Visible Actions Research Articles

The Body as Evidence for the Nature of Language.

Taking its cue from sign languages, this paper proposes that the recruitment and composition of body actions provide evidence for key properties of language and its emergence. Adopting the view that compositionality is the fundamental organizing property of language, we show first that actions of the hands, face, head, and torso in sign languages directly reflect linguistic components, and illuminate certain aspects of compositional organization among them that are relevant for all languages, signed and spoken. Studies of emerging sign languages strengthen the approach by showing that the gradual recruitment of bodily articulators for linguistic functions directly maps the way in which a new language increases in complexity and efficiency over time. While compositional communication is almost exclusively restricted to humans, it is not restricted to language. In the spontaneous, intense emotional displays of athletes, different emotional states are correlated with actions of particular face and body features and feature groupings. These findings indicate a much more ancient communicative compositional capacity, and support a paradigm that includes visible body actions in the quest for core linguistic properties and their origins.

Multiplicity-freeness of Unitary Representations in Sections of Holomorphic Hilbert Bundles

Abstract We prove several results asserting that the action of a Banach–Lie group on Hilbert spaces of holomorphic sections of a holomorphic Hilbert space bundle over a complex Banach manifold is multiplicity-free. These results require the existence of compatible anti-holomorphic bundle maps and certain multiplicity-freeness assumptions for stabilizer groups. For the group action on the base, the notion of an $(S,\sigma )$-weakly visible action (generalizing T. Koboyashi’s visible actions) provides an effective way to express the assumptions in an economical fashion. In particular, we derive a version for group actions on homogeneous bundles for larger groups. We illustrate these general results by several examples related to operator groups and von Neumann algebras.

Corporate social responsibility in emerging economies: A case of Indian agribusiness

This empirical article investigates indicators and motives of modern corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in Indian agribusiness context. The study uses content analysis of semi-structure interviews of 28 managers in four large Indian agribusiness firms. This study follows an inductive approach and offers a framework that provides insights into the indicators of agribusiness sector specific real motives of Indian firms for pursuing CSR. According to this framework, Indian agribusiness firms engage into participatory approach of community development as a proxy to CSR resulting finally in community ownership of CSR projects leading to sustainable CSR engagement. Interestingly, the findings of the study emphasise that there is an apparent shift from earlier prevalent ethical and philanthropic approach of CSR to stakeholder approach in the context of Indian agribusiness. The study reveals that there are two clear indicators to gauge the CSR intentions of agribusiness firms; the 'visible community development actions' and 'quantum of fund invested in CSR'. The study also divulges that more often than not 'quantum of CSR fund' is a function of the real nature of business of the firm and its legal/business requirements rather than philanthropic or altruistic motives.

Developmental evidence for continuity from action to gesture to sign/word

Abstract What is linguistic communication and what is it not? Even if we often convey meanings through visible bodily actions, these are rarely considered part of human language. However, co-verbal gestures have compositional structure and semantic significance, while highly iconic structures are essential in sign languages. This paper offers a review of major studies conducted in our lab on the continuity from actions to gestures to words/signs in development. After a brief introduction, we show how gestures may bridge the gap between actions and words and how this interrelationship extends beyond early childhood and across cultures. We stress the role of sign language and multimodal communication in the study of language as a form of action and present recent research on motoric aspects of human communication. Studying the visible actions of speakers and signers leads to a revision of the traditional dichotomy between linguistic and enacted, and to the development of a new approach to embodied language.

Attention to Quotation(s): From Activation to Inhibition

In the spirit of Talmy’s recent remark on desirable extensions of cognitive semantics into discourse analysis and multimodality, this paper outlines an agenda for framing quotation as an attention- and modality-sensitive phenomenon. A quotation’s distinct discourse function by itself – naturally – calls for an attention-driven analysis, and the representational subsystems of language yield modality-specific manifestations: Conventionalized figural delimiters prompt quotations’ metalinguistic and verbatim status in writing, while in (casual) speech they tend to stand out through vocal dynamics and visible bodily actions. With recourse to Talmy’s attention-based trigger-and-target construct, I will scrutinize a cross-section of videotaped samples of quoting by experienced us speakers from different speech genres in public settings, to demonstrate orally performed quotations’ responsiveness to attentional gradience: Exhibiting patterns of activation, attenuation, inhibition, and sustainment in indexing ‘the other voice,’ the case studies illustrate multiple effects of fore- and backgrounding ensuing from the different modalities’ complex interactions.

International advocacy NGOs, counter accounting, accountability and engagement

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how and why international advocacy NGOs (iaNGOs) use counter accounting as part of their campaigns against oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to reform problematic regulatory systems and make visible corporate practices that exploit governance and accountability gaps in relation to human rights violations and environmental damage.Design/methodology/approachThis arena study draws on different sources of evidence, including interviews with nine iaNGOs representatives involved in campaigns in the Niger Delta. The authors mapped out the history of the conflict in order to locate and make sense of the interviewees’ views on counter accounting, campaigning strategies, accountability and governance gaps as well as their motivations and aspirations for change.FindingsThe evidence revealed an inability of vulnerable communities to engage in relevant governance systems, due to unequal power relationships, corporate actions and ineffective governance practices. NGOs used counter accounts as part of their campaigns to change corporate practices, reform governance systems and address power imbalances. Counter accounts made visible problematic actions to those with power over those causing harm, gave voice to indigenous communities and pressured the Nigerian Government to reform their governance processes.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the intentions, desired outcomes and limitations of NGO’s use of counter accounting could influence human rights accountability and governance reforms in political institutions, public sector organisations, NGOs and corporations, especially in developing countries.Social implicationsThis paper seeks to contribute to accounting research that seeks to protect the wealth and natural endowments of indigenous communities to enhance their life experience.Originality/valueBy interviewing the preparers of counter accounts the authors uncover their reasons as to why they find accounting useful in their campaigns.

Особливості вокально-сценічного втілення персонажів оперного твору.

Метою статті є виявлення театрально-сценічних принципів і вокально-виконавських прийомів, що сприяють втіленню образних характеристик оперного персонажу. Методологічна основа статті полягає в історико-стильовому з особливою увагою до естетичного походження опери та смисловому призначенню музики, музикознавчому аналітичному, театрознавчому й стильовому підходах. Наукова новизна полягає в розгляді важливих вокально-виконавських, драматургічних і театрально-сценічних аспектів втілення персонажа оперного твору. Висновки. Таким чином, при роботі вокаліста над створенням образу оперного персонажа, слід враховувати, що дія трактується як сукупність реакцій людини на обставини, вона входить до складу вчинку і підпорядковується її спонукальним мотивам та прагне до досягнення мети. Але дії та рух заздалегідь зазвичай не плануються лише у повсякденній реальності; сценічне життя, навпаки, передбачає наявність у виконавця обдуманих реакцій – навмисно видимі руху і дії, що здійснюються від імені персонажа з єдиною метою – розкрити свідомі, несвідомі або приховані рухи думки, переживання героя. Отже, лише у стані перевтілення співака в співака-актора, розпоряджаючись його психофізикою, сам персонаж виявляє дієву свободу.Ключові слова: опера, оперний персонаж, сценічний образ, театрально-сценічні засоби виразності.

Reputation in an economic game modulates premotor cortex activity during action observation.

Our interactions with other people - and our processing of their actions - are shaped by their reputation. Research has identified an Action Observation Network (AON) which is engaged when observing other people's actions. Yet, little is known about how the processing of others' actions is influenced by another's reputation. Is the response of the AON modulated by the reputation of the actor? We developed a variant of the ultimatum game in which participants watched either the visible or occluded actions of two 'proposers'. These actions were tied to decisions of how to split a pot of money although the proposers' decisions on each trial were not known to participants when observing the actions. One proposer made fair offers on the majority of trials, establishing a positive reputation, whereas the other made predominantly, unfair offers resulting in a negative reputation. We found significant activations in two regions of the left dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC). The first of these showed a main effect of reputation with greater activation for the negative reputation proposer than the positive reputation proposer. Furthermore individual differences in trust ratings of the two proposers covaried with activation in the right primary motor cortex (M1). The second showed an interaction between visibility and reputation driven by a greater effect of reputation when participants were observing an occluded action. Our findings show that the processing of others' actions in the AON is modulated by an actor's reputation, and suggest a predictive role for the PMC during action observation.

The coordination of moves in Aikido interaction

Relying on the analysis of naturally occurring interaction recordings, this article proposes the moment-by-moment description of a specific type of focused interaction, the interaction of the martial art Aikido. In Aikido encounters, participants exchange moves of attack, defense, avoidance also using a “weapon”. These “Aikido movements”, as I shall call them, are articulated by the whole body and serve as projectable interactional units. Aikido movements appear as highly ordered minimal units of the practitioners’ activity which are coordinated between them in space and time. Central in this account is the description of the interactional space elaborated through the moving transactional segments of the practitioners. I suggest that the description of the visible bodily actions of Aikido opens a range of questions concerning the social and interactional construction of human perception in any activity involving whole body movements. As visible actions, Aikido movement and gesture share the property of becoming units of the social activity they organize.

Understanding intentional actions from observers’ viewpoints: A social neuroscience perspective

When we see others, we also try to ‘see’ their unobservable states of minds, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. We carefully monitor others’ actions, as we assume that those actions are outward manifestations of their internal states. Actors and observers can have divergent views on the cause of the same actions. Critically, it is often the observers’ view that affects important decisions in social life, from deciding the optimal level of cooperation to judging moral responsibility and court's decisions. Thus, the judgment about intentionality and agency in others’ actions determines the way in which the observer deals with the actor. The primate brain has two separate neural systems that function in understanding others’ actions and intentions. The mirror system is activated by others’ visible actions and predicts their physical consequences in goal terms, whereas the mentalizing system is primarily involved in the prediction of others’ intentions and upcoming actions regardless of whether others’ actions are directly observable or not. The functional roles of the two systems have sometimes been described as mutually independent or even oppositional. I propose a hypothesis that the two systems may collaborate closely for judging the sense of other-agency.

Constructing a Collective Identity Across Conflict Lines: Joint Israeli-Palestinian Peace Movement Organizations*

For collective action to occur and be sustainable, social movements must construct collective identities and develop a sense of themselves as collective actors. This is especially difficult for movements that work across deep political and cultural chasms, and in situations of protracted conflict. Yet, there has been almost no research on how movement organizations, which work across conflict lines in situations of protracted conflict, are able to establish this sense of cohesion. This project investigates how two joint Israeli-Palestinian peace movement organizations are able to construct shared collective identities in a political environment where each side is cast as the enemy of the other. The findings indicate that in protracted conflicts, trust building is a distinct and critical process inherent in constructing a collective identity. The findings similarly reveal that while storytelling goes a long way toward establishing trust initially, ultimately, collective identity construction depends on visible confirmatory actions.

Azobenzene‐containing LC polymethacrylates highly photosensitive in broad spectral range

ABSTRACTTwo photosensitive chiral liquid crystalline azobenzene‐containing polymethacrylates having different length of flexible spacer connecting chromophores with backbone were synthesized and their phase behavior and photo‐optical properties were studied. Both polymers consist of lateral methyl substituents in ortho‐position of azobenzene chromophores providing high photosensitivity even in red spectral region as well as high thermal stability of photoinduced Z‐form of azobenzene chromophores. It is shown, that smectic phase (SmA*) formation in films of polymer with longer spacer predetermines its quite unusual spectral response to UV and subsequent visible light actions. The SmA* phase promotes spontaneous homeotropic alignment of azobenzene chromophores in polymer films. UV‐irradiation induces not only E‐Z isomerization but also results in disruption of homeotropic alignment, whereas subsequent visible light action enables to obtain films with the low degree of chromophores orientation. The photo‐orientation phenomena under the action of polarized light of different wavelength on polymer films were studied. The possibility of using red polarized light of moderate intensity for optical photorecording on polymer films is demonstrated. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2016, 54, 2962–2970

An exploratory study into the application of psychological theories and therapies in Australian mental health occupational therapy practice: Challenges to occupation-based practice.

While legitimate practice tools have been the subject of debate within the profession, little attention has been paid to psychological frames of reference (PFsOR). Hence, this article explores the ways psychological theories and therapies shape occupation-based practice in mental health settings. Narrative inquiry methods and thematic analysis were used to explore the career stories of nine occupational therapists who had worked in mental health practice for more than five years. Respondents found it difficult to hold onto their occupational focus in the psychology-dominated world of mental health practice. The main themes to emerge were (i) tension between occupation and psychology; (ii) overwhelming pressures to adopt PFsOR; (iii) resistance to PFsOR; and (iv) using PFsOR to enhance professional repertoires. Findings pointed to the need to ensure PFsOR include occupational considerations for occupation-based practice in mental health. A occupation-based perspective means balancing PFsOR with occupation-based considerations, so service-user issues are holistically addressed. There is a need to critically review occupational therapists' use of PFsOR lest their most visible practical actions appear psychologically based rather than occupation based.

Teaching and Learning through Art

This special issue of the CEPS Journal focuses on specific approaches related to teaching and learning about content and objectives from all school subject areas by transferring artistic expressive activities at the primary and secondary school levels, as well as in teacher training education. The aim of the issue is to present research examples of the resolution of didactic questions through the implementation of methods, activities and approaches that are characteristic of the arts, in order to improve teaching and learning in other educational areas with various goals.Especially noteworthy in today's school is the fact that the majority of students are in daily contact with television, video and video games, with their colourful, fast-moving sequences of images, and, of course, with computers, which provide a wide range of possible uses and experiences. Scanning and combining images and experimenting with the tools offered by different programmes, as well as exploring the possibility of multiple printings and the divergence between printed and screen images, are just a few possible areas to consider. These experiences not only imply an increasing speed of changing images, mechanical simplicity and broad possibilities in the resolution of different technical processes, but above all a specific experience of space perception and representation, which every pupil brings to the classroom, and which is essential to the different school subjects and to education in general.We are referring to a group of competencies that a human being can develop by seeing, as well as by having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects and symbols - whether natural or man-made - encountered in the environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, the individual is also able to communicate with others. The ability to analyse and interpret images and other visual material, although critical, is not sufficient in itself; it must be accompanied by an ability to create visual material, in order to use a specific language that allows the individual to consider synthesised images that stimulate hybrid sensitive experiences and operative experiences in a holistic way.The described spatial experiences are important not only in the case of art education but for other school subjects, as most of them deal with visual representations of all kinds. This proposition is important when talking about the development of the capacity to imagine spatial relationships in the fields of geometry, geography, biology, physics, chemistry or sports; not to mention visualisation within history, literature or learning a foreign language. On the other hand, refined means of visual and auditory perception - along with all of the content this concept involves and supposes - are required in almost all activities, and school must therefore offer students proper operative experiences and must develop specific competencies.The need for individualisation of the educational process demands creating flexible, alternative and dynamic teaching and learning strategies. Art expression in all of its variants offers a path to deep insight into and reflection on a range of content from different points of view, fostering integrative and multisensory experiences. In this way, the artistic experience accumulated through various modalities of transfer becomes a connection issue between different content and objectives, a support and point of departure in the design of didactic materials for different subjects, and a source of motivation to improve teaching and learning in other educational areas. However, this is based on the recognition that new media and digital technologies deal mostly with visual images of all kinds and their combination with other expressive instruments, as well as with auditory, kinaesthetic and verbal experiences, as an essential element in the interpretation and comprehension of data within different school subject areas. …

Geometry of Multiplicity-Free Representations of SO ( N ) $\mathrm {SO}(N)$ and Visible Actions

For compact simple groups G$G$ of type B or D, we find the pairs (V1,V2)$(V_{1},V_{2})$ of irreducible representations of G$G$ such that the tensor product representation V1?V2$V_{1}\otimes V_{2}$ is multiplicity-free by a geometric consideration based on the notion of visible actions on complex manifolds, introduced by T. Kobayashi. The pairs that we find exhaust all the multiplicity-free pairs (V1,V2)$(V_{1},V_{2})$ in comparison with the classification that was obtained earlier by Stembridge by combinatorial methods.

Admissible representations, multiplicity-free representations and visible actions on non-tube type Hermitian symmetric spaces

This paper presents new characterization for a non-compact Hermitian symmetric space $G/K$ to be of tube type (or non-tube type) by multiplicities in some branching laws and visible actions. The study in this paper gives an example of a kind of the Cartan decomposition for non-symmetric homogeneous spaces.

Anticipated responses: The positive side of elicited reactions to competitive action

This study advances the action-oriented perspective on strategy dynamics. Strategy research suggests that a firm’s profit will decrease when facing rival responses, yet anecdotal evidence indicates that countermoves may enhance its performance. What is the interaction effect of simultaneous negative- and positive-side competitive responses on organisational performance? We propose that the answer depends not only on the actor’s characteristics but also the action’s characteristics. Grounded in empirical facts, our formal model of competitive dynamics examines the possibility of anticipated responses that are deliberately elicited by the attacking firm. We show that against attentive rivals, a firm with high attention and low aggressiveness can utilise visible actions to achieve its strategic intention and deployment. Our study offers significant implications for theory and practice.

Introduction: gesture in film

In his classic study, Gesture, Adam Kendon describes the visible actions that comprise utterances (Kendon, 2004, pp. 1–2). These visible utterances can occur in conjunction with, or independently t...

Whither the bully pulpit: leadership communications and corporate transformation

Purpose – This paper aims to look at some classic business leader communications to assess which ones succeed and which ones fail to meet that standard. From Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Churchill to Lady Thatcher, we have grown used to the idea that the words of our leaders in times of crisis can change history. Is this also true of business leaders? Can their words transform companies? Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at specific leadership communications examples from IBM, Nokia, Starbucks, as well as McKinsey research, to try to tease out the elements of successful leadership communications in company transformations. Findings – What we found is that successful leadership communications in culture transformations share four principal characteristics: they are authentic to the personality of the leader; they are not one-time communications, but the beginnings of a cascade; they are personally relevant to each individual employee; and they are quickly followed by visible actions springing from the strategic direction set by the leader’s communications. Research limitations/implications – As a subjective review of a limited number of cases, the elements selected are potentially vulnerable to counter-examples. Practical implications – The four characteristics of leadership communications isolated in the research can be applied by any corporate leader or communications team to create effective communications in the context of culture transformation. Social implications – To the extent that corporate leaders adopt these principles, their communications will be more credible to external stakeholders and, by extension, enhance the reputation of business leaders as a whole. Originality/value – While this subject has been studied by others, the four principles for successful leadership communications have not been articulated in this way before to the best of the author’s knowledge.

Recognizing flu-like symptoms from videos.

BackgroundVision-based surveillance and monitoring is a potential alternative for early detection of respiratory disease outbreaks in urban areas complementing molecular diagnostics and hospital and doctor visit-based alert systems. Visible actions representing typical flu-like symptoms include sneeze and cough that are associated with changing patterns of hand to head distances, among others. The technical difficulties lie in the high complexity and large variation of those actions as well as numerous similar background actions such as scratching head, cell phone use, eating, drinking and so on.ResultsIn this paper, we make a first attempt at the challenging problem of recognizing flu-like symptoms from videos. Since there was no related dataset available, we created a new public health dataset for action recognition that includes two major flu-like symptom related actions (sneeze and cough) and a number of background actions. We also developed a suitable novel algorithm by introducing two types of Action Matching Kernels, where both types aim to integrate two aspects of local features, namely the space-time layout and the Bag-of-Words representations. In particular, we show that the Pyramid Match Kernel and Spatial Pyramid Matching are both special cases of our proposed kernels. Besides experimenting on standard testbed, the proposed algorithm is evaluated also on the new sneeze and cough set. Empirically, we observe that our approach achieves competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-arts, while recognition on the new public health dataset is shown to be a non-trivial task even with simple single person unobstructed view.ConclusionsOur sneeze and cough video dataset and newly developed action recognition algorithm is the first of its kind and aims to kick-start the field of action recognition of flu-like symptoms from videos. It will be challenging but necessary in future developments to consider more complex real-life scenario of detecting these actions simultaneously from multiple persons in possibly crowded environments.