Questioning and responding in Italian

Questions are design problems for both the questioner and the addressee. They must be produced as recognizable objects and must be comprehended by taking into account the context in which they occur and the local situated interests of the participants. This paper investigates how people do ‘questioning’ and ‘responding’ in Italian ordinary conversations. I focus on the features of both questions and responses. I first discuss formal linguistic features that are peculiar to questions in terms of intonation contours (e.g. final rise), morphology (e.g. tags and question words) and syntax (e.g. inversion). I then show additional features that characterize their actual implementation in conversation such as their minimality (often the subject or the verb is only implied) and the usual occurrence of speaker gaze towards the recipient during questions. I then look at which social actions (e.g. requests for information, requests for confirmation) the different question types implement and which responses are regularly produced in return. The data shows that previous descriptions of “interrogative markings” are neither adequate nor sufficient to comprehend the actual use of questions in natural conversation

Self-perception and self-esteem of patients seeking cosmetic surgery

Cosmetic surgery represents a particular application of plastic surgery, in which the operative competence of the discipline is focused not on the correction of pathological disorders, but on the correction of some morphologic traits not accepted by the patients, or not adherent with the aesthetic canons of the time, although they are absolutely compatible with the norm. As a consequence, cosmetic surgery recognizes subjective indications. According to a particular literature on the subject, patients seeking these interventions would live a dualism between (their own) body image and inner self-image. Very psychotic case histories would come out of this. A base psychological approach adopted by the surgeon, competent both in the surgical and the psychological level, is absolutely needed. In this study, the psychological features of patients seeking cosmetic surgery were explored in an attempt to define common profiles or prevalent characteristics, and to isolate major psychiatric disorders. Patient self-esteem and physical self-perception also were investigated

Correction of prominent ears with a new splinting technique

Correction of prominent ears represents one of the main applications in plastic surgery. Apart from its cosmetic nature, this operation is important because of the psychological distress that the deformity causes patients. In this study, 40 patients who underwent treatment for prominent ears in our department were evaluated. The classical surgical technique described by Chongchet followed by a new splinting procedure was performed. The advantages of this technique are described in comparison with traditional methods

Attività in alcuni generi di psicoterapia

The main aim of our paper is to contribute to the outline of a general inventory of activities in psychotherapy, as a step towards a description of overall conversational organizations of diff erent therapeutic approaches. From the perspective of Conversation Analysis, we describe some activities commonly occurrring in a corpus of sessions conducted by cognitive and relational-systemic therapists. Two activities appear to be basic: (a) inquiry: therapists elicit information from patients on their problems and circumstances; (b) reworking: therapists say something designed as an elaboration of what patients have previously said, or as something that can be grounded on it; and patients are induced to confi rm/disprove and contribute to the elaboration. Furthermore, we describe other activities, which turn out to be auxiliary to the basic ones: storytelling, procedural arrangement, recalling, noticing, teaching. We fi nally show some ways in which these activities can be integrated through conversational interaction

Chimpanzees and bonobos use social leverage in an ultimatum game

The ultimatum game (UG) is widely used to investigate our sense of fairness, a key characteristic that differentiates us from our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees. Previous studies found that, in general, great apes behave as rational maximizers in the UG. Proposers tend to choose self-maximizing offers, while responders accept most non-zero offers. These studies do not rule out the possibility that apes can behave prosocially to improve the returns for themselves and others. However, this has never been well studied. In this study, we offer chimpanzee and bonobo proposers the possibility of taking into account the leverage of responders over the offers they receive. This leverage takes the form of access to alternatives for responders. We find that proposers tend to propose fairer offers when responders have the option to access alternatives. Furthermore, we find that both species use their leverage to reject unequal offers. Our results suggest that great apes mostly act as rational maximizers in an UG, yet access to alternatives can lead them to change their strategies such as not choosing the self-maximizing offer as proposers and not accepting every offer higher than zero as responders

Neodymium: Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet Long Impulse Laser for the Elimination of Superfluous Hair: Experiences and Considerations from 3 Years of Activity

This study examined the results obtained with a modern apparatus for laser hair removal (neodymium: yttrium-aluminum-garnet [Nd:YAG] laser at long impulses with a wave-length of 1,064 nm; Q-switched laser) over a follow-up period of 3 years. A large heterogeneous group of 480 patients was taken into consideration. These patients were treated according to a standard protocol with monthly checkups and a personalized protocol at deferred appointments. The results, discovered by means of the most objective procedure possible, were retrieved and put into a graph showing two different curves for the repopulation of hair. In their clinical travels, the authors observed an average variable regrowth of 40% to 65%, allowing them to affirm that laser hair removal using Nd:YAG at long impulses is decisively efficient in obtaining long-term results. The use of a protocol (denominated "prolonged monthly checkup") with laser sessions at ever-decreasing periods permits, among other things, more outstanding and advantageous results for the patient. Thanks to more efficiently synchronized phases of the biologic hair cycle, this shortens and moves the telegenic phases closer and also renders the anagenic phases (those in which the selective photoermolysis on the pilipheric follicle proves to be efficient) more efficient. Personalization of the treatment relative to the monthly health checkup sessions is of fundamental importance to the scope of obtaining the best results in terms of cost-benefit rate, provided submassimal fluxes are (i.e., those well-tolerated by the patient) used. All this allows hair removal that is not definitive, but which becomes progressively permanent (i.e., characterized by ever-growing periods of lack of hair sustained by sporadic maintenance laser sessions based on the individual's necessity). © 2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc

Gibbon strategies in a food competition task

Social primates face conflicts of interest with other partners when their individual and collective interests collide. Despite living in small, primarily bonded, groups compared to other social primates, gibbons are not exempt from these conflicts in their everyday lives. In the current task, we asked whether dyads of gibbons would solve a conflict of interest over food rewards. We presented dyads of gibbons with a situation in which they could decide whether to take an active role and pull a handle to release food rewards at a distance or take a passive role and avoid action. In this situation, the passive partner could take an advantageous position to obtain the rewards over the active partner. Gibbons participated in three conditions: a control condition with no food rewards, a test condition with indirect food rewards and a test condition with direct food rewards. In both test conditions, five rewards were released at a distance from the handle. In addition, the active individual could obtain one extra food reward from the handle in the direct food condition. We found that gibbons acted more often in the two conditions involving food rewards, and waited longer in the indirect compared to the direct food condition, thus suggesting that they understood the task contingencies. Surprisingly, we found that in a majority of dyads, individuals in the active role obtained most of the payoff compared to individuals in the passive role in both food conditions. Furthermore, in some occasions individuals in the active role did not approach the location where the food was released. These results suggest that while gibbons may strategize to maximize benefits in a competitive food task, they often allowed their partners to obtain better rewards. Our results highlight the importance of social tolerance and motivation as drivers promoting cooperation in these species