Moderate structural realism about space-time

This paper sets out a moderate version of metaphysical structural realism that stands in contrast to both the epistemic structural realism of Worrall and the—radical—ontic structural realism of French and Ladyman. According to moderate structural realism, objects and relations (structure) are on the same ontological footing, with the objects being characterized only by the relations in which they stand. We show how this position fares well as regards philosophical arguments, avoiding the objections against the other two versions of structural realism. In particular, we set out how this position can be applied to space-time, providing for a convincing understanding of space-time points in the standard tensor formulation of general relativity as well as in the fibre bundle formulation.     

Effects of Movement Improvisation and Aerobic Dancing on Motor Creativity and Divergent Thinking

Creativity is considered to be an embodied concept, where internal psychological and external behavioral processes are intertwined. Creativity enhancement programs often target the cognitive side of this bi‐dimensionality leaving the impact of motor interventions underexplored. To address this gap in the literature, we tested the effectiveness of two motor programs on motor creativity and divergent thinking (verbal and figural). A total of 92 college students (M_age = 25.36, SD = 2.66) were randomly allocated to a movement improvisation, an aerobic dance, or a control condition. Participants in both motor programs took part in ten 30‐minute classes twice a week over a period of 5 weeks. The findings revealed a significant effect of the motor programs on motor fluency and flexibility. Movement improvisation yielded the greatest effects on those variables, followed by aerobic dancing and control condition. Movement improvisation also impacted significantly more figural originality than the control condition. However, the effects were limited to the motor domain and failed to transfer into other divergent thinking variables. The findings highlighted the contribution of movement programs to creative potential development, and the imperative role of a non‐judgmental environment, where individuals are free to move spontaneously.     

The question of the training analysis system. Notes from the debate in Oslo

The Norwegian discussion of the training analyst system and the pro et contra arguments are shortly presented. When this note is written, the Board is contemplating to propose a revision of the by-laws, making it somewhat easier to fulfil the criteria for being approved as training analyst.     

Social cognition,artefacts, and stigmergy revisited: Concepts of coordination

A number of different coordination concepts have been developed to explain how individual activities are coordinated on a social level, and the variety of concepts shows there is an interest in many domains to find such explanations. Stigmergy being one of them, has come to be increasingly applied on various kinds of human activities. In other domains we find other concepts for explaining how environmental resources contribute to work activities or how people use them to structure their work. This paper discusses different coordination concepts, including stigmergy, articulation work, coordination mechanisms, triggers, placeholders, and entry points. The first three concepts are explicitly concerned with coordination among several agents, while the last three instead concern individual activities, but arguably they can be extended to the social level. They also bring an explicitly cognitive dimension to coordination, which is not as salient in the former concepts. The concepts discussed here do have some similarities, but also important differences. They may not be interchangeable, but they could complement each other, or contribute to further elaboration of existing concepts. The stigmergic sign, e.g., could usefully be developed to recognise qualitative differences in its role as a coordination mechanism.     

INTERTEACHING: THE EFFECTS OF QUALITY POINTS ON EXAM SCORES

Although previous studies have found interteaching to be an effective alternative to traditional methods of instruction, few studies have examined which of its components contribute to its effectiveness. In the current study, we examined whether manipulating quality points had an effect on our students' exam scores. In two sections of an undergraduate general psychology course, we used interteaching but alternated between quality points and no quality points several times throughout the semester; we also counterbalanced the order of presentation across sections. We found that quality points did not have an effect on exam scores.     

Facial expression recognition in the wild,by fusion of deep learnt and hand-crafted features

In spite of the recent advancements in the field of deep learning based techniques for facial expression recognition, the efficiency of the state-of-the-art recognition methods in the wild scenarios, remains a challenge. The main reason behind the less efforts made for handling wild scenarios is two-folds: very less and varying levels of cues available to identify the distinguishable patterns of features (spatial and temporal) and non-availability of a big dataset to train a deep learning model. Recently, a huge dataset called AffectNet is introduced in the literature providing enough base to apply a deep learning model to train. This paper proposes an efficient combination of hand crafted and deep learning features for facial expression recognition in the wild. We use facial landmark points as hand-crafted features and XceptionNet for the deep learned features. We experiment with XceptionNet and Densenet propose the use of XceptionNet as it performs better compared to DenseNet, when applied on wild scenarios. The proposed fusion of the hand-crafted and XceptionNet features outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for facial expression recognition in the wild.     

Multiple reference points in satisfaction and fairness assessment

Most studies of reference point effects have used a single referent, such as a price, a salary, or a target. There is considerable evidence that the judged fairness of, or satisfaction with, an outcome is significantly influenced by discrepancies from such single referents. In many settings, however, more than one reference point may be available, so the subject may be confronted simultaneously with some referents above, some at, and some below the focal outcome. Little is known about the simultaneous impact of such multiple reference points. We examine here the effects of two referents on ratings of salary satisfaction and fairness. Subjects were presented with a series of scenarios that described a salary offer made to a hypothetical MBA graduate and provided information about the salary offers made to either one or two other similar graduates. For each scenario, subjects judged how fair the focal graduate would feel the offer to be, and how satisfied he or she would be with it. Satisfaction ratings displayed asymmetric effects of comparisons: the pain associated with receiving a salary lower than another MBA is greater than the pleasure associated with a salary higher than the other student by the same amount. Fairness ratings showed a different pattern of asymmetric effects of discrepancies from the reference salaries: the focal graduate's salary was judged somewhat less fair when others received lower offers, and much less fair when others received higher offers. The asymmetric effects occurred for both reference points, suggesting that the focal salary was compared separately to each of the referents rather than to a single reference point formed by prior integration of the referents. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

应用复杂科学理论对穴位进行实验研究和定量计算

近年来,一些研究者根据复杂性科学理论研究的最新成果,对穴位的复杂性进行了实验研究和分析计算。就有关复杂科学对穴位的研究进行了概述和讨论,并认为研究穴位的本质可采用复杂性科学方法。     

急性有氧运动对认知表现的影响

急性有氧运动是持续时间在10~60分钟的一次有氧运动。急性有氧运动可暂时性地改变感觉敏感度、记忆、执行功能等认知功能, 但其对不同认知功能的影响效果存在差异, 干预结果受到个体体适能水平、运动强度和运动类型等因素的调节。目前用于解释急性有氧运动影响认知表现的理论有唤醒理论、前额叶功能衰退理论、神经内分泌模型和神经营养因子假说。未来的研究应加强对急性运动发挥作用机制的探究, 更多关注身心运动、团体运动等不同运动形式的干预效果, 以期为长期“运动处方”的开具提供依据。     

The Contribution of Perceived Fitness to Physiological and Self-Reported Responses to Laboratory Stress

This study sought to evaluate the contribution of perceived physical fitness beyond the contributions of gender, body mass index (BMI), defensiveness, and estimated aerobic fitness on both physiological and self-reported stress responsivity to laboratory-induced stress. Ninety healthy individuals (45 males, 45 females) participated in the experiment. Participants completed a laboratory procedure measuring cardiovascular responses (i.e. pulse rate and blood pressure) and self-reported rating of anxiety (i.e. the anxiety scale from the Multiple Affective Checklist–Revised—MAACL–R) while performing stressful laboratory tasks (i.e. the Stroop Color Naming Test and Serial 7's). Estimated aerobic fitness (i.e. VO₂max using the Bruce protocol) as well as perceived fitness (using a 10-point Likert scale) were also determined. Multiple regression and effect size results revealed that perceived fitness significantly contributed to the variance associated with both physiological and self-reported responses to laboratory stress. Specifically, perceived fitness significantly added to the variance beyond that attributed to gender, BMI, defensiveness, and estimated aerobic physical fitness while assessing pulse rate and MAACL–R anxiety scores. Overall results support the view that perception of fitness may be an important factor above and beyond aerobic fitness in its association with physiological and self-reported responses to stress.