Perceptual Ambiguity Research Articles

Specific Contribution of Psychosocial Cancer Counselling Centers - Perspectives of the Person Seeking Advice and the Referring Professional

The aim of the study is to look at the specific contribution of outpatient cancer counselling centers (OCCC) from the perspective of both the person seeking advice and the referring health care professionals. Qualitative design by means of guideline-based face-to-face interviews with cancer patients/relatives and individual telephone interviews with referring health care professionals. A total of 43 persons seeking advice and 30 referring health care professionals were interviewed. With regard to the contents of counselling, psycho-oncological support and help for self-help in combination with social-legal information about additional support services are perceived as central features. In the group of referring physicians, however, there seems to be some uncertainty about what OCCCs (can) provide. On the one hand, the results point to a specific core of the services offered by OCCCs, and on the other hand to ambiguous perceptions on the part of the respondents. They may contribute to further sharpening the profile of OCCC and to clarifying their place in the health care system.

The impact of role ambiguity on future volunteering: A case study of the 2017 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival

ABSTRACT Research on role ambiguity suggests its relationship to retention and commitment in business, industry and non-profit settings. The purpose of this study was to explore factors associated with perceived role ambiguity experienced by volunteers at the 2017 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival, and their impact on future volunteering engagement and awareness post-event. The study also examined differences in event role ambiguity perceptions based on gender, age and volunteering experience among the participants. Data were collected by a means of an online-administered survey from a sample of 268 volunteers. A response rate of 44% was obtained. Results of principal component analysis suggested two role ambiguity factors consisting of ‘means-ends/expectations & Scope’ and ‘Consequences of role performance’ that were relevant in this event setting. A significant association between volunteering experience and both role ambiguity dimensions were reported, while for ‘means-ends/expectations & scope’ ambiguity, males experienced greater clarity. Finally, the results indicate that role ambiguity is associated with future volunteering beyond the event. Implications for event managers are then explored.

Cultural and Civilizational Ties between India and China Today

From the second half of the 20th century bilateral relations between India and China have not received adequate coverage in domestic and foreign science. India and China, due to the strengthening of their economies and the gradual increase in political weight in the world arena, are increasingly viewed as geopolitical rivals, with the emphasis shifting from their bilateral to regional cooperation. It is notable that there are almost no articles on the cultural and civilizational ties between the countries. First of all, this is due to the limited nature of these contacts determined by a number of geopolitical and historical reasons. The countries separated by the world tallest mountain range developed independently from one another with little interaction between them, and it was not until the second half of the 20th century that these Asian powerhouses established solid relations. The bipolar period, in fact, formed the countries’ ambiguous perception of each other, which in many respects continues to restrain cooperation not only in the cultural sphere, but also in other areas. In addition, China and India themselves tend to pay little attention to this lack of communication, since at this stage and in the context of mistrust and rivalry cultural and civilizational ties are not a priority. Even statistics are scarce in both Indian and Chinese sources. At the same time, it is this line of cooperation that might somewhat smooth out the contradictions that have accumulated between the countries in other areas and contribute to a better understanding of each other. Because of intensifying personal contacts between the citizens of both countries and growing importance of the media sphere this mutual understanding is of utmost importance. This article aims to fill the gap that exists today in the scientific field regarding the dialogue of cultures between Delhi and Beijing. The author examines the main elements of cultural cooperation between the two countries and identifies the key problems they face today, as well as points out the opportunities for rapprochement based on the areas that make possible the development of appropriate interaction: religion, traditional health practices, similarities in the political outlook, large expatriot communities, education, art and tourism.

TIMBRE-BASED COMPOSITION, MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES AND AMBIGUITY IN REBECCA SAUNDERS’ COMPOSITIONAL STYLE

AbstractThis article takes up Rebecca Saunders’ comments on the significance of timbre in her work to develop a timbre-centred analytical technique for two of her compositions, Ire (2012), for cello and ensemble, and Still (2011), for violin and orchestra. Two overarching principles are identified: the organisation of the pieces’ sounds into clearly differentiated categories, which can also overlap in different ways, and the use of a phrase-based logic in the pieces’ formal construction. Alongside the timbral construction, stable pitches acquire formal significance by virtue of their rarity and conspicuousness. I also elaborate on the ways in which perceptual ambiguity is fruitfully exploited in these works.

An active role of inferior frontal cortex in conscious experience

In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions, such as introspection or action. Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments that indicated a key role of inferior frontal cortex in detecting perceptual conflicts caused by ambiguous sensory information. Crucially, the detection of perceptual conflicts by prefrontal cortex turned out to be critical in the process of transforming ambiguous sensory information into unambiguous conscious experiences: in a third experiment, disruption of neural activity in inferior frontal cortex through transcranial magnetic stimulation slowed down the updating of conscious experience that occurs in response to perceptual conflicts. These findings show that inferior frontal cortex actively contributes to the resolution of perceptual ambiguities. Prefrontal cortex is thus causally involved in determining the contents of conscious experience.

China’s rise in Latin America and the Caribbean 1990–2019: navigating perceptions in the relationship

To date, perceptions of China's rise in relation to US hegemony in the international realm has not escaped scholarly scrutiny. For the period 1990–2019, the International Relations literature has made a somewhat copious contribution to the broader debates on the US and China. Within the Sino-Latin America Caribbean (LAC) discourse, the implications of China's ascent for US interests in the region is an underlying concern. The region is considered salient in broader power configurations as a result of its geostrategic positioning in relation to the US. However, perceptions pertaining to the triad of interests in the space account largely for powerful states in the dynamic. Despite the ambiguous perceptions associated with a rising China in the international realm and the Latin America Caribbean region's strategic position, rather than being preoccupied with ideas of the ‘China threat’, these states appear to have largely bypassed the more threatening rhetoric associated with China's rise in the period under scrutiny. In seeking to bring Latin America and Caribbean states into the discourse, the article examines how benign perceptions shaped the region's relationship with China. The argument is made that Latin America and Caribbean states sought to frame and navigate their relationship with China largely on the premise of economic opportunity amidst a firmly embedded US role inside the region which further repudiated ideas of the ‘China threat’ in the engagement. In unpacking the argument, the discussion seeks to show that more favourable images of China's economic ascent punctuated LAC states responses to China and that such states have been driven by a high level of economic pragmatism in the relationship. It also illustrates that the underlying hegemonic order has practical effects and more subtle manifestations inside LAC states which mitigated against perceptions of threat in China's rise in the region.

Cantopop and Speech-Melody Complex

It is generally accepted that speech and melody are distinctive perceptual categories, and that one is able to overcome perceptual ambiguity to categorize acoustic stimuli as either of the two. This article investigates native Cantonese speakers’ speech-melody experience of listening to Cantonese popular songs (henceforth Cantopop songs), a relatively uncharted territory in musicological studies. It proposes a speech-melody complex that embraces native Cantonese speakers’ experience of the potentialities of speech and melody before they come into being. Speech-melody complex, I argue, does not stably contain the categories of speech or melody in their full-blown, asserted form, but concerns the ongoingness of the process of categorial molding, which depends on how much contextual information the listeners value in shaping and parsing out the complex. It follows, then, that making a categorial assertion implies a breakthrough of the complex. I then complicate speech-melody complex with the concept of “anamorphosis,” borrowed from the visual arts, which calls into question the signification of the perceived object by perspectival distortion. When transferred to the sonic dimension, “anamorphic listening,” I suggest, is not about at which point a sonic object becomes “distorted” but is about one’s processual experience of negotiating the hermeneutic values in their differenthearing-ases. The listener engages, then, in the process of molding and remolding, creating and negating, the two enigmatic categories. Through my analysis of two Cantopop songs and interviews with native Cantonese speakers, I suggest that Cantopop may invite an anamorphic listening, and that more broadly, it is an important, yet under-explored, genre with which to theorize about the relationships between music and language.

Supplier dependence asymmetry and investment in innovation: The role of psychological uncertainty

A key source of competitive advantage for large firms accrues from investments in innovative products and processes by their suppliers, incentivized by a positive relationship climate. A fundamental hindrance lies in a condition that commonly characterizes buyer-supplier relationships: asymmetric levels of dependence between business partners. Such asymmetry has been shown to be detrimental to the relationship, enhancing the likelihood of conflict, and negatively impacting the performance of the more dependent party. Considering that such dependence asymmetry is likely to persist, large buyers face the challenge of promoting a relationship environment that provides an incentive for suppliers to invest in innovation. In this study, we propose that large, dominant buyers can influence suppliers' intentions and behaviors by mitigating the effects of their perceived riskiness and ambiguity that emerge from a situation of dependence asymmetry. Specifically, using the lens of resource dependence theory, we investigate the effects of these two psychological dimensions of uncertainty on a supplier's trust, commitment, and willingness to invest in innovation, as well as the moderating effect of a buyer's information sharing in shaping a supplier's perceived uncertainty. The model is tested with a scenario-based experiment and results are corroborated by interviews with experienced managers of retail suppliers. Our findings indicate that a supplier's dependence on a large buyer increases its perception of ambiguity and riskiness in the relationship, negatively impacting its trust, commitment, and willingness to invest in innovation. However, a buyer who shares relevant and timely information with the supplier mitigates its perceived uncertainty, promoting the supplier's positive attitudes towards the buyer and incentivizing innovation. Sharing operational and strategic information such as point-of-sales data, sales forecasts, or strategic plans, becomes a valuable strategy to powerful buyers in the pursuit of becoming a preferred customer and enhancing a supplier's resource mobilization towards the relationship.

Perspectival truth: Michael Haneke’s «The castle» and the fragmentation of the real

With his 1997 TV adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Das Schlos (The Castle), the Austrian director Michael Haneke explores what he calls «Kafka’s fragmentary, ambiguous perception of reality». Defying TV audience expectations, The Castle develops a specific strategy contrasting with the rapid and overwhelming deluge of information transmission that Haneke points out to be the standard for «electronic media». But more specifically, The Castle’s fragmented style appears to put into question a metaphysical construal of ‘Truth’ and ‘Values’ as self-sufficient dimensions existing, unaffected, behind the sensible world of appearances. This must not lead to a relativistic stance. Rather, such a style brings to light the essential perspectival structure of our experience, calling for an approach to reality that forestalls the dichotomies of true vs. false, essence vs. appearance, or fact vs. interpretation.

Views and experiences of people with acne vulgaris and healthcare professionals about treatments: systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative research

ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to systematically review and synthesise qualitative papers exploring views and experiences of acne and its treatments among people with acne, their carers and healthcare...

A Potential Unintended Consequence of Big Data: Does Information Structure Lead to Suboptimal Auditor Judgment and Decision-Making?

SYNOPSISThis study examines the effects of information structure on auditor judgment and decision-making. Based on cognitive load theory, we predict that the variety of evidence inspired by Big Data likely lead to increased perceptions of ambiguity, which in turn impacts audit-related decisions. Additionally, we examine whether those effects are moderated by time budget pressure. We conduct an experiment with 120 auditors and find that auditors presented with varied data provide more conservative risk assessments and write down recommendations in an inventory obsolescence setting than auditors presented with a more traditional memo format. Our findings also indicate that time budget pressure moderates the effects of information structure resulting in the most conservative obsolescence risk and inventory write down assessments when presented with varied data in a high time budget pressure environment. We believe our study has important implications that should be considered before using Big Data on financial statement audits.

Goal-directed interaction of stimulus and task demand in the parahippocampal region.

The hippocampus and parahippocampal region are essential for representing episodic memories involving various spatial locations and objects, and for using those memories for future adaptive behavior. The “dual‐stream model” was initially formulated based on anatomical characteristics of the medial temporal lobe, dividing the parahippocampal region into two streams that separately process and relay spatial and nonspatial information to the hippocampus. Despite its significance, the dual‐stream model in its original form cannot explain recent experimental results, and many researchers have recognized the need for a modification of the model. Here, we argue that dividing the parahippocampal region into spatial and nonspatial streams a priori may be too simplistic, particularly in light of ambiguous situations in which a sensory cue alone (e.g., visual scene) may not allow such a definitive categorization. Upon reviewing evidence, including our own, that reveals the importance of goal‐directed behavioral responses in determining the relative involvement of the parahippocampal processing streams, we propose the Goal‐directed Interaction of Stimulus and Task‐demand (GIST) model. In the GIST model, input stimuli such as visual scenes and objects are first processed by both the postrhinal and perirhinal cortices—the postrhinal cortex more heavily involved with visual scenes and perirhinal cortex with objects—with relatively little dependence on behavioral task demand. However, once perceptual ambiguities are resolved and the scenes and objects are identified and recognized, the information is then processed through the medial or lateral entorhinal cortex, depending on whether it is used to fulfill navigational or non‐navigational goals, respectively. As complex sensory stimuli are utilized for both navigational and non‐navigational purposes in an intermixed fashion in naturalistic settings, the hippocampus may be required to then put together these experiences into a coherent map to allow flexible cognitive operations for adaptive behavior to occur.

A peculiar experience– everyday life with chronic sensory disturbances after oxaliplatin treatment for colorectal cancer - a phenomenological study

ABSTRACT Purpose: To deepen the understanding of how survivors’ experience and give meaning to the embodied phenomenon of chronic sensory disturbances in everyday life after oxaliplatin treatment for colorectal cancer. Methods: Data was generated by means of a semi-structured interview guide and drawings with the aim to explore eight survivors’ lifeworld experiences. Data was analyzed through a phenomenological approach. Results: The essential meaning of sensory disturbances emerged in two main themes and four sub-themes. Theme A: ‘A peculiar experience that is difficult to logically understand’ with the subthemes; ‘An ambiguous perception in hands and feet’ and ‘Being alienated from one’s own body’. Theme B: Losing touch with the world’ with the subthemes: ‘A lack of sensory contact with physical surfaces’ and ‘Breakdown of sensitivity in hands hampers fine motor skills and social contact’. Conclusion: Sensory disturbances contributed to an ambiguous and discordant perception of an alienated body that was difficult to describe and affected the ability to act and connect to things and other people. Metaphors and drawings were valuable as means to verbalize and illustrate the changed body perception where the ‘I can’ changed into ‘I cannot’. To support the embodied connection to the world new usage patterns were required.

Uncertainty in Mechanism Design

This paper studies the design of mechanisms that are robust to misspecification. We introduce a novel notion of robustness that connects a variety of disparate approaches and study its implications in a wide class of mechanism design problems. This notion is quantifiable, allowing us to formalize and answer comparative statics questions relating the nature and degree of misspecification to sharp predictions regarding features of feasible mechanisms. This notion also has a behavioral foundation which reflects the perception of ambiguity, thus allowing the degree of misspecification to emerge endogenously. In a number of standard settings, robustness to arbitrarily small amounts of misspecification generates a discontinuity in the set of feasible mechanisms and uniquely selects simple, ex post incentive compatible mechanisms such as second-price auctions. Robustness also sheds light on the value of private information and the prevalence of full or virtual surplus extraction.

Simultaneous Learning of Perceptual Ambiguity and Expected Value Estimates Alter Preferences, Discrimination Performance, and Choice

The ability to simultaneously learn how to distinguish between visually similar unknown items and their value was tested in three studies conducted across multiple days. In each study, participants took the role of a merchant in a market for obscure fruits. Merchants traded unknown fruits and earned money by identifying ripe ones. The ripe fruits had a fixed positive value, while the unripe ones had varying values at certain unknown probabilities. Participants had to learn that one fruit category (ripe or unripe) was always associated with a fixed monetary gain, whereas another category was associated with a lottery that had either monetary gains or losses. The fruit categories were always perceptually similar. We show that learning the value of items typically leads to (1) improvement in the ability to visually discriminate between high/low-value ones, and (2) a change in subjective preference towards the high-value items. When item values are ambiguous and determined by lotteries, participants do not show preference change. In those ambiguous cases, as the values of items become known, individuals’ risk-tolerance is predictive of item preferences such that a reinforcement learning model can be used to estimate the preferences. Despite the consistent behavior by the participants, their reflections on the decision heuristics typically fail to recognize key drivers of the rational choices. This suggests a discrepancy between the explicit interpretation of the choice heuristics and the intuitive decision practices. We propose a rationale for the behavioral outcomes and ways to use the novel experimental paradigm for further decision theory explorations.

Membership Fees in the History of the All-Union Society of Book Lovers: The Economy and Ideology of a Late Soviet Mass Organisation

This article considers the financial side and specifically the phenomenon of membership fees in the history of a mass voluntary organisation of the late Soviet period, i.e. the All-Union Society of Book Lovers. The purpose of the article is to examine the role of fees in the structure of the organisation’s income and identify contradictions that arose within the Society in their relation. The article refers to the company’s accounting documents, materials of congresses, the corporate newspaper Knizhnoe Obozrenie, and letters of book lovers to the leadership of the society. Based on the results of the study, it is concluded that the management of the organisation and ordinary participants treated the annual fee with different pragmatics. Officials needed money for the structure, so they sought to increase the number of collective and individual members of the Society and fees from them. Initially, collective participants provided the flow of money to the organisation. Later, their share in the total budget decreased with the growth of contributions from ordinary book lovers. The popularity of reading and book hunger caused the new organisation to be seen by its members as a means to get books: they directly connected membership fees with the opportunity to get books that were in deficit. The lack of official guarantees for books and subscriptions caused outrage among book lovers who meticulously paid their fees and could lead to their refusal to pay to the Society. In a situation like this, the existence of the organisation and the format of the mass organisation were doubted. The ambiguous perception of the state initiative in the field of reading on the part of citizens helps examine the relations of society and government in the late Soviet period in a more detailed way.

Clarifying the role of higher-level cortices in resolving perceptual ambiguity using ultra high field fMRI

The brain is organized into distinct, flexible networks. Within these networks, cognitive variables such as attention can modulate sensory representations in accordance with moment-to-moment behavioral requirements. These modulations can be studied by varying task demands; however, the tasks employed are often incongruent with the postulated functions of a sensory system, limiting the characterization of the system in relation to natural behaviors. Here we combine domain-specific task manipulations and ultra-high field fMRI to study the nature of top-down modulations. We exploited faces, a visual category underpinned by a complex cortical network, and instructed participants to perform either a stimulus-relevant/domain-specific or a stimulus-irrelevant task in the scanner. We found that 1. perceptual ambiguity (i.e. difficulty of achieving a stable percept) is encoded in top-down modulations from higher-level cortices; 2. the right inferior-temporal lobe is active under challenging conditions and uniquely encodes trial-by-trial variability in face perception.

The patient as a policy problem: Ambiguous perceptions of a critical interface in healthcare.

The interface between the patient and the health service has changed, which constitutes a potential problem for various policy-makers. Using a critical policy perspective and drawing on the theory of problem framing, this paper explores how actor groups with different responsibilities perceive the patient as a constructed policy problem. This is a qualitative study where data consists of single episode interviews with healthcare politicians, senior administrators, service strategists, and unit mangers from one regional health authority in Sweden. A thematic content analysis of the interviews was carried out in accordance with “the framework approach”. The study illustrates how the actors interpret their reality using diverse problem frames. This becomes more visible when the framing is disentangled with regard to what perspective they employ in relation to different accounts: society or the individual, or the (healthcare) system or the (healthcare) professional. The actor groups are part of the same institutional context, which explains certain tendencies of similarities in terms of the accounts being used, but still they approach the constructed problem differently which is visible as shifts—scaling up and down—between different accounts. By analyzing and structuring the various problem frames (including its policy styles) we can enhance our knowledge about how those responsible for the governance of healthcare approach the patient as a policy problem, as something that concerns only the patient and/or the provider, or as something that needs to be addressed in broader strategic terms.

Swagger Like Us: Black Millennials’ Perceptions, Knowledge, and Influence of 1980s and 1990s Urban Fashion Brands

In New York City in the late 1970s, the Black community created hip-hop, a significant cultural phenomenon, which has since spread around the world. Our research is centered on the revolutionary hip-hop fashion movement in Black history as it relates to Black millennials’ experiences of fashioning their bodies. We examine the perception of Black millennials who are attending or have attended historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) and their knowledge and perceptions of prominent Black-owned, urban fashion brands that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally, we seek to understand how or if these brands influence Black millennial consumers and their stylistic choices today. We used a qualitative approach and conducted 14 in-depth, semistructured interviews. Based on analysis of the data, we identified four themes: awareness of urban styles; ambiguous perceptions; 1980s and 1990s urban style influence; and awareness of cultural appropriation. We offer implications to the apparel industry.

Лексическая неоднозначность в экспериментальных исследованиях: метаанализ

The article analyses experimental studies of lexical ambiguity (polysemy and homonymy). In total, 42 papers published between 1981 and 2017 were selected for analysis. Selected works were analyzed from the point of view of a) interaction of the main factors of lexical ambiguity resolution (meaning dominance and context), b) modularity/interactivity of language systems. The choice of these issues was caused by the fact that, despite a significant number of papers addressing them, a common theoretical model of lexical ambiguity resolution is still missing. The analysis concluded that none of the existing models could be chosen as the only true one. I believe that it is more promising to combine all models into one; in this case, we should not talk about “models” but about “algorithms” or “strategies”. This merge is compatible with the results of studies of hemispheric asymmetry, which showed that the right and left hemispheres differently process ambiguous words. This difference is projected on the difference between the two main points of view on language processing, interactive and modular. Also, as a result of the analysis, the properties of meaning dominance and context as the main factors influencing the perception of ambiguity are summarized, and the ways and possibilities of their interaction are determined. These factors can participate in the process of resolving ambiguity autonomously or together, with different functions, speed, and levels of perception.