Daily Life Situations Research Articles

Brain Areas Responsible for Vigilance: An EEG Source Imaging Study.

Vigilance, sometimes referred to as sustained attention, is an important type of human attention as it is closely associated with cognitive activities required in various daily-life situations. Although many researchers have investigated which brain areas control the maintenance of vigilance, findings have been inconsistent. We hypothesized that this inconsistency might be due to the use of different experimental paradigms in the various studies. We found that most of the previous studies used paradigms that included specific cognitive tasks requiring a high cognitive load, which could complicate identification of brain areas associated only with vigilance. To minimize the influence of cognitive processes other than vigilance on the analysis results, we adopted the d2-test of attention, which is a well-known neuropsychological test of attention that does not require high cognitive load, and searched for brain areas at which EEG source activities were temporally correlated with fluctuation of vigilance over a prolonged period of time. EEG experiments conducted with 31 young adults showed that left prefrontal cortex activity was significantly correlated with vigilance variation in the delta, beta1, beta2, and gamma frequency bands, but not the theta and alpha frequency bands. Our study results suggest that the left prefrontal cortex plays a key role in vigilance modulation, and can therefore be used to monitor individual vigilance changes over time or serve as a potential target of noninvasive brain stimulation.

Balance Assessment in Deaf Children and Teenagers Prior to and Post Capoeira Practice through the Berg Balance Scale.

Hearing loss changes the functionality and body structure a disability that limits activity and restricts the participation of the individual in situations of daily life. It is believed that capoeira can help people with visual disabilities to minimize these deficits. BSE is a low specificity scale that evaluates objectively and functionally aspects of balance and risk of falls in the elderly and children, including the effect of environment on balance function. The objective of the research is to analyze deaf children and adolescents prior to and post-practice of capoeira using the Berg Balance Scale (BBS). Quantitative, clinical and observational studies. Twenty five deaf children between 10 and 16 years old of both genders were assessed. BBS was applied in two stages: before starting capoeira and after 6 months of training. The one-hour classes were held once a week for quantitative evaluation purposes. The subjects were divided and evaluated in two groups (10-13 years old and 14-16 years old). There was a significant statistical difference in BBS scores. The general group and the group of 10-13 years old (p = 0.0251) showed an increase in scores after practicing capoeira (p = 0.0039). There were no statistically significant differences in the group from 14 to 16 years of age (p = 0.0504). Using the Berg Balance Scale, it was possible to observe an improvement in the balance of the group of children and adolescents who practiced capoeira, and consequently, a decrease in the risk of falling.

精神物理学と音色

G. T. Fechner proposed his logarithmic law between physical continuum of stimulus and an attribute of sensation in 1860. Fechner also proposed the distinction between outer and inner-psychophysics. Outer-psychophysics deals with the relation between the observable participant's response and stimulus. In outer-psychophysics, it can be postulated that the response is located on the interval scale when the logarithmic law between stimulus and response is established. In inner-psychophysics, the logarithmic law is established in mind on the assumption that the equality of subjective size of just noticeable difference (jnd). However, it is difficult to verify the equality of jnd using empirical procedures. Bergson strongly criticizes that Fechner's law is based on an assumption that cannot be verified. Zwislocki (1991) defines that the measurement entails matching of common attributes of things or events. According to his definition of “Natural Measurement”, we can match the different things or events on the common psychological continuum. As a result, matching operation can ensure the point of subjective equality (PSE) to be a common attribute among different objects. When an appropriate measure is applied, the same PSE from different things or events confirms the same point on the continuum of common attribute of sensation. The PSE is a physical measure. It can be measured using objective or empirical procedure. An important role of psychophysics is to find an appropriate physical measure. Usually, the standardized physical measure of adequate stimulus is modified on the basis of psychophysical data and reflects the characteristics of sensation. Therefore, a good relationship between subjective response to adequate stimulus and a standardized measure can be expected. It is true that the relation between the loudness judgment of various kinds of nonsteady sounds and a standardized index (e. g. equivalent continuous A-weighted sound pressure level: LAeq) exhibits a high coefficient correlation. However, a law derived from the experimental results depends on the psychophysical method used. For example, the method of category scaling results logarithmic law and magnitude estimation results power law. The result of the experiment using the scale discriminative method was introduced to verify whether the logarithmic law or the power law was valid for the loudness judgment. The results showed that participants' quantitative judgments were well adapted to the experimental procedure. Torgerson (1960) suggests that the participants seem to judge the stimulus taking a different strategy depending on the purpose of the experiment. In daily life situations, we are very adaptive to quantitative behavior for satisfying the purpose of the behavior. This poses a problem of ecological validity in psychophysics. Therefore, it is necessary to select the appropriate stimuli and method to simulate the daily life situations in the psychophysical experiments. Main attributes of auditory sensation are loudness, pitch and timbre. Both loudness and pitch are one dimensional, but timbre or tone quality is multidimensional. It is difficult to constitute rating scale of tone quality expressed by only one physical dimension, and at present, it is far from to establish a general psychophysical rule for applying to tone quality. However, if the sound source is limited, a possibility of establishing a physical scale to predict tone quality. Some examples of the machine sound's tone quality control were introduced.

Development of Core Mathematics Courses in light of CCP Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).

M athematics is a mental activity interested in patterns, proof, problem posing and solving, logical and critical thinking, to understand the world in which we live and to make use of that understanding in our daily life situations. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2009, 85) indicated, “Mathematics is concerned with the ability of students to analyze reason and communicate ideas effectively as they pose, formulate, solve and interpret mathematical problems in a variety of life situations”. Therefore, “since mathematics have both utilitarian and intrinsic value, all students have a right of access to its benefits which provide powerful numeric, spatial, temporal, symbolic, communicative and other conceptual tools, skills, knowledge, attitudes and values to analyze; make and justify critical decisions; and take transformative action” (Paulsen,2006, 44). Students in modern societies, such as USA and UK, master general and basic information of mathematics with the enough level required for mathematical literate life. They also master skills of mathematical literacy and can apply mathematical rules in their common daily life situations.

The Relationship between Siege Stressors, Anxiety, and Depression among Patients with Cancer in Gaza Strip

Introduction: There is a growing body of literature examining the impact of other stressors due to daily life situation beside the stress of being diagnosed with cancer on anxiety and depression. Aim: The study aimed to investigate the relationship between stressors due to siege, war trauma, anxiety and depression among cancer patients in Gaza Strip. Method: The study sample consisted of 380 cancer patients (128 male and 252 female). The researcher used descriptive–analytical design to describe the study variables using; Gaza Scale for Socio-demographic status; Gaza Stressful Situations Checklist; Beck Depression Inventory Short form 13 items, translated into Arabic by Thabet; Hamilton Anxiety Scale. Results: The most common reported stressors due to siege were : 92.9% said prices are sharply increased due to closure, 90.3% said they feel that they are in big prison, 85.5% their work affected so much due to cut-off of electricity and shortage of gas (85.5%). The patients with cancer reported from 2-16 stressors due to siege with mean 9.02. Male cancer patients reported more stressors due to siege and families with low income had more stressors. Twenty four percent of patients had severe depression, female patients, and families with monthly income less than $300 had more depression. The results showed that 58.9% of patients had severe anxiety; female patients had more anxiety and families less than $300 had more anxiety. The study showed that there were statistically significant positive relationship between total stressors due to siege and depression symptoms and anxiety and there were significant relationship between the depression and anxiety in patients with cancer. Clinical implications: The results revealed that the majority of the study sample suffering from anxiety and depression due to siege. These results considered critical indicators that must be taken into consideration by the policy makers, researchers and clinicians to establish psychological support department specialized for cancer patients at the treating Centre and should be consult with specialized psychiatrist. Also, to provide the cancer patients with a list of recognized psychological centers and professional counselors for help. Establishing psychotherapy group for cancer patients. Provide special treatment and psychological support for the cancer patients.

The ToMenovela - A Photograph-Based Stimulus Set for the Study of Social Cognition with High Ecological Validity.

We present the ToMenovela, a stimulus set that has been developed to provide a set of normatively rated socio-emotional stimuli showing varying amount of characters in emotionally laden interactions for experimental investigations of (i) cognitive and (ii) affective Theory of Mind (ToM), (iii) emotional reactivity, and (iv) complex emotion judgment with respect to Ekman’s basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, Ekman and Friesen, 1975). Stimuli were generated with focus on ecological validity and consist of 190 scenes depicting daily-life situations. Two or more of eight main characters with distinct biographies and personalities are depicted on each scene picture. To obtain an initial evaluation of the stimulus set and to pave the way for future studies in clinical populations, normative data on each stimulus of the set was obtained from a sample of 61 neurologically and psychiatrically healthy participants (31 female, 30 male; mean age 26.74 ± 5.84), including a visual analog scale rating of Ekman’s basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise) and free-text descriptions of the content of each scene. The ToMenovela is being developed to provide standardized material of social scenes that are available to researchers in the study of social cognition. It should facilitate experimental control while keeping ecological validity high.

Editorial

This study investigates the notion that congregations act as subcultures which impact their members’ approaches to daily life conflict resolution and decision-making. Fourteen interviews of churchgoers from two congregations in New England were conducted to gain insight into how Catholics and Baptists differ in their approaches to conflict resolution and decision-making in daily life situations and how those approaches are impacted by the ecclesiology of the respective congregations. This study finds that the major differences between the churchgoers’ approaches to conflict resolution and decision-making are the values to which they adhere. It is concluded that those values are a result of each congregation acting as a subculture which has been formed by the importance of hierarchy, global and local focus, and, especially, the role of the church in each congregation. The study also finds that the relationship between church leadership and churchgoers is stronger in the Baptist congregation.

Heritage language anxiety and majority language anxiety among Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands

Aims and objectives: This study examines the language anxiety that occurs in immigrants’ daily lives when speaking the heritage language and the majority language, both in their host country and during visits to their home country. It compares the levels of heritage language anxiety and majority language anxiety across three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands and explores the link between immigrants’ language anxiety, and sociobiographical (i.e. generation, gender, education) and language background variables (i.e. age of acquisition, self-perceived proficiency, frequency of language use). Design: A Likert scale-based questionnaire was administered to 116 participants across three generations who reported their language anxiety levels when speaking the heritage language and the majority language in three social contexts (i.e. family, friendship and speaking with native speakers). Findings: Statistical analyses revealed that heritage language anxiety and majority language anxiety were prevalent in immigrants’ daily life, and that levels of both forms of anxiety differed across generations, and in different daily life situations. First- and second-generation immigrants typically experienced majority language anxiety, while second- and predominantly third-generation immigrants suffered from heritage language anxiety. Relationships emerged between language background variables and both forms of anxiety, but only in certain situations. These findings suggest that language background variables on their own may be insufficient to explain immigrant language anxiety in certain social contexts (i.e. within family). Rather than merely language background factors, a variety of other issues within social, cultural and national currents must be considered when examining language anxiety in the immigrant context. Implications: Taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines language contact and foreign language anxiety/second language anxiety research, this study suggests that the concept of foreign language anxiety/second language anxiety should be expanded beyond the confines of the classroom to include daily interactions of immigrant or minority communities. Originality: This study contributes to the limited body of evidence on the topic of language anxiety in immigrant contexts and presents a new construct ‘majority language anxiety’.

Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Creative Option Generation in Everyday Life Situations.

Which factors influence a human being’s ability to develop new perspectives and be creative? This ability is pivotal for any context in which new cognitions are required, such as innovative endeavors in science and art, or psychotherapeutic settings. In this article, we seek to bring together two research programs investigating the generation of creative options: On the one hand, research on option generation in the decision-making literature and, on the other hand, cognitive and clinical creativity research. Previous decision-making research has largely neglected the topic of generating creative options. Experiments typically provided participants with a clear set of options to choose from, but everyday life situations are less structured and allow countless ways to react. Before choosing an option, agents have to self-generate a set of options to choose from. Such option generation processes have only recently moved to the center of attention. The present study examines the creative quality of self-generated options in daily life situations. A student sample (N = 48) generated options for action in 70 briefly described everyday life scenarios. We rated the quality of the options on three dimensions of creativity- originality, feasibility, and divergence -and linked these qualities to option generation fluency (speed and number of generated options), situational features like the familiarity and the affective valence of the situation in which the options were generated, and trait measures of cognitive performance. We found that when situations were familiar to the participant, greater negative affective valence of the situation was associated with more originality and divergence of generated options. We also found that a higher option generation fluency was associated with a greater maximal originality of options. We complete our article with a joint research agenda for researchers in the decision-making field focusing on option generation and, on the other hand, researchers working on the cognitive and clinical aspects of creativity.

Early Buddhist Mindfulness and Memory, the Body, and Pain

In this article I survey selected aspects of the early Buddhist conception of mindfulness. I begin by distinguishing different types of mindfulness and draw out the implications of such distinctions. Next, I explore the relationship between mindfulness and memory in order to determine how far a conceptualization of mindfulness as a quality of the mind related to the present moment is indeed central to the understanding of its functions and significance in early Buddhist texts and in what way this relates to the ability to remember. Another dimension of the present exploration is the relation of mindfulness to being anchored in the body and how this can serve to maintain continuity of awareness in a daily life situation. The final topic I take up is the use of mindfulness to face pain and disease in the way this is already reflected in the early Buddhist discourses. These texts clearly document that the potential of mindfulness in this respect is not a modern innovation but has roots in the Buddhist tradition that reach back over more than two millennia.

Significance of the Feuerstein approach in neurocognitive rehabilitation

The theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and Mediated Learning Experience of Reuven Feuerstein states that individuals with brain impairment, because of congenital or acquired origin, may substantially and structurally improve their cognitive functioning, by a systematic intervention based on a specific, criteria-based type of interaction ("mediated learning"). Three application systems are based on it: a dynamic-interactive assessment of learning capacity and processes of learning, the LPAD (Learning Propensity Assessment Device); a cognitive intervention program called "Instrumental Enrichment Program", which trains cognitive, metacognitive and executive functions; and a program, which is oriented at working in context, Shaping Modifying Environments. These programs have been applied in widely different target groups: from children and young adults with learning and developmental disabilities, at risk of school failure, or having failed at school, because of socio-economic disadvantage or congenital neurological impairment; disadvantaged youngsters and adults in vocational training, to elderly people at the beginning of a dementia process. Experience with cognitive rehabilitation of children and adults with acquired brain damage, has been relatively recent, first in the Feuerstein Institute's Brain Injury Unit in Jerusalem, later in other centers in different parts of the world; therefore scientific data are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Feuerstein-approach fits into the goals and proposed approaches of cognitive rehabilitation, and to explore its relevance for assessment and intervention in individuals with congenital or acquired brain damage. The methodology of the Feuerstein approach consists of four pillars: dynamic assessment, cognitive activation, mediated learning and shaping a modifying environment. The criteria of mediated learning experience are explained with specific reference to people with acquired brain injury. The procedure of learning propensity assessment device uses visuo-spatial and verbal tasks known from neuropsychological assessment (such as Rey's complex figure drawing), as well as a in a pre-test - brief intervention - post-test format. Cognitive activation is done in various ways: a paper-and-pencil relatively content-free program called "instrumental enrichment", with transfer of learned principles into daily life situations, followed by metacognitive feedback. Four case histories of acquired brain damage are analyzed: a 19 year old man with extensive post-astrocytoma frontotemporal brain lesions; a 19 year old man with bilateral frontal and right temporal and parieto-occipital parenchymatous destruction after a traumatic brain injury; a 24 year old man with hemispherectomy for intractable epilepsy because of Sturge-Weber syndrome; and a 30-year old man with left porencephalic cyst after cerebral hemorrhage. Structural cognitive improvement could be demonstrated in positive change scores in visuo-spatial memory, associative and verbal memory, abstract thinking, and organizing tasks, even more than 10 years post-TBI. In some cases a rise in IQ has been documented. Improvement in daily life functioning and academic skills (re)learning has also been seen. Though impossible to claim scientific evidence, the case histories nevertheless suggest the importance of interactive assessment in designing intervention programs which have sufficient intensity, frequency, duration and consistency of mediation; furthermore, an essential ingredient is the ecological approach which requires working with the patient and the whole network around; a firm "belief system" or that modifiability is possible even with severe brain damage and many years after the injury; a cognitive, metacognitive and executive approach, and a quality of interaction according to criteria of mediated learning. They suggest that Feuerstein approach may offer interesting perspectives to cognitive rehabilitation. More extensive research is needed to provide a broader scientific evidence base.

Abduction dealing with potential values and its datasets towards IMDJ

In this paper, we introduce the concept of value to the abduction procedure. In fact, are dealt with outside of the abduction procedure. For usual abduction, we always consider values included in the knowledge (hard coded). However, for a certain procedure, such values are unnecessary and sometimes harmful. Outside of the main abduction procedure, the inference system can flexibly deal with to generate hypotheses considering the user's preference, situation, and the current trends, etc. In addition, we introduce the concept of the expiration of the hypothesis in the hypothesis generation. Recently-generated- hypotheses will not be generated during such an abduction procedure. Accordingly, the system can generate rather novel hy- potheses to enjoy potential chances. This type of inference can be applied to daily life situations. Of course, according to the application such as recommendation strategies in shops, the different strategy can be conducted. That is, items that users usually buy can be recommended. These strategies can be selected according to the user's sitution. Finally, I briefly illustrate the process of IMDJ strategy (proposal production) by the extended abduction. In IMDJ, proposal production procedure can be regarded as an abduction.

A Fresh Pair of Eyes: A Blind Observation Method for Evaluating Social Skills of Children with ASD in a Naturalistic Peer Situation in School.

The Social skills Observation Measure (SOM) is a direct observation method for social skills used in naturalistic everyday situations in school. This study describes the development of the SOM and investigates its psychometric properties in 86 children with Autism spectrum disorder, aged 9.8-13.1years. The interrater reliability was found to be good to excellent. The convergent validity was low in relation to parent and teacher reports of social skills, and also to parent interview on adaptive social functioning. Therefore this direct observation seems to provide additional information on the frequency and quality of social behaviors in daily life situations. As such it contributes to parent and teacher information as a blind measurement to evaluate Social Skills Training.

Subjective versus objective measures of tic severity in Tourette syndrome – The influence of environment

The objective of this study was to examine the influence of environmental challenges on tic expression by subjective and objective measures. The study group consisted of 41 children aged 6–18 years (M=10.15, SD=2.73) with a primary diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. Subjective measures included the Functional Assessment Interview developed for this study and three standard validated instruments. The objective measure was a video-recording of the patients in five daily-life situations: watching television, doing homework, being alone, receiving attention when ticcing, and talking to a stranger. In addition, the effect of premonitory urges on assessment of tic expression was evaluated. The associations between the subjective and objective measures of tic expression were moderate to low. A significantly higher number of tics were observed in the television situation, and a significantly lower number in the alone situation, compared to the other situations. Higher levels of premonitory urge were associated with greater awareness of objectively measured tic expression. In conclusion, tic expression is significantly influenced by the environment. Subjective measures of tic expression may be misleading. These results have implications for refining the clinical assessment of tics, improving research methodology, and developing new therapeutic strategies.

Effects of Noise Level and Cognitive Function on Speech Perception in Normal Elderly and Elderly with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Along with auditory function, cognitive function contributes to speech perception in the presence of background noise. Older adults with cognitive impairment might, therefore, have more difficulty perceiving speech-in-noise than their peers who have normal cognitive function. We compared the effects of noise level and cognitive function on speech perception in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), cognitively normal older adults, and cognitively normal younger adults. We studied 14 patients with aMCI and 14 age-, education-, and hearing threshold-matched cognitively intact older adults as experimental groups, and 14 younger adults as a control group. We assessed speech perception with monosyllabic word and sentence recognition tests at four noise levels: quiet condition and signal-to-noise ratio +5 dB, 0 dB, and -5 dB. We also evaluated the aMCI group with a neuropsychological assessment. Controlling for hearing thresholds, we found that the aMCI group scored significantly lower than both the older adults and the younger adults only when the noise level was high (signal-to-noise ratio -5 dB). At signal-to-noise ratio -5 dB, both older groups had significantly lower scores than the younger adults on the sentence recognition test. The aMCI group's sentence recognition performance was related to their executive function scores. Our findings suggest that patients with aMCI have more problems communicating in noisy situations in daily life than do their cognitively healthy peers and that older listeners with more difficulties understanding speech in noise should be considered for testing of neuropsychological function as well as hearing.

Why Can the Behavior Experiments Directed by Game Theory Experts Confirm the Mainstream Economics: On the Control of Experimental Conditions and Corresponding Diversity of Experimental Outcomes

The experimental outcomes are usually influenced by controlled experimental conditions. It is the different design of experimental conditions that leads to the diversity of experimental outcomes. To a large extent, because of the construction of double-blind settings that is similar with economic man, the experimental results achieved by game theory experts usually confirm the thinking logic and corresponding theories of modern mainstream economics. At the same time, knowledge structure of game theory experts and study objects contribute to the phenomenon that game theory experts tend to control experimental conditions strictly and are keen on double-blind settings. Generally, game theory experts prefer to test subjects' behavioral logic in the given game context, and even feel uneasy about the effects of some interference factors on the experimental results. However, this kind of controlled experimental condition is usually suitable to the market competition behavior where a large number of persons participate in, but is dramatically different from the situations of people's daily life. Therefore, in order to explore the general behavior mechanism in people's daily life better through behavioral experiments, it is necessary to improve the experiment conditions such as the matrix type of the game, environmental structure, subject characteristics and dynamics, so that the game context of experiments will be as close as possible to the real environment, which is the basic requirement and development direction of experimental and behavioral economics.

Questionnaire validation - PEACH on Brazilian Portuguese.

Translate, adapt and validate the Parent's Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children questionnaire to Brazilian Portuguese, as well as analyzing the interaction between parents/caregivers and children. After translated, back translated and adapted this questionnaire was administered to 13 parents or guardians of children with moderate to severe hearing loss that were treated in the ambulatory of audiology of the Institution. Parents should fill out the diary, answering the questionnaire, giving as many examples of observed behaviors for each question and return for follow-up after a week for an interview with the evaluator or child's therapist. Data are presented in frequency and percentage. We used chi-square test with a 5% significance level (p). Two questions were culturally adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. The questionnaires were answered by mothers most of the time (69.2%). The questionnaire was translated and adapted respecting the cultural aspects of the Brazilian population. It was observed that, for some questions, it is necessary care when analyzing the answers that parents provide, taking into consideration the child's age and linguistic content that is required for the observed behavior, avoiding erroneous interpretations made on the quality of amplification and the use of hearing aids or CI due to this. The questionnaire is of great importance since it measures the performance of children in their daily life situations.

Multifractal signatures of complexity matching.

The complexity matching effect supposes that synchronization between complex systems could emerge from multiple interactions across multiple scales and has been hypothesized to underlie a number of daily-life situations. Complexity matching suggests that coupled systems tend to share similar scaling properties, and this phenomenon is revealed by a statistical matching between the scaling exponents that characterize the respective behaviors of both systems. However, some recent papers suggested that this statistical matching could originate from local adjustments or corrections, rather than from a genuine complexity matching between systems. In the present paper, we propose an analysis method based on correlation between multifractal spectra, considering different ranges of time scales. We analyze several datasets collected in various situations (bimanual coordination, interpersonal coordination, and walking in synchrony with a fractal metronome). Our results show that this method is able to distinguish between situations underlain by genuine statistical matching and situations where statistical matching results from local adjustments.

Changes in visual perspective influence brain activity patterns during cognitive perspective-taking of other people's pain

Empathy refers to our capacity to share and understand the emotional states of others. It relies on two main processes according to existing models: an effortless affective sharing process based on neural resonance and a more effortful cognitive perspective-taking process enabling the ability to imagine and understand how others feel in specific situations. Until now, studies have focused on factors influencing the affective sharing process but little is known about those influencing the cognitive perspective-taking process and the related brain activations during vicarious pain. In the present fMRI study, we used the well-known physical pain observation task to examine whether the visual perspective can influence, in a bottom-up way, the brain regions involved in taking others’ cognitive perspective to attribute their level of pain. We used a pseudo-dynamic version of this classic task which features hands in painful or neutral daily life situations while orthogonally manipulating: (1) the visual perspective with which hands were presented (first-person versus third-person conditions) and (2) the explicit instructions to imagine oneself or an unknown person in those situations (Self versus Other conditions). The cognitive perspective-taking process was investigated by comparing Other and Self conditions. When examined across both visual perspectives, this comparison showed no supra-threshold activation. Instead, the Other versus Self comparison led to a specific recruitment of the bilateral temporo-parietal junction when hands were presented according to a first-person (but not third-person) visual perspective. The present findings identify the visual perspective as a factor that modulates the neural activations related to cognitive perspective-taking during vicarious pain and show that this complex cognitive process can be influenced by perceptual stages of information processing.

Percepções de alunos do terceiro ano do Ensino Médio sobre o corpo humano

Resumo Este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar algumas percepções que os alunos do último ano do Ensino Médio manifestam a respeito do corpo humano e dos sistemas que o integram. Investigamos 87 alunos do terceiro ano do Ensino Médio de três instituições distintas, por meio de um questionário que continha três questões abertas com situações ilustrativas do cotidiano, nas quais existiam ações relativas aos diversos sistemas do corpo humano. Nossos dados foram organizados em categorias (percepções sistêmicas e reducionistas), de acordo com os núcleos de sentido que apresentavam dentro do referencial teórico para análise de conteúdo. Os resultados, analisados dentro da abordagem qualitativa, mostram um maior percentual de percepções que indicam um distanciamento entre corpo didático e corpo biocultural.