First-person Perspective Research Articles

How face mask wearing affects the sense of self: breathing as a case of disrupted bodily self-consciousness

ABSTRACT This pioneer study focuses on the feedback effect that the face mask has on its wearer’s sense of Self (i.e. bodily Self-consciousness) caused by its multisensorial components and affordances which are taken into account from a first-person perspective approach. On the grounds of enactivism and Material Engagement Theory, we run qualitative semi-structured interviews recruiting 48 participants: 24 people had no experience using lower face coverings before COVID-19 pandemic (February 2020) and 24 people were hospital workers with such prior experience. Results show that face mask wearing dramatically updates bodily Self-consciousness retroacting on breathing experience, with differences between the two groups. This is consistent with evidence showing that breathing is “transparent” unless bodily, environmental, and/or emotional changes arouse a situated awareness of it. We conclude that the face mask performs a retroactive effect, which we explained as due to a “material performative agency” that significantly modifies the standard balance between the transparency and the opacity of our bodily Self-consciousness.

Harboring alien lifeworlds: The second-person in thought insertion

In phenomenology, the delusion of thought insertion is described and explained in different ways. There is a common idea that the delusion depends either on a lack of sense of agency or on a confusion between self and others. I propose that the delusion is an alienation in regard to what is expressed in some thoughts, that make them unfamiliar. In this perspective, the delusion has to do with the fact that the lifeworld expressed in inserted thought is given in a second-person perspective, is rooted in a different lived-body experience than one’s own. This contrasts with ordinary thoughts which are given in the first-person perspective, with which we have a sense of intimacy. This discussion is an opportunity for putting forth the idea of the second-person perspective: that is, certain experiences of the world are given to me through others, as distinct from those that are given to me directly as a lived body. In inserted thoughts, there is a sense in which some perspectives of reality, different to my own, are disclosed through an alien voice or through inside me. The distinction between the first person and second person perspectives leads to a better understanding of the primal constitution of the self and of others, based on the relation between the body and the world as it is given to us.

I, You, and We: Beyond Individualism and Collectivism

ABSTRACT The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already deeply engaged in extensive analyses of collective forms of intentionality a few years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this paper is to present some core insights from this early debate.

Egocentric and Allocentric Spatial Memory for Body Parts: A Virtual Reality Study.

Extensive literature elucidated the mechanisms underlying the ability to memorize the positions of objects in space. However, less is known about the impact that objects' features have on spatial memory. The present study aims to investigate differences in egocentric and allocentric object-location memory between hand stimuli depicted in a first-person perspective (1PP) or in a third-person one (3PP). Fifty-two adults encoded spatial positions within a virtual museum environment featuring four square buildings. Each of these buildings featured eight paintings positioned along the walls, with two pictures displayed on each of the four walls. Thirty-two stimuli were employed, which represented pictures of the right hand performing various types of gestures. Half of the stimuli depicted the hand in the 1PP, while the other half depicted the hand in the 3PP. Both free and guided explorations served as encoding conditions. Immediately after that, participants underwent a two-step object-location memory task. Participants were provided with a map of the museum and asked to identify the correct building where the image was located (allocentric memory). Then, they were presented with a schematic representation of the exhibition room divided into four sections and instructed to select the section where they thought the picture was located (egocentric memory). Our findings indicate a memory performance boost associated with egocentric recall, regardless of the perspective of the bodily stimuli. The results are discussed considering the emerging literature on the mnemonic properties of body-related stimuli for spatial memory.

Beliefs in Pain and Suffering:

In this communication recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience is presented showing that believing is a fundamental brain function. It integrates the perception of information from the environment with personal perspective taking (“what does it mean to me?”) as the basis for predictive coding of action. Observing that another person becomes injured can make one believe that the pain in the injured person is similar to pain that oneself has experienced previously. This first-person perspective has been called empathy and includes primal beliefs about potentially pain eliciting objects and painful events in the sense of “what does it mean to you?”. Furthermore, observing other people to suffer involves the conceptual belief that their condition is aversive and burdensome. Believing in love and peace involves the perspective of “what does it mean to us?”. Contradictory events may cause the sensation of pain and suffering in the afflicted individuals resulting in mutual distrust and eventually disruption of social bonds. In conclusion, beliefs play an important, though long underestimated role in cognitive neuroscience of pain and suffering and more generally for the cultural notions of deities and evil.

Neuroscientist who does not feel pain: Subjective ontology and the perspective anamorphosis of consciousness

Would the neuroscientist who does not feel pain know what he is studying? In this paper, the author analyzes the subjective ontology of conscious mental states and its origin – the subject’s first-person perspective. The ontology of the mental is irreducibly first-person ontology. In the thought experiment with neuroscientist Peter, it will be shown that a comprehensive science of consciousness requires a combined approach, as the phenomena of neuroscience are internally defined. The asymmetry between first-person and third-person perspectives regarding mental states will be strongly emphasized. The third part of the paper will offer a perspectival approach to the hard problem of consciousness. In conclusion, a truly objective science of subjectivity, a genuine science of consciousness, would have to engage scientifically with the subject’s egocentric first-person perspective.

Advance Medical Decision-Making Differs Across First- and Third-Person Perspectives

Background Advance healthcare decision-making presumes that a prior treatment preference expressed with sufficient mental capacity (“T1 preference”) should trump a contrary preference expressed after significant cognitive decline (“T2 preference”). This assumption is much debated in normative bioethics, but little is known about lay judgments in this domain. This study investigated participants’ judgments about which preference should be followed, and whether these judgments differed depending on a first-person (deciding for one’s future self) versus third-person (deciding for a friend or stranger) perspective. Methods A vignette-based survey was conducted (N = 1445 US Americans; gender-balanced sample), in a 3 (relationship: self, best friend, stranger) × 2 (T1 preference: treat, do not treat) × 2 (T2 contrary preference: ambiguous, unambiguous) design. Results Participants were more likely to defer to the incapacitated T2 preference of a third-party, while being more likely to insist on following their own T1 capacitated preference. Further, participants were more likely to conclude that others with substantial cognitive decline were still their “true selves,” which correlated with increased deference to their T2 preferences. Conclusions These findings add to the growing evidence that lay intuitions concerning the ethical entitlement to have decisions respected are not only a function of cognition, as would be expected under many traditional bioethical accounts, but also depend on the relationship of the decision to the decision-maker’s true self.

The role of perspective in refereeing: Insights from a video-based decision-making experiment

ABSTRACT Decision accuracy is a crucial factor in the evaluation of refereeing performance. In sports research, officials’ decision-making is frequently assessed outside real games through video-based decision experiments, where they evaluate recorded game situations from a third-person perspective. This study examines whether the inclusion of the first-person perspective influences decision accuracy and certainty. Twenty-four professional officials from the first and second German basketball leagues participated in the study. The officials assessed 50 game situations from both first-person and third-person perspectives, indicating their decisions and certainty levels. The statistical analysis utilises signal detection theory to evaluate the efficacy of the first-person perspective compared to the third-person perspective in identifying rule violations and no-calls in video recordings. The findings indicate that the first-person perspective does not yield superior accuracy in identifying foul calls. However, scenes from the first-person perspective exhibit a significant 9% increase in correctly identifying no-calls. Furthermore, officials report significantly higher levels of decision certainty and comfort when using the first-person perspective. The study suggests that sports officials may benefit from incorporating additional scenes from the first-person perspective into video-based decision training. Future studies should explore whether this additional perspective improves the training effect and translates into enhanced in-game performance.

Justifying Self-Partiality

The role that the first-person perspective is allowed to play in moral reasoning is a major source of contemporary debate between partialists and impartialists. The discussion usually revolves around the question of partiality’s justification when it is intended to benefit our loved ones. Surprisingly, the issue of partiality to oneself is rarely addressed directly and its link with egoism is left unexplored. This is a gap that this paper attempts to fill by focusing on some of the difficulties raised by the idea of justified partiality to oneself.

An Open Conversation About Postpartum Psychosis: An Interview with Jessie Hunt: Communications Lead, Advocate, and Expert by Experience.

Postpartum psychosis is a mental illness that is often misunderstood and stigmatized and can have a devastating impact on the women affected and their families, particularly when not identified and treated early on. The first-person perspective of experiencing a mental illness such as postpartum psychosis is remarkably powerful and can shed light on some of the hidden or misunderstood aspects of diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and getting support. With this in mind, we have prepared this interview from both an academic and lived experience perspective of postpartum psychosis, for clinicians, academics, mental health professionals, and members of the public.

Acute experimental inflammation in healthy women attenuates empathy for psychological pain

Administration of low-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to healthy humans is a translational approach to analyze the effects of acute systemic inflammation and sickness behavior. Although studies documented that LPS-induced inflammation can alter social behavior, its impact on empathy remains poorly understood. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 52 healthy female volunteers received an intravenous injection of either LPS (0.4 ng/kg body weight) or placebo and completed the Social Interaction Empathy Task (SIET) two hours after injection. Physiological responses (blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, cytokines, cortisol) were analyzed along with sickness symptoms and mood before and after LPS or placebo administration. LPS application led to significant increases in plasma cytokines and sickness symptoms as well as low mood. Moreover, volunteers receiving LPS showed significantly less empathy for other’s psychological pain than those who received placebo. Furthermore, LPS-injected volunteers with more severe sickness symptoms displayed higher pain ratings in the first-person perspective. Thus, low-grade inflammation reduces empathy for other’s psychological pain which might reflect an adaptive strategy to save energy by not responding empathetically when sick oneself.

Stories of building friendships during long-term recovery from problematic substance use

Background Building friendship is crucial for attaining and upholding recovery from problematic substance use. However, how people who have used substances problematically develop friendships needs to be investigated more from a first-person perspective. Aim To provide insight into how people in long-term recovery find meaning in their experience of building friendships. Method In semi-structured interviews, 17 people in recovery drew network maps and reflected on how friendships had developed during the long-term process. We analysed the narratives by way of a thematic narrative approach. Results Participants presented the friendship-formation process through four distinct storylines: (1) ‘I don’t make friends easily’; (2) overcoming barriers to building friendships; (3) ‘birds of a feather flock together’; and (4) ‘having “regular” friends makes me feel like an “average” person’. Conclusion People in long-term recovery from problematic substance use felt haunted and hindered by past experiences when building friendships. These experiences created a social divide between those who had experienced problematic substance use and those who had not. The valuable insights that social workers can gain from this study can support friendship development for people in long-term recovery on multiple levels. By understanding someone’s self-perceptions and their perspectives on others, social workers can engage with barriers when people in recovery enter social environments such as work. We emphasise the significance of a long-term approach to overcoming barriers to building new friendships.

Effects of first vs. third-person perspective and self- versus other-avatars on user movements in virtual reality

Social science experiments in virtual reality (VR) frequently manipulate the perspective from which a user views an avatar and the identity of an avatar to change participant perceptions and attitudes. However, avatar embodiment may also influence physical behaviors—i.e., the way participants move—during the VR experience. For example, users may shift their position to align with avatars they see from a first-person perspective, a phenomenon known as the self-follower effect. We conducted a between-subjects, pre-registered study to understand how common techniques such as manipulating perspective and appearance might affect participant movements while in VR. We demonstrate that even when participants do not have agency over their avatars' movements, viewing avatar movements influences their own actions, whether these are viewed from the first or the third-person perspective. These phenomena hold potential as interventions to prompt participant movements in other contexts.

The role of identity priming on the (unconscious) bodily self-attribution

It has been recently demonstrated that hand stimuli presented in a first-, with respect to a third-, person perspective were prioritized before awareness independently from their identity (i.e., self, or other). This pattern would represent an unconscious advantage for self-related bodily stimuli rooted in spatial perspective. To deeper investigate the role of identity, we employed a breaking-Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm in which a self- or other-hand presented in first- or third-person perspective was displayed after a conscious identity-related prime (i.e., self or other face). We replicated the unconscious advantage of the first-person perspective but, crucially, we reported that within the first-person perspective, other-hand stimuli preceded by other-face priming slowed down the conscious access with respect to the other conditions. These findings demonstrate that a top-down conscious identity context modulates the unconscious self-attribution of bodily stimuli. Within a predictive processing framework, we suggest that, by adding ambiguous information, the prime forces a prediction update that slows conscious access.

Local Fabric: Mid-Century Modernisms, Textile and Fashion Design, and the Northwest Coast, 1940–1967

In the mid-twentieth century, growing North American textile and ready-to-wear industries vigorously appropriated Native American aesthetics to cultivate a commercial and design identity apart from Europe. Most studies of the circulation of Indigenous idioms in these industries focus on Southwestern or South Pacific regionalisms, and scholarship on studio and commercial fabric and fashion design from the Northwest Coast in the twentieth century is limited. This paper contributes by raising Indigenous and non-Indigenous use of Northwest Coast design forms during the politically turbulent 1940s–1960s and analyzing the impact of this aesthetic vocabulary within broader North American textiles and fashion. Throughout, I engage with the approaches of critical fashion theory and multiple modernisms, considering the frictions of property and power relations within settler-colonial states, then and now. Drawing from study of objects, periodicals, and archival materials as well as first-person perspectives, I contextualize these representations within entangled art, museum, and design worlds in the Northwest Coast, New York City, and the Southwest. My examination illustrates that Northwest Coast artists and art ideas asserted a peripheral but locatable role in mid-century textiles and fashion, facilitating the development of today’s robust Indigenous fashion network on the Northwest Coast and its cultural politics.

The complexities of linguistic discrimination

ABSTRACT Linguistic discrimination is a complex phenomenon. How should it be investigated? Evidential pool is of key importance. In this paper, we present specific conceptual and methodological challenges in the study of linguistic discrimination, with a focus on linguistic discrimination resulting from implicit attitudes and the steadily growing research on biases and structural approaches to social injustice. We conclude by proposing that a productive and comprehensive way to investigate linguistic discrimination rooted in implicit attitudes should seek to incorporate first-person perspectives and testimonies from the linguistically harmed individuals, and discuss some arguments in support of this view.

Temporal Properties of Self-Prioritization.

Using electroencephalogram (EEG), we tested the hypothesis that the association of a neutral stimulus with the self would elicit ultra-fast neural responses from early top-down feedback modulation to late feedforward periods for cognitive processing, resulting in self-prioritization in information processing. In two experiments, participants first learned three associations between personal labels (self, friend, stranger) and geometric shapes (Experiment 1) and three colors (Experiment 2), and then they judged whether the shape/color-label pairings matched. Stimuli in Experiment 2 were shown in a social communicative setting with two avatars facing each other, one aligned with the participant's view (first-person perspective) and the other with a third-person perspective. The color was present on the t-shirt of one avatar. This setup allowed for an examination of how social contexts (i.e., perspective taking) affect neural connectivity mediating self-related processing. Functional connectivity analyses in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) revealed that self-other discrimination was mediated by two distinct phases of neural couplings between frontal and occipital regions, involving an early phase of top-down feedback modulation from frontal to occipital areas followed by a later phase of feedforward signaling from occipital to frontal regions. Moreover, while social communicative settings influenced the later feedforward connectivity phase, they did not alter the early feedback coupling. The results indicate that regardless of stimulus type and social context, the early phase of neural connectivity represents an enhanced state of awareness towards self-related stimuli, whereas the later phase of neural connectivity may be associated with cognitive processing of socially meaningful stimuli.

Unlocking the power of motor imagery: a comprehensive review on its application in alleviating foot pain.

Motor imagery is a cognitive process that involves mentally simulating movements without physical execution. It has been studied in the context of foot pain to understand the role of motor cortical reorganization and its impact on motor imagery abilities. However, further research is needed to establish consistent evidence regarding the relationship between motor imagery and foot pain. This review analyzed five relevant articles that investigated motor imagery in the context of foot pain. The studies involved participants with various conditions, including leg amputation, chronic leg pain, complex regional pain syndrome, and Achilles tendinopathy. Different methodologies were employed, including motor cortical mapping, foot laterality recognition tasks, EEG recordings, and treatment interventions incorporating motor imagery. The findings indicated that individuals with leg amputation exhibited functional reorganization in upper limb motor cortical maps, with a breakdown in the inhibitory relationship between foot and hand representations. Participants with chronic leg pain demonstrated slower and less accurate performance on foot laterality recognition tasks compared to healthy controls. Complex regional pain syndrome patients displayed distinct motor imagery strategies and responded differently to first-person and third-person perspectives. EEG studies revealed differences in brain activity during motor imagery tasks under pain-free and pain conditions. Treatment interventions incorporating motor imagery showed promising outcomes in improving functional outcomes and reducing pain levels. Motor imagery plays a significant role in foot pain conditions, although the evidence is still emerging. The findings suggest that motor imagery abilities may be affected by leg amputation, chronic pain, and complex regional pain syndrome. Further research is needed to establish standardized protocols for assessing motor imagery, identify specific patient populations that may benefit most from motor imagery interventions, and explore long-term effects. Integrating motor imagery into clinical practice has the potential to enhance rehabilitation approaches and improve outcomes in foot pain management.

Gradiently Foaming Ultrasoft Hydrogel with Stop Holes for Highly Deformable, Crack-Resistant and Sensitive Conformal Human-Machine Interfaces.

Hydrogels are considered as promising materials for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) owing to their merits of tailorable mechanical and electrical properties; nevertheless, it remains challenging to simultaneously achieve ultrasoftness, good mechanical robustness and high sensitivity, which are the pre-requisite requirements for wearable sensing applications. Herein, for the first time, this work proposes a universal phase-transition-induced bubbling strategy to fabricate ultrasoft gradient foam-shaped hydrogels (FSHs) with stop holes for high deformability, crack-resistance and sensitive conformal HMIs. As a typical system, the FSH based on polyacrylamide/sodium alginate system shows an ultralow Young's modulus (1.68kPa), increased sustainable strain (1411%), enhanced fracture toughness (915.6 Jm-2 ), improved tensile sensitivity (21.77), and compressive sensitivity (65.23 kPa-1 ). The FSHs are used for precisely acquiring and identifying gesture commands of the operator to remotely control a surgical robot for endoscopy and an electric ship in a first-person perspective for cruising, feeding crabs and monitoring the environmental change in real-time.

Through each other's eyes: initial results and protocol for the co-design of an observational measure of adolescent-parent interaction using first-person perspective

BackgroundCurrent observational methods to understand adolescent-parent interaction are limited in terms of ecological and content validity. We outline initial results and a protocol for future work from a programme of work to: (1) establish a new method for data capture of adolescent-parent interaction at home using wearable cameras and; (2) develop a new relevant and comprehensive observational micro-coding scheme. In Part 1, we report our completed preliminary work, comprised of an initial scoping review, and public engagement work. In Part 2, we present a protocol for the development of the new measure.MethodsPart 1—We searched Pubmed for existing observational measures of adolescent-parent interaction for the scoping review. We also undertook public engagement work utilising a mobile research van, taken to multiple locations around Bristol, UK to engage with a variety of populations through interactive methods. Part 2—Our protocol describes plans for: (1) A systematic review of the psychometric properties of observational measures of adolescent-parent interaction; (2) Focussed public engagement workshops; (3) Harmonisation of information from existing coding schemes and literature with information from public engagement with adolescents and parents; (4) A pilot study to assess the acceptability and feasibility of the method; (5) Development of a coding scheme in consultation with expert and lay panels, and through real-life application to recorded videos from a pilot sample.ResultsScoping review: we identified 21 adolescent-parent observational schemes, of which eight used micro-coding and 13 used globalcoding schemes. The majority of micro-coding schemes were not developed specifically for adolescents. Most studies used conflict or problem-solving tasks, which may not adequately capture positive adolescent-parent interactions. The mobile van event received views from 234 young people and/or parents. Families were positive about taking part in research using headcams. “Trust” and “understanding” were most frequently reported as important adolescent-parent relationship constructs.ConclusionsThis work represents the first attempt to truly co-design a method to assess parenting in adolescence. We hope to develop an observational measure using novel technological methods that can be used across a range of research and therapeutic settings.