Self-directed disability support: building people’s capacity through peer support and action research

How are people with disability experiencing and managing the transition towards self directed support and preparing for the NDIS? In this project, small groups of people with disability around Australia met over 6 months to talk about their disability support. The peer support groups enabled action research about how they are deciding the practical details about support, such as how, when and by whom it is provided

Hypnosis and memory: two hundred years of adventures and still going!

One of the most persistent beliefs about hypnosis is its ability to transcend mnemonic abilities. This belief has paved the way to the use of hypnosis in the clinical and legal arenas. The authors review the phenomena of hypnotic hypermnesia, pseudo-memories, and amnesia in light of current knowledge of hypnosis and memory. The investigation of the relation between hypnosis and memory processes has played an important role in our understanding of memory in action. Hypnosis provides a fertile field to explore the social, neuropsychological, and cognitive variables at play when individuals are asked to remember or to forget their past. We suggest promising avenues of research that may further our knowledge of the building blocks of memories and the mechanisms that leads to forgetfulness

Emotion word processing: does mood make a difference?

Visual emotion word processing has been in the focus of recent psycholinguistic research. In general, emotion words provoke differential responses in comparison to neutral words. However, words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation. For instance, how does one's inner emotional state influence the comprehension of emotion words? To address this question, the current study examined lexical decision responses to emotionally positive, negative, and neutral words as a function of induced mood as well as their word frequency. Mood was manipulated by exposing participants to different types of music. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions—no music, positive music, and negative music. Participants' moods were assessed during the experiment to confirm the mood induction manipulation. Reaction time results confirmed prior demonstrations of an interaction between a word's emotionality and its frequency. Results also showed a significant interaction between participant mood and word emotionality. However, the pattern of results was not consistent with mood-congruency effects. Although positive and negative mood facilitated responses overall in comparison to the control group, neither positive nor negative mood appeared to additionally facilitate responses to mood-congruent words. Instead, the pattern of findings seemed to be the consequence of attentional effects arising from induced mood. Positive mood broadens attention to a global level, eliminating the category distinction of positive-negative valence but leaving the high-low arousal dimension intact. In contrast, negative mood narrows attention to a local level, enhancing within-category distinctions, in particular, for negative words, resulting in less effective facilitation

JENTIL: responsive clothing that promotes an ‘holistic approach to fashion as a new vehicle to treat psychological conditions’

This paper explores an ongoing interdisciplinary research project at the cutting edge of sensory, aroma and medical work, which seeks to change the experience of fragrance to a more intimate communication of identity, by employing emerging technologies with the ancient art of perfumery. The project illustrates .holistic' clothing called the JENTIL® Collection, following on from the Author’s SmartSecondSkin' PhD research, which describes a new movement in functional, emotional clothing that incorporates scent. The project investigates the emergent interface between the arts and biomedical sciences, around new emerging technologies and science platforms, and their applications in the domain of health and well-being. The JENTIL® Collection focuses on the development of .gentle., responsive clothing that changes with emotion, since the garments are designed for psychological end benefit to reduce stress. This is achieved by studying the mind and advancing knowledge and understanding of how known well-being fragrances embedded in holistic Fashion, could impact on mental health. This paper aims to combine applied theories about human well-being, with multisensory design, in order to create experimental strategies to improve self and social confidence for individuals suffering from depressive illnesses. The range of methodologies employed extends beyond the realm of fashion and textile techniques, to areas such as neuroscience, psychiatry, human sensory systems and affective states, and the increase in popularity of complementary therapies. In this paper the known affective potential of the sense of smell is discussed, by introducing Aroma-Chology as a tool that is worn as an emotional support system to create a personal scent bubble. around the body, with the capacity to regulate mood, physiological and psychological state and improve self-confidence in social situations. The clothing formulates a healing platform around the wearer, by creating novel olfactory experiences in textiles that are not as passive as current microencapsulated capsule systems generally are

A review of self-processing biases in cognition

When cues in the environment are associated with self (e.g., one’s own name, face, or coffee cup), these items trigger processing biases such as increased attentional focus, perceptual prioritization and memorial support. This paper reviews the existing literature on self-processing biases before introducing a series of studies that provide new insight into the influence of the self on cognition. In particular, the studies examine affective and memorial biases for self-relevant stimuli, and their flexible application in response to different task demands. We conclude that self-processing biases function to ensure that self-relevant information is attended to and preferentially processed because this is a perpetual goal of the self-system. However, contrary task-demands or priming can have an attenuating effect on their influence, speaking to the complexity and dynamism of the self-processing system in cognition

The Importance of Conflict Resolution Techniques in Autonomous Agile Teams

Today, software companies usually organize their work in teams. Social science research on team development has shown that for a team to reach a productive and autonomous stage, it has to be able to manage internal conflicts and disagreements efficiently. To better facilitate the team development process, we argue that software engineers' needs additional training in negotiation skills and conflict resolution. In this position paper, we outline ideas for what aspects to consider in such training. As an example, we argue that a majority of the conflicts originate from team-level factors and that they, therefore, should be managed on the team-level instead of in relation to dyads.Comment: Accepted at 1st International Workshop on Autonomous Teams (A-TEAMS), 201

Improved categorization of subtle facial expressions modulates Late Positive Potential

Biases in facial expression recognition can be reduced successfully using feedback-based training tasks. Here we investigate with event-related potentials (ERPs) at which stages of stimulus processing emotion-related modulations are influenced by training. Categorization of subtle facial expressions (morphed from neutral to happy, sad or surprise) was trained with correct-response feedback on each trial. ERPs were recorded before and after training while participants categorized facial expressions without response feedback. Behavioral data demonstrated large improvements in categorization of subtle facial expression which transferred to new face models not used during training. ERPs were modulated by training from 450 ms poststimulus onward, characterized by a more gradual increase in P3b/Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitude as expression intensity increased. This effect was indistinguishable for faces used for training and for new faces. It was proposed that training elicited a more fine-grained analysis of facial information for all subtle expressions, resulting in improved recognition and enhanced emotional motivational salience (reflected in P3b/LPP amplitude) of faces previously categorized as expressing no emotion.

Developing an intervention to facilitate family communication about inherited genetic conditions, and training genetic counsellors in its delivery.

Many families experience difficulty in talking about an inherited genetic condition that affects one or more of them. There have now been a number of studies identifying the issues in detail, however few have developed interventions to assist families. The SPRinG collaborative have used the UK Medical Research Council's guidance on Developing and Evaluating Complex Interventions, to work with families and genetic counsellors (GCs) to co-design a psycho-educational intervention to facilitate family communication and promote better coping and adaptation to living with an inherited genetic condition for parents and their children (<18 years). The intervention is modelled on multi-family discussion groups (MFDGs) used in psychiatric settings. The MFDG was developed and tested over three phases. First focus groups with parents, young people, children and health professionals discussed whether MFDG was acceptable and proposed a suitable design. Using evidence and focus group data, the intervention and a training manual were developed and three GCs were trained in its delivery. Finally, a prototype MFDG was led by a family therapist and co-facilitated by the three GCs. Data analysis showed that families attending the focus groups and intervention thought MFDG highly beneficial, and the pilot sessions had a significant impact on their family' functioning. We also demonstrated that it is possible to train GCs to deliver the MFDG intervention. Further studies are now required to test the feasibility of undertaking a definitive randomised controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness in improving family outcomes before implementing into genetic counselling practice.The National Institute of Health Research funded the study but any views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Authority. Funded by NIHR reference number: RP-DG-1211-10015