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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Beneficial Effects of Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on Cognitive Performance
No full textTranscranial brain stimulation is increasingly used to improve compromised and physiological cognitive functioning. Various forms of transcranial electric stimulation build on the neurophysiological effects of weak currents that are directed to brain areas to induce modulations of cortical activity. The anode-excitatory cathode-inhibitory (AeCi) physiological model of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is often expected to produce mirrored cognitive effects for stimulations of relevant cortical areas, e.g., prefrontal cortices. However, recent research indicates that cognitive performance can also be improved via cathodal tDCS. Nevertheless, considering that different cortical structures may interact with current flow in varying ways, it is not adequate to reject AeCi entirely, to deduct a different physiological effect from cognitive outcomes, or to assume an inefficiency of cathodal tDCS in modulating higher order cortical functions. By highlighting beneficial outcomes, we present here an alternative view on cognitive enhancements that is consistent with the concept of a predominantly inhibitory effect of cathodal tDCS. Suppression of hyperactivity, dysfunctional network activity, noise filtering, state-dependent activity tuning (homeostatic plasticity), and distant disinhibition are discussed as possible mechanisms of action. Consideration of these aspects may allow for a better understanding of the complex results of tDCS studies on the malleability of cognition and behaviour
I enjoy hurting my classmates: On the relation of boredom and sadism in schools
No full textSchools can be a place of both love and of cruelty. We examine one particular type of cruelty that occurs in the school context: sadism, that is, harming others for pleasure. Primarily, we propose and test whether boredom plays a crucial role in the emergence of sadistic actions at school. In two well-powered studies (total N = 1,038) using both self- and peer-reports, we first document that sadistic behavior occurs at school, although at a low level. We further show that those students who are more often bored at school are more likely to engage in sadistic actions. Overall, the present work contributes to a better understanding of sadism in schools and points to boredom as one potential motivator. We discuss implications for research on sadism and boredom, in the school context and beyond
Lying, Deceptive Implicatures, and Commitment
No full textDeceptive implicatures are a subtle communicative device for leading someone into a false belief. However, it is widely accepted that deceiving by means of deceptive implicature does not amount to lying. In this paper, we put this claim to the empirical test and present evidence that the traditional definition of lying might be too narrow to capture the folk concept of lying. Four hundred participants were presented with fourteen vignettes containing utterances that communicate conversational implicatures which the speaker believes to be false. We further collected several potential proxy measures of lying, to get a better understanding of when a deceptive implicature is considered a case of lying. The results indicate that most implicatures (ten out of fourteen) were evaluated as lies and that lie ratings were closely tracked by the degree to which speakers were considered to have committed themselves to the truth of the content conveyed by their deceptive implicatures
Experimental Public Health in the Urban Laboratory
No full textThis paper explores the role Science and Technology Studies (STS) could play in critical studies of public health practice. An STS perspective is applied to two case studies which explore how experimental public health practice varies over time and space. These case studies include the promotion of ‘green space’ in densely populated urban environments in late nineteenth century London and the public health evaluation of a recent set of urban interventions implemented by the Healthy Towns programme in England. The paper concludes that STS provides a useful way forward for generating critical accounts of the use of urban spaces and communities as public health laboratories. Such accounts could be sensitive to the complex assemblages of scientific knowledge, policy and urban context that shape the implementation and outcomes of public health interventions
Liberal fatalism, COVID 19 and the politics of impossibility
No full textHow liberal governments manage knowledge, ignorance, prediction, and uncertainty has attracted increased attention in sociology. In this paper, we analyse the strategy of the UK Government during the Covid-19 pandemic to argue it entails a form of productive enrolment of ‘unknowns’ we label ‘surfing ignorance’. This strategy exploits inevitable limits to knowledge of any particular group of actors, and attempts to steer them to maintain political control. We argue this approach departs from the uses of knowledge and ignorance in both classical liberalism and neoliberalism, and theorize a new, hybrid form of governance which can be dubbed fatalistic liberalism. We discuss the relevance of this new form of governance for political futures of an increasingly volatile world. [NOTE: this paper was first submitted in May 2020]
The experimental emergence of convention in a non-human primate
No full textConventions form an essential part of human social and cultural behaviour and may also be important to other animals. Yet, despite the wealth of evidence that has accumulated for culture in non-human animals, we know surprisingly little about non-human conventions beyond a few rare examples. We follow the literature in behavioural ecology and evolution and define conventions as behaviours that solve a coordination problem in which two or more individuals need to display complementary behaviour to obtain a mutually beneficial outcome. We review and discuss the literature on conventions in non-human primates and come to the conclusion that all the ingredients for conventions to emerge are present and therefore that they ought to be more frequently observed. We probe emergence of conventions by using a unique novel experimental system in which pairs of baboons (Papio papio) can voluntarily participate together in touch-screen based cognitive testing and we show that conventions readily emerge in our experimental setup and that they share three fundamental properties of human conventions (arbitrariness, stability and efficiency). These results question the idea that imitation is necessary to establish conventions
Young children's screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 12 countries
No full textThis study examined children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in a large cohort (n=2209) of 8-to-36-month-olds sampled from 15 labs across 12 countries. The sample was largely balanced by sex, though most participants were majority White. Caregivers reported that young infants and toddlers with no online schooling requirements were exposed to more screen time during lockdown than before lockdown. While this was exacerbated for countries with longer lockdowns, there was no evidence that the increase in screen time during lockdown was associated with children’s demographics, e.g., age, SES. However, screen time during lockdown was negatively associated with child age and SES and positively associated with caregiver screen time and attitudes towards children’s screen time
Medical Education Videos as a Tool for Rehearsal: Efficiency and the Cases of Background Music and Difficulty
No full textThis study reports a field experiment investigating how instructional videos with and without background music contribute to the learning of examination techniques within a formal curriculum of medical teaching. Following a classroom teaching unit on the techniques for examining the knee and the shoulder joint, our participants (N = 175) rehearsed the studied techniques for either the knee or the shoulder joint with an instructional video with or without background music. As dependent measures, we collected a general questionnaire, a judgement of learning, as well as performance on an exam-like knowledge test covering both joints. For both videos, the participants who had watched a particular video during rehearsal were more accurate in answering the corresponding questions than the participants who had seen the other video, signaling that instructional videos provide a useful tool for rehearsal. For the knee video (less difficult), we observed a detrimental effect of the background music, whereas we observed no such effect for the shoulder video (more difficult). Further explorations revealed that background music might be detrimental for learning, as it reduces the perceived demand characteristics. Because the impact of the demand characteristics might be more pronounced in less difficult instructional videos, we discuss video difficulty as a potential moderating factor. Overall, our study provides evidence that instructional videos could be usefully implemented in formal teaching curricula and that such instructional videos probably should be designed without background music
Aversive personality and COVID-19: A first review and meta-analysis
No full textThe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly affected individuals and societies worldwide. In this review and meta-analysis, we investigated how aversive personality traits—i.e., relatively stable antisocial personality characteristics—related to how individuals perceived, evaluated, and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 34 studies with overall 26,780 participants, we found that people with higher scores in aversive personality traits were less likely to perceive guidelines and restrictions to curb the spread of the virus as protective (p̂ = -.11), to engage in health behaviors related to COVID-19 (p̂ = -.16), and to engage in non-health related prosocial behavior related to COVID-19 (p̂ = -.14). We found no consistent relation between aversive personality and negative affect regarding the pandemic. The results thus indicate the importance of aversive personality traits in understanding individual differences with regard to COVID-19
Characterizing and predicting person-specific, day-to-day, fluctuations in walking behavior
No full textDespite the positive health effect of physical activity, one third of the world’s population is estimated to be insufficiently active. Prior research has mainly investigated physical activity on an aggregate level over short period of time, e.g., during 3 to 7 days at baseline and few-month later, post intervention. To develop effective interventions, we need a better understanding of the temporal dynamics of physical activity. We proposed here an approach to studying walking behavior at “high-resolution” and by capturing the idiographic and day-to-day changes in that behavior. We analyzed daily step count among 151 young adults with overweight or obesity who had worn an accelerometer for an average of 226 days (~25,000 observations). We then used a recursive partitioning algorithm to characterize patterns of change, here sudden behavioral gains and losses, over the course of the study. These behavioral gains or losses were defined as a 30% increase or reduction in steps relative to each participants’ median level of steps lasting at least 7 days. After the identification of gains and losses, fluctuation intensity in steps from each participant’s individual time series was computed with a dynamic complexity algorithm to identify potential early warning signals of sudden gains or losses. Results revealed that walking behavior change exhibits non-linearities that can be described as sudden gains and losses. On average, participants experienced six sudden gains or losses over the study. We also observed a significant and positive association between critical fluctuations in walking behavior, a form of early warning signals, and the subsequent occurrence of sudden behavioral losses in the next days. Altogether, this study suggests that walking behavior could be well understood under a dynamic paradigm. Results also provide support for the development of “just-in-time” behavioral interventions based on the detection of early warning signals for sudden behavioral losses