Bridges between people: nonverbal mediation in an intercultural perspective and training proposals

Starting from the meaning of terms prejudices and mediation, the paper will deal with the theme of “intercultural mediation”, discussing aspects that characterize it, focusing on the non-verbal and creative elements. It will than reflect upon the necessary professional skills and on possible trainings through the body-artistic language (focusing on dance-movement therapy methodology), drawing inspiration from training experiences with professionals who face emergency situations within very complex social contexts. Italy receives 89% of the unaccompanied foreign minors arriving in Europe. However, Italy does not have adequate laws in place to initiate life projects and social inclusion which could help the overwhelming influx of refugees and migrants. In this very complex situation non-verbal competences can give the possibility to build bridges between people and to create social networks, that could help bring about more effective actions and, may be, political chang

Emerging Language: Cognition and Gestural Communication in Wild and Language Trained Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

An important element in understanding the evolutionary origin of human language is to explore homologous traits in cognition and communication between primates and humans (Burling, 1993, Hewes, 1973). One proposed modality of language evolution is that of gestural communication, defined as communicative movements of hands without using or touching objects (de Waal, 2003). While homologies between primate calls and language have been relatively well explored, we still have a limited understanding of how cognitive abilities may have shaped the characteristics of primate gestures (Corballis, 2003). Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are our closest living relatives and display some complex cognitive skills in various aspects of their gestural behaviour in captivity (de Waal, 2003, Pollick and de Waal, 2007). However, it is not yet currently clear to what extent these abilities seen in captive apes are typical of chimpanzees in general and to what extent cognitive capacities observed in captive chimpanzees have been enhanced by the socio-cultural environment of captivity such as language training. In this Ph.D. research, I investigated the cognitive skills underlying gestural communication in both wild and language trained chimpanzees, with a special focus on the repertoire and the intentionality of production and comprehension. The study of cognitive skills underlying the production of the repertoire and the role of intentionality is important because these skills are cognitively demanding and are a prerequisite in human infants for their ability to acquire language (Baldwin, 1995, Olson, 1993). My research suggests that chimpanzee gestural communication is cognitively complex and may be homologous with the cognitive skills evident in pre-verbal infants on the cusp of language acquisition. Chimpanzees display a multifaceted and complex signal repertoire of manual gestures. These gestures are the prototypes, within which there is variation, and between which the boundaries are not clear-cut, but there is gradation apparent along several morphological components. Both wild and language trained chimpanzees communicate intentionally about their perceived desires and the actions that they want the recipients to undertake. They do not just express their emotions, but they communicate flexibly by adjusting their communicative tactics in response to the comprehension states of the recipient. Whilst chimpanzees communicate their intentions flexibly, the messages conveyed are specific. However, recipients comprehend gestures flexibly in light of the signaller’s overall intentions. Whilst wild and language trained chimpanzee gestural communication revealed similar cognitive characteristics, language trained chimpanzees outperformed wild apes in that they had ability to use signals which made distinctions that human deictic words can make. Whilst these differences between wild and language trained chimpanzees may be due to the different methodological approaches used, it is conceivable that language training may have influenced captive ape cognitive skills in the representational domain. These results from wild and language trained chimpanzees indicate that chimpanzees possess some form of cognitive skills necessary for language development and that cognitive skills underlying repertoire and use in chimpanzees are a shared capacity between humans, other apes and a common ancestor. These findings render theories of the gestural origins of language more plausible. Related publications: 1. Roberts, A. I., Vick, S.-J., Roberts, S. G. B., Buchanan-Smith, H. M. & Zuberbühler, K. 2012. A structure-based repertoire of manual gestures in wild chimpanzees: Statistical analyses of a graded communication system. Evolution and Human Behavior, Published online: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.05.006 2. Roberts, A. I., Vick, S.-J. & Buchanan-Smith, H. 2012. Usage and comprehension of manual gestures in wild chimpanzees. Animal Behaviour, Published online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.05.02

Individuality and Contextual Variation of Character Behaviour for Interactive Narrative.

This paper presents a system for generating non-verbal communication behaviour suitable for characters in interactive narrative. It is possible to customise the behaviour of individual character using a system of character profiles. This allows characters to have a strong individuality and personality. These same profiles also allow the characters’ behaviour to be altered in different contexts, allowing for suitably changing behaviour as the story unfolds

Personhood, agency and suicide in a neo-liberalising South India.

Explanations for increased rates of youth suicide in the South Indian leprosy colony where I conducted research were reduced, in popular discourse about causality, to the categories of debt, unfulfilled aspiration and desires, and romantic failures. Convincing though these explanations are, they do not help to explain why young people everywhere, faced with the same kind of existential crises, do not take their lives in comparable numbers or, indeed, why they utilise particular – and very gendered – methods of harming and/or killing themselves. Ethnographic research, however, illuminates the local specificities against which such existential crises are played out in ways that might aid our search for explanations. In this article, I explore how South Indian notions of personhood – which, in turn, lead to particular understandings and experiences of agency – might impact on how and whether people kill themselves. I also attempt to situate these local explanations of personhood and agency in the wider context of a contemporary, industrialising and, increasingly, neo-liberal India, and, in some measure, to analyse the interplay between the two

Exploring micro-worlds of music meanings

A musical practice may have exclusive meanings shared only by some groups of people within a society. In fact, music has the capacity to create spaces for reserved communication between groups of individuals. Within these ambits, performance activity accompanies more or less articulated forms of thinking of the same performers and parts of competent listeners, since, if nothing else, each musical event is imagined previously and discussed afterwards. This shared knowledge impregnates the concreteness of musical expression, often explaining the variability which is perceptible when listening from outside the group. To investigate this kind of ambit of construction of meanings, it is necessary to try to get as close as possible to the cognitions shared by those who belong to it. To this end, a very significant contribution can come from heuristic approaches based on the strategies of dialogue, above all, negotiated dialogues (and not simple juxtapositions of different opinions) where, on the basis of deep mutual trust, through the intertwining and interaction of different points of view, elements of interpretation emerge for the scholar. This text aims to deal with this, based on a concrete methodological experience

THE PRECISION PSYCHIATRY. An Individualized Approach to the Diseases

The Precision Psychiatry is a new emergent topic in Psychiatry, and is “an approach for treatment and prevention that takes into account each person’s variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle”. It promises to be even more transformative than in other fields of medicine, because the psychiatry has not yet benefited from the advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies that now form an integral part of other clinical specialties. It may be an epistemological change in the field of psychiatry. This paper briefly highlights the story, the features, and the future of the Precision Psychiatry. Indeed, this approach is becoming a reality with the availability of massive data (derived from physiological recordings, brain imaging, ‘omics’ biomarkers, environmental exposures, self-reported experience)

Framing and scaffolding as relational caregiving in an institution for people living with dementia

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THE PRECISION PSYCHIATRY. An Individualized Approach to the Diseases

The Precision Psychiatry is a new emergent topic in Psychiatry, and is “an approach for treatment and prevention that takes into account each person’s variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle”. It promises to be even more transformative than in other fields of medicine, because the psychiatry has not yet benefited from the advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies that now form an integral part of other clinical specialties. It may be an epistemological change in the field of psychiatry. This paper briefly highlights the story, the features, and the future of the Precision Psychiatry. Indeed, this approach is becoming a reality with the availability of massive data (derived from physiological recordings, brain imaging, ‘omics’ biomarkers, environmental exposures, self-reported experience)

Prolegomenon for a Body-Oriented Research Method in Psychology

Mainstream psychology adheres to a reductionist perspective on the body which is founded on a biomedical framework. In this view, the bodys functioning is investigated as merely physiological correlates of mental processes. To fully understand psychological phenomena, there is a need to address the issue of the body at all levels of the research process. The main objective of this thesis is to offer a prolegomenon for a research method in psychology which would systematically work with the bodily expression through gesture and movement for understanding psychological questions. First, I discuss historical and theoretical underpinnings of body image scholarship, nonverbal communication work, phenomenology, and feminist theory. Second, I examine the existing methods from applied fields of body psychotherapy and dance practices. Finally, I provide a possible format of the body-oriented method (BOM), including the stages of data collection, data description, data interpretation, and representation of results