Interpretations Of Social Situations Research Articles

How music can change evaluations of social situations: Exploring the influence of emotional states and perceived group characteristics

In everyday life, music is increasingly being listened to through headphones and mobile devices in public situations. While a large body of research has demonstrated that music may influence the emotional states of listeners and affect multimodal perceptions i.e. in films, less is known about the music’s impact on environments and the interpretation of social situations. We conducted an online experiment to investigate the influence of music on evaluations, considering individuals’ emotional states (emotion congruence) and group perception. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions (music with positive valence and high arousal, music with negative valence and low arousal, and no music) while viewing images of two different social group types that varied in perceived group characteristics (group members being familiar or unfamiliar with each other). Images were rated on four bipolar scales measuring affective quality and cognitive evaluation of social situations. Results show that individuals who listened to negative music provided lower valence ratings and also judgded social environments lower in terms of pleasantness and cheerfulness (affective) than individuals in the other experimental conditions. In contrast, ratings of crowdedness and familiarity (cognitive) did not differ between experimental conditions. The effect of music on affective evaluations was shaped by social group types, such that participants were more influenced by music when viewing intimacy groups (e.g., friends) than when viewing transitory groups (e.g., strangers). Overall, our results support the assumption of mood congruency for affective evaluations and emphasize the need to consider social information when studying the influence of music on the perception of environments.

An integrative framework of early socio-emotional competencies: cognition, regulation and communication

Currently there is no consensus on what is the socio-emotional development, what are its components and path of progress, hindering the progress of transdisciplinary research and the development of evaluation and intervention methods in public policies. The literature about socio-emotional development is extensively reviewed, offering a theoretical model that identified three principal socio-emotional competencies: (a) socio-emotional cognition: composed by the attention and interpretation of social situations; (b) emotion regulation: composed by the emotion modulation and impulse control; (c) socio-emotional communication: composed by verbal and no verbal communication with others.

Prévenir la violence associée à la schizophrénie avec la remédiation cognitive

ObjectivesThe association between schizophrenia and violence represents an important issue in psychiatry. Often highly publicized, violent acts raise the question of their detection, prevention, management and treatment. There is no single, direct and exclusive link between aggressiveness and the underlying psychiatric disorder. On the contrary, the processes underlying this violence are multiple and interlinked. In addition to static and dynamic risk factors, cognitive deficits play an important role in the genesis and maintenance of violent and aggressive behavior. MethodsUsing recent data from the international literature and the main databases, we first clarify the role played by cognitive deficits in the violence of patients with schizophrenia. We then evaluate the place of psychosocial interventions such as cognitive remediation and social cognitive training in managing the violent and aggressive behavior of these patients. ResultsExecutive functions and working memory are the most studied neurocognitive functions in the field of violence in schizophrenia. Impulsivity, lack of cognitive flexibility, lack of adaptation and inhibition of automatic motor responses, and altered anger regulation may explain this relationship. Three main components of social cognition are associated with violent behaviors in schizophrenia: (1) the recognition of facial emotions through the inoperability of systems of “emotional monitoring”, violent inhibition and recognition of informative facial zones; (2) the theory of the mind through the erroneous interpretation of the intentions of others; (3) the attributional style through the preferentially aggressive over interpretation of social situations and weak capacities of introspection. Overall, cognitive biases inhibit response in a socially acceptable manner and increase the risk of responding impulsively and aggressively to a stressful or provocative situation. In this context, we studied the place held by psychosocial interventions in the management of the violent and aggressive behaviors of these patients. Various cognitive remediation programs have shown their feasibility in people with schizophrenia and neurocognitive deficits with a history of violence as well as their effectiveness in reducing violence, mainly by reducing impulsivity. Similarly, specific programs dedicated to social cognitive training such as Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT), Reasoning and Rehabilitation Mental Health Program (R&R2 MHP) and Metacognitive Training (MCT) have shown their positive impact on the control and reduction of global aggressive attitudes and on the numbers of physical and verbal aggressive incidents in schizophrenia. The improvement of social cognition would be achieved through the amendment of interpersonal relationships and social functioning. These interventions are effective at different stages of disease progression, in patients with varied profiles, on violent attitudes in general and on the number of verbal and physical attacks, whether for in-patients or out-patients. Beneficial effects can last up to 12months after termination of the study program. The interest of these interventions is preventive if the subject never entered in a violent register or curative in case of a personal history of violence. This type of care can be considered from a symptomatic point of view by limiting downstream the heavy consequences of such acts, but also etiologically by acting on one of the causes of violent behavior. Compliance with the eligibility criteria, carrying out a prior functional analysis and confirmation of the major impulsive part of the patient's violence are prerequisites for the use of these programs. Similarly, the early introduction of such therapies, their repetition over time and the integration of the patient into a comprehensive process of psychosocial rehabilitation will ensure the best chance of success. ConclusionsSome cognitive impairments appear to have their place in the genesis, progression and maintenance of violent acts of individuals with schizophrenia. Their management thus opens new therapeutic perspectives such as cognitive remediation, still rarely used in this aim, to complement the action of the traditional care tools. However, further therapeutic trials are needed before considering cognitive remediation and social cognitive training as central care modalities in the therapeutic control of violence in schizophrenia.

Differences in the early stages of social information processing for adolescents involved in bullying.

Bullying victimization has commonly been associated with deficiencies in social information processing (SIP). In contrast, findings regarding bullying perpetration are mixed, with some researchers claiming that bullies may have superior SIP abilities than victimized or uninvolved youth. This study investigated the effects of bullying and victimization on early SIP; specifically the recognition and interpretation of social information. In stage 1, 2,782 adolescents (11-16 years) were screened for bullying involvement, and in stage 2, 723 of these participants (mean age = 13.95) were assessed on measures of emotion recognition, hostile attribution bias, and characterological self-blame (CSB). No associations between bullying and early SIP were found. In contrast, victimization was associated with more hostile attribution bias and CSB attributions. Girls performed better than boys on the emotion recognition task while boys showed greater hostile attribution biases. No interaction effects of bullying or victimization with gender were found. Follow-up categorical analyses that considered pure victims versus victims who also bullied (bully-victims) on SIP, found a similar pattern of findings. These findings suggest that those who purely bully others are neither superior nor deficient in the early stages of SIP. Victimized adolescents, however, show biases in their interpretations of social situations and the intentions of others. These biases may lead to maladaptive responses and may increase risk for further victimization by peers.

You may now kiss the bride: Interpretation of social situations by individuals with right or left hemisphere injury

While left hemisphere damage (LHD) has been clearly shown to cause a range of language impairments, patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) also exhibit communication deficits, such as difficulties processing prosody, discourse, and social contexts. In the current study, individuals with RHD and LHD were directly compared on their ability to interpret what a character in a cartoon might be saying or thinking, in order to better understand the relative role of the right and left hemisphere in social communication. The cartoon stimuli were manipulated so as to elicit more or less formulaic responses (e.g., a scene of a couple being married by a priest vs. a scene of two people talking, respectively). Participants' responses were scored by blind raters on how appropriately they captured the gist of the social situation, as well as how formulaic and typical their responses were. Results showed that RHD individuals' responses were rated as significantly less appropriate than controls and were also significantly less typical than controls and individuals with LHD. Individuals with RHD produced a numerically lower proportion of formulaic expressions than controls, but this difference was only a trend. Counter to prediction, the pattern of performance across participant groups was not affected by how constrained/formulaic the social situation was. The current findings expand our understanding of the roles that the right and left hemispheres play in social processing and communication and have implications for the potential treatment of social communication deficits in individuals with RHD.

Interpretations of bullying by bullies, victims, and bully-victims in interactions at different levels of abstraction.

According to the Social Information Processing Model of children's adjustment, children develop general interpretation styles for future social events based on past social experiences. Previous research has shown associations between interpretations of social situations and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. This study investigated whether bullies, victims, bully-victims, and uninvolved children interpreted ambiguous human interactions differently in terms of bullying and whether these interpretations generalized to abstract non-human interactions. Participants were 390 children (49% girls, Mage = 10.3 years) who completed self-report measures of bullying and victimization. In addition, they indicated whether video fragments of positive, negative, or ambiguous interactions between humans, animals, and abstract figures depicted bullying situations. Bully-victims reported more bullying than victims and uninvolved children in ambiguous abstract figure, animal, and human fragments and in positive animal fragments. Children who bully did not differ from the other groups. These findings indicate that interpretations of bullying generalized from ambiguous human interactions to more abstract ambiguous animal and abstract figure interactions. Implications for further research and practice were discussed.

Unterschiede im Spielverhalten von Vierjährigen aus unterschiedlichen ethnischen Gruppen

In its psychological development, the child learns social-emotional competences in order to be able to cope with conflicts. Since ethnic diversity increases due to globalization, the influence of the ethnic background on the social competence children development must be investigated furthermore. The present study examines the differences of the social-emotional competences of children of various ethnic groups. To track the social-emotional competence in play, 84 Asian-American, Latin-American and African-American kindergarteners (age = 4) were tested with the Mac Arthur Story Stem Battery and the attachment representation using the Attachment Doll Play manual. There were significant differences in the avoidance of conflict, empathic and moral themes in problem-solving among the ethnic groups. Furthermore, according to ethnic background the children significantly differed in the dimensions of attachment representation, freezing/blocking, constriction and controlling. Since ethnically specific social competence, attachment dimensions and their inter-correlation were found, the children started Kindergarten with differing qualifications. There are indications that the differences in attachment accentuations in children call for ethnic differences in social competence and interpretations of social situations in adults and children.

Social Perceptions of Students with Learning Disabilities Who Differ in Social Status

As a group, students with learning disabilities (LD) have social difficulties. One possible explanation for these difficulties is the unique way they process social information. Although students with LD may differ from their nondisabled peers in their social cognition, investigators have suggested the presence of subgroups within the population of students with LD who may differ in their social competence and, thereby, shed light on the source of the difficulties. The present exploratory study examined how two subgroups of students with LD in inclusive settings, students with high and low social status, perceive social situations. Using a sociometric technique, three students with LD receiving high social‐status ratings and three students with LD receiving low social‐status ratings were identified. A qualitative approach was used to gather and evaluate data from the participants and their teachers. Results suggested differences between the two subgroups in their (1) sensitivity to cues in the environment, (2) interpretation of social situations in relation to their own experiences, and (3) levels of self‐control. Implications of these findings for practice and future research are discussed.

Critical Hermeneutics versus Neoparsonianism?

This essay aims at the restoration of a central feature of Habermas' social theory, most clearly articulated in his writings preceding his incorporation of sociological systems-theory into the design of a critical theory of late captialist societies and also preceding his programmatic essays on the reconstruction of historical materialism and on the theory of language (universal pragmatics).2 The feature in question is the claim that a critical theory of society is to be a theory which can be practically enlightening. I understand this claim to mean that the ultimate test for the validity of a critical theory of society consists in the possibility of the incorporation of its insights into practically consequential interpretations of social situations. A critical theory of society is a theory which cannot control the determination of the validity of its insights, simply by referring to standards of theoretical cogency, and of conceptual and explanatory adequacy. In the final analysis, its truth can only be ascertained if relevant groups in the society can integrate its claims into their practical deliberation, carried out under conditions of the need to act, and thus transform theoretical insights into practically consequential interpretations of their situation.s Habermas' Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (both