The volume and source of cyberabuse influences victim blame and perceptions of attractiveness

Cyberabuse is an escalating problem in society, as opportunities for abuse to occur in online public domains increase. Such acts are often defined by the frequency of abuse, and in many cases multiple individuals play a part in the abuse. Although consequences of such acts are often severe, there is typically little public sympathy/support for victims. To better understand perceptions of victims of abusive online acts, we manipulated the Volume (low, high) and Source (same-source, multi-source) of abusive posts in artificially-manipulated Facebook timelines of four fictitious ‘victims’. One hundred and sixty-four participants [United Kingdom-based; aged 18–59] rated ‘victims’ on measures of direct victim blame (DVB) and perceived social-, physical- and task-attractiveness. Results revealed significant Volume × Source interactions on DVB and social-attractiveness ratings. Few abusive posts authored by a single source yielded higher DVB and lower social-attractiveness ratings. Strong correlations between attractiveness and DVB were observed. We propose that our results could be due to an observer desensitization effect, or that participants interpreted the posts as indicative of friendly ‘teasing’ or ‘banter’ within an established social relationship, helping to explain why victims of online abuse often receive little sympathy or support

A proposed framework of an interactive semi-virtual environment for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Education of people with special needs has recently been considered as a key element in the field of medical education. Recent development in the area of information and communication technologies may enable development of collaborative interactive environments which facilitate early stage education and provide specialists with robust tools indicating the person's autism spectrum disorder level. Towards the goal of establishing an enhanced learning environment for children with autism this paper attempts to provide a framework of a semi-controlled real-world environment used for the daily education of an autistic person according to the scenarios selected by the specialists. The proposed framework employs both real-world objects and virtual environments equipped with humanoids able to provide emotional feedback and to demonstrate empathy. Potential examples and usage scenarios for such environments are also described

Can intelligence explode?

The technological singularity refers to a hypothetical scenario in which technological advances virtually explode. The most popular scenario is the creation of super-intelligent algorithms that recursively create ever higher intelligences. It took many decades for these ideas to spread from science fiction to popular science magazines and finally to attract the attention of serious philosophers. David Chalmers' (JCS, 2010) article is the first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the singularity in a respected philosophy journal. The motivation of my article is to augment Chalmers' and to discuss some issues not addressed by him, in particular what it could mean for intelligence to explode. In this course, I will (have to) provide a more careful treatment of what intelligence actually is, separate speed from intelligence explosion, compare what super-intelligent participants and classical human observers might experience and do, discuss immediate implications for the diversity and value of life, consider possible bounds on intelligence, and contemplate intelligences right at the singularity