Complex Cognitive Phenomena Research Articles

Sex differences in change-of-mind neuroeconomic decision-making is modulated by LINC00473 in medial prefrontal cortex.

Changing one's mind is a complex cognitive phenomenon involving a continuous re-appraisal of the trade-off between past costs and future value. Recent work modeling this behavior across species has established associations between aspects of this choice process and their contributions to altered decision-making in psychopathology. Here, we investigated the actions in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons of long intergenic non-coding RNA, LINC00473, known to induce stress resilience in a striking sex-dependent manner, but whose role in cognitive function is unknown. We characterized complex decision-making behavior in male and female mice longitudinally in our neuroeconomic foraging paradigm, Restaurant Row, following virus-mediated LINC00473 expression in mPFC neurons. On this task, mice foraged for their primary source of food among varying costs (delays) and subjective value (flavors) while on a limited time-budget during which decisions to accept and wait for rewards were separated into discrete stages of primary commitments and secondary re-evaluations. We discovered important differences in decision-making behavior between female and male mice. LINC00473 expression selectively influenced multiple features of re-evaluative choices, without affecting primary decisions, in female mice only. These behavioral effects included changing how mice (i) cached the value of the passage of time and (ii) weighed their history of economically disadvantageous choices. Both processes were uniquely linked to change-of-mind decisions and underlie the computational bases of distinct aspects of counterfactual thinking. These findings reveal a key bridge between a molecular driver of stress resilience and psychological mechanisms underlying sex-specific decision-making proclivities.

MULTIMODAL MEANS OF BORIS JOHNSON’S REPRESENTATION AS A CHARISMATIC LEADER ON SOCIAL MEDIA

In the paper, on the basis of a multimodal critical discourse analysis of political posters and social media posts, the authors outline the complex interplay of multimodal means serving to convey a political leader’s charisma. The paper aims to advance a set of historically conventionalized features typical of the charismatic personality (such as intelligence, self-confidence, persistence, ability to inspire, sociability, dominance, narcissism, and vision), present the updated definition of this notion, and substantiate theoretical and methodological grounds for the study of the interplay of multimodal means portraying a charismatic political leader that assist in conveying a political speaker’s charisma creation through its graphical image, namely political posters and social media posts. The results of the study reveal that charisma is a complex communicative and cognitive phenomenon reflecting person’s beliefs about certain innate, obtained or promoted by media, internal or external subliminal traits of a leader. These beliefs are shaped in the recipients’ consciousness during interactive communication on the basis of the leader’s strategy, techniques, and methods used in oral or written communication, as well as a set of linguistic and extralinguistic means associated with the speaker’s ability to satisfy certain needs of the community. As a study material the authors opted for the images of Boris Johnson, a politician already acknowledged as a charismatic one by international audiences, who has been a prominent political figure for almost a decade and has recently come to the forefront of political and diplomatic support of Ukraine in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The carried out analysis proves the highly informative as well as subliminal potential of multimodal visual pictographic means aimed at creating a charismatic image of a public person. The authors outline a set of verbal (elliptical sentences, catchy slogans in imperative mood, assonance, alliteration, the use of first person plural pronoun “We”, the lexical unit together, etc.) and visual-graphical means (font of the message, symbolic colour scheme, clothes style, body posture, gestures, oculesic features, etc.), whose interaction is aimed at triggering cognitive processes in the recipient’s mind in perceiving a charismatic image of the politician. Boris Johnson’s charisma is confirmed by the survey conducted among British and Ukrainian respondents as well as by his subscribers’ reactions, comments and likes following his posts on social media. The carried out analysis allows summarising the markers of a politician’s charisma portrayed on social media as follows: the number of comments and likes for their posts; informality while addressing the Prime Minister by his first name “Boris” and presence of a “popular name” “BoJo”; high degree of the followers’ messages expressiveness actualised through verbal means (significant amount of exclamatory sentences, interjections, evaluative epithets and idiomatic expressions), as well as graphical-visual means, in particular through the usage of graphic emoticons (emojis), serving to intensify the overall expressiveness of a message. The conclusion is that social media graphical images are aimed at conveying charismatic political leaders’ vision, offering their followers support and promise of a better future, portraying them as approachable, down-to-earth, considerate but at the same time serious leaders, ready to work to endure a better future. The results of the performed study can provide grounds for interdisciplinary research of both oral and written charismatic communication within the cognitive approach framework considering verbal, nonverbal and paralingual means’ (physiological, psychological, social, etc.) interplay that allows the audience to perceive a speaker as a charismatic one.

“I Just Want to Be Me, Authentically”: Identity Shifting Among Racially and Ethnically Diverse Young Adults

Identity shifting represents a common but complex social, behavioral, and cognitive phenomenon. However, some forms of identity shifting originate in response to structural, institutional, and interpersonal marginalization enacted on lower status groups, such as people of color in the United States. The current study investigated ways young adults from diverse ethnic/racial groups discussed shifting to fit in with White Americans (a dominant group) in the United States and their own ethnic/racial group (a minoritized group) and elucidated self-reported motivations for shifting. Participants consisted of 764 young adults (ages = 18–23) recruited from two large public universities in the Southeast and Southwest regions of the United States. The majority of participants identified as Black/African American (41%), Asian/Asian American (27%), or Hispanic/Latinx (22%). Analysis of participants’ qualitative responses identified six types of shifts and two motivations for shifting. The shifts included: behavioral, linguistic, cognitive, physical, food, and affect. Motivations for shifting focused on avoiding risks and obtaining rewards. The discussion offers interpretation of the results and recommendations for future research on identity shifting.

Bilingualism caught in a net: A new approach to understanding the complexity of bilingual experience.

The growing importance of research on bilingualism in psychology and neuroscience motivates the need for a psychometric model that can be used to understand and quantify this phenomenon. This research is the first to meet this need. We reanalyzed two data sets (N = 171 and N = 112) from relatively young adult language-unbalanced bilinguals and asked whether bilingualism is best described by the factor structure or by the network structure. The factor and network models were established on one data set and then validated on the other data set in a fully confirmatory manner. The network model provided the best fit to the data. This implies that bilingualism should be conceptualized as an emergent phenomenon arising from direct and idiosyncratic dependencies among the history of language acquisition, diverse language skills, and language-use practices. These dependencies can be reduced to neither a single universal quotient nor to some more general factors. Additional in-depth network analyses showed that the subjective perception of proficiency along with language entropy and language mixing were the most central indices of bilingualism, thus indicating that these measures can be especially sensitive to variation in the overall bilingual experience. Overall, this work highlights the great potential of psychometric network modeling to gain a more accurate description and understanding of complex (psycho)linguistic and cognitive phenomena. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Impact of Specific Yoga Module with special reference to Bhramari, Trataka and Jala neti on attention among Archers

Introduction:Attention is a complex cognitive phenomenon of selecting significant issues and disregarding those which are less significant characterizes achievement in sports, including archery. This study aimed to find out the effect of specific yoga modules with special reference to BhramariPranayama, Trataka, and Jala Neti, on attention among Archers. Material and methods: An experimental-control group design with a random sampling method having inclusion criteria for the participant obtained 50 individuals rangingfrom 18 to 25 years of age from Bhopal; were included in the study. Result:The 25 participants from the experimental group showed a high level of significance (p<0.05) after practicing specific yoga module with Bhramari, trataka, and jala neti for an hour and archery for 2 hours every day, except Sundays for 12 weeks in contrast to the control group were only yoga modules designed for the experimental group were not exposed. Discussion:The study suggests that a specific yoga module with special referenceto Bhramari, tratakaand, jala neti has a positive effect on increasing the shooting score and reducing errors in the Eye-Hand Coordination Test. Yoga can be practiced in a daily routine to increase the level of attention substantially.

Effect of resource-based instructions on pre-service biology teachers’ motivation toward learning biology

Linking motivation and learning is central to understanding students’ motivation toward learning and learning itself as complex cognitive phenomena. Some studies focused on students’ motivation toward learning biology in general; however, the shortage of studies on the effect of animation-based instruction and small-group laboratory activities as Resource-based Instructions (RBIs) on pre-service biology teachers was realized. The present study aimed to determine the effect of resource-based Instructions on pre-service biology teachers’ academic motivation toward learning biology at private and public Universities in Rwanda. Pre-service biology teachers were grouped into three groups at a public teacher traning University and received a pre-and post-assessment. Quasi-experimental, pre and post-test control group design was used at a public university, while a repeated measures design was used at a private university. The standard academic motivation scale for learning biology (AMSLB) yielded a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.71 before use. The t-Test was computed to measure the statistically significant difference between the pre-and post-assessment scores and group of RBI interventions. Multivariate analysis (MANOVA) was computed to measure the effect of RBIs vis à vis the AMSLB factors. Findings revealed no statistically significant difference (df=18, p=.458) in the motivation of learning biology of pre-service teachers before and after learning via traditional instruction at a public university. However, a statistically signficant difference was found with animation instruction (df=18, p=.002) and lab instruction (df=18, p=.014). The motivation of learning biology increased at a public university than at a private university. However, animations and small-group lab activities increased pre-service biology teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic—career motivation of learning biology at both universities. Therefore, the study recommends using RBIs to improve pre-service biology teachers’ motivation toward learning biology.

Communicative-functional components of discourse

The article considers the main types of semantic-sigmatic and communicative-functional transformations of lexical units against the background of changes in certain parameters of discourse and analyzes the fundamental motives for changing the load of lexical units in modern space. The relevance of this work is determined by modern transformations of linguistic study of different types of discourse, which occur on the basis of the study of communication and the search for universal foundations of linguistic interaction. Language is considered as a complex communicative and cognitive phenomenon that determines the state of intercultural communication. The components that directly affect the communication process and the success of the modern language formation must be identified. The aim of this study was to analyze the semantic-sigmatic and communicative-functional components of discourse and the theory of their understanding in modern communication. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study included the works of scientists in the field of modern methods of communication. The objective method was the analysis of documents (monographs, articles, statistics, scientific papers and textbooks on the selected topic).

Religious Experience and Clinical-EEG Aspects in Adult People with Epilepsy.

Spirituality and religiosity are complex cognitive phenomena; however, the relationship between spiritual experiences and epilepsy continues to be debated. Methods. Data from the daily spiritual experience scale (DSES) were related to EEG data and clinical variables of 100 adult people with epilepsy (PWEs). DSES scores were compared to 51 normal individuals (control group [CG]), with a significance level of P < .05. Results. The total score in the DSES was 36.1 ± 14 and 37.6 ± 13.2, respectively, in the PWEs and in the CG. In the PWEs, there was a correlation between DSES and age (Pearson's correlation; -0.22; P = .027) and educational level (0.207; P = .039). PWEs with ≥one seizure/month have a lower frequency of daily spiritual experiences than those with better controlled seizures (T-test; 39.2 ± 16.2 vs 31.7 ± 7.6; P = .038). EEG epileptiform activity (EA) in the right hemisphere was associated with a higher frequency of spiritual experiences than those with left-hemisphere EA (29.8 ± 9.0 vs 38.5 ± 17.5; P = .010). Conclusion. Demographic aspects, EA in the right hemisphere, and lower seizure frequency are associated with daily spiritual experiences in epilepsy, suggesting an association between aspects of spirituality, epilepsy, and neurobiological correlates.

Neural Activation in Risky Decision-Making Tasks in Healthy Older Adults: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Data.

Decision making is a complex cognitive phenomenon commonly used in everyday life. Studies have shown differences in behavioral strategies in risky decision-making tasks over the course of aging. The development of functional neuroimaging has gradually allowed the exploration of the neurofunctional bases of these behaviors. The purpose of our study was to carry out a meta-analysis on the neural networks underlying risky decision making in healthy older adults. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we systematically searched for fMRI studies of decision making in older adults using risky decision-making tasks. To perform the quantitative meta-analysis, we used the revised version of the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) algorithm. A total of 620 references were selected for initial screening. Among these, five studies with a total of 98 cognitively normal older participants (mean age: 69.5 years) were included. The meta-analysis yielded two clusters. Main activations were found in the right insula, bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Despite the limited number of studies included, our meta-analysis highlights the crucial involvement of circuits associated with both emotion regulation and the decision to act. However, in contrast to the literature on young adults, our results indicate a different pattern of hemispheric lateralization in older participants. These activations can be used as a minimum pattern of activation in the risky decision-making tasks of healthy older subjects.

Mechanisms of Network Interactions for Flexible Cortico-Basal Ganglia-Mediated Action Control.

In humans, finely tuned γ synchronization (60–90 Hz) rapidly appears at movement onset in a motor control network involving primary motor cortex, the basal ganglia and motor thalamus. Yet the functional consequences of brief movement-related synchronization are still unclear. Distinct synchronization phenomena have also been linked to different forms of motor inhibition, including relaxing antagonist muscles, rapid movement interruption and stabilizing network dynamics for sustained contractions. Here, I will introduce detailed hypotheses about how intrasite and intersite synchronization could interact with firing rate changes in different parts of the network to enable flexible action control. The here proposed cause-and-effect relationships shine a spotlight on potential key mechanisms of cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical (CBGTC) communication. Confirming or revising these hypotheses will be critical in understanding the neuronal basis of flexible movement initiation, invigoration and inhibition. Ultimately, the study of more complex cognitive phenomena will also become more tractable once we understand the neuronal mechanisms underlying behavioral readouts.

Toward an Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing Account.

In this paper, I argue for an embodied, embedded approach to predictive processing and thus align the framework with situated cognition. The recent popularity of theories conceiving of the brain as a predictive organ has given rise to two broad camps in the literature that I call free energy enactivism and cognitivist predictive processing. The two approaches vary in scope and methodology. The scope of cognitivist predictive processing is narrow and restricts cognition to brain processes and structures; it does not consider the body-beyond-brain and the environment as constituents of cognitive processes. Free energy enactivism, on the other hand, includes all self-organizing systems that minimize free energy (including non-living systems) and thus does not offer any unique explanations for more complex cognitive phenomena that are unique to human cognition. Furthermore, because of its strong commitment to the mind-life continuity thesis, it does not provide an explanation of what distinguishes more sophisticated cognitive systems from simple systems. The account that I develop in this paper rejects both of these radical extremes. Instead, I propose a compromise that highlights the necessary components of predictive processing by making use of a mechanistic methodology of explanation. The starting point of the argument in this paper is that despite the interchangeable use of the terms, prediction error minimization and the free energy principle are not identical. But this distinction does not need to disrupt the status quo of the literature if we consider an alternative approach: Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing (EEPP). EEPP accommodates the free energy principle, as argued for by free energy enactivism, but it also allows for mental representations in its explanation of cognition. Furthermore, EEPP explains how prediction error minimization is realized but, unlike cognitivist PP, it allocates a constitutive role to the body in cognition. Despite highlighting concerns regarding cognitivist PP, I do not wish to discredit the role of the neural domain or representations as free energy enactivism does. Neural structures and processes undeniably contribute to the minimization of prediction error but the role of the body is equally important. On my account, prediction error minimization and free energy minimization are deeply dependent on the body of an agent, such that the body-beyond-brain plays a constitutive role in cognitive processing. I suggest that the body plays three constitutive roles in prediction error minimization: The body regulates cognitive activity, ensuring that cognition and action are intricately linked. The body acts as distributor in the sense that it carries some of the cognitive load by fulfilling the function of minimizing prediction error. Finally, the body serves to constrain the information that is processed by an agent. In fulfilling these three roles, the agent and environment enter into a bidirectional relation through influencing and modeling the structure of the other. This connects EEPP to the free energy principle because the whole embodied agent minimizes free energy in virtue of being a model of its econiche. This grants the body a constitutive role as part of the collection of mechanisms that minimize prediction error and free energy. The body can only fulfill its role when embedded in an environment, of which it is a model. In this sense, EEPP offers the most promising alternative to cognitivist predictive processing and free energy enactivism.

ДИСКУРС ВОЛОНТЕРСЬКОГО РУХУ В СВІТІ СУЧАСНИХ ЛІНГВІСТИЧНИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ

The abstract reveals the problem of volunteer discourse as a type of institutional discourse which is realized the specific sphere of social interaction and is an integral part of the modern society. General characteristics of the volunteer discourse as a complex cognitive sociolinguistic phenomenon are presented.

ДИСКУРС ВОЛОНТЕРСЬКОГО РУХУ В СВІТІ СУЧАСНИХ ЛІНГВІСТИЧНИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ

The abstract reveals the problem of volunteer discourse as a type of institutional discourse which is realized the specific sphere of social interaction and is an integral part of the modern society. General characteristics of the volunteer discourse as a complex cognitive sociolinguistic phenomenon are presented.

Establishing equivalence-equivalence analogical relations via tact and listener training.

We investigated the role of verbal behavior on the emergence of analogy-type responding as measured via equivalence-equivalence relations. In Experiment 1, 8 college students learned to label arbitrary stimuli as, "vek," "zog," and "paf", and in Experiment 2, 8 additional participants learned to select these stimuli when hearing their names in an auditory-visual matching-to-sample (MTS) task. Experimenters tested for the emergence of relational tacts (i.e., "same" and "different") and equivalence-equivalence relations (analogy tests) via visual-visual MTS. Half of the participants were exposed to a think-aloud procedure. Even though they all passed analogy tests while tacting stimuli relationally, only participants exposed to tact training (Experiment 1) did so without the need for remediation. The results of these experiments confirm that individual discriminative and relational control of stimuli established through verbal behavior training is sufficient to produce equivalence-equivalence analogical responding, advancing the analysis of complex cognitive (problem-solving) phenomena.

ТЕРМИНОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ ДЕРИВАЦИЯ КАК ОСНОВНОЙ МЕХАНИЗМ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ТЕРМИНОЛОГИИ ПРЕДМЕТНОЙ ОБЛАСТИ «СОЦИОЛОГИЯ СЕМЬИ» В АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

The purpose of the article is to reveal and describe derivational models of terminological nomination in the object field «Sociology of the family». Derivational – morphological, morphological-syntactical and syntactical models of sociological terms belonging to family sociology in English have been analyzed. Detailed structural-semantic characteristics of English terms of family sociology is presented, the most productive means and methods of formation of terms in this sphere are revealed. The theoretical relevance of the study lies in apprehension of the derivational specific character of the formation of the object field «Sociology of the Family» as one of the main ways of verbalizing the scientific worldview. The apprehension of the object field of «Sociology of the Family» as a complex cognitive and linguistic phenomenon existing in several discourses (existential, vernacular, religious, gender, educational discourse, initiation discourse and many others) contributes to the presence of special and terminological vocabulary, integrating scientific and naive worldviews.

Within-trial contrast or Wagner's SOP model: Can they both account for two presumed complex cognitive phenomena?

When humans make biased or suboptimal choices, they are often attributed to complex cognitive processes that are viewed as being uniquely human. Alternatively, several phenomena, such as suboptimal gambling behavior and cognitive dissonance (justification of effort) may be explained more simply as examples of the contrast between what is expected and what occurs as well as Wagner's Standard Operating Procedure model based on reward prediction error. For example, when pigeons are attracted to choices involving a suboptimal, low probability of a high payoff, as in unskilled gambling behavior, it may be attributed to reward prediction error or the contrast between the low probability of reward expected and the sometimes high probability of reward obtained (when one wins). Similarly, justification of effort, the tendency to attribute greater value to rewards that are difficult to obtain, is typically explained in terms of the tendency to inflate the value of a reward to justify the effort required to obtain it. When pigeons prefer outcomes that require more effort to obtain, however, it is more likely to be explained in terms of contrast between the effort and the reward that follows. We readily attribute the behavior of animals to contrast-like effects or reward prediction error, however, when similar behavior occurs in humans, we also should be prepared to explain it in terms of simpler learning mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

DISTRESS in English media: integrating cognitive-discursive and computational approaches

The study acknowledges that DISTRESS is a complex cognitive, linguistic, and social phenomenon conceptualized in media discourse by polarized lexical instantiations and conceptual metaphors. This paper focuses on discovering the contrual of DISTRESS and its cultural and contextual objectification in the social context of media discourse. The theoretical backbone comprises conceptual metaphor theory, discourse theory, frame semantics and field theories, and linguistic theory of emotions. Cognitive-discursive framework reinforced by the computational approach reveals communicative situations of distress and their contextual specifications governed by specific communicative strategies and tactics. Integration of discursive and computational analyses with the assistance of Voyant Tools, Textanz, and SentiStrength brings topicality and insightful revelations about the fragments as particular contexts of sociocultural knowledge about DISTRESS. Cognitive framework discloses preconceptual characteristics of DISTRESS, its lexicon, and metaphoric conceptualization on various levels of abstration. The frame model of DISTRESS represents knowledge and associations about the emotion and the interplay of sensory and symbolic information. Discursive framework underpinned by a versatile text analytical software tool Textanz 3.1.4 enables to identify the types, ratio, and shared values of participants in communicative situations of distress. Sentiment analysis by a software tool for social web texts SentiStrength 2.3 helps extract the strength of mixed emotions on a dual scale (positive/negative sentiments) that articulates evaluative attitudes towards the particular communicative situation of distress regulated by a particular communicative strategy.

The HEURECA method: Tracking multiple phase coupling dynamics on a single trial basis

BackgroundAlthough acquisition techniques have improved tremendously, the neuroscientific understanding of complex cognitive phenomena is still incomplete. One of the reasons for this shortcoming may be the lack of sophisticated signal processing methods. Complex cognitive phenomena usually involve various mental subprocesses whose temporal occurrence varies from trial to trial. Mostly, these mental subprocesses require large-scale integration processes between multiple brain areas that are most likely mediated by complex, non-linear phase coupling mechanisms. Consequently, a spatiotemporal analysis of complex, multivariate phase synchronization patterns on a single trial basis is necessary. New methodThis paper introduces the HEURECA method (How to Evaluate and Uncover Recurring EEG Coupling Arrangements) that enables the dynamic detection of distinguishable multivariate functional connectivity states in the electroencephalogram. HEURECA adaptively divides a trial into segments of quasi-stable phase coupling topographies and assigns similar topographies to the same synchrostate cluster. ResultsHEURECA is evaluated by means of simulated data. The results show that it reliably reconstructs a time series of recurring phase coupling topographies and successfully gathers them into clusters of interpretable neural synchrostates. The advantages and unique features of HEURECA are further illustrated by investigating the popular complex cognitive phenomenon insight. Comparison with existing methodsUnlike existing methods, HEURECA detects complex phase relationships between more than two signals and is applicable to single trials. ConclusionsSince HEURECA is applicable to all kinds of circular data, it not only provides new insights into insight, but also into a variety of other phenomena in neuroscience, physics or other scientific fields.

Fictional Character: Response

Fictional Character:Response Daniel Hack (bio) Three decades ago, John Frow described literary character as “the most problematic and … undertheorized of the basic categories of narrative theory” (227). He might have added “stigmatized” as well, for this undertheorization stemmed, paradoxically enough, from high theory’s assault on character by figures such as Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, and J. Hillis Miller, among others. By 1974, suggests Rita Felski, “the case against character seemed closed” (v). This case stayed closed long enough that for Deidre Lynch, writing in 1998, Frow’s claim remained as true as it had been when he made it a dozen years earlier: Lynch quotes his passage at the beginning of her book The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (1998). Thanks in no small measure to the pioneering (and continuing) work of Frow and Lynch, along with Catherine Gallagher, Alex Woloch, and others, the fortunes of literary character have improved dramatically over the past two decades: literary character—or perhaps more precisely, fictional character—has been the subject of a good deal of exciting work. The emphasis on textuality that was central to the poststructuralist critique of character has been replaced by attention to character’s historicity and ontology, including the nature and significance of its (constitutive?) fictionality. Readerly investment in character has gone from being deprecated as a naive mistake—or, alternatively, a sophisticated trap—to being taken seriously as a complex historical and cognitive phenomenon with multiple, contingent psychological affordances and ideological effects. No longer undertheorized—nor, what was even more the case, underhistoricized—fictional character remains nonetheless, in Frow’s term, “problematic.” [End Page 419] Richly so. Perhaps most strikingly, recent work, often aligned with cognitive studies, has called into question the salience of a distinction central to both the post-structuralist critique of character and the first wave of the post-poststructuralist return to character: that between fictional characters and actual persons. For example, Blakey Vermeule has argued that “the reasons that we care about literary characters are finally not much different from the question of why we care about other people, especially people we have never met nor are ever likely to meet” (xiii). Other recent work focuses intently on the play of similarity and difference in our experience of actual persons and fictional characters, taking this play itself as crucial to character’s interest and power. The three papers from the 2016 NAVSA conference gathered in this cluster differ substantially with regard to their archives and their methods, but all participate in this project of rethinking the significance of fictional character’s fictionality—that is, rethinking the ways in which readers’ understandings of and relationships to fictional characters do and do not resemble and interact with their understandings of and relationships to real people. I selected these papers for their insights into these questions, for their resonance with one another, and for their wonderful suggestiveness. Learned and imaginative in their amassing of materials, making of connections, and drawing of distinctions, these papers taught me a lot. However, I appreciate them above all, both individually and collectively, for the questions they raised for me. In other words, these papers made me want to push back and made me want to hear more, in the way that the best conference papers do. David Coombs’s “Does Grandcourt Exist? Description and Fictional Characters” begins by locating a famous narratorial pronouncement in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) (“Attempts at description are stupid”) in relation to the history of philosophy: as Coombs explains, “Eliot’s career as a novelist coincided with the emergence of a philosophical distinction between … knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description” (391). Yet Coombs’s goal is not the classic New Historicist one of deepening our understanding of a literary text by demonstrating how it draws on or inhabits a now-obscure discourse. Instead, tracing the fortunes of the epistemological category of “knowledge by description” from these Victorian origins to the present day, Coombs treats Eliot’s novels as still-current participants in this ongoing philosophical investigation. Such “philosophical presentism,” as it were, may be on the rise: Coombs’s paper shares this...

Pain management programmes

### Key points Pain is a complex sensory, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural phenomenon. When pain becomes chronic, defined as pain which persists beyond the expected time of tissue healing (usually taken to be 3 months), the costs to the individual and to society are enormous. In contrast to most acute pain management strategies, the focus in managing chronic pain is rehabilitative, allowing patients to continue to participate in valued activities while learning to live with ongoing pain. This article will cover current evidence-based guidelines on the provision of pain management programmes (PMPs). PMPs aim to promote behaviour change and improve wellbeing in patients suffering significant distress and disability as a result of chronic pain. They are delivered by an interdisciplinary team, usually in a group setting. They are part of an integrated approach to the management of pain which should also include pain reduction strategies such as pharmacotherapy, injections, or neuromodulation. According to the Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer in 2009, 7.8 million adults in the UK live with chronic pain. The impact on the individual and on society is significant; 25% of people with chronic pain lose their jobs, and up to 16% admit to feeling suicidal. Patients with chronic pain are frequent attenders in primary and secondary care, and may present as emergency admissions during pain flare-ups. In 2009, £584 million was spent on prescriptions for chronic pain medication.1 Despite demonstrable physical and mental health benefits from remaining employed,2 80–90% of the costs associated with chronic low back pain are attributable to prolonged …