A qualitative study analysing the journey towards an embedded approach to service user involvement

Service user involvement in the design and delivery of education programmes for professionals is a key tenet of current policy. This study used a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of young mothers, students and academics who participated in an initiative aimed to coproduce and deliver a teaching resource focusing on becoming a mother and receiving services. The findings from the focus group interviews suggested that involving service users in student learning can provide an opportunity for open and honest dialogue, where assumptions and stereotypes can be challenged and better understood. It can also encourage users who are often seen as ‘hard to reach’ to be more actively involved in shaping the development of professionals

Counter-intuitive moral judgement following traumatic brain injury

Several neurological patient populations, including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), appear to produce an abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements to moral dilemmas; they tend to make judgements that maximise the welfare of the majority, rather than deontological judgements based on the following of moral rules (e.g., do not harm others). However, this patient research has always used extreme dilemmas with highly valued moral rules (e.g., do not kill). Data from healthy participants, however, suggests that when a wider range of dilemmas are employed, involving less valued moral rules (e.g., do not lie), moral judgements demonstrate sensitivity to the psychological intuitiveness of the judgements, rather than their deontological or utilitarian content (Kahane et al., 2011). We sought the moral judgements of 30 TBI participants and 30 controls on moral dilemmas where content (utilitarian/deontological) and intuition (intuitive/counterintuitive) were measured concurrently. Overall TBI participants made utilitarian judgements in equal proportions to controls; disproportionately favouring utilitarian judgements only when they were counterintuitive, and deontological judgements only when they were counterintuitive. These results speak against the view that TBI causes a specific utilitarian bias, suggesting instead that moral intuition is broadly disrupted following TBI

AWARENESS AND KNOWLEDGE ASSESSMENT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are built on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which consists of 17 goals as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The assessment of people’s awareness and knowledge on SDGs is of paramount importance to support any subsequent actions. The awareness of SDGs is higher compared to the previous agenda MDGs only in particular emerging countries; hence, it requires better progress after more than three years of its establishment. University students, as the agent of changes, are supposed to have a higher level of awareness and knowledge rather than average. When the university students have a better awareness and higher knowledge on SDGs, they can actively contribute to support, promote, and achieve the development goals by making use of their academic background. The objective of this research is to assess the level of awareness and knowledge on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among university students in Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data for this research are collected by field Survey and Questionnaire. This research analyzes data by using descriptive statistics and Chi-Square. The results show 89.5% of students are aware and 62.5% of students have high knowledge about SDGs. We found that students’ knowledge is only affected by the accessibility of information and students’ awareness is related to not only accessibility of information but also gender. Both awareness and knowledge are not affected by students’ participation in the organization

Assessing Empathy Across the Lifespan: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Approach

This thesis project aimed to utilize functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology in order to assess empathy in a lifespan sample. fNIRS is a non-invasive brain imaging technique that uses properties of light to infer brain activity. Participants ranged in age from 19-75 and were recruited to participate in an fNIRS experiment to assess empathy. Each participant was asked to assume the mental perspective of players on a computer game, and witnessed the player win, lose or tie the game involving a monetary reward. After the fNIRS recording, participants completed personality trait questionnaires related to empathy and emotional contagion. Results revealed brain activity during the win condition was positively correlated with trait perspective taking, and brain activity during the lose condition was positively correlated with emotional contagion. Additionally, younger adults had greater activation in both medial pre-frontal and dorsolateral regions compared to older adults in the win condition. These results suggest older and younger adults process information related to empathy differently in the frontal cortex, and that trait personality characteristics may be related to task-based brain activity in empathy-inducing situations. Understanding the way information processing changes in aging is an important aspect of taking care of the growing aging population

The Relation between Self-Reported Empathy and Motor Identification with Imagined Agents

Background:In a previous study, we found that when required to imagine another person performing an action, participants reported a higher correspondence between their own handedness and the hand used by the imagined person when the agent was seen from the back compared to when the agent was seen from the front. This result was explained as evidence of a greater involvement of motor areas in the back-view perspective, possibly indicating a greater proneness to put oneself in the agent's shoes in such a condition. In turn, the proneness to put oneself in another's shoes could also be considered as a cue of greater identification with the other, that is a form of empathy. If this is the case, the proportion of lateral matches vs mismatches should be different for subjects with high and low self-reported empathy. In the present study, we aimed at testing this hypothesis.Methodology/Principal Findings:Participants were required to imagine a person performing a single manual action in a back view and to indicate the hand used by the imagined person during movement execution. Consistent with our hypothesis, the proportion of matching between the handedness of participants and the handedness of agents imagined was higher for participants scoring high in a self-report measure of empathy. Importantly, this relationship was specific for females.Conclusions/Significance:At least for females, our data seem to corroborate the idea of a link between self-reported empathy and motor identification with imagined agents. This sex-specific result is consistent with neuroimaging studies indicating a stronger involvement of action representations during emotional and empathic processing in females than in males. In sum, our findings underline the possibility of employing behavioral research as a test-bed for theories deriving from functional studies suggesting a link between empathic processing and the activation of motor-related areas

A qualitative study analysing the journey towards an embedded approach to user involvement

Service user involvement in the design and delivery of education programmes for professionals is a key tenet of current policy. This study used a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of young mothers, students and academics who participated in an initiative that aimed to co-produce and deliver a teaching resource focusing on becoming a mother and receiving services. The findings from the focus group interviews suggested that involving service users in student learning can provide an opportunity for open and honest dialogue, where assumptions and stereotypes can be challenged and better understood. It can also encourage users who are often seen as ‘hard to reach’ to be more actively involved in shaping the development of professionals

Exploring Empathic Space: Correlates of Perspective Transformation Ability and Biases in Spatial Attention

Separate lines of research have noted recruitment of parietal cortex during tasks involving visuo-spatial processes and empathy. To explore the relationship between these two functions, a self-other perspective transformation task and a task of spatial attention (line bisection) were administered to 40 healthy participants (19 women). Performance on these tasks was examined in relation to self-reported empathy. Rightward biases in line bisection correlated positively with trait-level self-reported empathic concern, suggesting a left hemisphere mediation of this prosocial personality trait. Unexpectedly, speed of perspective taking in the self-other transformation task correlated negatively with empathic concern, but only in women, which we interpret in light of gender differences in empathy and strategies for egocentric mental transformations. Together, the findings partially support the commonalities in visuo-spatial attention, perspective-taking and empathy. More broadly, they shed additional light on the relationship between basic cognitive functions and complex social constructs

Violencia de género: el papel de la empatía y el perdón sobre la actitud hacia volver con la expareja

In the intervention with battered women, to minimize the impact of the experience and to diminish the possibility of a return to the violent relationship is quite important. To achieve this purpose, working on variables with a restorative effect on the process is the key. Considering the role of forgiveness in other clinical contexts, and the linking of empathy with it, the objective of the study was to analyze the relationship and predictive capacity of empathy and forgiveness (forgiveness of the situation and self-forgiveness, and forgiveness of the other) on the attitude of returning with the ex-partner. The study involved 17 women between 26 and 60 years. It was found that the ability or inability to separate from the emotions of others (reverberation), as empathic ability, influences the attitude of returning or not with the ex-partner. In addition, participants with greater difficulty in self forgiveness and forgive the situation had a higher difficulty of separation or reverberation.En la intervención con mujeres víctimas de violencia de género es fundamental minimizar el impacto de la experiencia sufrida y disminuir la posibilidad de retorno a la relación violenta. Para ello es clave trabajar sobre variables con efecto reparador sobre el proceso. Considerando el papel que se ha otorgado al perdón en otros contextos clínicos y la vinculación de la empatía con éste, el objetivo del presente estudio fue analizar la relación y capacidad predictiva de la empatía y el perdón en sus dos dimensiones (perdón a la situación y autoperdón, y perdón al otro) sobre la actitud de volver con la expareja. Participaron 17 mujeres de entre 26 y 60 años. Se encontró que la capacidad o incapacidad de separarse de las emociones de los demás (reverberación), influye en la actitud de volver o no con la expareja. Además, las participantes con mayor dificultad para perdonarse a sí mismas y a la situación, presentaban también una dificultad más elevada de separación emocional o reverberación