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The role of language and cultural engagement in emotional fit with culture: an experiment comparing Chinese-English bilinguals to monolingual Brits and Chinese
Get PDFThe current study investigated to what extent language and culture shape emotional experience. Specifically, we randomly assigned 178 Chinese-English bilinguals to report on emotional situations, cultural exposure, engagement, and language proficiency in either English as a foreign language (LX) or Chinese (L1). We established their fit with both the typical patterns of emotions among British and Chinese monolinguals and predicted these fit indices from the survey language, cultural exposure, and engagement. Whereas monolinguals fitted their own culture’s emotional patterns best, bilinguals fitted both the typical LX and L1 patterns equally well. The survey language affected bilinguals’ emotional fit, but there was no evidence for true frame switching. Rather, bilinguals with low exposure to English encountered a drop in emotional fit when using English. Yet, this negative effect of survey language was buffered when bilinguals had better quality interactions with Westerners that are likely to foster conceptual restructuring in the LX
The visual politics and policy of Donald Trump
Get PDFPolitical scientists seeking to understand politics and policy-making typically start with what political actors say and do. But Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency reminds us that images also matter. Engaging with methods, concepts and theories from visual studies, this article analyses images of the 45th president produced by official photographers, photojournalists, political activists and foreign governments between 1985 and 2021. W.J.T. Mitchell’s concept of the pictorial turn, it argues, helps us to understand the importance of such images for Trump’s post-truth politics, but also anxiety about their influence. This article finds that attempts to deride, deface or destroy Trump’s charismatic, strong-man persona were never likely to succeed because, as Mitchell predicts, they reduced the president’s supporters to idolaters in thrall to the power of images. Images played a more productive role, this article finds, by debunking the president’s political falsehoods in ways that textual corrections struggled to do and by documenting his administration’s disruptive approach to policy-making in areas such as foreign affairs and immigration policy. Such images did not tell the whole truth, but they were no less successful at confronting Trump’s post-truth politics as a result
Impact of COVID-19 on the L&D profession: perspectives from independent learning practitioners
No full textSynopsis: The COVID-19 pandemic has required a dramatic shift in ways of working. For many learning and development professionals, this has meant a rapid change in the use of digital learning technology.
Our research, in collaboration with Affinity Health at Work, draws on the experiences of independent L&D practitioners, who were confronted with the sudden need to adapt their businesses – not only to reconfigure their programmes for digital platforms, but to make them appealing to stakeholders within an increasingly competitive market.
Our evidence was collected from a vital source – practitioner expertise. It identifies the common barriers to transitioning to this new context and the technological, personal and relational resources needed to overcome them. It also considers how L&D will change and evolve in the coming years.
People practitioners with responsibility for learning and skills development can use these practical insights to understand how digital learning can be adopted and blended effectively with face-to-face learning in the future
Looking for the Emperor in Seneca's letters
No full textBook synopsis: Latin literature is a hotbed of holes and erasures. Its sensitivity to politics leaves it ripe for repression of all sorts of names, places and historical events, while its dense allusivity appears to hide interpretative clues in a network of texts that only the reader's consciousness can make present. This volume showcases innovative approaches to the field of Latin literature, all of which are refracted through this prism of absence, which functions as a fundamental generative force both for the hermeneutics and the ongoing literary aftermath of these texts. Reviewing and working with various influential approaches to textual absence, the contributors to Unspoken Rome treat these texts as silent types, listening out for what they do not say, and how they do not speak, whilst also tracing the ill-defined borders within which scholars and modern authors are legitimized to fill in the silences around which they are built
Are COVID-19 conspiracies a threat to public health? Psychological characteristics and health protective behaviours of believers
Get PDFWe tested the link between COVID-19 conspiracy theories and health protective behaviours in three studies: one at the onset of the pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK), a second just before the first national lockdown, and a third during that lockdown (N = 302, 404 and 399). We focused on conspiracy theories that did not deny the existence of COVID-19 and evaluated the extent to which they predicted a range of health protective behaviours, before and after controlling for psychological and sociodemographic characteristics associated with conspiracy theory belief. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs were positively correlated with beliefs in other unrelated conspiracies and a general conspiracy mind-set, and negatively correlated with trust in government and a tendency towards analytical thinking (vs. intuitive thinking). Unexpectedly, COVID-19 conspiracy believers adhered to basic health guidelines and advanced health protective measures as strictly as non-believers. Conspiracy believers were, however, less willing to install the contact-tracing app, get tested for and vaccinated against COVID-19, and were more likely to share COVID-19 misinformation – all of which might undermine public health initiatives. Study 3 showed conspiracy theory believers were less willing to undertake health protective behaviours that were outside of their personal control, perceiving these as having a negative balance of risks and benefits. We discuss models explaining conspiracy beliefs and health protective behaviours, and suggest practical recommendations for public health initiatives
Ethical dimensions of translational developmental neuroscience research in autism
Get PDFBackground: Since the 1990s, increasing research has been devoted to the identification of biomarkers for autism to help attain more objective diagnosis; enable early prediction of prognosis; and guide individualised intervention options. Early studies focused on the identification of genetic variants associated with autism, but more recently, research has expanded to investigate neurodevelopmental markers. While ethicists have extensively discussed issues around advances in autism genomics, much less ethical scrutiny has focused on research on early neurodevelopment and on the interventions being developed as a result.
Objectives: We summarise the current state of the science on the identification of early markers for autism and its potential clinical applications, before providing an overview of the ethical issues arising from increasing understanding of children’s neurodevelopment in very early life.
Results: Advances in the understanding of brain and behavioural trajectories preceding later autism diagnosis raise ethical concerns around three themes: (1) New models for understanding autism; (2) Risks and benefits of early identification and intervention; and (3) Communication of early concerns to families. These ethical issues should be further investigated in research conducted in partnership with autistic people and their families.
Conclusions: This paper highlights the need for ethical scrutiny of early neurodevelopmental research in autism. Scrutiny requires expertise and methods from the basic sciences and bioethics, as well as constructive collaborations among autistic people, their parents, and autism researchers to anticipate early interventions that serve the community’s interests and accommodate the varied experiences and preferences of people on the spectrum and their families
First-order rewritability of ontology-mediated queries in linear temporal logic
Get PDFWe investigate ontology-based data access to temporal data. We consider temporal ontologies given in linear temporal logic LTL interpreted over discrete time (Z; 1, or FO(RPR), which extends FO(<) with relational primitive recursion. In terms of circuit complexity, FO(<, \equiv)- and FO(RPR)-rewritability guarantee OMQ answering in uniform AC0 and, respectively, NC1. We obtain similar hierarchies for more expressive types of queries: positive LTL-formulas, monotone MFO(<)- and arbitrary MFO(<)-formulas. Our results are directly applicable if the temporal data to be accessed is one-dimensional; moreover, they lay foundations for investigating ontology-based access using combinations of temporal and description logics over two-dimensional temporal data
Reduced Glutamate Turnover in the Putamen Is Linked With Automatic Habits in Human Cocaine Addiction
Get PDFBackground: The balance between goal-directed behavior and habits has been hypothesized to be biased toward the latter in individuals with cocaine use disorder (CUD), suggesting possible neurochemical changes in the putamen, which may contribute to their compulsive behavior.
Methods: We assessed habitual behavior in 48 patients with CUD and 42 healthy control participants using a contingency degradation paradigm and the Creature of Habit Scale. In a subgroup of this sample (CUD: n = 21; control participants: n = 22), we also measured glutamate and glutamine concentrations in the left putamen using ultra-high-field (7T) magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We hypothesized that increased habitual tendencies in patients with CUD would be associated with abnormal glutamatergic metabolites in the putamen.
Results: Compared with their non–drug-using peers, patients with CUD exhibited greater habitual tendencies during contingency degradation, which correlated with increased levels of self-reported daily habits. We further identified a significant reduction in glutamate concentration and glutamate turnover (glutamate-to-glutamine ratio) in the putamen in patients with CUD, which was significantly related to the level of self-reported daily habits.
Conclusions: Patients with CUD exhibit enhanced habitual behavior, as assessed both by questionnaire and by a laboratory paradigm of contingency degradation. This automatic habitual tendency is related to a reduced glutamate turnover in the putamen, suggesting a dysregulation of habits caused by chronic cocaine use
Two new orchid species (Camaridium: Maxillariinae; Lepanthes: Pleurothallidinae) from the Pacific slope of the Northern Andes, Colombia
Get PDFThe Northern Andean Cordillera in Colombia hosts unique, megadiverse, and fragile ecosystems, including wet tropical lowland, cloud forest, and paramo that are essential for climate regulation and the subsistence of human settlements. The Serrania de Los Paraguas on the Pacific slope of the western range of the Northern Andes, Colombia, is an ecosystem that needs to be preserved in the face of a major threat due to rapid deforestation. However, there have been very few explorations surveying its plant diversity in the area. Here, we describe two new orchid species from the genera Camaridium (C. antonellii: Maxillariinae, Cymbidieae) and Lepanthes (L. valerieae: Pleurothallidinae, Epidendreae) discovered during a floristic survey conducted in the region. Camaridium antonellii is similar to C. inauditum but differs in the fractiflex, ovate-elliptic, acute leaves, the flowers with pink sepals and petals, the lip white, distinctly three-lobed, spotted with purple on the lateral lobes and yellow-cream towards the apex, the mid-lobe ovate to transverse ovate and lanceolate sepals. Lepanthes valerieae, which is similar to L. antennata, differs in the long apical lobes of the petals, surpassing the dorsal sepal, the longer connectives > 18 mm, rounded lobes of the lip, and the oblong, flattened appendix. Illustrations, distribution maps, and photographs are provided
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