Connecting embodiment,emotion and gentrification: An exploration through the practice of yoga in Toronto

Emotion and embodiment have rarely been identified as dimensions of gentrification processes, despite greater attention to the role of emotions in urbanization and to the mutual constitution of bodies and cities in geographic literature. This paper has two aims: to chart the ways that emotion and embodiment have been considered in gentrification research and theory to date, and to suggest further theoretical strategies for attending to the role that embodied practices and emotions play in marking, reproducing and consolidating gentrification. The latter aim is pursued through a personal reflection on the experience of yoga – as a practice that calls explicit attention to the body and its feelings in place – in Toronto, a city that is no stranger to gentrification. While this paper will not attempt to document in general how yoga and gentrification may be linked in Toronto or other places experiencing gentrification, it will suggest that as an increasingly popular embodied practice tied into middle-class consumption patterns and present in landscapes of urban revitalization, yoga practice affords relevant moments of reflection through which the embodied and emotional dimensions of gentrification can be clarified and/or problematized. My argument is that the body and its emotions are critical sites for the study of gentrification as a complex social and economic process. Embodied practices define the landscape of reproduction; bodies form a symbolic terrain over which struggles for urban space are fought; and the dynamics of emotional, embodied contact produce geographies of social and spatial exclusion.     

Aging and memory for faces versus single views of faces

Differences in the ability of young adults and elderly to recognize faces were examined under two conditions. In a standard single-view condition, in which each input face was shown as one photograph, we confirmed prior findings that young adults perform better than the elderly at distinguishing photographs seen before from photographs of new faces. We also found that the elderly had more trouble distinguishing photographs seen before from photographs of(l) old faces changed in facial expression and (2) old faces changed in expression and pose. Yet there were no reliable age differences in distinguishing old-but-changed faces from entirely new faces. In a more naturalistic multi-view condition, in which each input face was shown in four poses and with two expressions, no age differences were found. A second experiment ruled out the possibility that varied repetition, by itself, removes age differences in recognizing faces. These data supported age differences in remembering facial expressions and possibly other details of photographs of faces, but not in remembering faces perse.     

Malingering on the Personality Assessment Inventory: Identification of Specific Feigned Disorders

Summary: Two nonverbal methods for assessing degree of interpersonal attraction were explored. Twenty children ranging from 11 to 13 years of age were asked to select two liked and two disliked classmates of the same sex. On four different trials, subjects selected one geometric block to represent themselves and one to represent a pre-selected classmate, then placed the figures on a ruled board. Distance between objects was measured and found to be significantly related to degree of peer liking. In addition, subjects were asked to draw each of the four peers. The human figure drawings were rated for total pictorial detail which was found to vary strongly across magnitude of liking for female subjects, and for parts integration which was found to vary with degree of peer liking for both sexes. The degree of rated positive affective tone of drawings was also found to increase with liking. Implications for the use of these two interpersonal assessment techniques in clinical practice were discussed.