Left-hemisphere activation is associated with enhanced vocal pitch error detection in musicians with absolute pitch

The ability to process auditory feedback for vocal pitch control is crucial during speaking and singing. Previous studies have suggested that musicians with absolute pitch (AP) develop specialized left-hemisphere mechanisms for pitch processing. The present study adopted an auditory feedback pitch perturbation paradigm combined with ERP recordings to test the hypothesis whether the neural mechanisms of the left-hemisphere enhance vocal pitch error detection and control in AP musicians compared with relative pitch (RP) musicians and non-musicians (NM). Results showed a stronger N1 response to pitch-shifted voice feedback in the right-hemisphere for both AP and RP musicians compared with the NM group. However, the left-hemisphere P2 component activation was greater in AP and RP musicians compared with NMs and also for the AP compared with RP musicians. The NM group was slower in generating compensatory vocal reactions to feedback pitch perturbation compared with musicians, and they failed to re-adjust their vocal pitch after the feedback perturbation was removed. These findings suggest that in the earlier stages of cortical neural processing, the right hemisphere is more active in musicians for detecting pitch changes in voice feedback. In the later stages, the left-hemisphere is more active during the processing of auditory feedback for vocal motor control and seems to involve specialized mechanisms that facilitate pitch processing in the AP compared with RP musicians. These findings indicate that the left hemisphere mechanisms of AP ability are associated with improved auditory feedback pitch processing during vocal pitch control in tasks such as speaking or singing.     

Remembering the Historical Roots of Remembering the Personal Past

As scholars, remembering the historical past in one's area of study provides a foundation for purposefully pursuing knowledge. As individuals, remembering our personal past provides direction and purpose in everyday life. Taken together, these percepts provide the impetus for the current paper, which traces the contributions of six early pioneers who wrote about how humans remember their personal past. Analysis demonstrates how their historical ideas support current literatures focused on the personal past: reminiscence‐based mental health interventions, the adaptive psychosocial functions of autobiographical remembering, and the construction of identity as a life story. Three future research directions are also briefly presented: the human ability for mental ‘time travel’, a lifespan approach to remembering the personal past, and reflection on one's past as a route to wisdom. Understanding the human phenomenon of remembering the personal past has long‐standing historical roots that continue to stimulate basic and applied research. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Science is a Gateway for Democracy

The Arab Spring of 2011 has highlighted an unprecedent fact in the region: it was the young and educated population who established the spearheading of change, and led their countries to democracy. In this paper, we try to analyze how science has been a key factor in these moves, in Tunisia as well as in Egypt, and how it can help to anchor democracy in these countries.     

Respecting religion in youth music subcultures: inclusivity,individuality and conflict avoidance strategy

Drawing on fieldwork with young Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians involved in the secular punk rock subculture, this article examines strategies for building respectful relationships between religious and irreligious young people in youth music subcultures. Although punk rock developed as a secular and often anti-religious youth subculture, and although a thriving Evangelical subculture has developed with its own popular music scenes at odds with secular values, a significant number of young Christians have become active participants in punk. Arguing for the importance of musical and subcultural identities among contemporary youth, this article analyses examples of creative inclusivity and respectful relationships across religious boundaries, as well as examples of conflicts over spiritual values. Outlining strategies for building religious inclusivity and resolving religious conflict in youth subcultures, it is shown that where young people’s creative capacities and individual autonomy are respected and enabled by subcultural peers and secular or religious youth workers and institutions, strongly held religious views can still be welcomed within even strongly secular youth subcultures.     

Christian hip hop as pedagogy: a South African case study

Drawing on interviews with creators of Christian hip hop music in South Africa, this article demonstrates that this genre of popular music and youth culture is utilised as a form of pedagogy to transmit religious beliefs and values to contemporary youth. The pedagogical aspects of hip hop have been recognised in research on the topic, but the religious pedagogical uses of hip hop have been under-analysed within the social sciences. After outlining the global development of hip hop as a pedagogical practice, this article will demonstrate that, under the influence of North American Evangelicalism, South African Christian hip hop attempts to promote Evangelical orthodoxy and orthopraxy in response to the secular and religious practices of South African youth.     

Culture and Gender Representation in Iranian School Textbooks

This study examines the representations of male and female social actors in selected Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. It is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and uses van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network Model to analyze social actor representations in the gendered discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from the analysis show that the representations endorse the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality which is an institutionalized form of social practice in Iran. Three male and three female students were interviewed to find out what they think about these representations. Their responses with regard to whether they think textbooks should also include representations of other forms of sexuality were non-committal and vague. To them LGBT people are the “Other” practicing a form of sexuality that is not normal. Such exclusions could obscure the reality regarding the existence of such gender identities and represent the world in a particular manner.     

Evidence-based strategies to support children’s emergent literacy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

This study was designed to examine teachers’ reported use of evidence-based strategies to support children’s emergent literacy in Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The study participants comprised 644 kindergarten teachers from four countries, including Saudi Arabia (n = 154), Qatar (n = 105), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n = 190), and Oman (n = 195). The researchers designed a 29-items questionnaire that addressed five dimensions, examining evidence-based strategies that support emergent literacy: phonological awareness, knowledge and understandings of books and other texts, print awareness, knowledge of letters and words, and early writing. The results showed that teachers reported higher use of strategies concerning knowledge of letters and words, followed by those concerning print awareness. In addition, they reported lower use of strategies concerning early writing. Moreover, teachers in the UAE reported higher use of strategies in support of emergent literacy followed by teachers in Qatar and Oman, whereas teachers in Saudi Arabia reported lower use of evidence-based strategies. Finally, statistically significant differences were found regarding teachers’ use of emergent literacy strategies due to teachers’ demographic background. Implications for future research are discussed, and they include highlighting evidence-based emergent literacy strategies in early years settings in the GCC countries as well as expanding the scope of the study to include samples from different contexts.     

A Voxel-based lesion study on facial emotion recognition after circumscribed prefrontal cortex damage

Previous studies have shown inconsistent findings regarding the contribution of the different prefrontal regions in emotion recognition. Moreover, the hemispheric lateralization hypothesis posits that the right hemisphere is dominant for processing all emotions regardless of affective valence, whereas the valence specificity hypothesis posits that the left hemisphere is specialized for processing positive emotions while the right hemisphere is specialized for negative emotions. However, recent findings suggest that the evidence for such lateralization has been less consistent. In this study, we investigated emotion recognition of fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger in 30 patients with focal prefrontal cortex lesions and 30 control subjects. We also examined the impact of lesion laterality on recognition of the six basic emotions. The results showed that compared to control subjects, the frontal subgroups were impaired in recognition of three negative basic emotions of fear, sadness, and anger – regardless of the lesion laterality. Therefore, our findings did not establish that each hemisphere is specialized for processing specific emotions. Moreover, the voxel-based lesion symptom mapping analysis showed that recognition of fear, sadness, and anger draws on a partially common bilaterally distributed prefrontal network.