Acting your avatar’s age: effects of virtual reality avatar embodiment on real life walking speed

ABSTRACT

When immersive virtual reality users employ digital self-representations, i.e., avatars, they may be subject to the Proteus effect. This effect describes changes in attitudes and behaviors in accordance with identity cues derived from the employed avatar’s appearance, which can persist after leaving virtual reality. Individual reactions to the experience can affect the strength of observed Proteus effects. Especially the experienced illusions of body ownership of avatars and of being in the virtual environment (spatial presence) have been discussed in this context. This study investigated a Proteus effect of avatar age on post-embodiment walking speed, with special focus on how body ownership and spatial presence moderated this effect. Participants who had previously embodied older avatars took significantly longer to walk a set distance than either young avatar or control group participants. This was only apparent during the first half of the walking phase, which may indicate fast decay rates of the effect after embodiment ended. The reported body ownership could not be shown to impact the strength of the Proteus effect. Participants reporting more pronounced spatial presence were subject to stronger Proteus effects, with only the two-thirds of the sample with higher spatial presence showing evidence of the effect.     

Personifying the Radical

This study examines relationships among individual dispositions, news framing of civil liberties restrictions, security concerns, and political tolerance. We theorize that news frames condition the effects of individual dispositions on security and tolerance attitudes. To explore these relationships, an online‐survey experiment was conducted with 650 respondents. This experiment presented alternative versions of news stories about domestic security policies following September 11, and the policies' implications for a fringe activist group. One factor was whether the activists targeted by the government advocated for a cause supported or opposed by the respondent; another factor was whether the story framed government actions against the activists at the individual or group level. Findings show that individual framing—as opposed to group framing—made participants less tolerant of radicals they opposed and more tolerant of radicals they supported. Similar effects were observed for political ideology. Implications of personification as a framing device are discussed.     

Age-related changes in amplitude,latency and specialization of ERP responses to faces and watches

ABSTRACT

Healthy aging is associated with impairments in face recognition. While earlier research suggests that these impairments arise during memory retrieval, more recent findings suggest that earlier mechanisms, at the perceptual stage, may also be at play. However, results are often inconsistent and very few studies have included a non-face control stimulus to facilitate interpretation of results with respect to the implication of specialized face mechanisms vs. general cognitive factors. To address these issues, P100, N170 and P200 event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during processing of faces and watches. For faces, age-related differences were found for P100, N170 and P200 ERPs. For watches, age-related differences were found for N170 and P200 ERPs. Older adults showed less selective and less lateralized N170 responses to faces, suggesting that ERPs can detect age-related de-differentiation of specialized face networks. We conclude that age-related impairments in face recognition arise in part from difficulties in the earliest perceptual stages of visual information processing. A working model is presented based on coarse-to-fine analysis of visually similar exemplars.     

Method of Suicide in the Mentally Ill: A National Clinical Survey

Comparisons of psychiatric patients who die by suicide using different methods are scarce. We aimed to establish the methods of suicide used by those who are currently or have recently been in contact with mental health services in England and Wales (N = 6,203), and describe the social and clinical characteristics of suicides by different methods. We found that hanging, self‐poisoning, and jumping (from a height or in front of a moving vehicle) were the most common methods of suicide, accounting for 79% of all deaths. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.     

The Relationship between General Population Suicide Rates and the Internet: A Cross‐National Study

Internet Web sites and chat rooms have been reported both to promote suicides and have a positive beneficial effect on suicidal individuals. There is a paucity of studies examining the role of the Internet in general population suicide rates. The relationship between general population suicide rates and the prevalence of Internet users was examined in a cross‐national study using data from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Web sites. The prevalence of Internet users was significantly and positively correlated with general population suicide rates in both sexes. On multiple regression analysis the prevalence of Internet users was independently associated with general population suicide rates in males, and this independent relationship in females approached statistical significance. Caution should be exercised in the attribution of a causal relationship and the direction of this relationship because of the cross‐sectional and ecological study design whereby the findings are subject to ecological fallacy. However, the findings identify and support a need for further research.     

Assessing the Adherence to Guidelines of Media Reporting of Suicide Using a Novel Instrument—the “Risk of Imitative Suicide Scale” (RISc)

Media guidelines for reporting of suicide are considered important in suicide prevention because of the risk of “imitative” suicide. There are currently no established tools for the quantification of quality of reporting. We sought to develop and validate a quality assessment instrument—the Risk of Imitative Suicide Scale (RISc). The RISc appears capable of discriminating reliably between adherent and nonadherent articles. Our data suggest that adherence to guidelines is inconsistent, and there are major differences between web‐based and print media. The RISc could be used to evaluate effectiveness and consistency of media engagement with suicide prevention strategies.     

Secularism's threat to tradition: A reading of Europe,India and the Limits of Secularism

ABSTRACT

This article offers a reading of Jakob De Roover's important book, Europe, India and the Limits of Secularism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016). It invokes the way in which the English courts have re-described Sikh tradition as religion in order to illustrate the relevance of Jakob De Roover's hypothesis about secularism, explaining its dependence on Christian theology and its inbuilt normative dynamic, which reframes tradition and poses a lethal threat to it.