Bulletin of NTU "KhPI". Series: Problems of Electrical Machines and Apparatus Perfection. The Theory and Practice / Вісник Національного технічного університету "ХПІ". Серія: Проблеми удосконалювання електричних машин і апаратів. Теорія і практика
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Big Five Predictors of Pandemic-Related Behavior and Emotions in the First and Second COVID-19 Pandemic Wave in Slovakia
No full textThis study explores the effect of Big Five personality traits on behavioral and emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality traits of 248 Slovak persons were assessed twice before the pandemic using the Big Five Inventory 2. Behavioral and emotional responses to the pandemic were collected during the first and second pandemic wave (April and September 2020). The results showed a statistically significant decrease in all response domains and in COVID-19 fear between the first and the second pandemic wave, suggesting that psychological adaptation to the pandemic occurred during the interim period. The results identified several meaningful links between the traits and pandemic-related behavior and emotions, especially for neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. However, the effects of personality were higher for the first pandemic wave, suggesting that these effects vary across time probably because of changes in pandemic perception in the society
A Distributional and Sensorimotor Analysis of Noun and Verb Fluency
No full textCategory verbal fluency tasks, where participants are asked to produce words according to a semantic category, are typically noun-based (e.g., animals). While insights about the integrity and retrieval of semantic knowledge have been obtained by analyzing the ordinal variances of word production in these noun-based fluency tasks, focusing exclusively on noun categories ignores the semantic knowledge contributed by other semantic/grammatical categories, especially verbs. To better understand the representational differences of nouns and verbs within the mental lexicon, the current study conducted and contrasted different noun- and verb-based fluency tasks. By analyzing the use of different lexical information sources, including word frequency, and context and order similarity derived from a computational model of lexical semantics (BEAGLE; Jones & Mewhort, 2007), and the use of perceptual information derived from the recently released sensorimotor norms (Lynott, Connell, Brysbaert, Brand, & Carney, 2020), it was found that these information sources consistently distinguished noun and verb retrieval, signaling the underlying distributional and sensorimotor representational differences for these two semantic/grammatical categories. The results demonstrate the essential and integral role that distributional and grounded/embodied models play in understanding language and cognition, and highlight the usefulness of verbal fluency tasks in exploring theoretical questions in memory and psycholinguistics
The Global Jukebox: A public database of performing arts and culture
No full textStandardized cross-cultural databases of the arts are critical to a balanced scientific understanding of the performing arts, and their role in other domains of human society. This paper introduces the Global Jukebox as a resource for comparative and cross-cultural study of the performing arts and culture. The Global Jukebox adds an extensive and detailed global database of the performing arts that enlarges our understanding of human cultural diversity. Initially prototyped by Alan Lomax in the 1980s, its core is the Cantometrics dataset, encompassing standardized codings on 37 aspects of musical style for 5,776 traditional songs from 1,026 societies. The Cantometrics dataset has been cleaned and checked for reliability and accuracy, and includes a full coding guide with audio training examples (https://theglobaljukebox.org/?songsofearth). Also being released are seven additional datasets coding and describing instrumentation, conversation, popular music, vowel and consonant placement, breath management, social factors, and societies. For the first time, all digitized Global Jukebox data are being made available in open-access, downloadable format (https://github.com/theglobaljukebox), linked with streaming audio recordings (theglobaljukebox.org) to the maximum extent allowed while respecting copyright and the wishes of culture-bearers. The data are cross-indexed with the Database of Peoples, Languages, and Cultures (D-PLACE) to allow researchers to test hypotheses about worldwide coevolution of aesthetic patterns and traditions. As an example, we analyze the global relationship between song style and societal complexity, showing that they are robustly related, in contrast to previous critiques claiming that these proposed relationships were an artifact of autocorrelation (though causal mechanisms remain unresolved)
Testing Causal Explanations of Viewing Time Measures of Sexual Interests
No full textThe term viewing time (VT) effect refers to a phenomenon whereby respondents typically take longer to judge the sexual attractiveness of targets from sexually preferred (versus nonpreferred) categories. Although frequently characterized as an unobtrusive measure of respondents’ sexually motivated reactions to the stimulus images themselves, the typical pattern of response times might be sufficiently explained by the task demands of the seemingly less relevant rating task. Utilizing three different VT variants, the present paper reports an experimental investigation (N = 136 heterosexual women and men) that tested hypotheses derived from hot stimulus-based processes versus cold cognitive task-based processes. Specifically, stimulus-based processes would predict VT effects even without a rating task, greater VT effects for sexually more suggestive images, and correlations of VT effects with individual sex drive differences. The task-based processes would not imply such predictions, but instead suggest identical response patterns for abstract non-pictorial stimuli that require the same feature integration. Results unanimously speak to the relevance of task demands but provide no support for stimulus-based processes. Implications of these findings for the causal explanation of VT effects are discussed
Using the ADAPT guidance to culturally adapt a brief intervention to reduce alcohol use among injury patients in Tanzania
No full textBackground
Harmful alcohol use is a leading risk factor for injury-related death and disability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Brief negotiational interventions (BNIs) administered in emergency departments (EDs) to injury patients with alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are effective in reducing post-hospital alcohol intake and re-injury rates. However, most BNIs to date have been developed and implemented in high-income countries. The effectiveness of BNIs in LMICs is largely unknown as few studies have undertaken the rigorous task of culturally adapting these interventions to new settings. Given the high prevalence of alcohol-related injury in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, we culturally adapted a BNI to reduce post-injury alcohol use for implementation in this patient population.
Methods
Following the ADAPT guidance, we used an iterative, multiphase process to culturally adapt a high-income country BNI to the Tanzanian context. Our team consisted of local healthcare professionals with vast experience in counseling patients and an international team of academic and clinical professionals to integrate our extensive mixed-methods patient data to adapt this intervention. Design group discussions were used to discuss research results, interpret findings, discuss the goals of the intervention, and identify and suggest areas of adaptation of the intervention as well as specific adaptations to the BNI protocol. Objective assessments of our BNI protocol as well as a BNI assessment scale was developed to guide intervention fidelity.
Results
We developed the Punguza Pombe Kwa Afya Yako (PPKAY); a one-time, 15-minute nurse-led BNI that encourages safe alcohol use and motivates change in alcohol use behaviors among injury patients in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Adaptations to the original intervention protocol include changes regarding the interventionist, how a patient is greeted, how the topic of alcohol use is raised, how a patient is informed of their harmful alcohol use, how graphics are visualized within the intervention protocol, how behavior change is motivated, and which behavior changes are encouraged. Similarly, we developed a BNI assessment scale to accompany the PPKAY which evaluates adherence to the protocol and motivational interviewing tenants.
Conclusions
The PPKAY intervention is the first alcohol BNI which was culturally adapted for delivery to injury patients in an African ED. Our study demonstrates our approach to adapting substance use interventions for use in low resource settings and shows that cultural adaptation of alcohol use interventions is feasible, beneficial and empowering for our team. Our study lays a framework and method for other low resourced settings to integrate cultural adaptation into the implementation of a BNI in low resource EDs
Template for Rapid Iterative Consensus of Experts (TRICE)
No full textBackground: Public health emergencies require rapid responses from experts. Differing viewpoints are common in science, however, “mixed messaging” of varied perspectives can undermine credibility of experts, reduce trust in guidance, and act as a barrier to changing public health behaviours. Collation of a unified voice for effective knowledge creation and translation can be challenging. This work aimed to create a method for rapid psychologically-informed expert guidance during the COVID-19 response. Method: TRICE (Template for Rapid Iterative Consensus of Experts) brings structure, peer-review, and consensus to the rapid generation of expert advice. It was developed and trailed with 17 core members of the British Psychological Society COVID-19 Behavioural Science and Disease Prevention Taskforce. Results: Using TRICE, we have produced 15 peer-reviewed COVID-19 guidance documents based on rapid systematic reviews, co-created by experts in behavioural science and public health, taking 4-155 days to produce, with approximately 17 experts and a median of 10 drafts per output. We provide worked-examples and key considerations, including a shared ethos and theoretical/methodological framework, in this case, the Behaviour Change Wheel and COM-B. Conclusion: TRICE extends existing consensus methodologies and has supported public health collaboration, co-creation of guidance and translation of behavioural science through explicit processes in generating expert advice for public health emergencies
Perceptual Dissimilarity and Cognitive Performance Predict Novel Word Retention, but Not Extension Skills in Down Syndrome
No full textWhile the influence of cognitive and linguistic capacities and the perceptual features of objects on word-learning skills in people with typical development (TD) are well understood, there is little evidence concerning these mechanisms in people with Down syndrome (DS). Using an eye-tracking task, this study examined the ability of 29 children with DS (mean mental age: 3.44 years) to identify familiar words, fast-map pseudowords to novel objects, retain word-object mappings, and extend these mappings to new objects of similar shape. It also contrasted their word-learning abilities to those of 26 two-to-five-year-olds with TD and examined how cognitive and linguistic skills and perceptual information influenced those abilities. Children with DS were found to have similar identification, fast-mapping, and extension skills as their peers with TD, but retained fewer word-object mappings. Greater retention skills are related to mental age, oral vocabulary, and greater perceptual differences between the target and surrounding objects
Psychology's Theory Crisis, and Why Formal Modelling Cannot Solve It
No full textIn light of psychology’s ‘theory crisis’, multiple authors have argued that adopting formalization and/or formal modelling would constitute a useful or even necessary step towards stronger psychological theory. In this article, I instead argue that formal modelling cannot solve the core problem the psychological ‘theory crisis’ refers to, which are the currently high degrees of contrastive and holistic underdetermination of our theories by our data. I do so by first introducing underdetermination as an explanatory framework for determining the evidential import of research findings for theories, and showing how both broader theoretical considerations and informal assumptions are key to this process. Then, I derive the aforementioned core problem from the current ‘theory crisis’ literature and tentatively explore its possible solutions. Lastly, I show that formal modelling is neither a necessary nor sufficient solution for either contrastive or holistic underdetermination, and that its uncritical adoption might instead worsen the crisis
Explainer: Taxing rezoning windfalls (betterment)
No full textIn its 2021 budget, the Victorian government announced a new tax on windfall land value gains from rezoning (also known as a betterment tax)
This note explains the economic principles behind such a tax, the benefits of applying such a tax, implementation issues that need to be considered, and lessons from the operation of similar taxes elsewhere.
Property is, conceptually, a finite bundle of rights. Rezoning grants additional property rights to owners of an existing set of property rights. Those new rights could instead be sold at a market price. A tax on the value gain from rezoning at anything less than 100% is equivalent to selling the new property rights from the community to the current property owner at a discount. Just like selling other property rights from the public to the private sector does not add to market prices in property markets, nor does selling rezoning rights.
A tax on rezoning windfalls is uncommon not because it is a bad tax but because it is a good tax
Reinventing the clinic? Consuming hospital spaces in the PFI era
No full textSince 1997, Labour has overseen a new hospital building programme in the UK that has been heralded by Tony Blair as part of a ‘new civic building programme that will rival that of the Victorian age’. These hospitals, primarily funded through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), are depicted as setting new standards in healthcare facility design. In this paper, we examine the distinctiveness of these designs, exploring the rhetoric that proclaims them as offering new levels of clinical efficiency and patient care in a distinctly ‘non-institutional’ setting. Emphasising the homology between these designs and the (il)logics of the marketplace, we conclude that this new generation of hospitals is indicative of an important shift in the locus of healthcare from the world of the service user to the world of the consumer