Affective interactions using virtual reality: the link between presence and emotions.

Many studies showed the ability of movies and imagery techniques to elicit emotions. Nevertheless, it is less clear how to manipulate the content of interactive media to induce specific emotional responses. In particular, this is true for the emerging medium virtual reality (VR), whose main feature is the ability to induce a feeling of "presence" in the computer-generated world experienced by the user. The main goal of this study was to analyze the possible use of VR as an affective medium. Within this general goal, the study also analyzed the relationship between presence and emotions. The results confirmed the efficacy of VR as affective medium: the interaction with "anxious" and "relaxing" virtual environments produced anxiety and relaxation. The data also showed a circular interaction between presence and emotions: on one side, the feeling of presence was greater in the "emotional" environments; on the other side, the emotional state was influenced by the level of presence. The significance of these results for the assessment of affective interaction is discussed.     

Teachers facing school failure: the social valorization of effort in the school context

This paper describes two studies concerning teachers’ classroom interventions facing school failure. The role of two main variables is investigated: the lack of effort as a cause of failure students are held responsible for by teachers, and teacher’s social representations of intelligence. The first study (Study 1) explored the impact of “lack of effort” causal attribution for student’s failure on the intervention strategies adopted by 122 high school teachers. Study 2 analyzed the impact of social representations of intelligence, held by 202 high school teachers, on “lack of effort” causal inference and on behavioral interventions. Results highlight that teachers mostly choose more severe educational interventions with retributive purpose when failure is ascribable to an absence of effort expenditure by the student. Moreover, the findings support the role of teachers’ social representations of intelligence in failure explanations and in educational practices, showing that “lack of effort” attribution and practices with retributive purpose are predicted by the social representation of intelligence “as a gift”. Results are analyzed and discussed by considering the effort as a normative parameter of the school environment. This research was supported financially in part by MURST “University funds, 2004 (Ex 40%)”. Portions of these results were presented at the 8th International Conference on Social Representations, Rome.     

Detection of counting pseudoerrors: What helps children accept them?

This study examines children's comprehension of non‐essential counting features (conventional rules). The objective of the study was to determine whether the presence or absence of cardinal values in pseudoerrors and the type of conventional rule violated affects children's performance. A detection task with pseudoerrors was presented through a computer game to 146 primary school children in grades 2 through 4. The same pseudoerrors were presented both with and without cardinal values; the pseudoerrors violated conventional rules of spatial adjacency, temporal adjacency, spatial–temporal adjacency, and left‐to‐right direction. Half of the participants within each age group were randomly assigned to an experimental condition that included pseudoerrors with a cardinal value, and the other half were assigned to a condition that included pseudoerrors without a cardinal value. The results show that when presented with a cardinal value, children more easily recognize the optional nature of non‐essential counting features. Likewise, the type of conventional rule transgressed significantly affected the children's acceptance of pseudoerrors as valid counts. Participants penalized breaches of temporal and spatial–temporal adjacency to a greater degree than breaches of spatial adjacency and left‐to‐right direction.     

Step changes in the intertrial interval in the midsession reversal task: Predicting pigeons' performance with the learning-to-time model

Our goal was to assess the role of timing in pigeons' performance in the midsession reversal task. In discrete-trial sessions, pigeons learned to discriminate between 2 stimuli, S1 and S2. Choices of S1 were reinforced only in the first half of the session and choices of S2 were reinforced only in the second half. Typically, pigeons choose S2 before the contingency reverses (anticipatory errors) and S1 after (perseverative errors), suggesting that they time the interval from the beginning of the session to the contingency reversal. To test this hypothesis, we exposed pigeons to a midsession reversal task and, depending on the group, either increased or decreased the ITI duration. We then contrasted the pigeons' performance with the predictions of the Learning-to-Time (LeT) model: In both conditions, preference was expected to reverse at the same time as in the previous sessions. When the ITI was doubled, pigeons' preference reversal occurred at half the trial number but at the same time as in the previous sessions. When the ITI was halved, pigeons' preference reversal occurred at a later trial but at an earlier time than in the previous sessions. Hence, pigeons' performance was only partially consistent with the predictions of LeT, suggesting that besides timing, other sources of control, such as the outcome of previous trials, seem to influence choice.     

Influence of Stimulus Salience and Attentional Demands on Visual Search Patterns in Hemispatial Neglect

Seventy-five left and right brain-damaged patients, with or without hemispatial neglect, and 40 age-matched control subjects were tested on cancellation tasks with two different visual textures modeled after Julesz (1981). In one condition (“preattentive”), target elements segregated easily from background elements and were perceived effortlessly. In the other (“attentive”), target elements did not segregate easily and could be detected only after prolonged focal scrutiny. Both controls and patients were more accurate and faster on the preattentive than attentive texture. However, only neglect patients were disproportionately impaired on the attentive texture, thus suggesting that unilateral neglect is exacerbated by the low visual salience of the stimuli and a higher engagement of focal attention. Thus, a simple bedside test may help to tell apart the level of visual information processing maximally impaired in neglect patients.     

Complex in memory,mind in matter: walking hand in hand

This paper aims to highlight four major points: first: a ‘Jungian attitude’ understood as a viewpoint which enables work with interconnectedness through various fields of knowledge. Second, that complexes are dynamic, as is memory, and that both are transformed by experience and develop hand in hand with each other i.e., the transformation of the complex occurs through the transformation of memory as embodied in internal working models, and vice versa. Third, complexes and archetypes are linked to each other in matrices of one form or another and lead to the complexity of the psyche, which is a developing system. Fourth, the analytical process provides an arena that enables and consolidates interconnections that foster a better intrapsychic transition. The analytic meeting promotes profound changes, redesigning our neural architecture as well as our psychic landscape.     

What messages can foster safer sex among young women? Experimental evidence concerning the role of emotions and moral norms

Through a 2 × 2 × 2 quasi experimental design (N = 254), this research investigated if a social campaign eliciting positive emotions and activating moral norms might enhance condom negotiation skills, intended and estimated condom among young women with or without past sexual experience with casual partners. Emotions had a main effect on one of the six condom negotiation strategies we considered; for most of the other variables an interaction effect with moral norms and/or past behaviour emerged. Concerning estimated condom use, positive emotions worked better than negative ones when moral norms were salient. With respect to negotiations skills, positive rather than negative emotions seemed more effective for women with past causal sexual experience. In women without this kind of experience, positive emotions seemed to work better when moral norms were salient. Moral norms had a main effect on negotiation self-efficacy, but not in the predicted direction: when moral norms were more salient women were found to be less confident about their negotiation ability. These results suggest that a message which makes moral norms salient should at the same time elicit positive emotions in order to be effective; moreover, messages should be carefully tailored according to women’s past behaviour.