The poetics of experience: a first-person creative and critical investigation of self-experience and the writing of poetry

There is increasing interest in the personal benefits of writing poetry and a growing field of practical application within healthcare. However, there is little direct research and a need for practice-based theoretical integration to improve understanding of the specific changes, creative processes and challenges involved. This study investigates the way that writing poetry can affect self-experience. It also contributes to the development of combined modes of creative and critical inquiry. A first-person account of the experiential and creative outcomes of writing poetry over an extended period is presented. The results of this are subjected to reflexive analysis and a critical theoretical explication. Four factors relating self-experience to the experience of writing poetry are identified: a failure of conscious intention; an inhibiting objectification of experience; an implicit assumption of a separate self, and a changed experience of self that felt more embodied and fluid. These findings are the basis of a theoretical examination that utilizes the work of Ignacio Matte Blanco and Michael Polanyi, in conjunction with insights derived from contemporary psychoanalysis, embodied cognition, neuroscience and attention training. An original theoretical integration is developed. It is proposed that poetry has a characteristic bi-logical form that condenses and integrates difference and identity in a simultaneous and concentrated manner. The process of composition requires a reciprocal interplay of conscious and unconscious processes, which can be enhanced by an increase in embodied awareness, a decrease in the exercise of deliberate volition, and the facilitative use of images. This involves a flexible oscillation of awareness that, modulated by the breadth of attention and the degree of identification or separation from experience, directly alters the boundaries and quality of self-experience. This framework avoids the limitations of reductive or eliminative views of the self and allows for the creative operation of what is dubbed the 'nondual imagination'

Exploring Mothers\u27 Influence on Preschoolers\u27 Physical Activity Levels and Sedentary Time

Physical activity (PA) patterns continue from childhood into adulthood; therefore, establishing healthy PA levels early is imperative. Mothers have been identified as influencing preschoolers’ activity behaviours; however, a holistic exploration of maternal influence is lacking. The purpose of this study was to explore maternal influence on preschoolers’ PA and sedentary time. Preschoolers (n = 30) and their mothers wore ActicalTM accelerometers, and mothers completed the adapted Environmental Determinants of Physical Activity in Preschool Children - Parent Survey. Direct entry regression analyses were conducted to explore maternal influence (e.g., support, enjoyment) on preschoolers’ activity levels. Maternal support was a significant predictor of preschoolers’ PA and sedentary time (p \u3c .05), while mothers’ enjoyment of PA was related to preschoolers’ sedentary time, light PA, and total PA (p \u3c .05). Further research using a large diverse sample is warranted to clarify and understand the ways in which mothers impact their preschoolers’ PA behaviours

A “collective effort to make yourself feel better”: The group process in mindfulness-based interventions.

There is growing interest in mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in the management of multiple physical and mental health issues. Although MBIs utilize a group format, research on how this format impacts teaching and learning mindfulness is lacking. This study aimed to develop a detailed theory of MBI group processes utilizing a grounded theory methodology. This article presents our subsequent model, developed from semistructured interviews conducted with MBI students, teachers, and trainers (N = 12). A core category, the group as a vessel on a shared journey, and three higher-order categories emerged from the data. They illustrate how MBI group processes navigate a characteristic path. Teachers build and steer the group “vessel” in a way that fosters a specific culture and sense of safety. The group is facilitated to share communal experiences that augment learning and enrich mindfulness practice. Limitations and implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed

Capability in the digital: institutional media management and its dis/contents

This paper explores how social media spaces are occupied, utilized and negotiated by the British Military in relation to the Ministry of Defence’s concerns and conceptualizations of risk. It draws on data from the DUN Project to investigate the content and form of social media about defence through the lens of ‘capability’, a term that captures and describes the meaning behind multiple representations of the military institution. But ‘capability’ is also a term that we hijack and extend here, not only in relation to the dominant presence of ‘capability’ as a representational trope and the extent to which it is revealing of a particular management of social media spaces, but also in relation to what our research reveals for the wider digital media landscape and ‘capable’ digital methods. What emerges from our analysis is the existence of powerful, successful and critically long-standing media and reputation management strategies occurring within the techno-economic online structures where the exercising of ‘control’ over the individual – as opposed to the technology – is highly effective. These findings raise critical questions regarding the extent to which ‘control’ and management of social media – both within and beyond the defence sector – may be determined as much by cultural, social, institutional and political influence and infrastructure as the technological economies. At a key moment in social media analysis, then, when attention is turning to the affordances, criticisms and possibilities of data, our research is a pertinent reminder that we should not forget the active management of content that is being similarly, if not equally, effective

Exploring the structural relationship between interviewer and self-rated affective symptoms in Huntington’s disease

This study explores the structural relationship between self-report and interview measures of affect in Huntington’s disease. The findings suggest continued use of both to recognize the multidimensionality within a single common consideration of distress

Students’ concern about indebtedness: A rank based social norms account

This paper describes a new model of students' concern about indebtedness within a rank-based social norms framework. Study 1 found that students hold highly variable beliefs about how much other students will owe at the end of their degree. Students' concern about their own anticipated debt – and their intention of taking on a part-time job during term time – was best predicted not by the size of the anticipated debt, but by how they, often incorrectly, believed their debt ranked amongst that of others. Study 2 manipulated hypothetical debt amounts experimentally and found that the same anticipated debt was rated as 2.5 times more concerning when it ranked as the second highest being considered than when it was the fifth highest. Study 3 demonstrated that the model applies to evaluation of different types of debt (income contingent loans versus general debt)

A Frequency Bin Analysis of Distinctive Ranges Between Human and Deepfake Generated Voices

Deepfake technology has advanced rapidly in recent years. The widespread availability of deepfake audio technology has raised concerns about its potential misuse for malicious purposes, and a need for more robust countermeasure systems is becoming ever more important. Here we analyse the differences between human and deepfake audio and introduce a novel audio pre-processing approach. Our analysis aims to show the specific locations in the frequency spectrum where these artefacts and distinctions between human and deepfake audio can be found. Our approach emphasises specific frequency ranges that we show are transferable across synthetic speech datasets. In doing so, we explore the use of a bespoke filter bank derived from our analysis of the WaveFake dataset to exploit commonalities across algorithms. Our filter bank was constructed based on a frequency bin analysis of the WaveFake dataset, we apply this filter bank to adjust gain/attenuation to improve the effective signal-to-noise ratio, doing so we reduce the similarities while accentuating differences. We then take a baseline performing model and experiment with improving the performance using these frequency ranges to show where these artefacts lie and if this knowledge is transferable across mel-spectrum algorithms. We show that there exist exploitable commonalities between deepfake voice generation methods that generate audio in the mel-spectrum and that artefacts are left behind in similar frequency regions. Our approach is evaluated on the ASVSpoof 2019 Logical Access dataset of which the test set contains unseen generative methods to test the efficacy of our filter bank approach and transferability. Our experiments show that there is enhanced classification performance to be gained from utilizing these transferable frequency bands where there are more artefacts and distinctions. Our highest-performing model provided a 14.75% improvement in Equal Error Rate against our baseline model

Short Utterance Dialogue Act Classification Using a Transformer Ensemble

An influx of digital assistant adoption and reliance is demonstrating the significance of reliable and robust dialogue act classification techniques. In the literature, there is an over-representation of purely lexical-based dialogue act classification methods. A weakness of this approach is the lack of context when classifying short utterances. We improve upon a purely lexical approach by incorporating a state-of-the-art acoustic model in a lexical-acoustic transformer ensemble, with improved results, when classifying dialogue acts in the MRDA corpus. Additionally, we further investigate the performance on an utterance word-count basis, showing classification accuracy increases with utterance word count. Furthermore, the performance of the lexical model increases with utterance word length and the acoustic model performance decreases with utterance word count, showing the models complement each other for different utterance lengths

Short-term effectiveness of drain-blocking in suppressingenzymic peat decomposition and DOC export

It has become evident that there is a general problem of increasing colour in the water draining from areas of accumulated peat in upland Britain. It was agreed in early 2007 to set up a preliminary investigation into the causes of change in colour using methods based on characterising the breakdown and oxidation of peat. These make use of techniques to measure the activities of extracellular enzymes which catalyse the process of decomposition independently from the microbial population. The overall aim of this investigation was to investigate the effect of grip blocking on the enzymic decomposition of peat and the consequential production of colour. The main study area is located within Langdon Moor, part of the Raby Estate. Peat samples were collected at 5 m intervals along transects perpendicular to a natural gully and a blocked grip. At each 5 m interval peat samples were collected at 5 depths down to 85 cm depth. Peat samples were analysed in the laboratory for carbon-related enzyme activities, microbial activity, colour and phenolic concentration.There were clear differences between enzyme activities in surface peat when compared with peat from greater depth at both study sites. There were no significant differences in magnitude of enzyme activity levels in surface peat from either area. However, there were significant differences between the areas for a number of parameters including enzyme activities in peat collected from depths between 5 and 85cms. These results suggest that increased retention of water within Langdon moor, as a result of grip blocking has caused a significant impact on the amount of colour and phenolic compounds with increasing depth relative to the amounts in a naturally drained area. Furthermore, the relationship between water colour and the concentration of phenolic compounds has been altered in the area of the blocked grip. This indicates some difference, yet to be elucidated, in the processes producing the colour deriving from the two drainage states.There were also significant differences in amounts of colour and phenolic compounds, but not enzyme activities with increasing distance from the blocked grip in contrast to the naturally drained area where amounts were less variable. This again indicates a significant influence of altered drainage patterns on the amount and quality of the coloured compounds produced from the breakdown of peat.Further detailed research will be required to determine whether this phenomenon is site specific or widespread in peatlands, and to the cause and effect of changing enzyme activity, phenolics and colour in peatlands. This preliminary study has only focused on one site per management treatment and therefore, at this stage, the results must be considered to be preliminary and site specific to Langdon moor rather than applicable to peatlands in general.Despite the small size of the study, we have achieved a good indication that there are significant differences between the two sites with contrasting drainage histories that were chosen for study and that it is possible to determine the involvement of a number of soil enzymes in the breakdown processes. It should now be possible to produce a properly convincing dataset with enough replicate study sites included which could quantify spatial variation that will undoubtedly be there at this scale. Now that the methods have been implemented, the funding requirements are relatively modest so that a level similar to that originally provided by Peatscapes (£4k) would enable a design that could cover a substantive area of Langdon Moor in enough detail to clearly demonstrate the impact of impeded drainage on this managed area

Conceptualizing gratitude and appreciation as a unitary personality trait

Gratitude and appreciation are currently measured using three self-report instruments, the GQ6 (1 scale), the Appreciation Scale (8 scales), and the GRAT (3 scales). Two studies were conducted to test how these three instruments are interrelated, whether they exist under the same higher order factor or factors, and whether gratitude and appreciation is a single or multi-factorial construct. In Study 1 (N = 206) all 12 scales were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. Both parallel analysis and the minimum average partial method indicated a clear one-factor solution. In Study 2 (N = 389) multigroup confirmatory factor analysis supported the one-factor structure, demonstrated the invariance of this structure across gender, and ruled out the confounding effect of socially desirable responding. We conclude gratitude and appreciation are a single-factor personality trait. We suggest integration of gratitude and appreciation literatures and provide a clearer conceptualization of gratitude