Subsequent Experience Research Articles

Cultural normative beliefs in the U.S. as a determinant of negative dental experiences and dental anxiety: a preliminary investigation

AbstractDental anxiety, a predictor of both dental treatment avoidance and health outcomes, has been linked with early negative dental experiences. The causes of this relationship remain largely unexplored. This study provides a preliminary exploration of within-cultural variations of dental normative beliefs on the perception of negative dental experiences and the subsequent experience of dental anxiety in the U.S. A sample of 190 U.S. adults recruited from Amazon’s MTurk completed measures of cultural normative beliefs about oral health care, age and fear at first dental visit, history of negative dental experiences, and dental anxiety. Factor analysis yielded support for a three-factor model (daily maintenance, regular check-up, and dental treatment) of the dental cultural normative beliefs scale. Correlations and structural equation modeling found support for a previously posited theoretical model in which negative dental experiences and fear at first dental visit mediate associations between the cultural normative beliefs and dental anxiety. Most notably, cultural normative beliefs favoring a prevention orientation to dental treatment and daily maintenance of oral health predicted less fear at the first dentist visit, which in turn, related to fewer negative dental experiences and less dental anxiety. This preliminary survey suggests that dental cultural normative beliefs within the U.S. shape fear during initial dental visits. Future research should build on this initial work and explore between-cultural norm variations as well as strategies for changing cultural normative beliefs to improve perceptions of dental experiences and lessen dental anxiety.

The Maternal Body, HIV and Race: Dual Raced and Ambivalent Maternal Experiences in a Vertically Infected HIV-Positive Adolescent

The HIV pandemic in South Africa has tragically left a wake of vertically infected children who have suffered parental loss and social marginalization. Vertically infected HIV-positive children are those who have acquired the virus from their mother during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. In this paper, the development and alienation of the self is explored in a psychoanalytically informed research case study of a black adolescent girl who was vertically infected with HIV and later fostered by a white mother. This case study explores the sociogenic meanings of raced maternal experiences and disease identified in a series of psychoanalytic interviews, using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Drawing from Melanie Klein, Franz Fanon and other feminist and post-colonial psychoanalytic theorists, the early primal raced and diseased scene is considered through internalizations and fixation on the body. Nosipho is first introduced through a short vignette and a discussion of her early maternal relational experiences. The paper then explores the ambivalence experienced by the participant as part of her HIV and raced lived experiences. HIV and raced subjectivities are both powerful internalized conscious as well as unconscious embodied experiences. For Nosipho, it has been a complicated process found in the shared dual mothering experiences between a biological mother who is black and the subsequent white maternal experiences. The interrogation of this embodied dual experiences of having black mothers who are HIV-positive whilst simultaneously having white mothering roles in children who are vertically infected with HIV is a terrain that is infused by deep contradictory and conflicting emotional and affective states around love and hate, joy and despair, fear, and hope, all at once. Consequently, holding both the HIV and the raced subjectivities is deeply painful for black children who are vertically infected with HIV.

Impact of Trauma on the Lives of Black Men With Multiple Arrests

A mixed-methods study was carried out to better characterize the life course experiences, with a focus on trauma, of men who had perpetrated gun violence and other violent crime, and who had multiple arrests and incarcerations. A small sample of 13 men with a history of a minimum of 12 arrests each as well as histories of gun violence, other violent crime, and incarceration was drawn from a social program providing cognitive therapy and job skills training in a major urban center. Participants completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 and completed an in-depth interview. Results demonstrated that the participants had extraordinarily significant levels of trauma exposure but that they had minimal avowed trauma symptoms. The exception is that every participant demonstrated a clinically relevant score on the Arousal subscale (Criterion E). Participants in interviews discussed a number of characteristics of their developmental years. They described near constant exposure to traumatic events, in some cases starting from very young ages. Most participants described a personal experience of numbing or desensitization to their experiences. They described the impact of gangs on both protecting them from trauma and exposing them to trauma, and they described their subsequent experiences of incarceration. They offered recommendations for strategies to minimize violent crime in communities.

EXPRESS: The Effect of Game Ad Outcome on Subsequent Mobile Gaming Experience: the Mediating Role of Inferred Difficulty

This study investigates the effect of game advertisement outcomes on a player’s subsequent gaming experience. Research on vicarious experience shows that individuals infer game difficulty to be higher when watching game advertisements where players lose (vs. win) the game. Building on the effort–paradox paradigm, the first of this three-part study shows that such higher inferred difficulty enhances enjoyment and engagement during subsequent gaming experiences, especially for advertisements featuring easy game levels. Solely manipulating the difficulty level, Study 2 confirms the underlying mechanism of inferred difficulty for the observed effect of game advertisement outcomes. Study 3a finds that the main positive effect of losing (vs. winning) ads does not hold for advertisements featuring difficult game levels. Study 3b further explores this by focusing only on advertisements with difficult game levels, investigating how variations in players’ self-efficacy might influence their response to losing advertisements depicting difficult game levels. The findings across four studies suggest that, when promoting easy game levels, marketers can use advertisements with losing outcomes to extend gaming sessions, thereby increasing revenue from in-game advertisements. However, for difficult game levels, advertisements with losing outcomes are effective only for those with high self-efficacy.

Twists to Classical Conditioning of Adult Drosophila.

Memory has been extensively studied in Drosophila since the early 1970s. Straightforward aversive and appetitive conditioning paradigms train populations of flies to associate the pairing of one of two odors with either punishment or reward. After training, the flies show either preferential avoidance or approach behavior, to the appropriate odor, when given a choice between the two odors in a simple T-maze apparatus. These basic experimental approaches have proven useful in understanding the genetic, molecular, cellular, and neuronal network bases of various valence-specific memories in the fly brain. In addition, numerous modifications to these assays have permitted the study of a broad range of memory-related phenomena. Labile short-term avoidance and approach memories can be readily distinguished from more stable "consolidated" long-term memory equivalents. Prior or subsequent experience of the training cues, and manipulations of the flies' condition, have revealed how parallel competing memories and incompatible states can temporarily interfere with memory retrieval, providing insight into mechanisms of forgetting. Recent studies have also modified the training and testing apparatus to allow simultaneous presentation of odors and colors, providing insight into mechanisms of multisensory learning.

Ensemble memory of a scene interacts with current perception regardless of attentional requirements.

How do we maintain a rich and stable perceptual experience across the entire visual scene, even when we are focusing on a subset of visual inputs? The current study explored this question by investigating whether the visual system processes summary statistics of multiple features regardless of task relevance, and how they interact with subsequent perception. To test the processing of multifeature summary statistics under different attentional requirements, we presented multiple Gabor patches with heterogeneous orientations/colors and asked participants to attend to a single feature dimension (Experiments 1 and 3) or a single item (Experiment 2) for the memory task. During the memory maintenance period (before memory response), we asked the participants to perform a discrimination task (Experiments 1 and 2) or a boundary localization task (Experiment 3) to test how the memory of the ensemble representation alters the subsequent perceptual experience. We found evidence for obligatory processing of scene summary statistics presented for the memory task, which interacted with the subsequent perceptual sensitivity. Specifically, not only summary statistics relevant but also those of task-irrelevant feature (Experiments 1 and 3) and outside the focus of attention (Experiment 2) were encoded and bidirectionally interacted with subsequent perception. These results suggest obligatory processing of summary statistics of a scene, which may allow rich and stable visual experience by integrating temporally adjacent visual inputs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Experience of Euclidean geometry sculpts the development and dynamics of rodent hippocampal sequential cell assemblies

Euclidean space is the fabric of the world we live in. Whether and how geometric experience shapes our spatial-temporal representations of the world remained unknown. We deprived male rats of experience with crucial features of Euclidean geometry by rearing them inside spheres, and compared activity of large hippocampal neuronal ensembles during navigation and sleep with that of cuboid cage-reared controls. Sphere-rearing from birth permitted emergence of accurate neuronal ensemble spatial codes and preconfigured and plastic time-compressed neuronal sequences. However, sphere-rearing led to diminished individual place cell tuning, more similar neuronal mapping of different track ends/corners, and impaired pattern separation and plasticity of multiple linear tracks, coupled with reduced preconfigured sleep network repertoires. Subsequent experience with multiple linear environments over four days largely reversed these effects. Thus, early-life experience with Euclidean geometry enriches the hippocampal repertoire of preconfigured neuronal patterns selected toward unique representation and discrimination of multiple linear environments.

Predicting Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Collective Wrongdoing: Effects of Imagined Versus Experienced Collective Guilt on Moral Behavior

ABSTRACTPast research has shown that people are inconsistent when making predictions about emotions and moral behaviors following their own wrongdoing. However, it is less clear how people react when they did not cause the wrongdoing themselves but the group or collective they associate with. The present paper investigates people's reactions to collective wrongdoing and the question (1) whether the prediction of the experience of group‐based guilt is related to actual moral behaviors and (2) whether this prediction is reliable. In three studies, we analyze collective guilt and subsequent behavioral reactions. Study 1 involved real academic situations, varying the kind of unfair treatment of others. A priori, participants overestimated their own subsequent experiences of collective guilt as well as their moral behavior. With respect to actual responses, experienced guilt was the strongest predictor of behavioral reactions, while imagined guilt, in‐group identification and satisfaction did not significantly predict responses. Moreover, participants also reacted more to the direct harm caused by their group to others than to unjustified privileges granted to others. Study 2 fully replicated these results and showed relative stability in the predictions of collective guilt. Study 3 compared the responses by participants of the previous two studies with their responses 5 years later, indicating high stability of the observed effects over time. Also, we observed that making repeated predictions after experiencing the guilt‐eliciting situation did not improve the accuracy of our participants' predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for self‐predictions, behavioral and affective forecasting of collective emotions, and for common assessment methods of guilt by hypothetical vignettes.

Treatment mechanism and outcome decoupling effects in cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and behavior therapy for chronic pain.

Findings suggest that cognitive therapy (CT), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and behavior therapy (BT) for chronic pain produce improvements through changes in putative mechanisms. Evidence supporting this notion is largely based on findings showing significant associations between treatment mechanism variables and outcomes. An alternative view is that treatments may work by reducing or decoupling the impact of changes in mechanism variables on changes in outcomes. We examined the degree to which relationships between previous changes in potential treatment mechanisms and subsequent changes in outcomes changed as treatment progressed and vice versa. Cognitive therapy, MBSR, BT, and treatment as usual (TAU) were compared in people with chronic low back pain (N = 521). Eight individual sessions were administered with weekly assessments of putative treatment mechanisms and outcomes. Lagged analyses revealed mechanism × session number interactions and outcome × session number interactions, such that associations between mechanism and outcome variables were strong and significant in the first third of treatment, but weakened over time and became nonsignificant by the last third of treatment. These effects were similar across treatment conditions but did not emerge among people undergoing TAU. Results suggest that during the course of CT, MBSR, and BT, the links between changes in treatment mechanism variables became decoupled from subsequent changes in outcomes and vice versa. Thus, starting by midtreatment and continuing into late treatment, participants may have learned through participation in the treatments that episodes of maladaptive pain-related thoughts and/or spikes in pain need not have detrimental consequences on their subsequent experience.

Surfacing of Latent Time Memories Supports the Representational Basis of Timing Behavior in Mice

Animals can adapt their reward expectancy to changes in delays to reward availability. When temporal relations are altered, associative models of interval timing predict that the original time memory is lost due to the updating of the underlying associative weights, whereas the representational models render the preservation of the original time memory (as previously demonstrated in the extinction of conditioned fear). The current study presents the critical test of these theoretical accounts by training mice with two different intervals in a consecutive fashion (short → long or long → short) and then testing timing behaviors during extinction where neither temporal relation is in effect. Mice that were trained with the long interval first clustered their anticipatory responses around the average of two intervals (indirect higher-order manifestation of two memories in the form of temporal averaging), whereas mice trained with the short interval first clustered their responses either around the short or long interval (direct manifestation of memory representations by their independent indexing). We assert that the original memory representation formed during training with the long interval “metrically affords” the integration of subsequent experiences with a shorter interval, allowing their co-activation during extinction. The original memory representation formed during training with the short interval would not metrically afford such integration and thus result in the formation of a new (mutually exclusive) time memory representation, which does not afford their co-activation during extinction. Our results provide strong support for the representational account of interval timing. We provide a new theoretical account of these findings based on the “metric affordances” of the original memory representation formed during training with the original intervals.

Middle‐Class Versus Working‐Class White Mothers’ Approaches to Diversity in the Netherlands

There is a large body of literature on how white middle‐class parents select schools for their children in gentrifying urban contexts. In this study, we aimed to explore the experiences of such parents after enrolling their children in ethnically mixed schools but also how these experiences varied in gentrifying urban contexts and smaller cities. We interviewed mothers without a migration background living in a large city (Amsterdam) or a medium‐sized city (Tilburg) who had chosen to send their children to an ethnically mixed school in a majority–minority neighbourhood, asking them to reflect on their neighbourhood choice, school choice, and subsequent experiences. Based on our analysis, we developed a typology of parents’ positions towards diversity, whereby they could be described as idealists, pragmatists, and realists. Aligned with previous studies, this article shows that the idealist position on diversity was more common among the white middle classes in Amsterdam, who expressed a positive attitude towards diversity but engaged with it to a controlled and limited extent. However, we also identified a group of mothers, mostly working class but also middle class, who did not take an idealized approach to diversity but embraced it as a lived reality. The study underlines the importance of mothers’ engagement with diversity during their own childhood and youth as an important factor in shaping parenting behaviour around diversity.

State-dependent connectivity in auditory-reward networks predicts peak pleasure experiences to music.

Music can evoke pleasurable and rewarding experiences. Past studies that examined task-related brain activity revealed individual differences in musical reward sensitivity traits and linked them to interactions between the auditory and reward systems. However, state-dependent fluctuations in spontaneous neural activity in relation to music-driven rewarding experiences have not been studied. Here, we used functional MRI to examine whether the coupling of auditory-reward networks during a silent period immediately before music listening can predict the degree of musical rewarding experience of human participants (N = 49). We used machine learning models and showed that the functional connectivity between auditory and reward networks, but not others, could robustly predict subjective, physiological, and neurobiological aspects of the strong musical reward of chills. Specifically, the right auditory cortex-striatum/orbitofrontal connections predicted the reported duration of chills and the activation level of nucleus accumbens and insula, whereas the auditory-amygdala connection was associated with psychophysiological arousal. Furthermore, the predictive model derived from the first sample of individuals was generalized in an independent dataset using different music samples. The generalization was successful only for state-like, pre-listening functional connectivity but not for stable, intrinsic functional connectivity. The current study reveals the critical role of sensory-reward connectivity in pre-task brain state in modulating subsequent rewarding experience.

Rethinking and advancing the movement of resistance, activism, and advocacy in health in four central arenas of the Middle East Region

AbstractThe Middle East region has a long history of resistance, activism, and advocacy movements in health, most recently as part of the 2011 region‐wide Arab Spring. Despite this storied history, however, movements of resistance, activism, and advocacy in health in the region are rarely unpacked, examined, or documented. This historical and contextual analysis aims to examine the long‐standing confiscated health rights and subsequent experiences of resistance, activism, and advocacy in health in populations in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq. Promoting a health equity and health rights‐based approach is key to achieving Universal Health Coverage and health‐related Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in contexts that experience fragile socioeconomic and humanitarian conditions and political instability such as many countries in the Middle East. Marginalized populations, including Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, Lebanese Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender+ (LGBT) communities, Egyptian women and girls affected by Female Genital Mutilation, and Iraqi refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, have been severely impacted by decades of oppression, conflict, and displacement. These populations have faced various forms of discrimination, neglect, and violence that have hindered their access to quality healthcare and basic health rights. Rather than relying on government efforts, local and international movements to advocate for and protect the health rights of these populations are key. Innovative approaches, strategic dialogue and collective actions are prerequisites for promoting resistance, activism, and advocacy in health in all country's systems structure. This analysis highlights the important of this social public health issue in the most turbulent region and provides evidence to guide all countries to realize equitable human rights for health for all populations.

I can’t get satisfaction: examining the moderating role of service brand authenticity in the relationship of imperfect experiences and satisfaction

PurposeThis study aims to examine the moderating role of dimensions of brand authenticity (continuity, credibility, integrity and symbolism) in the relationship between evaluations of imperfect experiences and satisfaction within a service experience context. Building on prior research arguing for the subjective evaluation of service experiences as well as for the use of signals during dynamic experiences that build a shield to protect a brand, it assumes that service experiences range across a continuum of experiential perfection/imperfection.Design/methodology/approachTwo Web-based surveys, one pilot (N = 231) and one main (N = 349) have been conducted. The survey methodology was complemented by a (moderated) structural equation modelling approach taken for the data analysis.FindingsThe findings indicate that imperfect experiences in a restaurant context have a negative influence on satisfaction. Brand continuity, credibility, integrity and symbolism authenticity weaken the negative relationship between imperfect experiences and satisfaction, but this effect seems to depend on the type of experiential imperfections.Originality/valueThe current study provides theoretical and preliminary empirical evidence explaining how dynamic interactions with customers can impact subsequent static experiences. The authors found that the strength of the relationship between imperfect experiential elements and satisfaction does not only depend on perceived brand authenticity and does not always weaken when brand authenticity is present.

Context-dependence of deterministic and nondeterministic contributions to closed-loop steering control.

In natural circumstances, sensory systems operate in a closed loop with motor output, whereby actions shape subsequent sensory experiences. A prime example of this is the sensorimotor processing required to align one's direction of travel, or heading, with one's goal, a behavior we refer to as steering. In steering, motor outputs work to eliminate errors between the direction of heading and the goal, modifying subsequent errors in the process. The closed-loop nature of the behavior makes it challenging to determine how deterministic and nondeterministic processes contribute to behavior. We overcome this by applying a nonparametric, linear kernel-based analysis to behavioral data of monkeys steering through a virtual environment in two experimental contexts. In a given context, the results were consistent with previous work that described the transformation as a second-order linear system. Classically, the parameters of such second-order models are associated with physical properties of the limb such as viscosity and stiffness that are commonly assumed to be approximately constant. By contrast, we found that the fit kernels differed strongly across tasks in these and other parameters, suggesting context-dependent changes in neural and biomechanical processes. We additionally fit residuals to a simple noise model and found that the form of the noise was highly conserved across both contexts and animals. Strikingly, the fitted noise also closely matched that found previously in a human steering task. Altogether, this work presents a kernel-based analysis that characterizes the context-dependence of deterministic and non-deterministic components of a closed-loop sensorimotor task.

Convergence of online flow and AI-enabled services: the impact on awe experience in e-tail customer journeys

ABSTRACT This study investigates how control, concentration, and enjoyment impact customers’ awe experience in e-tailing, and examines how AI-enabled services may alter online flow dynamics. The research employed cutting-edge data collection techniques using an AI-driven platform developed by an Indian online survey firm. Participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and snowball sampling. Variables were measured using a Likert-type scale, with survey credibility and validity ensured through rigorous measures, including feedback collection and analysis. Through a novel research model and the ‘broaden-and-build theory,’ the study reveals that customers’ awe experience can be significantly influenced by control and concentration. Surprisingly, AI-powered e-retail services negatively affected two flow dimensions and subsequent awe experience. However, customers’ awe experience positively correlated with AI service quality, indicating emotions’ criticality. These findings provide new insights for future research and e-tailers to design effective marketing strategies enhancing customer journeys. The study underscores the importance of fashion retailers embracing AI technology to meet dynamic customer expectations, yielding enhanced efficiency and cost-effectiveness through process automation and waste minimization. By integrating AI, the industry undergoes a significant transformation, effectively redefining the shopping experience.

An Examination of Social Work Interventions for Female Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Example of Türkiye

This study explores the life experiences of young women in northwest Türkiye, who were subjected to childhood sexual abuse. It considers the social services provided during their time in institutional care and their subsequent life experiences. The research adopts a holistic approach, encompassing the young women’s childhood experiences, the disclosure of abuse, the care received from statuary services, and the post-care challenges based on their narratives. The key research questions are: "How do institutional social work interventions affect the long-term recovery of young women who experienced childhood sexual abuse?" and "How effective is institutional care in preparing these women for life thereafter?" Employing a qualitative research methodology, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 women to retrospectively analyze their life experiences through the life history method. Furthermore, focus group discussions were conducted with social workers and representatives from non-governmental organizations. The findings emphasize that although institutional care caters to the immediate needs of children, it inadequately supports their development into well-adjusted adults capable of informed decision-making across different life contexts. Consequently, this deficiency leads to new and persisting challenges in family relationships, housing, partner choice, marriage, and motherhood, exacerbating the trauma resulting from sexual abuse. Results suggest a need to restructure social services in the field of child protection system in Türkiye to better address the long-term effects of trauma of child sexual abuse. Further research should assess the interventions for families of these children’s in care, to identify and meet specific needs, thereby enhancing intervention strategies.

Exploring Transnational Identity and Borders in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

In contemporary Indian literature, post-independent writers grapple with the complexities of identity and nationhood amidst historical legacies such as partition, migration, displacement, and violence. These issues delve into the primal origins of people and their subsequent diasporic experiences, which challenge their cultural and societal identities. This paper aims to delve into the theme of transcending national identity in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines. Through the novel, Ghosh interrogates the construction of borders and national identities, probing the boundaries between people and the geographical landscapes they inhabit. Set against the backdrop of significant historical events like the freedom movement in Bengal, the Second World War, and the partition of India in 1947, the narrative spans three generations across three distinct cities—Calcutta, Dhaka, and London. The characters navigate diverse horizons, shaped by memories of traumatic historical events and nationalist struggles. Their journey from ‘Going Away’ to ‘Coming Home’ is marked by blurred lines between nations and families, symbolized as ‘Shadow Lines,’ transcending temporal and spatial borders in their diasporic experiences. Additionally, the paper delves into the intricacies of individual identity and the inner and outward conflicts arising from geographical dislocation and cultural disparities depicted in the novel.

Subjective unemployment expectations and (self-)insurance

We study subjective unemployment expectations and their influence on economic behavior. We utilize a longitudinal data set combining survey elicited subjective unemployment expectations with administrative data on income, savings, and unemployment insurance. Our findings indicate that subjective expectations hold valuable predictive information about subsequent unemployment experiences. We find that individuals tend to overestimate their risk of unemployment. Moreover, higher unemployment expectations lead to a greater likelihood of enrolling in unemployment insurance and accumulation of liquid savings.

Effects of delay sequence in a delay discounting task

Delay discounting refers to the decrease in subjective value of a reward as the delay until its receipt increases. In the present study we assessed the effects of the sequence of delay blocks (increasing or decreasing) on discounting and the data systematicity using a titrating procedure with human participants. All participants completed the delay discounting task in both an increasing and decreasing sequence of delays. Delays ranged from one day to ten years. We found steeper discounting when the delays were presented in an increasing sequence compared with when they were presented in a decreasing sequence. We also found steeper discounting when participants completed the increasing sequence condition first. Our results agree with other findings reported in the literature and suggest that delay discounting may be affected by prior and subsequent experience.