Escaping from Rama: Portraits of Indian women

This study examines visual, post-colonial portraits of the Indian women of the Sanskrit epics, in order to show the sociocultural, historical-ideological roots of this aesthetic. After independence, Hindu movements found in the epics a female archetype, who stands for the Hindu community. Post-colonial visual representations maintained this idealistic characterisation within a binary system, according to which women can be angelic guarantors of the social order or devilish, sexually uncontrolled creatures. This ambiguity derives from the double nature of the female principle of the world, shakti, and the visual storytelling tradition or chitrakatha. Using the same Indian storytelling tradition, female points of view have begun to criticise this nationalistic, ‘male gaze’. In the graphic novel Sita's Ramayana, Rama and male activities, particularly war, are secularised and criticised as selfish by female characters, foremost of whom is Sita, a model of the devoted and pure bride or pativrata.     

Same kinematics but different objects during action observation: Detection times and motor evoked potentials

Motor resonance refers to the fact that an observed action is online subliminally reenacted. The aim of the present paper was to verify if, on equal terms of kinematics, the to-be-grasped object's intrinsic properties are influencing the observers' motor behaviour. A detection time and a single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment were performed to verify the effects of a change of object's intrinsic properties artificially made on a video showing a grasping action. In particular, the object substituting the original one was not graspable by the showed movement. Results indicated an influence of object's intrinsic properties: Detection times were delayed and motor evoked potentials were reduced when the movement shown was not suitable to grasp the object. These results are interpreted as an evidence that during grasping action observation the motor system of the observer is influenced not only by the seen movements but also by the to-be-grasped object.     

Representing young and older adult faces: Shared or age-specific prototypes?

ABSTRACT

Young adults recognize young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces and are more sensitive to how individual young faces deviate from a norm/prototype. Here we used an adaptation paradigm to examine whether young and older adult faces are represented by separable norms and the extent to which the coding dimensions for these two categories overlap. In Experiment 1, following adaptation to oppositely distorted young and older faces (e.g., expanded young and compressed older faces), adults’ normality judgments simultaneously shifted in opposite directions for the two face categories, providing evidence for separable norms. In Experiment 2, participants were adapted to distorted faces from a single age category (e.g., compressed young); aftereffects transferred across face age but were larger for the face age that matched adaptation. Collectively, these results provide evidence that young and older faces are processed with regard to separable norms that share some underlying coding dimensions.     

Social support: main and moderating effects on the relation between financial stress and adjustment among college students with disabilities

Students with disabilities are underrepresented in 4-year colleges and universities in the United States and those that do attend are at an increased risk of performing poorly in these settings. These difficulties for college students with disabilities may be compounded by additional stress related to financial concerns. The current study was designed to investigate the effects of social support on the adjustment of college students with disabilities generally, and among college students experiencing financial stress specifically. Results indicated that two types of social support (total support and satisfaction with support) had positive effects on the post-secondary adjustment of college students with disabilities. Moreover, both forms of support moderated the effects of financial stress on some, but not all, indicators of adjustment. The implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.     

A Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System Development for Siting a Landfill in the Province of Torino (Italy)

The present paper proposes a spatial multicriteria approach for supporting Decision‐Makers in the siting process of a Municipal Solid Waste landfill in the Province of Torino (Italy). In particular, the contribution illustrates the development of a Multicriteria‐Spatial Decision Support System based on the integration of Geographic Information Systems and a specific Multicriteria Decision Analysis technique, named Analytic Network Process (ANP). This technique, which represents the generalization of the more well‐known Analytic Hierarchy Process to dependences and feedbacks, is particularly suitable for dealing with complex decision problems which are characterized by inter‐relationships among the elements at stake. The application allows the dependence relationships among the criteria to be assessed, and the relative importance of all the elements that play an influence on the final choice to be evaluated. The purpose of the study is to generate a suitability map of the area under analysis for locating a waste landfill, paying particular attention to the contribution that the spatial ANP offers to sustainability assessments of undesirable facilities. To this end, the simple network structure has been used and both exclusionary and non‐exclusionary criteria have been identified and grouped into clusters. The results are obtained in the form of suitability maps analysed through ilwis 3.3 software (52North, ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands) and have been further verified through a sensitivity analysis with reference to the clusters priorities in order to test the robustness of the proposed model. The main findings of this research have proved that the spatial ANP is a useful tool to help technicians to make their decision process traceable and reliable. Moreover, this approach helps Decision‐Makers to undertake a sound reflection of the siting problem. Finally, the implementation of the spatial ANP technique gives an originality value to the present research because it represents one of the first applications at both the national and international level. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive and neural determinants of response strategy in the dual-solution plus-maze task

Response strategy in the dual-solution plus maze is regarded as a form of stimulus-response learning. In this study, by using an outcome devaluation procedure, we show that it can be based on both action-outcome and stimulus-response habit learning, depending on the amount of training that the animals receive. Furthermore, we show that deactivation of the dorso-medial and the dorso-lateral striatum with Botulinum neurotoxin A, mimicked or abolished, respectively, the effects of practice on the sensitivity of the response strategy to outcome devaluation. These findings have relevant implications for the understanding of the learning mechanisms underlying different overt behaviors in this widely used maze task.     

Detecting fakers of the autobiographical IAT

Autobiographical memories might be identified using a variant of the implicit association test (IAT), or the autobiographical IAT (aIAT). The aIAT provides a measure of association between true sentences and sentences describing an autobiographical event. This tool might be used to evaluate whether specific autobiographical information is encoded within the respondent's mind/brain. This paper examines possible problems arising when the aIAT is used as a lie‐detector technique. The results indicate that, when given previous instruction or training with an aIAT, examinees can alter their results and beat the ‘memory‐detector’. However, we have been able to detect successful fakers of aIAT on the basis of their specific response patterns. Our algorithm has the ability to spot the faker in a satisfactory manner. If, as demonstrated here, faking can be detected, then the real autobiographical event might also be identified when the examinee attempts to alter their results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fantasized recipient-donor relationships following lung transplantations: a qualitative case analysis based on patient narratives

The present study examines the relationships between lung transplant recipients and their unknown, deceased donors. Out of 20 semi-structured interviews, eight narratives, by three female and three male recipients respectively, were identified in which the figure of the donor played a role. These narratives were examined using JAKOB, a qualitative research tool that analyses relational configurations and diagnoses psychodynamic conflicts. Analysis revealed a broad range of varying themes and relationships with equally varying wish and fear themes. All the narrators dealt either explicitly or implicitly with whether and how they are connected to their donors. In five narratives, specific personality traits were attributed to the figure of the donor; in four narratives, latent feelings of guilt concerning the donor's death were expressed. Indeed, the figure of the donor was not always perceived as an independent person, separate from the narrator's self: in two cases, the donor appears as part of the recipient's self, while in another case, the donor is presented as a transitional object for the recipient. The findings of the narrative analysis are discussed within a theoretical model of psychical organ integration.     

Influence of motion on face recognition

The influence of motion information and temporal associations on recognition of non-familiar faces was investigated using two groups which performed a face recognition task. One group was presented with regular temporal sequences of face views designed to produce the impression of motion of the face rotating in depth, the other group with random sequences of the same views. In one condition, participants viewed the sequences of the views in rapid succession with a negligible interstimulus interval (ISI). This condition was characterized by three different presentation times. In another condition, participants were presented a sequence with a 1-sec. ISI among the views. That regular sequences of views with a negligible ISI and a shorter presentation time were hypothesized to give rise to better recognition, related to a stronger impression of face rotation. Analysis of data from 45 participants showed a shorter presentation time was associated with significantly better accuracy on the recognition task; however, differences between performances associated with regular and random sequences were not significant.     

A brief review on the use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for language imaging studies in human newborns and adults

Upon stimulation, real time maps of cortical hemodynamic responses can be obtained by non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) which measures changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin after positioning multiple sources and detectors over the human scalp. The current commercially available transportable fNIRS systems have a time resolution of 1-10 Hz, a depth sensitivity of about 1.5 cm, and a spatial resolution of about 1 cm. The goal of this brief review is to report infants, children and adults fNIRS language studies. Since 1998, 60 studies have been published on cortical activation in the brain’s classic language areas in children/adults as well as newborns using fNIRS instrumentations of different complexity. In addition, the basic principles of fNIRS including features, strengths, advantages, and limitations are summarized in terms that can be understood even by non specialists. Future prospects of fNIRS in the field of language processing imaging are highlighted.