The production of school violence from a cultural psychology perspective / La producción de violencia escolar desde una perspectiva de la psicología cultural

Abstract

Violence is a complex phenomenon that requires a systemic, multilevel analytical perspective of particular historical and sociocultural contexts and human relations. Here we analyze the multidimensional expressions of violence observed within school contexts, and illustrate our theoretical ideas with data constructed from an empirical study carried out in a public school located at a low-income city close to the capital of Brazil, Brasilia. The study’s goal was to identify different forms of interpersonal violence as well as some of the multiple factors and experiences that might play a role in the emergence and reproduction of violent patterns of interactions and all members of the school community.     

Stimulus mislocalization depends on spatial frequency.

It was previously reported that briefly presented peripheral stimuli are perceived closer to fixation than continuously presented stimuli at the same eccentricity; this effect has, however, not proved consistently replicable. In this study it was investigated whether the misperception of location might depend upon the spatial frequency content of the stimulus. Spatial-frequency-filtered vertical bars were displayed briefly and their locations were judged relative to continuously visible comparison spots. For monocular stimuli, a significant foveopetal mislocalization of the bar was obtained that increased in size as spatial frequency was lowered. Even larger mislocalizations were obtained for dichoptically presented horizontally disparate pairs of bars, and this effect also increased at low spatial frequencies. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed, and spatial frequency is suggested to have been the confounding factor in previous studies.