hacer pragmática intercultural y la propuesta por otras teorías de la pragmática, incluida la teoría de la Pragmática Sociocultural de Diana Bravo y sus colegas. (shrink)

Background: Serious games have shown positive results in increasing motivation, adherence to treatment and strengthening the therapeutic alliance in multiple psychiatric disorders. In particular, patients with impulse control disorders and other disorders in which the patient suffers from inhibitory control deficits have been shown to benefit from serious games.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics and to evaluate the usability of a new serious videogame, e-Estesia. This serious videogame was designed to improve emotion regulation in patients (...) with gambling disorder. Preliminary results from a pilot sample are also reported.Method: A pilot sample of 26 patients undergoing treatment for GD was recruited. Participants used e-Estesia on a tablet, which was connected to a thoracic band that sent heart rate and heart rate variability data to the videogame platform in order to provide biofeedback. The System Usability Scale was completed by patients to determine the usability of e-Estesia.Results and Discussion: e-Estesia performed comparatively well for all the explored groups. Around 84.6% of the patients endorsed that it was easy to use. Female patients with GD presented higher HRV during the use of the serious videogame compared to men. (shrink)

Abstract(1) There is enough contradictory evidence regarding the role of base rates in category learning to confirm the nonexistence of biases in such learning. (2) It is not always possible to activate statistical reasoning through frequentist representation. (3) It is necessary to use the concept of systematic processing in reconsidering the published work on biases.

Embodiment approaches to cognition and emotion have put forth the idea that the way we think and talk about affective events often recruits spatial information that stems, to some extent, from our bodily experiences. For example, metaphorical expressions such as “being someone’s right hand” or “leaving something bad behind” convey affectivity associated with the lateral and sagittal dimensions of space. Action tendencies associated with affect such as the directional fluency of hand movements (dominant right hand-side – positive; non-dominant left hand-side (...) – negative) and approach-avoidance behaviors (forward – positive; backwards – negative) might be mechanisms supporting such associations. Against this background, experimental research has investigated whether positive and negative words are freely allocated into space (e.g., close or far from one’s body) or resonate with congruent (vs. incongruent) predefined manual actions usually performed by joysticks or button presses (e.g., positive - right; negative - left, or vice versa). However, to date, it is unclear how the processing of affective concepts resonate with directional actions of the whole body that are performed freely within a context enabling lateral and sagittal movements simultaneously. Accordingly, 67 right-handed participants were to freely step on an 8-response pad (front, back, right, left, front-right, front-left, back-right, or back-left) after being presented in front of them valence-laden personal life-events submitted before the task (e.g., words or sentences such as “graduation” or “birth of a child”). The most revealing finding of this study indicates that approach-avoidance behaviors and space-valence associations across laterality are interwoven during whole body step actions: Positive events induced steps highly biased to front-right whereas negative events induced steps highly biased to back-left. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo discute un estilo comunicativo típico de muchos hispanohablantes, que a menudo ha sido caracterizado en la literatura sobre pragmática y comunicación intercultural como de cercanía interpersonal y de confianza. El punto de partida teórico y metodológico es la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM, por sus siglas en inglés), que propone el uso de un minivocabulario de conceptos básicos para explicar otros más complejos. En este caso, presentamos descripciones (que en la teoría se denominan guiones (...) culturales) de distintos aspectos de este estilo comunicativo de cercanía y de palabras claves culturales y rasgos gramaticales relacionados con este modo de comunicar al que, consciente o inconscientemente, adhieren muchos hispanohablantes. Nos basamos en trabajos ya realizados por otros autores dentro de la NSM y proponemos también nuevas descripciones. (shrink)

The study investigated the influence of resilience and dispositional optimism on, first, emotional distress and, second, the intention to self-isolate, experienced by people with a lower and higher illness risk, during the lockdown imposed in Spain during the first COVID-19 wave. These effects were investigated against the background of the Health Belief Model. A convenience sample of N = 325 participants completed an online survey including an ad-hoc questionnaire measuring the HBM core factors: Perceived health threat, and perceived quarantine benefits (...) and costs. Self-efficacy and perceived social pressure were also measured. Based on reviews regarding pandemic outbreaks, quarantine benefits were conceptualized as the perceived effectiveness and solidary contribution of self-isolating in line with the quarantine protocols. Quarantine “psychosocial” costs were conceptualized as a composite of perceived boredom, loneliness, and economic concerns. Findings revealed an asymmetrical pattern of results so that people at higher risk were more distressed by the perceived severity of getting infected whereas people at lower risk were more distressed by the psychosocial costs. Moreover, resilience and optimism were more “protective” against distress within the lower and higher risk groups, respectively. In addition, quarantine benefits and self-efficacy promoted the intention to self-isolate within both groups. However, optimism hindered such intention. This finding is discussed in the light of links between dispositional optimism and optimistic bias; the underestimation of experiencing negative events, which can relax the perceived health risk. Based on these findings, communication campaigns should prioritize information about the effectiveness of the implemented preventive behaviors rather than the costs of not implementing them, and be cautionary in encouraging excessive optimism. (shrink)

An active engagement with arts in general and visual arts in particular has been hypothesized to yield beneficial effects beyond arts itself. So-called cognitive and socio-emotional “transfer” effects into other domains have been claimed. However, the empirical basis of these hopes is limited. This is partly due to a lack of experimental comparisons, theory-based designs, and objective measurements in the literature on transfer effects of arts education. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to design and experimentally investigate a (...) theory-based visual-arts education program for adolescents aged between 12 and 19 years. The program was delivered in a museum context in three sessions and was expected to yield specific and objectively measurable transfer effects. To conduct a randomized field trial, three strictly parallelized and standardized art courses were developed, all of which addressed the topic of portrait drawing. The courses mainly differed regarding their instructional focus, which was either on periods of art history, on the facial expression of emotions, or on the self-perception of a person in the context of different social roles. In the first and more “traditional” course portrait drawing was used to better understand how portraits looked like in former centuries. The two other courses were designed in a way that the artistic engagement in portrait drawing was interwoven with practicing socio-emotional skills, namely empathy and emotion recognition in one course and understanding complex self-concept structures in the other. We expected positive socio-emotional transfer effects in the two “psychological” courses. We used an animated morph task to measure emotion recognition performance and a self-concept task to measure the self-complexity of participants before and after all three courses. Results indicate that an instructional focus on drawing the facial expressions of emotions yields specific improvements in emotion recognition, whereas drawing persons in different social roles yields a higher level of self-complexity in the self-concept task. In contrast, no significant effects on socio-emotional skills were found in the course focussing on art history. Therefore, our study provides causal evidence that visual-arts programs situated in an art-museum context can advance socio-emotional skills, when designed properly. (shrink)

We explore the distinctive characteristics of Mexico's society, politics and history that impacted the establishment of genetics in Mexico, as a new disciplinary field that began in the early 20th century and was consolidated and institutionalized in the second half. We identify about three stages in the institutionalization of genetics in Mexico. The first stage can be characterized by Edmundo Taboada, who was the leader of a research program initiated during the Cárdenas government (1934-1940), which was primarily directed towards improving (...) the condition of small Mexican farmers. Taboada is the first Mexican post-graduate investigator in phytotechnology and phytopathology, trained at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, in 1932 and 1933, respectively. He was the first investigator to teach plant genetics at the National School of Agriculture and wrote the first textbook of general genetics, Genetics Notes, in 1938. Taboada's most important single genetics contribution was the production of "stabilized" corn varieties. The extensive exile of Spanish intellectuals to Mexico, after the end of Spain's Civil War (1936-1939), had a major influence in Mexican science and characterizes the second stage. The three main personalities contributing to Mexican genetics are Federico Bonet de Marco and Bibiano Fernández Osorio Tafall, at the National School of Biological Sciences, and José Luis de la Loma y Oteyza, at the Chapingo Agriculture School. The main contribution of the Spanish exiles to the introduction of genetics in Mexico concerned teaching. They introduced in several universities genetics as a distinctive discipline within the biology curriculum and wrote genetics text books and manuals. The third stage is identified with Alfonso León de Garay, who founded the Genetics and Radiobiology Program in 1960 within the National Commission of Nuclear Energy, which had been founded in 1956. The Genetics and Radiobiology Program rapidly became a disciplinary program, for it embraced research, teaching, and training of academics and technicians. The Mexican Genetics Society, created by de Garay in 1966, and the development of strains and cultures for genetics research were important activities. One of de Garay's key requirements was the compulsory training of the Program's scientists for at least one or two years in the best universities of the United States and Europe. De Garay's role in the development of Mexican genetics was fundamental. His broad vision encompassed the practice of genetics in all its manifestations. (shrink)

Susana Ruiz Fernández, Juan José Rahona López y Martin Lachmair Leibniz Institut für Wissensmedien Tübingen, Alemania ¿Cómo responde nuestro cerebro … Read More →.

Mindreading capacity has been widely understood as the human ability to gain knowledge about the inner processes and states of others that bring about the behavior of these agents. This paper argues against this epistemic view of mindreading on the basis of different empirical studies in linguistics and social and developmental psychology: we are systematically biased in attributing mental states, and many everyday uses of mental ascription sentences do not reflect an epistemic function in our social interactions. We introduce an (...) alternative view of mental ascriptions, the social cover view, which is consistent with the evidence. The social cover view holds that the main function of mental ascriptions is to cover the social status and reputation of an agent rather than to gain knowledge about her inner processes and states. Finally, we discuss two possible objections to our proposal. (shrink)

Se presenta un estudio cuyo propósito es analizar la pertenencia, tendencia y desafíos de los estudios generales en currículos de programas académicos de Universidades peruanas. El estudio, realizado según el diseño fenomenológico, estuvo conformada por docentes universitarios conocedores del currículo elegidos hasta lograr la saturación. Se aplicó un cuestionario de preguntas abiertas enfocado en la apreciación de los informantes en el objeto de la investigación y como resultados se encontró que los estudios generales contribuyen: al desarrollo de habilidades blandas en (...) la formación integral del estudiante, a la identificación de fortalezas e intereses sobre la profesión, a la vida ciudadana, al descubrimiento y la reafirmación de la vocación; de ahí su pertinencia curricular. (shrink)

Political polarisation in the United States offers opportunities to explore how beliefs about candidates – that they could save or destroy American society – impact people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Participants forecast their future emotional responses to the contentious 2020 U.S. presidential election, and reported their actual responses after the election outcome. Stronger beliefs about candidates were associated with forecasts of greater emotion in response to the election, but the strength of this relationship differed based on candidate preference. Trump supporters’ (...) forecast happiness more strongly related to beliefs that their candidate would save society than for Biden supporters. Biden supporters’ forecast anger and fear were more strongly related to beliefs that Trump would destroy society than vice versa. These forecasts mattered: predictions of lower happiness and greater anger if the non-preferred candidate won predicted voting, with Biden supporters voting more than Trump supporters. Generally, participants forecast more emotion than they experienced, but beliefs altered this tendency. Stronger beliefs predicted experiencing more happiness or more anger and fear about the election outcome than had been forecast. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms through which political polarisation and rhetoric can influence voting behaviour. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un estudio sobre las diferenciaciones (aqsām) del amor, uno de los puntos más importantes del principal escrito que Ibn ʿArabī dedicó a la cuestión amorosa, el capítulo 178 de Las Iluminaciones de La Meca (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya). A través de un juego de oscilación y equilibrio entre perspectivas ontológicas y epistemológicas aparentemente enfrentadas –incomparabilidad/similaridad, oculto/manifiesto, unidad/multiplicidad, espíritu/cuerpo– y un recurrente manejo del lenguaje de las alusiones (išāra), el maestro andalusí distingue entre amor divino (ilāhī), espiritual (rūḥānī), natural (...) (ṭabī‘ī) y elemental (ʿunṣurī). Se ofrece un análisis y comentario del texto akbarí que pretende aclarar la especificidad de cada una de estas nociones, así como su íntima relación con el discurso amoroso del autor. (shrink)

The disease brought about by the SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 coronavirus has had an unprecedented global impact. Confinement to control the outbreak may have mental health consequences for the most vulnerable in the population, including adolescents. This study aims to describe and analyze the relationships between the stress variables, Emotional Intelligence and the intention to use cannabis in healthy adolescents, before and after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic containment stage. A comparative correlational study was carried out with validated self-completed questionnaires through (...) an online platform. The sample is made up of adolescents aged 13–17 from two different schools in Ponferrada. The analysis of correlation and differences between the groups indicate that confinement has had effects on the mental health of the adolescents, specifically on the emotional manifestations of stress. Furthermore, significant gender differences were found for stress values and Emotional Intelligence. However, no differences have been found for cannabis use intention. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar que el marco conceptual que reduce la psiquiatría a una ciencia empírica, dejando al margen a la filosofía, es claramente insuficiente. Para ello se recupera la propuesta del psiquiatra Kurt Schneider y se muesran sus paralelos con fenomenólogos como Edmund Husserl o Max Scheler. El artículo se centra en la distinción entre motivo y causa, que es fundamental en la definición de neurosis y psicosis, y que es también el núcleo de la argumentación (...) de Husserl cuando aboga por la “actitud personalista”, frente a la “actitud naturalista”. (shrink)

Este artigo tenta compreender o estatuto da morte dentro da concepção de vida que se pode depreender das teorizações freudianas. Para isso recorremos a uma leitura comparativa entre dois momentos fundamentais da obra de Freud: o empreendimento metapsicológico (com destaque ao artigo sobre as pulsões, de 1915) e a publicação, em 1920, do Além do princípio de prazer. Verificamos que, em linhas gerais, as características mais essenciais com que a vida é descrita mantêm-se as mesmas em ambos esses momentos; o (...) que mudou foi o estatuto conferido à morte nessa concepção, que de limite lógico e externo passou a ser origem e finalidade da vida. Notamos, outrossim, que a incorporação da morte no seio da vida não se deu no vazio, mas que Freud só a perfez ao se debruçar sobre hipóteses que marcavam presença em seu pensamento já antes de 1920, num processo de contínua reelaboração teórica. (shrink)

Reseña de "Punto de inflexión: Crisis climática y ecológica” de Pamela Poo.

Despite recent efforts by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to move towards standardised procedures for documenting models, methods, systems or datasets, there is currently no methodology focused on use cases aligned with the risk-based approach of the European AI Act (AI Act). In this paper, we propose a new framework for the documentation of use cases that we call use case cards, based on the use case modelling included in the Unified Markup Language (UML) standard. Unlike other documentation methodologies, we (...) focus on the intended purpose and operational use of an AI system. It consists of two main parts: firstly, a UML-based template, tailored to allow implicitly assessing the risk level of the AI system and defining relevant requirements, and secondly, a supporting UML diagram designed to provide information about the system-user interactions and relationships. The proposed framework is the result of a co-design process involving a relevant team of EU policy experts and scientists. We have validated our proposal with 11 experts with different backgrounds and a reasonable knowledge of the AI Act as a prerequisite. We provide the 5 use case cards used in the co-design and validation process. Use case cards allows framing and contextualising use cases in an effective way, and we hope this methodology can be a useful tool for policy makers and providers for documenting use cases, assessing the risk level, adapting the different requirements and building a catalogue of existing usages of AI. (shrink)

Si dejamos a un lado la teoría, son tiempos difíciles para el republicanismo y uno de sus conceptos centrales: la virtud cívica. A contramano de ello, cabe la pregunta respecto a las nociones aristotélicas que, en tal sentido, podrían pervivir en las sociedades complejas contemporáneas. Se repasarán algunos conceptos políticos clave del pensador estagirita y también de Marco Tulio Cicerón, autor romano que sigue sus pasos, para luego intentar actualizar aquellos elementos que, entendemos, aún pueden aplicarse a nuestras sociedades, mientras (...) que otros deberán ser dejados a un lado. Asimismo, en un momento de alta apatía en relación a la democracia, y de cierta anomia provocada por un individualismo exacerbado, entendemos que es clave la pregunta por la existencia, actualidad y posibilidades de la virtud cívica en el siglo XXI. Y, en caso de respuesta afirmativa a dicha posibilidad, cabe preguntarnos cuánto de aristotélico tendría hoy esa virtud. (shrink)