Conceptual Representation Research Articles

Forming of modern Russian youth’s social representations about maintaining health: condition and problems

The article deals with the study of health maintaining among Russian youth. Based on data from all-Russian surveys and presented in relevant studies, the contradictions between the value perception of health and destructive health practices among young people were found. In this regard, based on the understanding of health conservation as a purposeful activity, in the structure of which the cognitive component plays a significant role, the author underlines to study young people’s ideas about health and health caring in order to realise the reasons of differences between the state of health and the attitude of Russian youth. In this regard, the author conducted a study of the structure of social ideas of young Russians. The theoretical basis of the study was the key provisions of the concept of social representations by S. Moscovici. The empirical basis was the data of the author’s empirical study “Health Saving of Modern Russian Youth: Ideas and Practices”. Based on the results of the study, it was established that the core of modern youth’s social ideas about health conservation are traditional images and ideas that reflect the most characteristic of Russian society and its health conservation culture, but in a limited format. The peripheral zone includes components such as breaking bad habits, well-being, and maintaining emotional stability. The least characteristic of young Russians is the connection between ideas about health and health preservation with institutional practices of clinical examination and preventive examinations, which suggests a decrease in the role of the medical institute as an agent of social control in relation to health in the ideas of the younger generation. Thus, the social ideas of young Russians about health and the practices of its preservation, along with traditional ideas, are distinguished by features, the formation of which, according to the author, is due to the influence of new agents of healthy lifestyle socialization and the online-sources

Metaphorical Mirrors: Aesthetic Reflections from Plato to Nietzsche (and Beyond)

AbstractThis article weaves together three main strands: first, the ambiguities of mirror metaphors in relation to concepts of artistic representation and expression; secondly, the double-sided and sometimes paradoxical influence of Plato in this area of aesthetics; thirdly, the need to interpret long-lasting metaphors in the history of ideas not as static figures of speech but as dynamic tropes which shift in sense and implications with changes of context. In constructing and exploring this thematic configuration of mirrors, metaphors, and Plato, the chief concern is to draw out—via a small selection of texts, including passages from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—some underappreciated complexity in the various classical traditions that have contributed to aesthetics and philosophy of art.

Computational Approaches to Concepts Representation: A Whirlwind Tour

Computational Approaches to Concepts Representation: A Whirlwind Tour

Individual representation in approval-based committee voting

AbstractWhen selecting multiple candidates based on approval preferences of voters, the proportional representation of voters’ opinions is an important and well-studied desideratum. Existing criteria for evaluating the representativeness of outcomes focus on groups of voters and demand that sufficiently large and cohesive groups are “represented” in the sense that candidates approved by some group members are selected. Crucially, these criteria say nothing about the representation of individual voters, even if these voters are members of groups that deserve representation. In this paper, we formalize the concept of individual representation (IR) and explore to which extent, and under which circumstances, it can be achieved. We show that checking whether an IR outcome exists is computationally intractable, and we verify that all common approval-based voting rules may fail to provide IR even in cases where this is possible. We then focus on domain restrictions and establish an interesting contrast between “voter interval” and “candidate interval” preferences. This contrast can also be observed in our experimental results, where we analyze the attainability of IR for realistic preference profiles.

Convolutional neural networks uncover the dynamics of human visual memory representations over time.

The ability to accurately retrieve visual details of past events is a fundamental cognitive function relevant for daily life. While a visual stimulus contains an abundance of information, only some of it is later encoded into long-term memory representations. However, an ongoing challenge has been to isolate memory representations that integrate various visual features and uncover their dynamics over time. To address this question, we leveraged a novel combination of empirical and computational frameworks based on the hierarchal structure of convolutional neural networks and their correspondence to human visual processing. This enabled to reveal the contribution of different levels of visual representations to memory strength and their dynamics over time. Visual memory strength was measured with distractors selected based on their shared similarity to the target memory along low or high layers of the convolutional neural network hierarchy. The results show that visual working memory relies similarly on low and high-level visual representations. However, already after a few minutes and on to the next day, visual memory relies more strongly on high-level visual representations. These findings suggest that visual representations transform from a distributed to a stronger high-level conceptual representation, providing novel insights into the dynamics of visual memory over time.

Probing visual literacy skills reveals unexpected student conceptions of chromosomes.

Molecular biology can be challenging for undergraduate students because it requires visual literacy skills to interpret abstract representations of submicroscopic concepts, structures and processes. The Conceptual-Reasoning-Mode framework suggests that visual literacy relies on applying conceptual knowledge to appropriately reason with the different ways of representing concepts in molecular biology. We used this framework to specifically explore visual literacy related to chromosomes. We conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with students who had taken at least a year of college-level biology courses, and we asked them to sketch chromosomes, interpret an abstract representation of chromosomes, and use the abstract representation to answer a multiple-choice question about meiosis. While many participants used the correct vocabulary to describe chromosome structure and function, probing their visual literacy skills revealed gaps in their understanding. Notably, 97% of participants (34 of 35) held conceptual errors related to chromosome structure and function, which were often only revealed in their sketches or explanations of their sketches. Our findings highlight the importance of scaffolding visual literacy skills into instruction by teaching with a variety of visual models and engaging students in using and interpreting the conventions of abstract representations of chromosomes.

Office soundscape assessment: A model of acoustic environment perception in open-plan officesa).

The soundscape approach has been utilised in recent research for residential environments, but applications to indoor working environments remain limited. This study investigated the suitability of affective quality evaluations of open-plan office acoustics. Perceptual assessments were completed by occupants of eight open-plan office floorplates, using affective dimensions outlined in PD ISO/TS 12913-3:2019 and indoor soundscape studies. Participant demographic, contextual, work-related quality, and psychological well-being data were collected. Workstation noise levels were measured following BS ISO 22955:2021. Principal component analysis identified Pleasantness, Eventfulness, and Emptiness as the main perceptual dimensions, cumulatively explaining 56% of the total variance. Results indicate the suitability of the PD ISO/TS 12913-3:2019 two-dimensional model for open-plan offices. The perceived presence of human sounds negatively correlated with ISO Pleasantness yet positively correlated with ISO Eventfulness. Participant gender and aural diversity mediated ISO Pleasantness. Psychological well-being and work-related quality correlated positively with soundscape pleasantness. No correlations were found between level-based acoustical indicators-equivalent continuous sound level (LAeq), level exceeded 10% (LA10) and 90% (LA90) of the time, level variability (LA10-LA90) and Liveliness-and perceptual scores. A conceptual representation of open-plan office soundscape perception is presented, offering a framework for evaluating and designing workspaces to enhance well-being.

Th e concept of human image in the artistic heritage of A.A. Zinoviev

The work analyzes the concepts of human representation in the art trilogy of A.A. Zinoviev. The specific genre features of his novels are described, which dictate a new form of representation of a person completely impersonal and stereotyped. The supra-individual nature of his characters is emphasized, which are generally represented by three varieties: ibans, homos, postmen, each of which has its own extreme poles. Specific techniques have been identified that distinguish the novel heroes of the artistic space A.A. Zinoviev: the heroes of the trilogy are compared with the options for representing the character in a classic novel, on the basis of which specific artistic techniques of the image are distinguished, characteristic only of the sociological novels of A.A. Zinoviev. The conclusions obtained as a result of the analysis of typed heroes of the art trilogy allow us to talk about the creation of a new genre of the novel — sociological, in which the concept of human representation undergoes deep author's processing, as a result, the hero is not interesting as a person, but as the embodiment of a particular idea, and conditional impersonal heroes represent a world without conventions, in all its potential possibilities, this is the phenomenon of A.A. Zinoviev, which turned the conditional form of the novel into a statistically life-like diagnostic social sentence to modern society.

QURANIC IMAGERY OF SABR (PATIENCE)

This study investigates the Quranic representation of both kinetic and abstract imagery to elucidate the significance and essence of sabr as conveyed in the verses of the Quran. Both abstract and kinetic pictures are analyzed to enhance the imagery elaboration of the abstract idea of sabr as presented in the verses of the Quran. The abstract image underwent a first evaluation to ascertain the value and quality of sabr. The study examines diverse methods of practicing sabr through abstract concepts, including confidence, hope, serenity, piety, and obedience, which are classified as faith and piety. The study identified the representation of dynamic visuals in the portrayal of the tangible concept of sabr. The concrete images of sabr are interpreted through two techniques of kinetic imagery, represented by second and third-person pronouns. The second pronoun is employed to engage the reader in vivid imagery, while the third pronoun aims to facilitate readers visualization of the narratives of sabr. This study assessed the kinetic and abstract representations in interpreting abstract qualities and values. Examining the representations of abstract concepts from the Quran is recommended to attain a more profound comprehension of them.

Double training reveals an interval-invariant subsecond temporal structure in the brain.

Subsecond temporal perception is critical for understanding time-varying events. Many studies suggest that subsecond timing is an intrinsic property of neural dynamics, distributed across sensory modalities and brain areas. However, our recent finding of the transfer of temporal interval discrimination (TID) learning across sensory modalities supports the existence of a more abstract and conceptual representation of subsecond time that guides the temporal processing of distributed mechanisms. One major challenge to this hypothesis is that TID learning consistently fails to transfer from trained intervals to untrained intervals. To address this issue, here, we examined whether this interval specificity can be removed with double training, a procedure originally developed to eliminate various specificities in visual perceptual learning. Specifically, participants practiced the primary TID task, the learning of which per se was specific to the trained interval (e.g., 100 ms). In addition, they also received exposure to a new interval (e.g., 200 ms) through a secondary and functionally independent tone-frequency discrimination task. This double training successfully enabled complete transfer of TID learning to the new interval, indicating that training improved an interval-invariant component of temporal interval perception, which supports our proposal of an abstract and conceptual representation of subsecond time in the brain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Illusory truth effect across languages and scripts.

The repetition of a statement increases its credibility, a phenomenon known as the illusory truth effect. Here we tested whether the illusory truth effect persists across languages and scripts. In two experiments, Italian-English (n = 80) and Greek-English (n = 66), unbalanced bilinguals were exposed to 60 written unknown trivia statements in English. After a distractor math task, participants rated the truthfulness of the same 60 (repeated) statements and 60 new statements, which were presented either in the same language as in the exposure phase (English) or in a different language (Italian, Experiment 1, or Greek, Experiment 2). Response times were faster when information was repeated in the same language compared to a different language, suggesting increased processing fluency in the former than in the latter case. Truth ratings yielded an illusory truth effect: repeated statements were considered more truthful than new statements. Interestingly, the magnitude of the illusory truth effect remained regardless of whether the repetition was in the same or in a different language and persisted even when the different language condition also entailed a different script (Latin in exposure phase and Greek in repetition). The results suggest that the language of information presentation is not a critical factor to affect the illusory truth effect, despite the fact that repetition in the same language increases processing speed. We interpret our results in light of the referential theory (Unkelbach & Rom, Cognition 160: 110-126, 2017), attributing the illusory truth effect to conceptual fluency induced by the overlap of activated conceptual representations in bilingual memory.

Abstract concepts and expertise: the case of institutional concepts

Recent views recognize that abstract concepts encompass a variety of exemplars, each relying on different dimensions, including not only sensorimotor but also inner, linguistic, and social experiences. How these dimensions characterize types of abstract concepts, and whether their weight varies across contexts and individuals remains an open question. We investigated the role of linguistic and social situations in the processing of institutional concepts, such as justice, by individuals with different levels of expertise. In a priming study, legal experts and non-experts were asked to respond to target words (go-trials) consisting of different kinds of abstract (institutional, theoretical) and concrete concepts (food, tools) and to ignore filler words (no-go trials). The verbal stimuli were primed by pictures depicting social-action, linguistic-social, linguistic-textual situations, and a control condition. As predicted, critical priming modulated performance on abstract concepts, likely due to their highly context-dependent meaning. Interestingly, we found that the processing of institutional concepts was selectively facilitated by social action prime, suggesting that this situational content may be integrated to support their representation. Crucially, the dialogic context, the linguistic social prime, affected more non-experts than law-experts, who tended to frame institutional concepts as shared idea for regulating social practices. Our results show that linguistic and social inputs become differently salient for institutional concepts representation depending on individual competence.

Representation of Anticipated Rewards and Punishments in the Human Brain.

Subjective value is a core concept in neuroeconomics, serving as the basis for decision making. Despite the extensive literature on the neural encoding of subjective reward value in humans, the neural representation of punishment value remains relatively understudied. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the neural representation of reward value, including methodologies, involved brain regions, and the concept of common currency representation of diverse reward types in decision-making and learning processes. We then critically examine existing research on the neural representation of punishment value, highlighting conceptual and methodological challenges in human studies and insights gained from animal research. Finally, we explore how individual differences in reward and punishment processing may be linked to various mental illnesses, with a focus on stress-related psychopathologies. This review advocates for the integration of both rewards and punishments within value-based decision-making and learning frameworks, leveraging insights from cross-species studies and utilizing ecological gamified paradigms to reflect real-life scenarios.

Kant and his Critique of Leibniz

According to one line of interpretation, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant argues that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz conflated two kinds of cognitive capacities and their respective types of mental representations: (1) sensibility and sensible or spatiotemporal representations and (2) the understanding and intellectual or conceptual representations. According to this interpretation, Leibniz held that sensibility is not distinct from the understanding, and sensible representations are confused and reducible to distinct intellectual representations. However, this interpretation fails against the more charitable thesis that Leibniz believed the two cognitive capacities and their representations are distinct, yet all sensible representations are necessarily confused. Instead, I argue that Kant’s criticism concerns a different distinction: general logic, the rules of thought in general, and transcendental logic, the rules governing thought of sensible representations. Additionally, I argue for a second part of Kant’s criticism: the Copernican Revolution. By providing an account of mathematics that depends on objects of possible knowledge conforming to our cognitive capacities, Kant eliminates the possibility of a Leibnizian metaphysical project that allegedly aims beyond such objects. A Leibnizian would have to provide an account of the success of mathematics solely in terms of general logic or deny it altogether.

Political Power and Its Representation

Understanding the concept of representation as a key factor involved in the process of meaning production in a society, can help us answer the following questions: what does the concept of representation mean in the context of constituting and producing political power, what does the process of representation entail, and how does it function? Our focus will be on the idea that political power is produced through regimes of verbal and visual representation that actively shape our perception of reality, including existing social norms and values. Representation is not only the result of certain social tendencies and changes, but also their instigator. The status of a ruler is determined not only based on their historical or social relevance, but also on how they are represented. In shaping the perception of a ruler as a legitimate holder of power, representation often plays a more dominant role than the subject itself. We will treat the concepts of power and representation as interdependent and interconnected variables. We will pay attention to how their reciprocal subordination produces two effects: the institution of power appropriates representation as something inherently its own, and representation is actually what transfers its power onto it.

PROTECTING OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS BY THE PROSECUTOR THROUGH REPRESENTATIVE MEANS: SEARCH FOR THE INTERESTS OF THE STATE

The article highlights some peculiarities of the legislative regulation of the prosecutor’s protection of children’s rights by means of representative means through the prism of court practice on determining the State’s interest in this area. The purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of legislative regulation of the prosecutor’s function of representing the State’s interests in court in the area of child protection and also to make proposals for improving the efficiency of the mechanism of protection of children’s rights by means of prosecutorial representation. The author notes the imperfection of the legislative regulation of the representative function of the prosecutor’s office, which narrows its human rights protection potential. It is proved that imperfect legislation and the lack of consistent and unambiguous judicial practice create difficulties in the prosecutor’s office’s function of representing the interests of the State in the field of child protection. The author formulates the author’s own concept of prosecutorial representation in the field of child protection, which is proposed to be understood as the activities carried out by specially authorized subjects - juvenile prosecutors - with a valueoriented social focus on the realisation of a child’s rights to life, healthcare, treatment, recreation, education, social security, comprehensive development and upbringing in a family environment, as well as on the protection of the State’s interests in this area as a strategic national priority. In order to increase the effectiveness of representative activities and the efficiency of protection and enforcement of children’s rights in this area, it is proposed to introduce appropriate legislative changes to the mechanism for calculating and making appropriate payments to orphans and children deprived of parental care.

Social representations of young people about people with disabilities and disabilities in an inclusive educational environment: the experience of cross-cultural research

Relevance. Interest in the study of social representations arose due to the development of inclusion in all spheres of life. This fact has an impact on the specifics of training Russian and foreign students in this field in a medical university, the development of their inclusive competence. The study of cross-cultural features of social representations of persons with disabilities and the disabled, the identification of universal and specific phenomena in respondents will contribute to understanding social and psychological phenomena at the individual level that determine social attitudes and behavior of individuals in an inclusive modern society, taking into account its sociocultural characteristics.The purpose of the study is to study the cross-cultural characteristics of social perceptions of people with disabilities and people with disabilities among Russian and foreign students.Objectives: to analyze the content characteristics and approaches to the study of social representations; to develop programs of empirical research; to describe the results of the study; to formulate conclusions.Methodology. This study is based on the provisions of the theory of social constructionism (P. Berger, T. Lukman; J.Douglas); E. Durkheim's concepts of collective representations; theories of social representations (S. Moscovici, D. Jodelet, etc.). Research methods: theoretical analysis of literature, research interview, method of verbal associations, testing, content analysis.Results. Both similar and specific phenomena in social representations of people with disabilities and people with disabilities in the samples of Russian and foreign students were revealed. Similar is the presence of tolerant attitudes towards people with disabilities and people with disabilities in both samples. The differences relate to the social level of social perceptions, as well as the characteristics of social distance in relation to respondents to this category of citizens.Conclusions. Along with a tolerant attitude towards people with disabilities and people with disabilities, respondents have insufficient professional awareness of this category of citizens, experience difficulties in interacting with them at the level of joint activities and professional relationships, which requires the development of additional programs and practices in the context of social, educational and volunteer activities to develop inclusive competence of students.

D2kg: An integrated ontology for knowledge graph-based representation of government decisions and acts

To implement Open Governance a crucial element is the efficient use of the big amounts of open data produced in the public domain. Public administration is a rich source of data and potentially new knowledge. It is a data intensive sector producing vast amounts of information encoded in government decisions and acts, published nowadays on the World Wide Web. The knowledge shared on the Web is mostly made available via semi-structured documents written in natural language. To exploit this knowledge, technologies such as Natural Language Processing, Information Extraction, Data mining and the Semantic Web could be used, embedding into documents explicit semantics based on formal knowledge representations such as ontologies. Knowledge representation can be made possible by the deployment of Knowledge Graphs, collections of interlinked representations of entities, events or concepts, based on underlying ontologies. This can assist data analysts to achieve a higher level of situational awareness, facilitating automated reasoning towards different objectives, such as for knowledge management, data maintenance, transparency and cybersecurity. This paper presents a new ontology d2kg [d(iavgeia) 2(to) k(nowledge) g(raph)] integrating in a unique way standard EU ontologies, core and controlled vocabularies to enable exploitation of publicly available data from government decisions and acts published on the Greek platform Diavgeia with the aim to facilitate data sharing, re-usability and interoperability. It demonstrates a characteristic example of a Knowledge Graph based representation of government decisions and acts, highlighting its added value to respond to real practical use cases for the promotion of transparency, accountability and public awareness. The developed d2kg ontology in owl is accessible at: http://w3id.org/d2kg, as well as documented at: http://w3id.org/d2kg/documentation.

Language proficiency is associated with neural representational dimensionality of semantic concepts

Previous studies suggest that semantic concepts are characterized by high-dimensional neural representations and that language proficiency affects semantic processing. However, it is not clear whether language proficiency modulates the dimensional representations of semantic concepts at the neural level. To address this question, the present study adopted principal component analysis (PCA) and representational similarity analysis (RSA) to examine the differences in representational dimensionalities (RDs) and in semantic representations between words in highly proficient (Chinese) and less proficient (English) language. PCA results revealed that language proficiency increased the dimensions of lexical representations in the left inferior frontal gyrus, temporal pole, inferior temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. RSA results further showed that these regions represented semantic information and that higher semantic representations were observed in highly proficient language relative to less proficient language. These results suggest that language proficiency is associated with the neural representational dimensionality of semantic concepts.

The Diversity of Voices in Universities: A Critical Reflection on Representation Based on Two University Projects in Iceland and Germany

ABSTRACTBackgroundUniversities are deeply rooted in a tradition of exclusivity. However, for the past several years, they have been called upon to develop in an inclusive and socially responsible manner that does justice to the plurality of society. This has led to the emergence of diverse practices and projects around the world that are intended to open up universities to previously excluded and marginalised groups of people. At the same time, findings from postcolonial studies, such as Spivak's discussions on the topic of representation, show that such processes of change must always be accompanied by critical reflection. This article offers a reflexive analysis of two university projects—one in Iceland and one in Germany—where people with learning difficulties are employed as academic staff, engaged in both teaching and research.MethodsThis article is a result of a collaboration between three nondisabled lecturers and three lecturers with learning disabilities, co‐written across three languages—German, Icelandic and English. The authors worked together to explore theories of representation, ensuring that their discussions and writing were accessible to all members, regardless of language or disability. The article discusses two projects from Iceland and Germany.FindingsThe article shows that inclusive higher education developments are necessary. The projects presented in the article have created work opportunities for people with learning disabilities in the previously exclusive setting of the university. The article provides descriptions of the exemplary life paths of the three lecturers with learning disabilities who co‐authored this article. They have had to navigate the precarious balance between being reduced to mere representatives of their disability and contributing valuable academic knowledge. The findings suggest that an inclusive university can foster equitable academic environments, contributing to the transformation of higher education by reflecting diverse viewpoints and experiences.ConclusionsInitiatives in Iceland and Germany highlight significant progress towards more inclusive universities by integrating individuals with learning disabilities into academic roles, challenging traditional power dynamics. Spivak's (2008) concept of representation emphasises the need to include marginalised voices in academic discourse, ensuring they are genuinely reflected. While these efforts are crucial, continuous critical reflection is necessary to avoid reinforcing inequalities. Moving forward, universities must embed inclusion into all aspects of their structures, creating meaningful opportunities for marginalised groups to influence decision‐making. This approach will ensure that representation is transformative and drives genuine social change.