Transformative drama as a tool of cultural and social activities In the educational process. Universal structure, cultural content

According to theater anthropologists, the world history of theater dates back more than thousand years before. No less time has art been seen as a tool of education. Hunting pantomime was used by our ancestors for hunting, creating the equivalent of reality and teaching young men the art of hunting. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, stressed the role of art in education. Furthermore, medieval church teachers appealed to the tradition of art education. It was already in the prehistoric times, followed by ancient and medieval period when the effectiveness of cultural activity in working methods in care centers was indicated and argued. There is still a considerable amount of reports, descriptions, case studies, research papers being developed which emphasize educational potential of art. With such a wide variety, there is no need to create new ones. The question that arises is whether this education holds any cultural value. This article is an attempt to answer the question of whether drama therapy successfully used in education is culturally intertwined

Social Perspective Taking

The current mindset of the Army is that it must be able to win our Nation’s wars while at the same time ready to assist in stability operations (U.S. Department of the Army, 2008). A challenge is that Soldiers often have to bridge large cultural gaps and may lack the language skills to effectively engage with the host of individuals now present in these operations including the local populace, host nation security forces, coalition partners and other foreign governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Perspective taking – described more formally as “Social Perspective Taking” (SPT) – is an interpersonal technique which may address these challenges. SPT is a skill often learned throughout life but may be very difficult in cross-cultural interactions. This report describes the results of a literature review and SME and Soldier interviews regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to develop SPT and the methods used to train SPT. Based on this information a four module curriculum is proposed which utilizes a four-step method for the development of SPT. The curriculum trains Soldiers how to accurately consider the host-national’s perspective without cultural bias and erroneous assumptions and allows Soldiers to meet host-national goals while accomplishing U.S. missions and objectives

The Social Life of Metaphor

The five experiments in this dissertation examine the social effects of metaphor context production and comprehension. In Studies 1 and 2, participants wrote a meaningful discourse context for metaphorical or literal sentences. Participants providing context for metaphor used more idiomatic emotional expressions, cognitive mechanism words (e.g., “think”) and adverbs. Those responding to the literal prompts used physical descriptions. These results are interpreted in light of research that shows idiomatic expressions and cognitive mechanism words are used to express emotion and signal friendship. In Study 2, use of affective content in the metaphor condition was positively correlated with scores on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). Participants in the metaphor group also scored higher on this task compared to the literal group. The Eyes findings show writers in the metaphor condition framed their context to engage an ostensive audience. Studies 3 and 4 consisted of reading short scenarios that ended with metaphorical or literal statements, followed by questions assessing social and emotional inferences of the participants. Participants also completed the Eyes task. Use of metaphor by characters in a story was perceived as more emotionally intense and suggestive of interpersonal closeness. Scores on the Eyes task positively and uniquely correlated with social variables (closeness and emotional intensity) when scenarios ended with metaphor, but not when they ended with literal statements. These correlations show those who perceived metaphor as socially informative were more accurate at identifying emotions in others. Study 5 tested the premise that even out of context, metaphor comprehension proceeds through inferences of an implicit intention (e.g., Katz, 2005; Ritchie, 2006). After reading metaphorical or literal sentences, the participants completed the Eyes task and a non-social, creativity task (wherein participants provided nouns in response to verb prompts). Participants who read metaphor did better on the Eyes task than those who read literal counterparts, supporting the claim that, even out of context, metaphor conveys an interpersonal intention. Additionally, compared to the literal group, participants in the metaphor group provided more “social” words in response to verb prompts. Results are discussed in light of embodied cognition

Functional Role of Interjections of Tatar Language

Recently, in studying the linguistic picture of the world, interest has been growing in the national originality of the perception of reality, the national specificity of the reflection of the world picture in the language. The linguistic picture of the world is not linguistic; it reflects cognitive reality due to history, culture, geography, and other factors within the objective world. This article, based on such general scientific research methods as induction, deduction, observation, analysis, and synthesis of empirical material, attempts to reveal the national identity of the emotional experiences of the Tatar people. The study's subject is the emotive lexicatic language, which makes it possible to formulate and evaluate the presented picture and conceptualization of the surrounding Tatars. As the results of this study confirm, a person in the Tatar language picture of the world and eastern linguistic culture is less dualistic than a European; his emotions and speech tend to be in harmony, mutually complementing each other. In life, in everyday life, and the feelings of the Tatars, there is a severe imprint of the traditions and canons of Islam. The importance of the study of emotive vocabulary lies in the fact that it allows you to identify the priorities of the Tatar language consciousness, as well as the features of the vision of the Tatars world, the representation of the image of a person and his world from the position of the universal in the phraseology of the Tatar language, and the position of national specific features. The study of the dynamic semantics of phraseological units of the Tatar language in the structure of meaning makes it possible to represent significance for the general theory of linguistic science

A computer based system to design expressive avatars

Avatars are used in different contexts and situations: e-commerce, e-therapy, virtual worlds, videogames,collaborative online design... In this context, a good design of an avatar may improve the user experience. The ability of controlling the way an avatar convey messages and emotions is capital. In this work, a procedure to design avatar faces capable of conveying to the observer the most suitable sensations according to a given context is developed. The proposed system is based on a combination of genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks whose training is based on perceptual human responses to a set of faces.Diego-Mas, JA.; Alcaide Marzal, J. (2015). A computer based system to design expressive avatars. Computers in Human Behavior. 44:1-11. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.027S1114

Reach for the Stars: Restructuring Schooling for Emergent Bilinguals with a Whole-Child, Arts-Infused Curricular Approach

This qualitative case study describes a two-year, multi-pronged university-urban school district partnership in Massachusetts sponsored by former Governor Deval Patrick’s Gateways Cities agenda to support an innovative middle school summer enrichment academy for emergent bilingual (EB) learners. The partnership between Boston University and Malden Public Schools aimed at improving EB student success through a whole-child, inclusive, community-arts- infused, content-based curriculum with field trips, guest speakers, conversation classes with bilingual university graduate students, and performing arts, fitness and wellness workshops; a comprehensive teacher training/coaching model; and parent education and community engagement experiences. This chapter examines the impact of the whole-child, community-arts- infused curriculum on middle school EB student learning. Results from interviews, pre-and post- assessments, and observations indicate that the curricular approach boosted learner confidence and engagement; enhanced linguistic and socioemotional development and promoted intercultural awareness and positive cultural identity for attending EBs

Understanding the Influence of Cultural Dimensions on the Interpretative Ability of People to Infer Personality from the Avatars: Evidence from Cultural Dimensions of Greece, Pakistan, Russia, and Singapore

Avatar is a customized cartoon representation of the self and many people develop inferences about individuals’ online representations through their avatar’s facial appearance. Research has shown that avatars can signal information about the personality and social desires of a person [1]. Nonetheless, customizing an avatar enables control of self-representation that could potentially moderate the true personality traits of an individual. The customized facial appearance of the avatar affects people’s ability to draw expressions [2], whereas, several cultural dimensions affect the interpretative ability of the people to construct personality inferences from the facial appearance of avatars. We found a significant relationship between neuroticism to uncertainty avoidance and masculinity, whereas, negative relationships were found between extraversion and masculinity, and agreeableness to uncertainty avoidance. The study uses three-dimensional avatars to capture detailed features and expressions on avatar faces

Can a Humanoid Face be Expressive? A Psychophysiological Investigation

Non-verbal signals expressed through body language play a crucial role in multi-modal human communication during social relations. Indeed, in all cultures, facial expressions are the most universal and direct signs to express innate emotional cues. A human face conveys important information in social interactions and helps us to better understand our social partners and establish empathic links. Latest researches show that humanoid and social robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans, both esthetically and expressively. However, their visual expressiveness is a crucial issue that must be improved to make these robots more realistic and intuitively perceivable by humans as not different from them. This study concerns the capability of a humanoid robot to exhibit emotions through facial expressions. More specifically, emotional signs performed by a humanoid robot have been compared with corresponding human facial expressions in terms of recognition rate and response time. The set of stimuli included standardized human expressions taken from an Ekman-based database and the same facial expressions performed by the robot. Furthermore, participants’ psychophysiological responses have been explored to investigate whether there could be differences induced by interpreting robot or human emotional stimuli. Preliminary results show a trend to better recognize expressions performed by the robot than 2D photos or 3D models. Moreover, no significant differences in the subjects’ psychophysiological state have been found during the discrimination of facial expressions performed by the robot in comparison with the same task performed with 2D photos and 3D models