Positive Stories Research Articles

Effects of sleep on positive, negative and neutral valenced story and image memory.

During sleep, emotional memories are preferentially strengthened. However, most studies on sleep and emotional memory focus on comparing negative valence with neutral valence stimuli. This study compared the sleep‐dependent memory effects for stories and images, each comprising negative, neutral, and positive stimuli. It was hypothesized that a sleep effect would be seen for negatively and positively valenced stimuli. A novel story memory task (comprising three stories), and photographs from the Nencki Affective Picture database were presented for learning to 61 healthy adults (ages 18–25). They were tested for memory on the two tasks immediately, and then again after either a 2‐hr nap (n = 31; 17 women, 14 men) or 2‐hr wake period (n = 30; 13 women, 17 men). At second testing, the sleep condition had significantly better recall compared to the wake condition on both tasks. There was a relationship with valence only for the story task, with better performance for the sleep condition on the negatively and positively valenced texts, but not on the neutral text. There were no significant relationships between memory measures and sleep‐stage duration and EEG power variables. The story memory findings support the hypothesis that memory consolidation prioritizes emotional memory, whether positively or negatively valenced.

A Qualitative Study of US Women's Perspectives on Confidence for Physiologic Birth in the Birth Center Model of Prenatal Care.

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of the components of the US birth center model of prenatal care and how the birth center prenatal care model contributes to birthing people's confidence for physiologic childbirth. This was a qualitative descriptive study using semistructured interviews with individuals who gave birth in freestanding birth centers. Birthing people were recruited from freestanding birth centers in a Midwestern US state and were between the ages of 18 and 42, were English-speaking, and had experienced a birth center birth within the previous 6 months. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Glaser's constant comparative method. Twelve women who gave birth in birth centers, representing urban and rural settings, participated. Four core categories were identified encompassing the components of birth center prenatal care and how the birth center model contributes to women's confidence for physiologic birth: birth center culture and processes, midwifery model of care within the birth center, internal influences, and outside influences. Women who gave birth in birth centers believed that the birth center culture and environment, the midwifery model of care in the birth center, internal influences including the belief that birth is a normal physiologic process, and outside influences including family support and positive birth stories contributed to their confidence for physiologic birth.

Anti-Archetypes: Patterns of Hope

Positive stories of change can play a powerful role in shaping systems. In systems-thinking, stories can take the form of systems archetypes which depict recurring themes and organizational dramas. Though these patterns are important for uncovering problems, they also have the potential to help us identify patterns of hope and aspirational futures. This paper will introduce Anti-Archetypes: systemic patterns of hope that allow us to move beyond what is to what is possible. The Anti-Archetypes are not radical redesigns of the existing Archetypes; instead, they reframe familiar stories to reflect more positive dynamics and outcomes.

The Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Cheating

The Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning, and the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching more broadly, tends to focus on positive stories of things that work (Dawson & Dawson, 2018). We have an interest in learning and want to share strategies we have found to be successful. A similar parallel can be drawn with the field of academic integrity, in that it too is a field with a focus on a positive thing: students’ capabilities and actions that demonstrate they can and do act in the way we want them to.
 Delving into the negative is unpleasant. It can require an adversarial mindset (Dawson, 2021), similar to the type used in cybersecurity (Craigen et al., 2014). Scholars of cheating can be portrayed by the media as undercover sleuths (e.g. Cook, 2018). On the flipside, those who question the technologies used to detect or deter cheating can face legal action by vendors. In my own work I have had to step very carefully, having been warned that studies where I try to empirically check if anti-cheating technologies work may not be legal without the support of their vendors. Cheating and anti-cheating scholarship is a charged, risky place to be.
 This presentation explores cheating and technology. Drawing on a recent synthesis of research from cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and game studies (Dawson, 2021), it discusses what the current state of cheating is, and where it is likely to be in the near future – as well as the types of scholarship that we need to address the problem of technology-enhanced cheating.
 References
 Cook, H. (2018, 13 November 2018). Academics go undercover to spot the telltale signs of a cheater. The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/academics-go-undercover-to-spot-the-telltale-signs-of-a-cheater-20181113-p50fng.html
 Craigen, D., Diakun-Thibault, N., & Purse, R. (2014). Defining cybersecurity. Technology Innovation Management Review, 4(10), 13-21.
 Dawson, P. (2021). Defending assessment security in a digital world: preventing e-cheating and supporting academic integrity in higher education. Routledge.
 Dawson, P., & Dawson, S. L. (2018). Sharing successes and hiding failures: ‘reporting bias’ in learning and teaching research. Studies in Higher Education, 43(8), 1405-1416. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1258052

China’s mediated public diplomacy towards Japan: a text-as-data approach

ABSTRACT As a rising power, China has realized that it is an urgent task to improve its national image among foreign publics. In the era of Xi Jinping, China has invested a substantial amount of resources in its foreign-language media to present a more favorable national image to an international audience. This study provides a novel approach to examine the content of China’s Japanese-language media and its dissemination. The study found that the Chinese state media promotes China’s soft power using two main strategies: (1) highlighting China’s culture and economic achievements, and (2) providing positive stories of China. A comparative content analysis of Chinese and Japanese media shows that Chinese media’s narratives are not well circulated in Japan’s public opinion field. This study has both substantive and methodological significance. Substantively, this investigation enhances our understanding of China’s strategic use of state-owned media for public diplomacy. Methodologically, this research contributes to the employment of quantitative text analysis methods on Japanese-language data.

Effects of media stories of hope and recovery on suicidal ideation and help-seeking attitudes and intentions: systematic review and meta-analysis

There is strong evidence that suicides increase after media stories about suicides by celebrities, particularly those that highlight the suicide method (the Werther effect). Much less is known about the Papageno effect-the protective effects of media stories of hope and recovery from suicidal crises. A synthesis of the retrievable evidence is lacking. We aim to summarise findings from randomised controlled trials about the effects of stories of hope and recovery on individuals with some degree of vulnerability to suicide. For this systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis, we searched PubMed (including MEDLINE), Scopus, Embase, PsycInfo, Web of Science, and Google Scholar published from inception to Sept 6, 2021, without language restrictions. We included trials that reported suicidal ideation (the primary outcome) or help-seeking attitudes or intentions (the secondary outcome) and tested a media narrative of hope and recovery. Studies were excluded if they did not feature a clearly positive story of hope and recovery, or had a control group exposed to suicide-related stimulus material. We contacted the lead or senior authors of all original studies to obtain participant-level data for this study. The primary analysis was restricted to individuals with some vulnerability to suicide. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomised trials. The study is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42020221341. Our search yielded 7347 records. 3920 records were screened by title and abstract, and 25 full-text records assessed for eligibility. There were eight eligible studies with 2350 participants for which individual participant data were sought. For suicidal ideation, six studies met the inclusion criteria for the primary analysis. Follow-up responses were available for 569 (90%) of 633 participants who were randomised with high vulnerability (345 [55%] allocated to the intervention group and 288 [45%] to the control group). The pooled standardised mean difference (SMD) indicated a small reduction in suicidal ideation of -0·22 (95% CI -0·39 to -0·04, p=0·017; six studies) in the intervention group. For help-seeking attitudes and intentions, four studies met the inclusion criteria and follow-up data were available for 362 (86%) of 420 participants (247 [59%] allocated to the intervention group and 173 [41%] to the control group). The pooled SMD showed no evidence of a difference between the groups (SMD=0·14, 95% CI -0·15 to 0·43, p=0·35; four studies). Low levels of cross-study heterogeneity effects were observed for both analyses (I2=5% [suicidal ideation] and I2=36% [help-seeking attitudes and intentions]). We found no evidence of publication bias. Media narratives of hope and recovery from suicidal crises appear to have a beneficial effect on suicidal ideation in individuals with some vulnerability, but there is insufficient evidence regarding help-seeking attitudes and intentions. These findings provide new evidence about narratives for suicide prevention. None.

Representation of Fat Women in Wolipop.detik.com and Liputan6.com: A Sara Mill's Analysis Perspective

Having an ideal body is a common opinion and stereotype of women's society. They are competing to achieve it all because it is also supported by the depiction of the massive mass media with advertisements that place beautiful and slim women as actors. However, on the other hand, not all women have an ideal body shape like fat women who always get unfair behavior from the dominant society. They become a subculture group that must fight against negative stigma to get justice. It is rare for women to be portrayed positively by the mass media. Using Sara Mills' critical discourse analysis, the writer wants to see how the representation of fat women at Wolipop.detik.com and Liputan6.com online media through three articles selected from each. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach. The results show that these two media put writer-reader positions in place that see obese women as a subculture group struggling in the dominant society. However, many are brave enough to speak up nowadays, especially on social media. Wolipop.detik.com places more obese women as subjects, while for Liputan6.com women are told more as objects. These two media are still lack of Indonesian fat women positive stories, meaning that they still adhere to the dominant discourse and values.

Benefits of Positive Psychology-Based Story Reading on Adolescent Mental Health and Well-Being.

The importance of complete mental health in school context has recently begun to attract a lot of attention. Positive psychology interventions are often associated with improvement in mental health outcomes, but few studies have examined whether story reading is an intervention that is linked with indicators of complete mental health. This study investigated the effects of story reading interventions on both positive and negative indicators of mental health over time for a group of Turkish grade 10 high school students (n = 53). These included 33 students in a story reading group and 20 in a control group for comparison. The results showed that story reading led to improvement in students’ mindfulness, optimism, happiness, and positive emotions, and also caused reduction in depression, anxiety, pessimism, and other negative emotions over a 5-week period, with a small to large effect sizes. The obtained results are discussed in the context of their implications for potential psychological interventions in high school settings.

The responsible use of veterinary medicines – UK and international perspectives

The Responsible use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance (RUMA) hosted its fourth biennial conference, ‘The responsible use of veterinary medicines – UK and International perspectives’, online on Thursday 18th November 2021. A key event highlight was the incredible voluntary industry achievements to date which have helped to halve sales of antibiotics to treat UK farm animals and has seen the use of highest priority critically important antibiotics in animals reduce by 79% since 2014. The event covered the positive story of responsible use of medicines in UK farming; an introduction to the new RUMA organisation for companion animals and equine and its objectives; a look ahead to the UK animal medicines legislation; the international context for the responsible use of medicines; the story of the UK's high health and welfare standards in international trade discussions; a look ahead to the next challenges for responsible use of animal medicines.

Caring for residents with dementia during a COVID-19 outbreak in a long-term care home.

Background Although there have been considerable public concerns about the impact of COVID‐19 on residents living in long‐term care homes, much less attention has focused on lessons learned from staff experiences about caring for people with dementia during outbreaks. The outbreaks added significant additional stress to the nursing workforce, which has historically experienced high turnover, chronic staffing shortages, and increased burnout in long‐term care settings. We conducted focus groups (n=20) and individual interviews (n=10) to investigate critical challenges, experiences, and support needed for frontline staff in a long‐term care home in British Columbia, Canada. A total of 30 staff in multiple disciplines participated in the study. They included Registered Nurses, Licenced Practical Nurses, care staff, recreational staff, and unit clerks. We applied qualitative thematic analysis and identified four themes: (a) I am proud, (b) we become stronger, (c) I am nervous (d) the vaccine helps. The frontline staff's voices provided a detailed description of their emotional experiences, creative coping strategies and positive stories about caring for the most vulnerable population in extraordinary situations. In our poster, lessons learned and implications for future research and practice will be explored and discussed.

Https://journal.spera.asn.au/index.php/AIJRE/article/view/323

This paper uses data from research projects that deliberately set out to tell positive stories about educators who were working with the children and families of migratory agricultural workers in the US. The aim underpinning these projects was to move beyond the deficit discourses and stories of blame that so often circulate, particularly in relation to social groups that are marginalised, and to present stories that embody positive and productive ways of thinking and working. Using Maxwell’s (2012) process of connecting, the authors used the transcripts of semi-structured interviews to construct narratives about three of the educators who were interviewed. These examples from rural education research highlighted the actions of educators to build and promote children’s and families’ relationships with the place where they were residing temporarily. The notion of querencia provided a helpful way of conceptualising the relationship between place and belonging, to assist the development of insider understandings. The narrative approach offers a way of opening such discussions in education more broadly and to consider the role of teachers in ensuring that negatively framed stories, such as deficit discourses, are not in play.

Positive life stories of Stroke-Survivor's spousal caregiving in Hong Kong: Lessons for policy and practice

BackgroundAdvances in medical-care for immediately post-stroke mean that many stroke-survivors now live a normal lifespan, although they may suffer residual disability. They are often cared for at home by their spouse, who may be ill-prepared for this task, and may also have health concerns. As demands on formal services increase with population aging in Hong Kong, equipping spousal-caregivers with positive effective caring strategies is increasingly important. ObjectiveTo understand what constitutes positive spousal-caregiving for stroke-survivors in Hong Kong within the cultural lens of ‘Zhong (Loyalty)’ MethodNaturalistic qualitative research was employed to hear stories about positive caregiving from Hong Kong couples living with stroke sequelae. Three in-depth face-to-face semi-structured interviews were undertaken with eleven dyads (stroke-survivor alone, spousal-caregiver alone, then the couple together). Data validation was by member-checking, further questions, and feedback at a second interview, and corroboration by field-notes. FindingsA strength-based interactive model of positive spousal-caregiving was described, whose core tenet was Zhong (Loyalty). This fostered, and in turn was nurtured by, three paired key behaviours (1. Learning new skills linked with satisfaction when efforts paid off; 2. Utilizing formal and informal resources linked with supporting others; 3. Cherishing and bringing out the best linked with managing life- and self-care). Couples’ capacity to develop these behaviours reflected their inner strengths. ConclusionsCouples who practiced positive caring and were resilient in the face of adversity were likely to optimise dyadic health and deal constructively with unexpected challenges. To address a looming shortfall between client need, and formal health and social services in Hong Kong, evidence-based policies are required to support effective, positive community-based spousal-caregiving.

Storycrafting refugee children’s lives. Presenting Ali and the Long Journey to Australia

Refugee students may come to schools with fragmented educational histories and other exile-related stressors, but many also settle fast, enjoy school and live rather ordinary childhoods. These more positive stories are not told because they get overridden by well-meaning but counterproductive stories of victimhood. This article presents a storycrafting project with 13 primary school aged refugee children in Australia, with an aim to problematise this deficit-discourse. The outcome was the group’s “preferred narrative”, that is, a story combining fact and fiction within the dialogical process between the teller and the audiences. The story was published as a fictional book and an animated film entitled Ali and the Long Journey Australia. This article discusses this process and its outcome; how a child-led project combining fact and fiction can inform qualitative research, and how stories are welcomed by audiences which are out of reach by regular research outputs.

<em>The Serpent</em> (2021)

<em>The Serpent</em> (2021)

Women Writing the American Artist in Novels of Development from 1850–1932: The Artist Embodied

Women Writing the American Artist in Novels of Development from 1850–1932: The Artist Embodied

WELCOMING SERVICES TO WORKERS IN A SERVICE SPECIALIZED IN SOCIAL APPROACH IN THE STATE OF SÃO PAULO: AN EXPERIENCE REPORT IN PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING

This article aims to present the internship process in Institutional Psychology carried out in an institution of the Specialized Service of Social Approach (SEAS), in the state of Sao Paulo, remotely, in view of the new coronavirus pandemic. To achieve this, weekly meetings were held for seven weeks with the institution's workers, with the aim of offering them a place of support and welcoming, where they felt comfortable sharing their anxieties and demands, in order to alleviate their routine at work and the resulting psychological burden. The methodology used was the Experience Report, a method whose focus was exclusively on the analysis of the experience lived by the interns in their work process. The demands, difficulties and challenges that both the workers and the homeless population face daily are discussed in this study as a basis for its analysis, and were also identified in the workers' discourse from the meetings held. Therefore, this experience provided a view of the current picture of the human conditions of society in their plurality – but also in their inequalities – and highlighted the need to explore interconnected positive, negative and collective stories that affect each other's lives in a personal and social but, above all, professional aspect.

Estimation of Psychological Distress in Japanese Youth Through Narrative Writing: Text-Based Stylometric and Sentiment Analyses.

BackgroundInternalizing mental illnesses associated with psychological distress are often underdetected. Text-based detection using natural language processing (NLP) methods is increasingly being used to complement conventional detection efforts. However, these approaches often rely on self-disclosure through autobiographical narratives that may not always be possible, especially in the context of the collectivistic Japanese culture.ObjectiveWe propose the use of narrative writing as an alternative resource for mental illness detection in youth. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the textual characteristics of narratives written by youth with psychological distress; our research focuses on the detection of psychopathological tendencies in written imaginative narratives.MethodsUsing NLP tools such as stylometric measures and lexicon-based sentiment analysis, we examined short narratives from 52 Japanese youth (mean age 19.8 years, SD 3.1) obtained through crowdsourcing. Participants wrote a short narrative introduction to an imagined story before completing a questionnaire to quantify their tendencies toward psychological distress. Based on this score, participants were categorized into higher distress and lower distress groups. The written narratives were then analyzed using NLP tools and examined for between-group differences. Although outside the scope of this study, we also carried out a supplementary analysis of narratives written by adults using the same procedure.ResultsYouth demonstrating higher tendencies toward psychological distress used significantly more positive (happiness-related) words, revealing differences in valence of the narrative content. No other significant differences were observed between the high and low distress groups.ConclusionsYouth with tendencies toward mental illness were found to write more positive stories that contained more happiness-related terms. These results may potentially have widespread implications on psychological distress screening on online platforms, particularly in cultures such as Japan that are not accustomed to self-disclosure. Although the mechanisms that we propose in explaining our results are speculative, we believe that this interpretation paves the way for future research in online surveillance and detection efforts.

Combining First Nations Research Methods with a World Health Organization Guide to Understand Low Childhood Immunisation Coverage in Children in Tamworth, Australia

In Australia, we used the World Health Organization’s Tailoring Immunization Programmes to identify areas of low immunisation coverage in First Nations children. The qualitative study was led by First Nations researchers using a strength-based approach. In 2019, Tamworth had 179 (23%) children who were overdue for immunisations. Yarning sessions were conducted with 50 parents and health providers. Themes that emerged from this research included: (a) Cultural safety in immunisation services provides a supportive place for families, (b) Service access could be improved by removing physical and cost barriers, (c) Positive stories promote immunisation confidence among parents, (d) Immunisation data can be used to increase coverage rates for First Nations children. Knowledge of these factors and their impact on families helps ensure services are flexible and culturally safe.

Community-based performances of harmonious diversity: Happy talk and utopian performativity in Playback Theatre

In this article, we examine a Playback Theatre performance in which audience members perform their appreciation for living in a diverse community, engaging with the performativity of happy talk surrounding diversity. Happy talk is largely considered to support the status quo of White supremacy, letting those who benefit from dominant systems of power off the hook. However, in this event it appeared to operate instead as a utopian performative. The racially and ethnically diverse storytellers in the workshop narrate positive stories about the diversity in their community, and they do so for a reason. This article looks at the hope animating the event.

Key stakeholders’ recommendations for improving Australian news media reporting of people with severe mental illness, violence and crime

ABSTRACT Objective Media portrayals of severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, psychosis and bipolar disorders, are often negative or prominently linked to violence or crime and consequently have a negative influence on public attitudes and behaviours. This study aimed to determine key stakeholders’ recommendations for improving news reporting of severe mental illness in the context of violence and crime. Method Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Australian key stakeholders including people with lived experience of severe mental illness (n = 12), news media professionals (n = 12) and mental health professionals (n = 8) with expertise in media reporting of mental illness. Data were analysed thematically. Results Recommendations for improving news reports of violence and crime were consistent with existing guidance for reporting on mental illness more generally. This covered inclusion of positive stories of the lived experience of severe mental illness, avoiding undue prominence of severe mental illness, and discussing underlying broader social issues. The importance of improving media professionals’ understanding of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, psychosis and bipolar disorder was emphasised. Additional supports and resources were acknowledged as being necessary to facilitate change to media portrayals. Incentives for improving media portrayals barriers and enablers were also discussed. Discussion These findings indicate that it would be useful and feasible to implement guidelines for media reporting on severe mental illness that provide specific and detailed guidance for reporting on violence and crime. Feedback from participants has already informed the development of these guidelines, and the findings of this study will inform their implementation to help ensure widespread dissemination and uptake.