102128 research outputs found
Sort by
Growing decision-making: the role of theory of mind, empathy, and personality traits in school-age children
No full text: Children's decision-making is a socio-cognitive skill embedded within a broader system that promotes understanding of others and effective management of interpersonal contexts, making it closely linked to Theory of Mind (ToM) and empathy. The present study examined how these abilities, together with personality traits and cognitive skills, relate to decision-making in middle childhood, specifically regarding fairness, altruism, and delay of gratification. A sample of 94 children aged 6-10 years completed tasks assessing fairness (Ultimatum Game), altruism (Dictator Game), and delay of gratification (Marshmallow Task), together with measures of ToM, empathy, personality traits, and cognitive ability. Results revealed that fairness was predicted by ToM and situational empathy, suggesting that acting fairly involves integrating mental-state reasoning with context-dependent emotional responsiveness. Altruism, in contrast, was specifically associated with affective empathy, indicating that children's tendency to help others is primarily driven by their emotional sensitivity. Delay of gratification was unrelated to ToM or empathy. Instead, it was predicted by the personality trait of Openness to Experience, reflecting the role of trait-like motivational tendencies in delay of gratification. Age and general cognitive ability did not predict any of the decision-making outcomes. Path analyses confirmed that fairness and altruism are driven by social-cognitive mechanisms, whereas delay of gratification depends primarily on individual dispositions rather than interpersonal processing. These findings clarify the specific contributions of ToM, empathy, and personality to children's decision-making and carry important implications for developmental and educational practices
Turning bias into leverage: the case for gender quotas
No full textThis paper explores how voter prejudice against women in politics can evolve over time through learning. Building on a Bayesian updating framework, we model voters as holding biased priors about female candidates’ competence and updating their beliefs based on the performance of elected women. The model predicts that gender quotas can accelerate this learning process by increasing the visibility of competent female politicians, and that the effect is stronger, i.e., learning is faster, in more biased contexts. We test these predictions using two institutional reforms in Italian municipal elections. First, we exploit a short-lived gender quota reform (1993-1995) and find that quotas had a persistent effect on women’s representation even after their removal. Their impact was stronger in municipalities with historically higher gender bias, proxied by referendum outcomes on abortion and divorce and the gender gap in education. Second, we examine the 2012 introduction of gender quotas and genderconditioned double preference voting in municipalities with over 5,000 inhabitants. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design that allows for heterogeneous effects, we f ind that the reform increased women’s representation in the first post-reform election and in the subsequent electoral cycle. Effects are larger in municipalities with higher pre-treatment prejudice, especially in the subsequent cycle. Overall, these results support our theoretical prediction that quota-driven exposure to female politicians reduces bias more quickly where initial prejudice is stronger
Cultural invariance in musical communication (for CogSci 2022 Proceedings)
No full textDespite the variability of music worldwide, some types of human songs share basic acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic, whereas lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Prior studies with western English-speaking participants have shown that this enables listeners to infer aspects of a singer’s behaviour, despite being unfamiliar with the singer’s culture and language. Here, we test whether these intuitions are shared across a diversity of languages and human societies, with 5,524 people from 49 industrialised countries comprising 28 languages, and 116 people in 3 small-scale societies with limited access to global media. Each made inferences about the behavioural contexts of 118 songs from 86 societies. Both groups reliably identified the behavioural functions of dance songs, lullabies, and healing songs. Linguistic and geographical proximity between listeners and singers was minimally predictive of accuracy, demonstrating a degree of cultural invariance in music perception
Assessment of the Safety and Effectiveness of the FLOWer Antiembolic Filter Supporting Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation
No full textBackground: Embolic events are life-threatening complications of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) with clinically relevant stroke rates of 2%-4%. Aims: This study aims to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of FLOWer, a novel embolic protection device (EPD) used in TAVI procedures. Methods: Data on the FLOWer device were obtained from its CE-mark clinical trial (the NAUTILUS study, NCT04704258). Safety outcomes were the 30-day rate of major adverse events (MAEs, including all deaths, ischemic strokes, and acute kidney injury), while effectiveness data consisted of the number of particles captured by the filter during the procedure. These data were compared with benchmark values from the EPD literature. In addition, the total number (TNL) and volume (TVL) of new brain lesions were evaluated. Results: A total of 52 intention-to-treat (ITT) patients were considered, 45 of whom were per protocol (PP) patients. The rate of 30-day MAEs for the PP population was 2.2% (1/45% vs. 14.3%, p = 0.0082); no strokes were observed. The median number of captured debris larger than 60 μm was 213 (IQR: 128-315 vs. 46.1, p < 0.0001), and larger than 150 μm, 105 (IQR: 60-190 vs. 41.6, p < 0.0001). The median TVL and TNL per patient were 291.7 mm3 (IQR: 98.5-630.7 mm3) and 4.5 mm3 (IQR: 2.0-8.3 mm3), respectively. Conclusions: The use of FLOWer during TAVI was found to be feasible and safe, with a low incidence of MAEs and a reduced number and volume of new brain lesions. The significant amount of debris captured compared to similar devices demonstrates effective device performance
Risemiotizzare con i Lego. Narrazione, raffigurazione, spazializzazione
No full textUno degli aspetti più interessanti del sistema LEGO è che si tratta a tutti gli effetti di una grammatica funzionale. Dotato di un proprio patrimonio morfosintattico e semantico e di risorse e strategie di lessicalizzazione, il linguaggio LEGO è operativo su tutte e tre le metafunzioni tipiche dei sistemi di significazione complessi, ossia ideazione (la codificazione di referenti specifici sul piano del rappresentato), interazione (l’inscrizione di una rete di rapporti sociali all’interno della rappresentazione) e testualizzazione (l’allestimento testuale di un sistema di rapporti prospettici e cognitivi, di natura per lo più spaziale). Dagli anni Trenta in poi, generazioni di giocatori hanno utilizzato i mattoncini LEGO per significare e risignificare una sterminata varietà di referenti, anche attraverso prodotti e media diversi (riviste, film, musica, videogames, parchi tematici, ecc.) in un’opera costante di cannibalizzazione della cultura contemporanea. È dal 1963 in poi, in particolare, che i mattoncini LEGO diventano un sistema semiotico di elementi discreti universalmente combinabili, senza limitazioni sincroniche (pezzi di set tematici diversi, proprio perché basati sulla stessa grammatica di elementi funzionali, possono combinarsi indefinitamente) o diacroniche (si possono montare pezzi di recente produzione con pezzi ereditati da giocatori di generazioni precedenti). Questo paper analizza in particolare alcuni processi ideativi (di natura narrativa e raffigurativa) per mezzo dei quali è possibile narrare e descrivere storie e oggetti (reali e immaginari) con il linguaggio LEGO. Si tratta di una linguaggio cross-semiotico, basato sull’interazione spaziale fra visualizzazione, grafica e codice numerico – una serie articolata di funzioni sintattiche, semantiche e cognitive
Riprese | Risignificazioni | Ritorni. Estetiche e pratiche della rigenerazione
No full textStrutturata in nuclei tematico-prospettici – o in fasci di senso – si presenta qui una declinazione polisemica e contraddittoria della rigenerazione che guida i e che mette in frizione diversi saperi e ordini disciplinari, dall’analisi semiotica alla sociologia dei processi culturali, dalla narratologia alla critica
del cinema all’analisi del linguaggio teatrale e televisivo, dalla teoria della moda alla linguistica funzionale. Avremo a che fare con una rigenerazione intesa, sul piano storico-sociale, come successione esperienziale che plasma
le coorti in comunità di senso, ma anche come antagonismo e trasmissione,
come scarto fra generazioni e immaginari di rinascita. Con una rigenerazione – in chiave semiotica, mediologica, narratologica e discorsiva, sul piano del rappresentato e della rappresentazione – quale articolazione di temporalità complessa, franta o moltiplicata. Quella che emerge ad esempio nella proliferazione di sequel, prequel, reboot, remake, citazioni, iterazioni, traduzioni, ritorni e revival, usi riusi e abusi fantasmatici di sorta. Quella che mobilita un tempo «postumo», che ridefinisce le coordinate di spazio e tempo nell’accelerazione del contemporaneo, e che esiste in forma di ripresa (video, audio). Rigenerazione, infine, sul piano latamente culturale e antropologico, come confronto fra la generazione retroflessa che ci ha consegnato il nostro tempo, e quella – tutta ancora da figurare – che, forse, spariglierà le carte e riuscirà a farlo proprio, questo tempo
Experimental and computational study of the crystal packing of isoelectronic 4,11-diaza[5]helicene and 4,7,8,11-tetraaza[5]helicene
Full text linkThe crystal structures of isoelectronic 4,11-diaza[5]helicene (DNH) and 4,7,8,11-tetraaza[5]helicene (TNH) are accurately determined at room temperature by single crystal X-ray diffraction. Analysis of crystal packing with computational chemistry tools, including the evaluation of intermolecular and cohesive energies with force field and charge density (PIXEL) methods, highlights the effect of skeletal replacement of two aromatic C-H with nitrogen atoms. Both crystals are centrosymmetric racemates, with asymmetric units (ASUs) exploiting the same conformation. The ASU of TNH bears two symmetry-independent enantiomers, and the different settings of symmetry operators mirror in different packing motifs with respect to DNH. Both structures exhibit columnar stacking arrangements, which differ in their mutual orientation, distance and strength. Stacking interactions are more frequent and stronger in the tetraaza compound, owing to the greater intrinsic polarization of its ground-state electron density that favors antiparallel arrangements of neighboring molecular dipole moments. Finally, the possible existence of thermodynamically stable chiral forms of the title compounds is investigated by symmetry-constrained Monte Carlo (SC-MC) calculations
Nurturing Students’ Reflexive Approach to Data Analysis by Crafting Collective Zines
No full textThis article presents insights from a classroom exercise in an undergraduate Applied Social Research course, in which students explored how their lived experiences shape the ways they make sense of qualitative data, becoming aware of the situated nature of research. Through collective zine-making, they engaged with visual and narrative empirical material from earlier research on how young people’s daily experiences were reconfigured amid major changes in everyday routines and emotional life. By cutting, arranging and annotating fragments, students encountered interpretive tensions and the affective dimensions of working with qualitative data.
Drawing on classroom observations and students’ reflections, the article explores how zinemaking as a creative practice has fostered situated reflexivity. The article contributes to wider conversations on the teaching practices of sociology, showing how tactile, collaborative and imaginative engagement with research materials can encourage thoughtful engagement with data
