Horizontal asymmetries derived from script direction : consequences for attention and action

Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Psicologia na área de especialização de Psicologia Social apresentada no ISPA - Instituto Universitário, no ano de 2021.A direção de leitura e escrita estabelecem uma trajetória preferencial de exploração do espaço que é reforçada por diversas regularidades culturais consistentes com essa direccionalidade. A correlação espaço-movimento cria um esquema para a ação que enviesa a representação da agência humana, estendendo-se à representação de outros conceitos abstratos que não possuem bases sensoriomotoras. A dimensão horizontal é recrutada para melhor compreender estes conceitos, sendo ancorados de acordo com a direção de escrita e leitura da nossa língua. A assimetria espacial que esta direccionalidade induz constitui um contributo crucial para a área do embodiment, tendo sido demonstrado que afeta processos sociais e cognitivos. Contudo, os processos específicos que estas assimetrias ativam permanecem pouco explorados. Em sete estudos, esta dissertação investiga de que forma as assimetrias espaciais afetam inferências sociais e a performance visuo-motora para com estímulos ancorados na dimensão horizontal. O primeiro estudo indica que inferências sociais relacionadas com agência são preferencialmente atribuídas a faces de perfil orientadas para a direita (versus esquerda). Em duas experiências, o segundo estudo mostra que faces orientadas para a direita servem como pistas para a orientação de atenção. Faces orientadas para a direita, que traduzem a direção utilizada para representar a agência humana, facilitam a atenção para e deteção de alvos no campo visual direito, comparativamente a faces orientadas para a esquerda no campo visual esquerdo. No terceiro estudo, as faces foram substituídas por palavras temporais auditivas e visuais, que se sabe serem ancoradas horizontalmente. A assimetria espacial foi testada em duas experiências em comunidades com direções de leitura e escrita opostas (Português e Árabe). Observou-se uma ancoragem contrária do conceito abstrato ‘tempo’ entre as duas amostras (Português: passado-esquerda/futuro-direita; Árabe: passado-direita/futuro-esquerda). Adicionalmente, uma performance assimétrica reversa entre as duas comunidades linguísticas confirma que o mapeamento do tempo é enviesado pelos hábitos ortográficos e pela representação cultural da agência humana. Isto é, palavras temporais que coincidem com a direção induzida por ambos os sistemas de escrita (i.e., palavras relacionadas com futuro), dão origem a vantagem à direita na amostra Portuguesa, e vantagem à esquerda na amostra Árabe. O quarto estudo estendeu estes resultados à categoria da política, tipicamente representada através de coordenadas de esquerda e de direita. Respostas manuais e atencionais foram mais rápidas para alvos localizados à direita após terem sido apresentadas termos políticos de direita (versus alvos à esquerda após termos políticos de esquerda), que correspondiam à direção em que habitualmente se representa movimento. O quinto e último estudo demonstrou que a apresentação de palavras temporais simultaneamente com um tom auditivo não-espacial impede os efeitos de emergirem. Estas pistas bimodais revelaram as condições limitativas dos efeitos da assimetria espacial. Em conclusão, esta dissertação demonstra que existe uma propriedade genérica de movimento que deriva da direção ortográfica e que é transversal à representação de estímulos distintos, em várias tarefas e modalidades sensoriais. Estes resultados oferecem uma perspetiva mais abrangente sobre o impacto prevalente que uma característica da língua aparentemente irrelevante tem em processos cognitivos fundamentais de perceção, atenção, e julgamento.The directional activities of reading and writing have been shown to ground a preferential trajectory when scanning space. This horizontal directional formation is further reinforced by other cultural regularities that overlap with it. This space-movement correlation creates a left-right (or vice-versa) schema for action that biases the representation of human agency and extends to the representation of other abstract concepts lacking experiential sensorimotor bases. Consequently, the horizontal dimension is recruited to reason about abstract concepts that are mapped congruently with one’s dominant reading and writing or script direction. The spatial asymmetry that this combined directionality induces is a core finding in the embodiment area and has been shown to affect important social and cognitive processes. However, the specific processes activated by these asymmetries remain unclear. A series of seven experiments are outlined to investigate how spatial asymmetries affect social inferences and visuomotor performance to stimuli anchored in the horizontal dimension. The first study indicated that a range of agency-related social inferences are preferentially assigned to face profiles oriented rightward (versus leftward). Across two experiments, the second study showed that right oriented faces serve as attention-orienting primes. Rightward faces, which are in line with the direction used to represent human agency, facilitate attention to and detection of targets on the right hemifield, relative to leftward faces and targets on the left hemifield. In the third study, face primes were replaced by visual and auditory time words known to ground horizontally in space. Spatial asymmetries were tested in two experiments with communities holding opposite writing scripts (Portuguese and Arabic). We observed the mapping of time to be reversed between the two samples (Portuguese: past-left/future-right; Arabic: past-right/future-left). Further, a mirrored asymmetric performance between the two linguistic communities confirmed that the mapping of time is biased by orthographic habits and the cultural representation of human agency. That is, time words that coincide with the direction induced by both writing systems (i.e., future-related) gave rise to right-side advantage in the Portuguese sample and left-side advantage in the Arabic sample. The fourth study extended these results to the category of politics, commonly represented through coordinates of left and right. Manual and gaze responses were faster to targets embedded on the right following conservatism-related words (versus the left following socialism-related words) that embody the habitualized rightward movement direction. The fifth and final study demonstrated that presenting time words synchronously with an auditory nonspatial tone impaired cueing effects. These bimodal cues revealed the boundary conditions of the spatial agency bias. Overall, this dissertation underscores that a generic property of movement that is derived from orthographic direction underlies the representation of very distinct stimuli across tasks and sensory modalities. These findings offer a broader perspective on the pervasive impact a seemingly irrelevant feature of language has on fundamental cognitive processes of perception, attention, and judgment

Mindful Artmaking in Elementary Classrooms: A Path to Emotional Regulation

Abstract In an era dominated by technological advancements and mounting external pressures, the emotional and mental well-being of the younger generation is a growing concern. This research paper explores the intricate relationship between mindfulness, art-making, and emotional regulation within the context of elementary classrooms. The modern world, filled with a plethora of stimuli, has escalated stress levels among individuals, especially children, leading to a surge in mental health issues. Mindfulness, deeply rooted in ancient traditions, teaches individuals to stay present, fostering a non-judgmental awareness of their thoughts and emotions. Art-making, on the other hand, serves as a medium for emotional expression and self-discovery, providing a platform for individuals to externalize and process their feelings creatively. When combined, these tools form a potent strategy to help children understand, express, and regulate their emotions. This study delves into the foundational theories of mindfulness, art-making, and emotional regulation, investigating their relevance and applicability in today\u27s educational settings. Furthermore, the paper underscores the symbiotic relationship between these themes, emphasizing their collective role in fostering emotional balance and mental well-being. As the complexities of the modern world continue to unfold, embracing the therapeutic potential of mindful art-making becomes imperative for cultivating resilience and emotional stability among the younger generation

Probing student engagement with size and distance in introductory astronomy

Astronomy Education Research has shown that students have many challenges when it comes to understanding key concepts in Astronomy. Amongst these is a poor understanding of astronomical scales. Recently for example, both sizes and distances have been shown to present similar difficulties to students in both South Africa and Norway. It is difficult to attribute the findings simply to inadequate teaching due to the significant differences between the two countries with regard to language, culture, and the type of science teaching. It has, therefore, been suggested that since astronomical sizes and distances are beyond immediate human experience the explanation might in fact lie at a deeper cognitive level. The present thesis is aimed at exploring the link between astronomical sizes and distances as well as cognition. Part I The thesis focuses on investigating students' understanding of sizes and distances in astronomy. This was done by probing student notions of astronomical scales, using the size and distance questions from the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), the instrument which led to the original findings noted previously. These questions were administered before and after a specially structured teaching intervention on sizes and distances. The results of this study in 2018 were found to be (a) in agreement with similar studies previously reported in South Africa and Norway, namely, that both sizes and distances in astronomy were poorly understood in both contexts and (b) that the teaching intervention was least effective for distances. Based on the findings above, the focus of the thesis shifted to a more fine-grained investigation of how students conceived of distances, as they increased from "human scale" to "beyond human scale". The study was carried out using the Grounded Theory Method (GTM). Data were generated by prompting written explanations from introductory astronomy students on how they engaged with three distances two of which may be considered to be within human experience while the third lies beyond the realm of direct experience. The distances used were 7 metres, 100 kilometres and the distance to the moon. The second distance was partly informed by the idea that we often communicate large distances to each other in terms of time. In addition, the framing of the questions excluded the possibility of visual explanations. The questions were administered to a cohort of introductory astronomy students at the University of Cape Town in 2019. A grounded analysis of the student responses was carried out to identify key ideas. The categories that emerged from the analysis showed clear evidence of students using different, unconnected types of explanations rather than simple extrapolations of one idea. A conceptual transition was identified relative to the body position of the respondents: body calibration and self-propelled body motion (or journeying). What was striking was that time was rarely mentioned explicitly. The way in which students expressed themselves was assumed to be an expression of the way in which they were thinking about different distance domains and suggestive of the cognitive perspective offered by "Embodied Cognition". Of particular interest was that nonstatic explanations were centered around the notion of a journey, and one of the key "thinking templates" in Embodied Cognition; the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL "Image Schema". Part II of the thesis summarizes key elements of Embodied Cognition that are pertinent to the present work and describes a pilot activity for teaching astronomical distances based on this account. Part II Theories of cognition can roughly be divided into two camps: those that assume that thinking is a "mentalese activity" involving symbolic manipulation. Most importantly, these symbolic elements are "amodal" in that they are not derived from the sensory modalities. On the other hand, Embodied Cognition assumes that these symbols arise from the sensory modalities, hence all thinking arises from bodily experience and its interactions with the environment in infancy. While there are several strands that feed into Embodied Cognition, of direct interest to the present work is that of Cognitive Linguistics and the notion of Conceptual Metaphor. In this view metaphors are not regarded as (mere) linguistic devices but as conceptual expressions that reflect cognitive schematic structures that relate to the bodily infant experience. These cognitive schematic structures or "Image Schemas" arise from repeated bodily actions repeatedly activating particular neural networks and form the basic building blocks of all abstract thought. A fair amount of such Image Schemas (or "thinking templates") have been identified of which the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL resonates most clearly with the data described earlier. This Image Schema comes about in infancy when a child learns that a toy on the far side of a room cannot be reached by grasping only but that moving the body from one place to another (crawling) is required. This is the basis of "Life is Journey or the Ph.D. Journey", for example. Another aspect of Embodied Cognition holds that understanding involves a mental simulation using the cognitive resources that are activated at the time. In order to see if activating the SPG / Journey "thinking template" prior to engaging with the teaching material would help in comprehending astronomical distances a two-part teaching activity (A and B) was developed around the notion of a journey. Part A was presented to the students as 'Journey to the observable edge of the UNIVERSE along UNIVERSity avenue" and required students to walk the length of the campus in a structured manner that is described in detail in the thesis. Part B, engagement with the teaching material, was carried out immediately afterwards in the Main Hall of the University. Thus, the thinking behind the two-part activity, piloted in 2020 just prior to Covid related lockdown, was that "journey" cognitive resources would be activated by the experience and would therefore be used in engaging with the teaching material regarding astronomical distances. Student evaluations were gathered in order to probe how students had engaged with the activity, including if any of the resources associated with journeying were expressed. A post-test ranking task showed that while results were mixed relative to previous studies overall there was a marked improvement for the present cohort. In summary the work shows clearly that there were two different modes of thinking about distances (i) based on counting and (2) based on the notion of the journey/journey-ing. Results were interpreted as the activation of schema described by embodied cognition. The difficulty that students experienced with astronomical distances was attributed to the lack of activating the Source-Path-Goal schema. In order to see whether there was a way to activate the Source-Path-Goal schema, an activity involving students walking was designed. The outcomes from the activity, indicated promising results with regard to student engagement with astronomical distance

Investigation of the Misconceptions Related to the Concepts of Equivalence and Literal Symbols Held by Underprepared Community College Students

Many students struggle to learn mathematics in K-8 grades. Research has shown that lower grade students often misconceive equivalence as an operation rather than a relation, and that students also form various misconceptions of literal symbols. Many students arrive at college seriously underprepared in mathematics, but there is scant research on the difficulties and misconceptions of these college students. The purpose of this research was to learn if underprepared community college students harbor misconceptions of equivalence and of literal symbols similar to K-8 students. For this study, 191 underprepared college students were surveyed for misconceptions by a questionnaire of 43 items selected from the established suite of effective items. The items for each concept were further partitioned into the definition, properties, and applications of each concept. Many students (84%) were expert regarding the definition of equivalence. An additional 13% of the students also demonstrated knowledge of the concept, although they did not always take advantage of it. Similarly, over 40% of the students demonstrated expert understanding of the properties of equivalence, but an additional 53% demonstrated a restricted understanding of the concept. Only 5% of the students were considered expert with the fundamental applications of equivalence and less than 60% demonstrated a basic knowledge of the applications. Few students (33%) were knowledgeable of the definition of literal symbols, and fewer (\u3c 5%) demonstrated knowledge of the properties of the literal symbol. Consequent to their minimal knowledge of the concept, very few students were able to demonstrate knowledge of literal symbol applications. Community college students underprepared in mathematics are generally aware of the relational definition of equivalence, but many are not fluent in its use. Most attention needs to be directed to the applications of equivalence. The same students are generally not aware of the concept of literal symbols and much attention needs to be directed not only at the applications of literal symbols, but also at their definition and properties

An investigation into how low achieving secondary students learn fractions through visual representations

The gap between low and high achievers is a worldwide concern in Education, especially when it comes to mathematics. One way of facing this issue is by investigating the learning processes of those disadvantaged students at a classroom level. Bearing this in mind, I started my research by observing lessons for low achieving students in an underperforming school in England. After getting acquainted with the context, I designed lesson plans to teach fraction addition and subtraction following three design principles: lessons should enable students to build their knowledge about fractions on visual representations, students should have opportunities to solve tasks without being told how to do it beforehand and lesson plans should maintain some coherence with participant teachers’ current practices. The first principle is the most relevant for my findings, and its choice was based on the growing evidence pointing out the relevance of visual representations for mathematical learning and as a potential pathway to overcome some difficulties faced by low achieving students. Three teachers enacted the lesson plans with a different low achieving group each. Data was collected of the pupils’ working out, as registered in the worksheets, and also in the form of audio recordings, taken during the lessons, of my interactions with students about their thinking while solving the tasks. The data analysis revealed aspects of students’ learning through visual representations that were grouped into two major findings. Firstly, the lessons were successful in promoting reasoning anchored in visual representations, and enabled students to extend their knowledge beyond what was explicitly taught to them. Secondly, an apparent lack of visual skills and prior knowledge on multiplication restricted their engagement with some tasks. The final discussion focuses on the role of visual representations in the learning of mathematics in general, but mainly for low achieving students, and how this can be implemented in classrooms

WHEN DARKNESS DESCENDS: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF MATERNAL RESILIENCE FOLLOWING HURRICANE MARIA

Within the last 40 years, academic research on disasters has focused on resilience as applied to individual adaptive capacities, rebuilding resources, and policy-driven solutions. While there has been an increased awareness of the many gendered dimensions of post-disaster recovery, women’s and mother’s agency in such situations is still largely ignored. Thus, this dissertation adopts a maternal focus, arguing that mothers are not merely vulnerable subjects but critical agents of post-disaster recovery for families, communities, and social systems more generally. To analyze mothers’ resilience, I looked to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico as an illustrative case and field site. Combined across two site visits in 2019 and 2020, I interviewed nine mothers and conducted a focus group with eight midwives. Their interviews were framed as stories using Clandidin and Connelly’s (2000) restorying techniques. Additionally, I drew from Buzzanell’s (2010) Communication Resilience Framework to map five communicative processes of enacting resilience onto these stories. By studying their stories, I was able to extend Buzzanell’s framework to acknowledge the proactive agency of maternal resilience as enacted through communication, contextual, and relational elements of life in the aftermath. My analysis identifies how mothers reproduced and revised configurations of personal, family, and community life post-disaster. Overall, these embodied research practices revealed how these women remade their daily practices, renegotiated relationships and identities, and created new resource avenues not just to survive but to thrive and live well. When interlinked with histories, material exigencies, and cultural discourses, “getting back to normal” required mothers to seek the routine and advocate for change simultaneously in both motherwork and domesticity. All across the island mothers used anger as a productive force for activism and creative entrepreneurship and leveraged communal coalitions as key components to establishing collaborative empowerment and belongingness. The relationships they had with one another enacted their own brand of resilience. I argue that maternal resilience broadens discussions and understandings of what resilience is and how mothers, through their mothering practices, enact transformative approaches to disaster recovery

Energy-Flow – A New Perspective on James MacGregor Burns’ Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness

This theoretical dissertation documents a personal transforming leadership experience; during which, I explored my Leadership as Energy-Flow model by having a virtual dialogue with the polymathic works of theorists and thinkers to corroborate and refine it. The model consists of a theory and a conceptual scheme. The energy-flow theory, based on the laws of physics and Chinese philosophy and cosmological science, fashions the energy-flow conceptual scheme. Using the conceptual scheme, I delve into the Premise of the Dialogue, “In what ways and to what extent would using the energy-flow frame of reference describe and stimulate new meanings in Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness?” I venture forth in this exploration, sparked by Bertrand Russell’s (1938) and James MacGregor Burns’ (1979) on leadership power, to discover how one might use energy-flow abstractions to represent leadership phenomena. Energy-flow abstractions are images of events captured in thought, within which one unfolds and enfolds new meanings and deepens understanding of transforming leadership. The dialogue with six different traditions includes the works of: Alfred North Whitehead on philosophy and science, Ilya Prigogine on physics, Abraham H. Maslow on human potentials, need hierarchy, and management, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on psychological energy-flow, Richard Gerber on physiological energy-flow and vibrational medicine, and Ralph H.G. Siu on quantum and the Tao of science of leadership. The dialogue then continues into the work of Burns (2003). Many of my epiphanies, using the energy-flow conceptual scheme to fathom transforming leadership theory, induce some propitious ideas for further exploration in viewing leadership as energy-flow and using energy-flow as a basis for deciphering human affairs. The electronic version of this dissertation is available at the OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu

Right here, right now: situated interventions to change consumer habits

Consumer behavior-change interventions have traditionally encouraged consumers to form conscious intentions, but in the past decade it has been shown that while these interventions have a medium-to-large effect in changing intentions, they have a much smaller effect in changing behavior. Consumers often do not act in accordance with their conscious intentions because situational cues in the immediate environment automatically elicit learned, habitual behaviors. It has therefore been suggested that researchers refocus their efforts on developing interventions that target unconscious, unintentional influences on behavior, such as cue-behavior (“habit”) associations. To develop effective consumer behavior-change interventions, however, we argue that it is first important to understand how consumer experiences are represented in memory, in order to successfully target the situational cues that most strongly predict engagement in habitual behavior. In this article, we present a situated cognition perspective of habits and discuss how the situated cognition perspective extends our understanding of how consumer experiences are represented in memory, and the processes through which these situational representations can be retrieved in order to elicit habitual consumer behaviors. Based on the principles of situated cognition, we then discuss five ways that interventions could change consumer habits by targeting situational cues in the consumer environment and suggest how existing interventions utilizing these behavior-change strategies could be improved by integrating the principles of the situated cognition approach