Technology,Phenomenology and the Everyday World: A Phenomenological Analysis on How Technologies Mould Our World

Technology always provides a new perception of the world. However, it is not clear when technology produces “mere” new informations and when it provides something more such as a production of new objects in our world which start to “live” around us. The aim of this paper is to study how technology shapes our surrounding world. The questions which we are going to answer are: Is it really adding new objects to our world? If yes, does every technology have this potentiality? We are going to tackle the problem using a phenomenological and post-phenomenological approach focussing our attention on the perceptual level. Using Husserl’s philosophy we will study how technology are deeply involved in our perception and, thanks to post-phenomenology and its concept of “embodiment relations,” we will be able to determine which kind of technologies have the potentiality to change our surrounding world introducing and producing new objects in it.     

The Dynamic Association of Being and Non-Being: Heidegger’s Thoughts on Plato’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sophist</Emphasis> Beyond Platonism

This article examines Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s Sophist, focusing on his attempts to grasp Plato’s original thinking of being and non-being. Some contemporary thinkers and commentators argue that Heidegger’s view of Plato is simply based on his criticism against the traditional metaphysics of Platonism and its language. But a close reading of his lecture on the Sophist reveals that his view of Plato is grounded in Plato’s questioning struggle with the ambiguous nature of human speech or language (logos). For Heidegger, Plato’s way of philosophizing is deeper than the metaphysical understanding of Platonism which sees only fixed ideas of being. In the Sophist, dialectical thinking of Plato constantly confronts the questionable force of the logos which betrays the natural possibility of non-being based on the tension between movement and rest. Thus, from Plato’s original insight Heidegger uncovers the dynamic association (koinōnia) of being and non-being as a natural ground of everyday living with others. However, although Heidegger’s understanding of the Sophist powerfully demonstrates the lively possibility (dunamis) of being beyond the customary perspective of Platonic metaphysics, his interpretation fails to further disclose Plato’s political question of being emerging in the Sophist, which seeks the true associative ground of human beings.     

Ontogenesis Versus Morphogenesis Towards an Anti-realist Model of the Constitution of Society

This article firstly criticizes Margaret Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach for being indecisive about the realist notion of emergence it proposes as well as for her inadequate account of structural conditioning. It is argued that critical realists’ conceptualizations of emergence cannot but lead to inconsistencies about the adequate placement of agents as parts of emergent entities. The inconsistencies to which these conceptualizations lead necessitate an anti-realist model of the constitution of societies which takes into account that social structures are existentially dependent upon ideational elaboration. This alternative anti-realist theoretical perspective is provided by Ontogenesis, within the framework of which the realists’ idea of the ‘necessary and internal relations’ give their place to the ontological pervasiveness of the culturally shared imaginary schemata. Archer’s denial of a collective synchronic impact to social forms is implied in her analysis of morphogenetic cycles, according to which, structural elaboration post-dates social interaction; and this denial is also expressed in this very idea of emergent structures. Instead, for Ontogenesis, social forms are synchronically dependent on the collective impact of the differently socially placed agents, who have different interests and material resources, and whose interaction only becomes meaningful when drawing on these culturally shared imaginary schemata.     

Social Constructivism in Science and Technology Studies

Berger and Luckmann’s concept of “social construction” has been widely adopted in many fields of the humanities and social sciences in the half-century since they wrote The Social Construction of Reality. One field in which constructivism was especially provocative was in Science and Technology Studies (STS), where it was expanded beyond the social domain to encompass the practices and contents of contemporary natural science. This essay discusses the relationship between social construction in STS and Berger and Luckmann’s original conception of it, and identifies problems that arose from indiscriminate uses of constructivism.     

Cognitive Load Differentially Impacts Response Control in Girls and Boys with ADHD

Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) consistently show impaired response control, including deficits in response inhibition and increased intrasubject variability (ISV) compared to typically-developing (TD) children. However, significantly less research has examined factors that may influence response control in individuals with ADHD, such as task or participant characteristics. The current study extends the literature by examining the impact of increasing cognitive demands on response control in a large sample of 81children with ADHD (40 girls) and 100 TD children (47 girls), ages 8–12 years. Participants completed a simple Go/No-Go (GNG) task with minimal cognitive demands, and a complex GNG task with increased cognitive load. Results showed that increasing cognitive load differentially impacted response control (commission error rate and tau, an ex-Gaussian measure of ISV) for girls, but not boys, with ADHD compared to same-sex TD children. Specifically, a sexually dimorphic pattern emerged such that boys with ADHD demonstrated higher commission error rate and tau on both the simple and complex GNG tasks as compared to TD boys, whereas girls with ADHD did not differ from TD girls on the simple GNG task, but showed higher commission error rate and tau on the complex GNG task. These findings suggest that task complexity influences response control in children with ADHD in a sexually dimorphic manner. The findings have substantive implications for the pathophysiology of ADHD in boys versus girls with ADHD.     

Chronic Childhood Peer Rejection is Associated with Heightened Neural Responses to Social Exclusion During Adolescence

This functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study examined subjective and neural responses to social exclusion in adolescents (age 12–15) who either had a stable accepted (n?=?27; 14 males) or a chronic rejected (n?=?19; 12 males) status among peers from age 6 to 12. Both groups of adolescents reported similar increases in distress after being excluded in a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball), but adolescents with a history of chronic peer rejection showed higher activity in brain regions previously linked to the detection of, and the distress caused by, social exclusion. Specifically, compared with stably accepted adolescents, chronically rejected adolescents displayed: 1) higher activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) during social exclusion and 2) higher activity in the dACC and anterior prefrontal cortex when they were incidentally excluded in a social interaction in which they were overall included. These findings demonstrate that chronic childhood peer rejection is associated with heightened neural responses to social exclusion during adolescence, which has implications for understanding the processes through which peer rejection may lead to adverse effects on mental health over time.     

The Relationship Between Secondary Traumatic Stress and Personal Posttraumatic Growth: Personality Factors as Moderators

This present study examined the relationship between secondary traumatic stress, personality factors, and personal posttraumatic growth for persons indirectly exposed to traumatic life events. A sample of 162 nurses and physicians completed the self-report measures describing symptoms of secondary traumatic stress, personality factors and vicarious posttraumatic growth. The results indicated that secondary traumatic stress negatively correlated with vicarious posttraumatic growth. Moreover, this relation is moderated by personality factors. A low level of secondary traumatic stress symptoms is associated with a higher level of perceived posttraumatic growth for participants with a high level of openness, agreeability and conscientiousness. These findings emphasize the differences in perceiving posttraumatic growth in the context of secondary exposure to traumatic life events.     

Behavioral and Psychophysiological Effects of a Yoga Intervention on High-Risk Adolescents: A Randomized Control Trial

The purpose of this study was to conduct a pilot randomized control trial to test whether a mindful yoga intervention had a beneficial impact on substance use and its psychological and psychophysiological correlates in high-risk adolescents. Research on yoga has generated growing evidence for its positive effects on physical and emotional health. However, most studies are conducted with adults, with few controlled studies conducted with youth. We designed a 20-session mindful yoga intervention for adolescents attending a school for students at high-risk for dropping out. The 50-min classes were offered three times a week. The participants (mean age = 16.7 years) were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. Multi-rater (student, teacher), multi-method (survey, cognitive, psychophysiological) data were collected before and after the yoga curriculum. At post-test, students in the yoga condition, as compared to control students, exhibited trends toward decreased alcohol use and improved teacher-rated social skills (p < .10); and showed a non-significant increase in arousal in response to relevant stimuli as measured in skin conductance. Significant effects were not found on hypothesized proximal measures of self-regulation, mood, mindfulness, or involuntary engagement coping. Future research is needed to replicate and expand upon our findings. Studies are also needed with larger samples to further investigate potential mediators and moderators of yoga’s effects.     

Mechanisms Mediating Children’s Perceived Maternal Nonsupportive Reactions to Sadness and Children’s Social and Emotional Functioning

This study examined whether children’s perceptions of maternal nonsupportive reactions to sadness (active discouragement and non-response) influenced children’s loneliness and classroom popularity indirectly through their effects on children’s sadness inhibition and self-perception of social competence. Participants were children in grades 3–6 from a university affiliated public elementary school (N = 175; 53 % females; 37 % racial/ethnic minority). Children reported on the frequency of their mother’s active discouragement and non-response of their sadness, as well their own sadness inhibition, self-perceived social competence, and loneliness. Classroom peers reported on children’s popularity. Results indicated that perceived maternal non-response to sadness was indirectly related to classroom popularity and loneliness through the effect on children’s self-perception of social competence. In contrast, perceived maternal active discouragement of sadness was indirectly related to children’s classroom popularity through the effect on children’s sadness inhibition. These results support the consideration of active discouragement and non-response as distinct constructs and indicate the likelihood of different pathways of influence in predicting emotional and social outcomes such as loneliness and classroom popularity.