Does culture shape our understanding of others’ thoughts and emotions? An investigation across 12 countries

Measures of social cognition have now become central in neuropsychology, being essential for early and differential diagnoses, follow-up and rehabilitation in a wide range of conditions. With the scientific world becoming increasingly interconnected, international neuropsychological and medical collaborations are burgeoning to tackle the global challenges that are mental health conditions. These initiatives commonly merge data across a diversity of populations and countries, while ignoring their specificity. OBJECTIVE: In this context, we aimed to estimate the influence of participants’ nationality on social cognition evaluation. This issue is of particular importance as most cognitive tasks are developed in highly specific contexts, not representative of that encountered by the world’s population. METHOD: Through a large international study across 18 sites, neuropsychologists assessed core aspects of social cognition in 587 participants from 12 countries using traditional and widely used tasks. RESULTS: Age, gender, and education were found to impact measures of mentalizing and emotion recognition. After controlling for these factors, differences between countries accounted for more than 20% of the variance on both measures. Importantly, it was possible to isolate participants’ nationality from potential translation issues, which classically constitute a major limitation. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these findings highlight the need for important methodological shifts to better represent social cognition in both fundamental research and clinical practice, especially within emerging international networks and consortia

Remembering, witnessing and translation : female experiences of the Nazi camps

[Abstract unavailable

Retranslating Rousset : English-language mediations of L’Univers concentrationnaire

This article approaches the translation of concentration camp testimony through the optic of secondary witnessing in order to consider how translation, as an act of listening, might impact the preservation and transmission of the survivors’ account. A case study on the initial translation and retranslation of David Rousset’s L’Univers concentrationnaire in English will serve as the basis for exploring how the translators have attended to the survivor’s representation of the camps. It will also scrutinize paratextual material and translation reviews as a means of retracing some of the socio-cultural conditions of production of the two target texts, paying particular attention to how Rousset has been understood and received

Vascular Function Intervention Trial in sickle cell disease (V-FIT): Trial Protocol

This protocol outlines procedures for capturing participant information as part of the V-FIT study. The protocol should not be used as a guide for the treatment of other participants; every care was taken in its drafting, but corrections or amendments may be necessary. This trial adheres to the principles outlined in the International Conference on Harmonisation Good Clinical Practice (ICH GCP) guidelines, protocol and all applicable local regulations

The effect of alcoholism on visuo-spatial perspective taking

Background: Severe alcoholism is associated with cognitive deficits which research has shown to effect social functioning. Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to make judgments based on another’s state of mind, has only recently been explored in alcohol research. Previous research has shown that alcoholism is associated with deficits in conscious, deliberate emotional processing and humour processing. However, ToM encompasses many social functions, including the ability to take another’s visual perspective, but little is known about how cognitive deficits caused through alcoholism may affect these processes. Aim: The aim of the experiments in this thesis was to explore how alcoholism may effect automatic visual-spatial processing and the effect of emotional valence of stimuli on this automatic process. Methods: Visual processing was measured by asking participants to respond to a dot probe appearing as either congruent (above/below) or incongruent (left/right) to facial stimuli which conveyed a neutral or emotional expression (e.g.a fearful or happy face). Participants were also asked to quantify the level of the emotion expressed using a 7 point-Likert scale. Results: The results from the visuo-spatial processing trials (VSPT) show that alcoholism is not associated with any impairment in VSPT; both alcoholics and non-alcoholics showed a perspective reaction time cost when the perspective differed from their own. This can be taken as evidence for automatic VSPT. However, the relevance of the fearful facial expression did cause a reaction time cost for the non-alcoholics that was not demonstrated by the alcoholics. However, both the alcoholics and non-alcoholics showed a delayed response to happy faces when the perspective differed from their own. To address the question as to why it may be the case that alcoholics did not react differently to neutral and fearful faces, participants were asked to rate the faces for emotional content. In these trials alcoholics rated the neutral faces as containing more emotion than the non-alcoholics. Conclusions: The VSPT studies in this thesis suggest that alcoholics do not show any deficits in visual perspective taking, although this research is in its infancy so greater exploration is required. What appears most significant from the experiments is that the emotional content of the stimuli presented creates processing differences between the alcoholics and non-alcoholics as evidenced by their reaction time differences and ratings of the faces. The extent to which these processing differences will effect alcoholic’s day to day lives is not known

Connie Cox in a Senior Clarinet Recital

This is the program for the senior clarinet recital of Connie Cox. The recital was held on December 10, 1963, at 8:00 p.m., in Mitchell Hall Auditorium. Cox was acompanied by Sharon Owens

Sensing Noise as an Information Object in Socio-Technical Environmental Monitoring

A noise phenomenology is proposed that considers noise as an information object that only has meaning when experienced by an actor. Environmental noise has a major impact on the health and well-being of citizens, particularly when the noise occurs at night. Noise level monitoring can fail to take into account the impact of noise on the lived experienced of citizens. A socio-technical multi-sensor architecture is used to record night time noise in a domestic urban environment in a longitudinal study in the UK. Results are triangulated with contemporaneous logs of occupants to isolate noise patterns that cause the most disturbance to sleep behaviour. The phenomenology identifies the need for a multidimensional interdisciplinary approach to developing sensor networks to acquire noise information for environmental monitoring