Type Of Social Context Research Articles

Influence of distinct social contexts of long-term care facilities on the dynamics of spread of COVID-19 under predefine epidemiological scenarios

Abstract More than half of the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) related mortality rates in the United States and Europe are associated with long-term-care facilities (LTCFs) such as old-age organizations, nursing homes, and disability centers. These facilities are considered most vulnerable to spread of an pandemic like COVID-19 because of multiple reasons including high density of elderly population with a diverse range of medical requirements, limited resources, nursing activities/medications, and the role of external visitors. In this study, we aim to understand the role of visitor’s family members and specific interventions (such as use of face masks and restriction of visiting hours) on the dynamics of infection in a community using a mathematical model. The model considers two types of social contexts (community and LTCFs) with three different groups of interacting populations (non-mobile community individuals, mobile community individuals, and long-term facility residents). The goal of this work is to compare the outbreak burden between different centre of disease control (CDC) planning scenarios, which capture distinct types of intensity of diseases spread in LTCF observed during COVID-19 outbreak. The movement of community mobile members is captured via their average relative times in and out of the long-term facilities to understand the strategies that would work well in these facilities the CDC planning scenarios. Our results suggest that heterogeneous mixing worsens epidemic scenario as compared to homogeneous mixing and the epidemic burden is hundreds times greater for community spread than within the facility population.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the left middle frontal gyrus modulates the information people communicate in different social contexts

Neocortical structures of the left frontal lobe, middle frontal gyrus (MFG) in particular, have been suggested to be linked to the processing of punishing and unpleasant outcomes in decision tasks. To assess the role of left MFG (lMFG) in communicative decisions, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to inhibit its function during communicational exchanges under two types of social contexts: formal and informal. Three groups of participants received an offline 1-Hz inhibitory rTMS of lMFG, right MFG as an active control site, or lMFG sham/placebo TMS as a passive control condition. Participants’ task included answering difficult general-knowledge questions, rating their confidence in their answers’ correctness, and, finally, deciding if they would report or withhold these answers in formal and informal social contexts. There were significantly more reported than withheld answers in the informal context in all groups. The formal context showed no differences between reported and withheld answers in both control conditions, while, crucially, real rTMS of lMFG produced a different pattern, with more withheld than reported answers. Thus, lMFG inhibition seems to result in more rational decisions made only in formal communication contexts, where there is a perception of a certain pressure or possible negative outcomes. In informal social contexts and in the absence of negative consequences the pattern of answers did not change, regardless of the reporting strategy or the TMS protocol used. These results suggest selective context-dependent involvement of the lMFG in decision-making processes during communicational exchanges taking place under social pressure.

Face-work in Chinese routine criminal trials

AbstractThis article examines the performative aspect of face-to-face interactions among various legal actors and defendants in routine criminal trials in China. Using 105 trial videos as empirical data, the author develops a face-work framework to understand how an individual judge's “face”—signifying judges' legal and political roles, and their professional status—is established, protected, and enhanced during courtroom interactions. The study shows that the legal face of judges can be established by some characterizations of the nature of criminal trials such as the demarcation of legal space, the speed of the trial, and the apprising of rights to the defendants. Nevertheless, the legal face can also be disrupted by trial interactions due to judges' lack of judicial authority. Hence, Chinese judges maintain their authority through the establishment of their political face. They also use both their political face and legal face to establish their situational professional status. These interactions often lead to punitive and coercive measures against defendants in trials. While the article focuses on routine criminal trials in China, the face-work framework has the potential to explain courtroom interactions in other types of social contexts and legal proceedings.

Conversational pragmatics: memory reporting strategies in different social contexts.

Previous studies in conversational pragmatics have showed that the information people share with others heavily depends on the confidence they have in the correctness of a candidate answer. At the same time, different social contexts prompt different incentive structures, which set a higher or lower confidence criterion to determine which potential answer to report. In this study, we investigated how the different incentive structures of several types of social contexts and how different levels of knowledge affect the amount of information we are willing to share. Participants answered easy, intermediate, and difficult general-knowledge questions and decided whether they would report or withhold their selected answer in different social contexts: formal vs. informal, that could be either constrained (a context that promotes providing only responses we are certain about) or loose (with an incentive structure that maximizes providing any type of answer). Overall, our results confirmed that social contexts are associated with different incentive structures which affects memory reporting strategies. We also found that the difficulty of the questions is an important factor in conversational pragmatics. Our results highlight the relevance of studying different incentive structures of social contexts to understand the underlying processes of conversational pragmatics, and stress the importance of considering metamemory theories of memory reporting.

Temporal-aware and multifaceted social contexts modeling for social recommendation

The social recommendation has utilized ego network in a static manner, assuming that the way of social influence impacts users’ preferences is simplex and constant over time. Such assumptions hinder the effectiveness of social recommendation since the online social contexts are complicated and friends’ tastes may change across items consumption. To address this research gap, we propose a novel social recommendation model that focuses on the effect of different social contexts and the dynamics of social influence. Specifically, we first leverage a community detection algorithm to divide online users into various communities, named community-based social contexts. Based on the community structure, we introduce a hierarchical attention mechanism to evaluate the influence of multiple community-based social contexts. Secondly, we choose the directly connected neighbors, namely the ego-network based social contexts. In such social contexts, the model can capture the user’s preferences that are influenced by their friends’ dynamic behaviors. Then, the model could have a comprehensive representation of users’ current preferences by merging the impact of two types of social contexts. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art social recommendation models. The implementation of our model and the datasets are available at https://github.com/socialsnail/TSC.

Dyadic analysis of adolescent friendships behaviours during pain: Comparison of those with chronic pain versus those without chronic pain.

Social context has been found to influence pain intensity and tolerance. The aims of this study were to determine the impact of one type of social context on the painful experiences of adolescents with and without chronic pain by examining interactions within and across friendship dyads during experimental pain. Each adolescent in 61same-sex friendship dyads (30 dyads with a chronic pain member) across three sites participated in the cold pressor task and acted as the observer during their friend's participation. They also completed a battery of measures to capture friendship features and pain outcomes. Pain intensity was measured using an 11-point numeric scale. Pain tolerance was measured by the length of time in the cold pressor device. Videotapes of their interactions were coded for verbal and non-verbal behaviours. A series of Actor Partner Independence Modelling, Hierarchical Multiple Regression and Multivariate Analysis of Covariance was used to analyse the data. Friendship features were not associated with pain intensity or tolerance. Both members of dyads with a chronic pain member used fewer non-attending behaviours when they were observing their friend resulting in participants in those dyads having lower pain tolerance. Moreover, within dyads, one's friend's behaviours when experiencing pain influenced pain tolerance but only for those dyads with a chronic pain member. Strategies aimed at improving social interactions for adolescents with chronic pain while they are experiencing pain are discussed. Research is needed to understand how different peer relationships influence pain tolerance in adolescents with chronic pain. During pain, patterns of interactions differ within and between adolescent friendship dyads when one has chronic pain (CP) versus controls. Dyads with a CP member use fewer non-attending behaviours despite non-attending behaviours rated as more helpful. Pain intensity was solely related to the participant's behaviour. Amongst dyads with a CP member, pain tolerance was also influenced by their friend's behaviours. Friends of adolescents with pain engage in more unhelpful behaviours perhaps decreasing the ability of CP adolescents to engage in social activities.

The Role of Social Context in the Talent Development Process at the Higher Education Level

This small-scale study addresses the limited research available on the lifeworld experiences of gifted tertiary level students. Whilst there is a wealth of research on the experiences of gifted students at the primary and secondary school level, not much is known about the learning experiences of gifted undergraduates. This study seeks to give a voice to gifted undergraduates through a phenomenological framework, which is a methodology that allows the perceptions of the participant rather than that of outside researchers to take precedence. Four gifted graduates (2 male and 2 female) who attended a small, urban university in New South Wales and had achieved in the top 2% of their cohort were selected for this study. Participants described the types of learning environments that had supported their talent development such as mentorship and cross level classes, as well as types of social contexts that impeded the talent development process. Different types of social coping strategies were also uncovered. One interesting outcome of this study was the finding that many of the social coping strategies used by gifted students at the high school level were still in operation at the tertiary level. The implications of this study should help educators at the tertiary level better understand how to support the talent development process and develop optimal learning environments for their gifted student populations.

Influence of Coactors on Saccadic and Manual Responses.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of coaction on saccadic and manual responses. Participants performed the experiments either in a solitary condition or in a group of coactors who performed the same tasks at the same time. In Experiment 1, participants completed a pro- and antisaccade task where they were required to make saccades towards (prosaccades) or away (antisaccades) from a peripheral visual stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants performed a visual discrimination task that required both making a saccade towards a peripheral stimulus and making a manual response in reaction to the stimulus’s orientation. The results showed that performance of stimulus-driven responses was independent of the social context, while volitionally controlled responses were delayed by the presence of coactors. These findings are in line with studies assessing the effect of attentional load on saccadic control during dual-task paradigms. In particular, antisaccades – but not prosaccades – were influenced by the type of social context. Additionally, the number of coactors present in the group had a moderating effect on both saccadic and manual responses. The results support an attentional view of social influences.

Reducing injuries among young drivers: what kind of measures are needed?

Young drivers run a greater risk everywhere. Better understanding of the underlying processes to this problem are a useful tool in preventive endeavors. An understanding that a person’s life ambition and context of driving mostly influence young drivers in terms of traffic safety more than their ability of mastering different driving situations and their skill of vehicle maneuvering is important to understand young drivers overrisk. Research has indicated that a hierarchical approach to the task of driving can help to identify specifically which skills a driver needs to avoid crashes and injuries. Keskinen (1996) divided the task of driving into four separate levels (4. goals for life and skills for living, 3. goals and context of driving, 2. mastering traffic situations and 1. vehicle maneuvering) in which the higher levels are considered to always affect behavior on the lower levels.The idea behind a hierarchical approach is that success as well as failure on the higher levels will affect the demand on lower levels (Hatakka et al. 2002). Keskinen and others later developed a proficiency model comprising Goals for Driver Education (GDE) (Hatakka et al. 2002). The GDE matrix states specifically what driver training should focus on in order to produce the safest possible new drivers. Understanding the GDE matrix offers the possibility to use it to develop different countermeasures for young drivers. If this is adapted as closely as possible to this group and their driving situations, it should be possible to significantly enhance safety. Driver education or communication campaigns cannot be expected to radically change a young person’s life goals. Special courses for young drivers designed to make individuals conscious of their personal tendencies and the type of social context that affects their driving behaviour could be helpful, whether offered via the ordinary school system or at driving schools.To change a young driver’s goals behind driving and the context in which it is done, a variety of different methods of persuasion should be used. For example, communication campaigns and increased enforcement may be used simultaneously and in particular target young males. (Engström et al. 2003). Communication campaigns that employ persuasive, emotional messages are most effective where young drivers are concerned. Attitudes about safety are formed at an early age, long before legal driving, and therefore it would also be important also to target young adolescents. Laws need enforcement to be effective and should target areas of particular risk to young drivers

With Whom and Where You Play: Preschoolers' Social Context Predicts Peer Victimization.

This short-term longitudinal study assessed the relations between the social context of children's play (play-group size, play-group gender composition, and play setting) in the fall and peer victimization in the spring for low-income, minority, preschool girls and boys. Gender differences in these associations, as well as the moderating effect of children's individual problem behavior, were considered. Using a multiple-brief observation procedure, preschoolers' (N = 255, 49% girls) naturally occurring play in each type of social context was recorded throughout the fall semester. Observers also rated children's victimization and problem behaviors in the fall, and teachers rated children's victimization at the end of the school year. Findings suggested that social context variables predicted spring victimization above and beyond fall victimization and individual levels of problem behavior and that these associations varied for boys and girls. The findings signify the importance of the social context on changes in peer victimization.

Decision making across social contexts: competition increases preferences for risk in chimpanzees and bonobos

Context can have a powerful influence on decision-making strategies in humans. In particular, people sometimes shift their economic preferences depending on the broader social context, such as the presence of potential competitors or mating partners. Despite the important role of competition in primate conspecific interactions, as well as evidence that competitive social contexts impact primates’ social cognitive skills, there has been little study of how social context influences the strategies that nonhumans show when making decisions about the value of resources. Here we investigate the impact of social context on preferences for risk (variability in payoffs) in our two closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, and bonobos, Pan paniscus .I n afirst study, we examine the impact of competition on patterns of risky choice. In a second study, we examine whether a positive play context affects risky choices. We find that (1) apes are more likely to choose the risky option when making decisions in a competitive context; and (2) the play context did not influence their risk preferences. Overall these results suggest that some types of social contexts can shift patterns of decision making in nonhuman apes, much like in humans. Comparative studies of chimpanzees and bonobos can therefore

Exercising at home: Real-time interaction and experience sharing using avatars

This paper reports on the design of a vision-based exercise monitoring system. The system aims to promote well-being by making exercise sessions enjoyable experiences, either through real-time interaction and instructions proposed to the user, or via experience sharing or group gaming with peers in a virtual community. The use of avatars is explored as means of representation of the user’s exercise movements or appearance, and the system employs user-centric approaches in visual processing, behavior modeling via history data accumulation, and user feedback to learn the user’s appreciation. A preliminary user survey study has been conducted to explore the avatar appreciations across different types of social contexts.

How is Christianity Incarnated in Society?

This article offers a magisterial survey of the history of Christian interaction with the wider culture. Part of the purpose is to indicate how the current success of charismatic churches is symptomatic of a general pattern of interaction rather than some major digression from it. Arguing that Christianity inserts into culture a repertoire selectively received according to type of social context, the author addresses motifs such as the collective and/or individual Victim, the righteous remnant, the heroic leader or Solomonic king of an elect nation or empire, and the martyr, heretic or dissident arguing that in Jesus the prophet-priest-king motif is combined with the Victim and martyr motif, in such a way as to undermine the sacral unity of religion and empire in successive waves of evangelisation, Pentecostalism being the latest.

Toward a Multifaceted Model of the Structure of Social Justice Judgments

This study explores the potential cross-cultural generalizability of a conceptual framework for understanding the multifaceted universe of contents and structure of human social justice judgments (SJJ). The hypothesized framework identifies four elemental facets needed to define SJJ and specifies the types of justice contents people are likely to distinguish when evaluating the justness of a distribution—principles and distributive rules, social resources, sign of the outcome distribution (positive or negative), and the type of social context in which resources are distributed. To empirically verify the fit between the hypothesized structure, smallest space analysis was applied, and earlier findings obtained in an Israeli sample were compared to findings obtained in East and West German samples. Separate replications conducted in the East and West German samples revealed that the multidimensional configurations of SJJ intercorrelations could be partitioned into distinct regions of items that correspond to the facets’ hypothesized elements and their expected arrangements

Social context and social capital as enablers of knowledge integration

This paper argues that social contexts and social capital enable knowledge integration; that different social contexts combined with different types of social capital enable different types of knowledge integration. Four types of social contexts are distinguished based on the extent of social embeddedness and closeness of interorganizational coupling; four types of social capital are also described. Based on the diversity of knowledge streams, the extent of tacitness of knowledge to be exchanged, and value created through such exchanges, four modes of knowledge integration are identified, namely frontier, incremental, combinative, and instrumental. This paper provides new insights about the processes of interorganizational transfer of knowledge: the unique combination of a specific social context with a specific type of social capital means firms can achieve equally effective yet highly differentiated approaches to different modes of knowledge integration.

Social stress, autonomic neural activation, and cardiac activity in rats

Animal models of social stress represent a useful experimental tool to investigate the relationship between psychological stress, autonomic neural activity and cardiovascular disease. This paper summarizes the results obtained in a series of experiments performed on rats and aimed at verifying whether social challenges produce specific modifications in the autonomic neural control of heart rate and whether these changes can be detrimental for cardiac electrical stability. Short-term electrocardiographic recordings were performed via radiotelemetry and the autonomic input to the heart evaluated by means of time-domain heart rate variability measures. Compared to other stress contexts, a social defeat experience produces a strong shift of autonomic balance toward sympathetic dominance, poorly antagonized by vagal rebound, and associated with the occurrence of cardiac tachyarrhythmias. These effects were particularly severe when a wild-type strain of rats was studied. The data also suggest that the cardiac autonomic responses produced by different types of social contexts (dominant–subordinate interaction, dominant–dominant confrontation, social defeat) are related to different degrees of emotional activation, which in turn are likely modulated by the social rank of the experimental animal and the opponent, the prior experience with the stressor, and the level of controllability over the stimulus.

The Social Dynamics of Pottery Style in the Early Puebloan Southwest by Michelle Hegmon

748 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE vices: more precise control of firing, and knowledge of complemen­ tary clay and paint combinations for white wares; the complex tech­ nological process and limited distribution of the lead resources required for making glaze ware vessels; or the unusual dexterity and skill needed to produce large polychrome vessels. But what forces motivated the production of increasingly special­ ized pottery in the absence ofelite political control or market forces? Increased territoriality, economic marginalization, and the growth of communal ritual activities are proposed, and it seems likely these factors are causally interconnected to differing degrees. With this in mind, the volume supplies plenty of detailed analyses and well-writ­ ten discussion central to furthering our understanding of these pro­ cesses. Jane Peterson Dr. Peterson is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Marquette Univer­ sity. The Social Dynamics ofPottery Style in the Early Puebloan Southwest. By Michelle Hegmon. Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Pp. xx+272; figures, tables, bibliography. $22.95 (paper). Michelle Hegmon’s goal in this work is to understand style and the use of style by both groups and individuals in the northern Southwest in the 9th century A.D. The assumptions under which she pursues this goal are: 1) that style is complex and multidimensional and 2) that material culture is not merelya by-product or a reflection of social relations but is actively manipulated and “meaningfully constituted” in a variety of ways. Thus she explores the concept of style as it is used in archaeology. This discussion is both elegant and comprehensive. Therefore, Hegmon’s book is ofinterest and consti­ tutes a significant contribution on at least two levels: first, in her theoretical discussion of style, which she defines, in a general sense, as “a way of doing that involves choice”; second, in her exploration of the social relations in two areas of the northern Southwest (Black Mesa in northern Arizona and the Dolores River in southwestern Colorado). Hegmon’s discussion ofstyle will interest not only the archaeologi­ cal community but scholars of modern material culture. The breadth of its appeal is due largely to her view of style on multiple levels and to her ability to synthesize an extremely large, and often contentious, theoretical debate into a workable perspective. This synthesis requires that she weave together the best features of a vari­ ety of perspectives from the more traditional ones associated with processual archaeology to the more recent, postmodern contextual approach. The result is a view of style that pulls together contextspecific interpretations of meaning and stylistic manipulation into TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 749 a more general model of the role of style in certain types of social context. Further, she argues that the role played by style can be ex­ amined analytically by looking at the nature ofthe structure (or rules of organization) and the choice of design elements used. Hegmon then uses this general model to understand the chang­ ing uses of style in the northern Southwest. The 9th century was a very dynamic period in this region, one in which sedentism and horticulture came to dominate, resulting in the redrawing of social boundaries and redefinition of social relations. However, these re­ definitions occurred in very different ways in the two areas Hegmon examines. On Black Mesa, villages were relatively small and highly dispersed. Conversely, on the Dolores River, villages were very large and densely packed. Corresponding to these differences in settlement pattern are dif­ ferences in ceramic style. In particular, sites in the Black Mesa area have more painted pottery than do sites in the Dolores area. Addi­ tionally, the design structure is much more rigid on Black Mesa and the design attributes are less varied (i.e., there is greater heterogene­ ity in both aspects of style in the Dolores assemblage). Also, the level of stylistic diversity increased through time in the Dolores area while it remained relatively stable at Black Mesa. Hegmon concludes from this pattern that style played a very different role in the two areas. She interprets the greater degree of stylistic variability at both the structural and the design-element level in the Dolores area as an indication of...