Perceiving individuality in harpsichord performance

Can listeners recognize the individual characteristics of unfamiliar performers playing two different musical pieces on the harpsichord? Six professional harpsichordists, three prize-winners and three non prize-winners, made two recordings of two pieces from the Baroque period (a variation on a Partita by Frescobaldi and a rondo by François Couperin) on an instrument equipped with a MIDI console. Short (8 to 15 s) excerpts from these 24 recordings were subsequently used in a sorting task in which 20 musicians and 20 non-musicians, balanced for gender, listened to these excerpts and grouped together those that they thought had been played by the same performer. Twenty-six participants, including 17 musicians and nine non-musicians, performed significantly better than chance, demonstrating that the excerpts contained sufficient information to enable listeners to recognize the individual characteristics of the performers. The grouping accuracy of musicians was significantly higher than that observed for non-musicians. No significant difference in grouping accuracy was found between prize-winning performers and non-winners or between genders. However, the grouping accuracy was significantly higher for the rondo than for the variation, suggesting that the features of the two pieces differed in a way that affected the listeners' ability to sort them accurately. Furthermore, only musicians performed above chance level when matching variation excerpts with rondo excerpts, suggesting that accurately assigning recordings of different pieces to their performer may require musical training. Comparisons between the MIDI performance data and the results of the sorting task revealed that tempo and, to a lesser extent, note onset asynchrony were the most important predictors of the perceived distance between performers, and that listeners appeared to rely mostly on a holistic percept of the excerpts rather than on a comparison of note-by-note expressive patterns

Érzelem fókuszú párterápiás képzések résztvevőkre gyakorolt hatása a megélt tudásszintjük és kompetenciaérzésük vonatkozásában = The effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) trainings measured by the perceived knowledge and competency of the participants

Háttér és célkitűzések: Tanulmányunk az első magyarországi Érzelmekre Fókuszáló Párterápiás (ÉFT) képzések észlelt hatékonyságának vizsgálatát mutatja be a tudás- és a kompetenciaérzet mentén. Vizsgálatunkban az alap- (Externship) és haladóképzések (Core Skills) elemzése mellett a teljes strukturált képzési folyamatot is mértük. Kutatásunk nagy létszámú, tolmácsolással tartott alapképzéseket vizsgált, valamint nemzetközi szinten is elsőként mérte az ÉFT-haladóképzést, valamint a teljes képzési folyamatot. Módszer: Kutatásunkban a családokkal foglalkozó, segítő foglalkozású szakemberek ÉFT-specifikus megélt tudás- és kompetenciaszintjét mértük (Externship: N = 244; Core Skills: N = 33; teljes képzési folyamat: N = 19) az erre a célra létrehozott és magyarra fordított ÉFT Tudás és Kompetencia Skála (EFT-KACS) kérdőívvel. Eredmények: A résztvevők észlelt ÉFT-specifikus tudása, kompetenciaérzete és a terápiás szövetség kialakítási képességének érzete szignifikánsan növekedtek a képzési blokkokat követően. Az eredmények alapján az alapképzés legjelentősebben az észlelt tudást növeli, míg a kompetenciaérzet kialakulásáért leginkább a haladóképzés felelős. Következtetések: A magyar EFT-KACS pszichometriai mutatói megfelelőek, a kérdőív megbízható. Kutatásunk rávilágít az ÉFT-képzések hatékonyságára, valamint az ezzel kapcsolatos tudás- és kompetenciagyarapodásban betöltött szerepére. | Background and objectives: Our study examined the perceived effectiveness of the first Hungarian Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) trainings by measuring the perceived EFT knowledge and competency. We studied large group EFT Externship trainings, done through translation, and advanced Core Skills trainings. Our research was the first to measure Core Skills trainings and the entire training process. Method: We measured healthcare professionals’ perceived EFT knowledge and competency (Externship: N = 244; Core Skills: N = 33; entire training process: N = 19) using the Hungarian EFT Knowledge and Competency Scale (EFT-KACS). Results: Participants’ perceived EFT knowledge and competency, and their perceived alliance, increased significantly after each training block. Based on our results, Externship increases the perceived knowledge the most, while Core Skills training is mostly responsible for the development of the perceived competency. Conclusions: The psychometric properties of the Hungarian EFT-KACS are adequate, the questionnaire is reliable. Our research highlights the effectiveness of the EFT trainings and their role in the development of EFT knowledge and competency

Dyadic coping in personal projects of romantic partners: assessment and associations with relationship satisfaction

In the present study we describe a context-sensitive, personal-projects-based approach to dyadic coping with stress which adapted the Dyadic Coping Inventory (DCI) for the assessment of dyadic coping strategies in stressful personal projects. In a cross-sectional study, 149 heterosexual Hungarian couples provided evaluations pertaining to their dyadic coping experiences in a stressful everyday project. Explorative factor analyses of personal project-related DCI items provided theoretically meaningful factor structures and the resulting subscales showed excellent reliability. The subscales’ predictive validity was tested in two dyadic analyses using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) whereby positive and negative dyadic coping experiences served as predictors of satisfaction with the dyadic coping process in particular, and with the relationship in general as outcomes. Our results showed that satisfaction with dyadic coping in personal projects is predicted only by the dyadic coping experiences of the respondents (the actor effect), while actor and partner effects proved to be predictive of relationship satisfaction. Negative partner experiences related to dyadic coping predicted lower relationship satisfaction of the female partner, while for males the positive experiences of the partner were found to be more predictive. These results confirm that the contextualized assessment of dyadic coping experiences in specific stressful personal projects is a reliable and valid method. Further methodological and theoretical conclusions are discussed

Mémoire et histoire en Europe centrale et orientale

La question de la mémoire, devenue un champ de recherche fécond dans l'historiographie française, allemande et anglo-saxonne, est en passe de devenir l'objet d'études importantes en Europe centrale et orientale. Lieu d'affrontement de forces impériales et locales, durablement confronté à la nécessité de reconstruire et repositionner des identités aussi bien individuelles que collectives, l'espace centre et est-européen se présente comme un champ privilégié de questionnements sur les modalités de la constitution d'une culture historique et mémorielle. La mémoire constitue de fait un défi majeur posé aujourd'hui à la fois à la recherche historique, mais plus généralement aussi aux sociétés d'Europe centrale et orientale. Cette question est rendue plus aigüe encore par le contexte actuel de transition postcommuniste, d'intégration européenne et de globalisation, qui posent la question de la révision de la mémoire historique, de sa (re)construction et de la subversion de modèles identitaires. À travers des chapitres thématiques, les auteurs de cet ouvrage collectif abordent la question de l'instrumentalisation de l'histoire et de la mémoire par le pouvoir politique, la construction de lieux de mémoire et leurs représentations et usages, la mémoire dans la construction des identités nationales, mais aussi municipales, régionales et transnationales. Le patrimoine, au niveau local ou régional, fait l'objet d'analyses qui mettent en relief le fonctionnement de ses mises en scène, sans en éluder les omissions. Ces thèmes ont été abordés à partir de différentes perspectives disciplinaires : études germaniques, histoire politique et culturelle, histoire de l'art, slavistique, littérature, sociologie et ethnologie. Placés dans des unités thématiques, les articles proposent une progression chronologique, de l'époque médiévale à la période postcommuniste, en passant par la Seconde Guerre mondiale et les guerres dans l'espace yougoslave des années 1990, à travers des études de cas pris dans l'ensemble de l'espace centre et est-européen. La Croatie, dont la mémoire fait tout particulièrement l'objet d'analyses, fait figure ici de paradigme privilégié, à partir duquel s'offrent des perspectives comparatives