Ambiguous Condition Research Articles

PARANOIA AND AMBIGUITY IN BEFORE I FALL BY LAUREN OLIVER: POSTMODERNISM STUDY

The concern of the study is the paranoia and ambiguity as a social phenomenon experienced by the main character in Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. It intended to examine the author’s narration and also the main character’s utterances which are portraying as a paranoia and ambiguity condition and the main character’s way to solve her problem of life.This study applies qualitative research, because the data are in the form of words or sentences. It examines the characters utterances and author’s narration from postmodernism approach concerning on Jean Francois Lyotard’s postmodernism theory. In addition, data reduction, data displays, and conclusion drawing/verification are the techniques of analyzing the data.The result of the study finds paranoia and ambiguity as the theme of postmodern literature in Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver which faced by the main character, Samantha Kingston. The study also finds the main character’s way to solve her paranoia and ambiguity as her problem of life.

Pessimistic outcome expectancy does not explain ambiguity aversion in decision-making under uncertainty

When faced with a decision, most people like to know the odds and prefer to avoid ambiguity. It has been suggested that this aversion to ambiguity is linked to people’s assumption of worst possible outcomes. We used two closely linked behavioural tasks in 78 healthy participants to investigate whether such pessimistic prior beliefs can explain ambiguity aversion. In the risk-taking task, participants had to decide whether or not they place a bet, while in the beliefs task, participants were asked what they believed would be the outcome. Unexpectedly, we found that in the beliefs task, participants were not overly pessimistic about the outcome in the ambiguity condition and in fact closer to optimal levels of decision-making than in the risk conditions. While individual differences in pessimism could explain outcome expectancy, they had no effect on ambiguity aversion. Consequently, ambiguity aversion is more likely caused by general caution than by expectation of negative outcomes despite pessimism-dependent subjective weighting of probabilities.

Da curadoria de artista a alguma outra coisa

O texto especula a permeabilidade entre práticas artísticas e curatoriais, a partir de uma série de projetos que poderiam ser entendidos comopropostas ambivalentes, cruzando o terreno entre essas atividades. Se um artista pode ser um curador, que escolhas essa condição ambígua determina?A serviço de que decisões e situações, para além da própria carreira, pode-se operar essa prática? Trata-se de um relato em primeira pessoa que se lançasobre as perspectivas reais de entendimento de possíveis tipologias da curadoria associada ao campo das artes e mídias. O texto aborda pensamos decríticos como Claire Bishop, Elena Filipovic, Hal Foster, Hans Ulrich Obrist e outros, em pensamentos que buscaram expandir o campo de atuação de artistas em relação a práticas curatoriais. Considerando um grande número de artistas atuantes nas confluências desse campo no Brasil, como os brasileiros raziela Kunsch, Giselle Beiguelman, Fernando Velazquez, Marcus Bastos, Roberto Traplev, Kika Nicolela, Bruno Mendonça, Sonia Guggisberger, Claudio Bueno, Gabriel Menotti ou Daniel Lima, o texto enseja um novo ambiente para essas práticas, que envolvem novas configurações de espaços do tipo artist-run spaces (espaços autogeridos) ou exposições preparadas exclusivamente por artistas. Sem afirmar dogmas, arriscar genealogias ou pre-definir terrenos de atuação, o texto resvala pensamentos associados à frase “Não sabendo que era impossível, foi lá e fez”, como o devaneio de um curador que acabou sendo sem saber que era ou podia ser.

Decision‐making in civil litigation: Effects of attorney credibility, evidence strength, and juror cognitive processing

AbstractThe current study examined the relationship between juror cognitive processing (measured by need for cognition [NFC]), attorney credibility, evidence strength, and civil litigation verdicts (liability, likelihood of causation, and compensatory damages). Participants (N = 446) viewed a videotaped mock civil trial in which the credibility of the attorneys and the strength of the plaintiff's evidence were manipulated. Plaintiff attorney credibility, defense attorney credibility, and strength of evidence interacted with one another for liability verdicts. In the strong evidence condition, the likelihood of a liable verdict was higher for a credible plaintiff attorney than a non‐credible plaintiff attorney when facing a non‐credible defense attorney. In the ambiguous evidence condition, the likelihood of a liable verdict was higher for a credible plaintiff attorney than a non‐credible plaintiff attorney when facing a credible defense attorney. Plaintiff attorney credibility, however, was found to be more influential on jurors’ decision‐making than case evidence for likelihood of causation and compensatory damage award decisions. Participants’ NFC also interacted with plaintiff attorney credibility. High NFC jurors were more influenced by a credible plaintiff attorney than low NFC jurors. Although these findings are counter to common findings in the NFC literature, they conform to a body of literature that supports the notion that jurors view attorney credibility as a piece of case evidence and not a peripheral cue as is often assumed. Thus, the findings indicate that attorneys do matter to the outcomes of cases. Policy and practice implications for attorneys and the courts are discussed.

Patients\u2019 responses to incidentally discovered silent brain infarcts \u2013 a qualitative study

BackgroundIncidentally discovered silent brain infarcts (id-SBIs) are an understudied condition with probable clinical significance, but it is not known how patients respond to or prioritize this condition. We sought to assess reporting of id-SBIs and how patients approach their diagnosis.MethodsPatients with id-SBIs were identified from sequential scans between 12/2015–5/2016, were referred by treating clinicians, or self-referred for the study. This study used qualitative semi-structured interviews. Purposeful sampling was used to achieve diversity in acuity, setting, and recruitment strategy. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. A constant comparative method was used to develop a coding schema, find consensus, and iteratively explore emergent themes until thematic saturation was achieved.ResultsOnly 10 of 102 patients prospectively identified by neuroimaging were informed of the imaging findings. Twelve participants in total were interviewed. Among the study participants, the primary themes were cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic uncertainty regarding id-SBIs. Clinicians described id-SBIs to participants as an ambiguous condition. Participants feared potential consequences of id-SBIs, including symptomatic stroke, dementia, and disability. Participants attempted to reduce uncertainty with strategies including equating id-SBIs with symptomatic stroke, self-education about stroke, and seeking second opinions.ConclusionParticipants considered id-SBIs to be a serious medical condition. Ambiguous counseling by clinicians on id-SBIs provoked or failed to attenuate fear, leading to participants adopting strategies aimed at reducing uncertainty.

E-Satisfaction Estimation

In this competitive atmosphere, internet marketing serves as an effective alternate trade network that businesses can focus on to get direct access to their target customers. Online buying facilitates shoppers to purchase goods and services right away from the merchants over the internet and without human interference. Consumers find produce of their preference with just click of a button. A complete series of merchandise from various dealers with their prices get exhibited to the buyers for their choice. But, is competitive prices and good product features sufficient for the buyers for their buying decisions? This article attempts to answer this ambiguous condition and try to realize the vital aspects for buyers' satisfaction. A customer satisfaction index (ECCSI) is studied to comprehend the features of online satisfaction and with a comparative analysis using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS (IFT), these different e-satisfaction indices are ranked to get an overall view of preferences of the customers.

Cultura mestiza y regímenes estéticos de la vida cotidiana. El ethos barroco de Bolívar Echeverría

This article, inspired by Bolívar Echeverría, analyzes Latin American capitalist reality as an “inevitable historical fact” resulting from the cultural contact initiated in the Spanish Colony. We hold the thesis that the culturally ambiguous condition of the Hispanic-American colonial mestizo materialized in a “will of form” applied to everyday life, which although it seems to reproduce the instrumental purposes of Central European Modernity, contributes to its overcoming by establishing the other Modernity, where the self is integrated into us. For this purpose, we will approach the mestizo caste from four sequential historical approaches: the initial cultural ambiguity of the colonial mestizo, the identity recomposition of the mestizo population, the other Modernity and the aesthetic regimes of daily life.

Ultrafast laser-scanning optical resolution photoacoustic microscopy at up to 2 million A-lines per second

The imaging speed of optical resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) using pulsed excitation is fundamentally limited by the range ambiguity condition, which defines the maximum laser pulse repetition frequency (PRF). To operate at this theoretical upper limit and maximize acquisition speed, a custom-built fiber laser capable of operating at a PRF of up to 2 MHz was combined with a fast laser scanning optical OR-PAM system based on a stationary fiber-optic ultrasound sensor. A large area (10 mm × 10 mm) of the mouse ear was imaged within 8 s, when acquiring 16 million A-lines and operating the laser at a PRF of 2 MHz. This corresponds to a factor of four improvement in imaging speed compared to the fastest OR-PAM system previously reported. The ability to operate at high-imaging frame rates also allows the capture of hemodynamic events such as blood flow. It is considered that this system offers opportunities for high throughput imaging and visualizing dynamic physiological events using OR-PAM.

Managing difficult and violent adolescents ( adolescents difficiles) in France: a genealogical approach.

'Difficult adolescent' is a clinical category defined by psychiatrists' expertise. Since the end of the 1990s, it has been extensively used to describe a population of disruptive, violent yet vulnerable adolescents, at the margins of public institutions that manage youth deviancy in France. For the present study, an interconnected network of 49 documents was analysed using a genealogical method in order to provide comprehensive elements in the results. This category found its ecological niche in the 1960s, revealing a moral tension in the use of constraint. It addressed new problems of intractable individuals, whose dangerousness and vulnerability require coordination between penal, social and psychiatric institutions. It defines an ambiguous condition, suspended between the trouble experienced by the caregivers and an adolescent's individual disorder.

Social reward processing: A biomarker for predicting psychosis risk?

The desire to obtain social rewards (e.g. positive feedback) features prominently in our lives and relationships, and is relevant to understanding psychopathology – where behavior is often impaired. Investigating social rewards within the psychosis-spectrum offers an especially useful opportunity, given the high rates of impaired social functioning and social isolation. The goal of this study was to investigate hedonic experience associated with social reward processing as a potential biomarker for psychosis risk. This study used a task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm in adolescents at clinical high-risk for the development of psychosis (CHR, n = 19) and healthy unaffected peers (healthy controls – HC, n = 20). Regional activation and connectivity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum were examined in response to receiving positive social feedback relative to an ambiguous feedback condition. Expectations of impaired hedonic processes in CHR youth were generally not supported, as there were no group differences in neural response or task-based connectivity. Although interesting relationships were found linking neural reward response and connectivity with social, anticipatory, and consummatory anhedonia in the CHR group, results are difficult to interpret in light of task limitations. We discuss potential implications for future study designs that seek to investigate social reward processing as a biomarker for psychosis risk.

The Plastic Cassowary: Problematic ‘Pets’ in West Papua

ABSTRACTThis article explores the ambivalent relations of indigenous Marind to domesticated animals in Merauke District, West Papua. Marind pity village animals because they lose their ‘wildness’ and behave like human settlers, whom Marind consider alien because of their ‘modern’ lifestyle and non-Papuan origins. These transformations evoke to Marind their own experiences of political oppression and ethnic domination as coerced subjects of the Indonesian state. However, domesticates also appear to enjoy living in the village and refuse to return to the wild. Similarly, many Marind are drawn by the promises of modernity and have given up hope for political freedom. Furthermore, Marind themselves replicate the oppressive role of the state over their lives by subjecting animals to human control. In this light, domesticates as ‘matter out of place’ in the village environment provoke pity and anxiety because they offer an all too faithful reflection of the ambiguous condition of their keepers.

Adult Attachment Affects Neural Response to Preference-Inferring in Ambiguous Scenarios: Evidence From an fMRI Study.

Humans are highly social animals, and the ability to cater to the preferences of other individuals is encouraged by society. Preference-inferring is an important aspect of the theory of mind (TOM). Many previous studies have shown that attachment style is closely related to TOM ability. However, little is known about the effects of adult attachment style on preferences inferring under different levels of certainty. Here, we investigated how adult attachment style affects neural activity underlying preferences inferred under different levels of certainty by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI results demonstrated that adult attachment influenced the activation of anterior insula (AI) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in response to ambiguous preference-inferring. More specifically, in the ambiguous preference condition, the avoidant attached groups exhibited a significantly enhanced activation than secure and anxious attached groups in left IPL; the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation secure attached group in left IPL. In addition, the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation than secure and avoidant attached groups in left AI. These results were also further confirmed by the subsequent PPI analysis. The results from current study suggest that, under ambiguous situations, the avoidant attached individuals show lower sensitivity to the preference of other individuals and need to invest more cognitive resources for preference-reasoning; while compared with avoidant attached group, the anxious attached individuals express high tolerance for uncertainty and a higher ToM proficiency. Results from the current study imply that differences in preference-inferring under ambiguous conditions associated with different levels of individual attachment may explain the differences in interpersonal interaction.

A common subgraph correspondence mining framework for map search services

With the development of GPS, Internet, and mobile devices, the map searching services become an essential application in people’s lives. However, existing map searching services only support simple keywords based location search, which neglect users’ complex search requirements, such as searching a hotel surrounded by station, shopping mall, cinema, etc. In this paper, we propose a map searching framework which maps users’ complex search requirements into a graph pattern match problem. In this framework, the user’s query requirements are mapped into a undirected graph, where the vertexes indicate the searched locations, and the edges represent the distance between connected locations. In this way, we propose a common pattern searching algorithm to give the top k matches groups and arrange them using a similarity. The similarity is defined by multi-model information, i.e., the graph structure, location categories, review stars, and review counts. Moreover, this method also allows user to input ambiguous and uncertain query condition with sketching query map. To adapt the method to large-scale data, we also filter the candidate groups by effective pruning methods. The evaluations on Yelp dataset demonstrate the proposed method is effective and flexibility in both certain and uncertain query graphs.

Do Dishonesty, Ambiguity and Ethical Behaviour Affect? Risk Aversion?

The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of risk aversion, which are dishonesty, ambiguity and ethical behaviour. The first and third phase of this studies involve of completing a questionnaire to identify participant level of dishonesty and ethical behaviour. The second phase involves an experiment adapted from Ellsberg’s which we identify participant tendency of risk taking on ambiguity condition. In this study we found that dishonesty has a negative effect on risk aversion meanwhile ambiguity and ethical behaviour have positive effect on risk aversion. Even though the result of ambiguity has positive effect on risk aversion, but this result has shown an insignificant effect. In the future, researchers are suggested to emphasize the risk for indicating the ambiguity on risk aversion.

Project Cost Escalation Prediction Models Based on System Dynamics Approach

Multiyear construction project is one of the riskiest project due to uncertainty and dynamic economic condition. In multi-years project, cost escalation is inevitable because during construction period various risk factors such as increasing of labor cost, materials cost, energy cost, and equipment cost will affect the costs of the projects. This paper proposes a model to estimate cost escalation based on System Dynamic (SD) approach. SD is used to represent correlation among risk factors influencing cost escalation and to calculate cost escalation during project period. Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) was made based on in-depth literature review and confirmed by the experts. To validate the model, 7 multi-years projects in Indonesia were used as case study. The result showed that the proposed model can accurately predict project cost escalation with an accuracy of 91.21%. Simulation of SD also showed that the change of scope of work, ambiguous contract condition, unpredictable conditions, project schedule delay, inflation, and extreme weather condition are the most influencing factor of cost escalation. Besides predicting cost escalation of project, this model can also be used as early warning system in multi-year projects environment.

The relationship between obsessive-compulsive personality features and perceptual decision-making strategy under the ambiguous condition

The relationship between obsessive-compulsive personality features and perceptual decision-making strategy under the ambiguous condition

Children's Counterfactual Reasoning About Causally Overdetermined Events.

In two experiments, one hundred and sixty-two 6- to 8-year-olds were asked to reason counterfactually about events with different causal structures. All events involved overdetermined outcomes in which two different causal events led to the same outcome. In Experiment 1, children heard stories with either an ambiguous causal relation between events or causally unrelated events. Children in the causally unrelated version performed better than chance and better than those in the ambiguous condition. In Experiment 2, children heard stories in which antecedent events were causally connected or causally disconnected. Eight-year-olds performed above chance in both conditions, whereas 6-year-olds performed above chance only in the connected condition. This work provides the first evidence that children can reason counterfactually in causally overdetermined contexts by age 8.

Modulation of the N400 component in relation to hypomanic personality traits in a word meaning ambiguity resolution task.

High levels of hypomanic personality traits have been associated with an increased risk of developing bipolar disorder (BD). Changes in semantic content, impaired verbal associations, abnormal prosody, and abnormal speed of language are core features of BD, and are thought to be related to semantic processing abnormalities. In the present study, we used event-related potentials to investigate the relation between semantic processing (N400 component) and hypomanic personality traits. We assessed 65 healthy young adults on the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS). Event-related potentials were recorded during a semantic ambiguity resolution task exploring semantic ambiguity (polysemous word ending a sentence) and congruency (target word semantically related to the sentence). As expected, semantic ambiguity and congruency both elicited an N400 effect across our sample. Correlation analyses showed a significant positive relationship between the Social Vitality subscore of the HPS and N400 modulation in the frontal region of interest in the incongruent unambiguous condition, and in the frontocentral region of interest in the incongruent ambiguous condition. We found differences in semantic processing (i.e., detection of incongruence and semantic inhibition) in individuals with higher Social Vitality subscores. In the light of the literature, we discuss the notion that a semantic processing impairment could be a potential marker of vulnerability to BD, and one that needs to be explored further in this clinical population.

Lexical ambiguity resolution during sentence processing in Parkinson's disease: An event-related potential study.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to investigate lexical ambiguity resolution during sentence processing in 16 people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 16 healthy controls. Sentences were presented word-by-word on computer screen, and participants were required to decide if a subsequent target word was related to the meaning of the sentence. The task consisted of related, unrelated and ambiguous trials. For the ambiguous trials, the sentence ended with an ambiguous word and the target was related to one of the meanings of that word, but not the one captured by the sentence context (e.g., ‘He dug with the spade’, Target ‘ACE’). Both groups demonstrated slower reaction times and lower accuracy for the ambiguous condition relative to the unrelated condition, however accuracy was impacted by the ambiguous condition to a larger extent in the PD group. These results suggested that PD patients experience increased difficulties with contextual ambiguity resolution. The ERP results did not reflect increased ambiguity resolution difficulties in PD, as a similar N400 effect was evident for the unrelated and ambiguous condition in both groups. However, the magnitude of the N400 for these conditions was correlated with a measure of inhibition in the PD group, but not the control group. The ERP results suggest that semantic processing may be more compromised in PD patients with increased response inhibition deficits.

Dangerous or vulnerable? A genealogy of “difficult and violent adolescents” in France

IntroductionDifficult adolescent is a clinical category, defined by psychiatrists’ expertise and referred to psychoanalytical concepts. Since the end of the 1990s, it has been extensively used to describe a marginal population in public institutions managing youth deviancy in France. This success occurs against a backdrop of institutional reforms, converging towards politics of suffering and risk management.ObjectivesContributing to the anthropology of mental health, this communication provides comprehensive elements to this success.MethodsInterconnected networks of 49 documents were analyzed using a genealogical method based on Foucault's late conceptions and Ian Hachking's works on constructivism.ResultsResults have shown that the category of difficult adolescents found its ecological niche in the 1960s, revealing a moral tension in the use of constraint. At that time, the introduction of the psychoanalytical notions of transference and counter transference depicted a clear distinction with previous categories such as the “abnormals” or “maladjusted youth”. Since then, it has defined an ambiguous condition, suspended between the trouble of caregivers and the adolescents’ individual disorder. In addition, the extension of clinical expertise silences social issues, such as gender discriminations, ethnicity and access to employment.ConclusionsThe reforms of custodial treatments represented the initial conditions of detection for difficult adolescents, raising new problems of intractable individual and institutional linkage. Driving towards a biographical personalization, the category allows new forms of regulation in the use of institutional power.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.