社交媒体使用对执行功能的影响：有益还是有害?

社交媒体使用对执行功能的影响尚存争议, 这与社交媒体使用强度起到的调节作用有关。中等强度的社交媒体使用会产生社交媒体心流体验, 使注意集中于目标信息, 并为个体提供了持续不断的社会奖励和情感支持, 对执行功能有益, 但高、低强度社交媒体使用则会损害执行功能。今后该领域的研究应该探讨社交媒体使用影响执行功能的“剂量效应”以及社交媒体使用类型对执行功能的具体影响, 还应关注不同认知水平的个体, 以进一步明确社交媒体使用与执行功能发展的关系。     

Exploring the mental health of circus artists: Circus factors,psychological resilience,and demographics predict disordered eating and exercise addictions

There are similarities in the performance demands of circus and other performance domains such as leanness sports and dance, yet little is known about the mental health of circus artists. We explored self-reported disordered eating and exercise addictions in a sample of 500 circus artists. The sample consisted of aerial acrobats (71%), floor acrobats (13%), object manipulators (9%), and equilibrists (6%) who participate in circus at a range of performance levels (amateur 50%, part/full-time professional 41%, student 6%, retired 3%). Similar to elite athletes in leanness sports, approximately 36% of the circus artists in our sample were classified as ‘at risk’ of an eating disorder. A binomial logistic regression model suggested that being ‘at risk’ of an eating disorder was negatively related to participants’ age and trait resilience, positively related to exercise addictions, and differences among circus categories were found (i.e., higher among equilibrium and aerial acrobatics). Using a Bayesian estimation procedure, a linear regression model suggested that exercise addiction scores were positively related to participants’ weekly training time and being ‘at risk’ for an eating disorder, negatively associated with their years of experience in circus, and differences between circus categories (high levels in equilibrium) and modality of engagement in circus (higher levels among amateurs) were identified. Consequently, these exploratory study findings indicate that a complex interaction of factors might impact the development of disordered eating and exercise addictions among circus artists. Implications for discipline-specific and experience-specific interventions to address these maladaptive behaviours are discussed.     

Sharing therapeutic experiences of place: Co-creative digital storytelling as a way to explore connection to place

This paper explores two seemingly diverse case studies that share stories of place through co-creative media digital storytelling practices. The co-creative media practice of digital storytelling is applied as a framework to extend the current understanding of community issues in their individual contexts. Case one applied digital storytelling as a tool to investigate aged-care residents' therapeutic landscape experience. In Case two, it explores local communities’ experience of flood and how digital storytelling was applied as a way to relieve trauma. This research adopts a comparative case studies methodology. With the two cases in very different contexts, common themes of “a sense of identity”, “memories and belonging” and “therapeutic narratives” emerged. Findings suggest digital storytelling enables social connection. It also engages with memories as narratives and is an effective way to recall significant experiences, in our research contexts, therapeutic experiences. Finally, digital storytelling as a co-creative practice is also a way to build resilience and contribute to co-creating places.     

Facebook as a platform for collecting women's birth stories: Supporting emotional connections between researchers and participants

This paper extends debate on the use of social networking sites in social science research, specifically focusing on their role in creating ‘emotionally connected’ research spaces. Drawing on the authors' experiences of using a closed Facebook group as a platform for collecting women's ‘birth stories’, we explore to potential of Facebook to support the transcendence of traditional researcher/participant relations and empower participants through creating something akin to a ‘Community of Practice’. The project also contributed to a process of inter and intra-personal self-care, which, as a research team, we recognise as an important driver of our research agendas. We acknowledge that the virtual cannot be all-inclusive but conclude that this methodological approach has generated both a rich dataset and a series of emotions for researchers and participants that added value to the research process. We also argue that this approach captured a greater depth of experience and diversity of voice than would have been the case if we had chosen to use traditional face-to-face methods. We call for future research to focus on better understanding some of the challenges related to the appropriateness of Facebook as a platform for hearing the voices of particular socio-cultural groups.     

Using Force: Australian Newspaper Depictions of Contacts Between the Police and Persons Experiencing Mental Illness

The media creates and sustains knowledge about socially relevant issues such as crime, mental illness, and policing. Past research suggests that while the media portrayal of the police is undoubtedly complex, their portrayal of people experiencing mental illness remains mainly negative. The depiction of their encounters in the mass media is of considerable interest because of the influential role the media has on public opinion and debate; however, there is a lack of current research in this area. This study aimed to examine media items in the major newspapers across Australia between January 2006 and December 2007 (n = 77) to investigate their portrayal of this interface. The dominant themes encountered in the initial analysis depicted people experiencing mental illness as dangerous and a threat to the public, where the mental health system has failed to manage them adequately. Further analyses found that people experiencing mental illness were stigmatised in a third of the media items reviewed and were represented significantly more negatively in these encounters than the police. Implications of these findings and some suggestions regarding possible strategies that could improve socially responsible media reporting and public discourse on mental illness are proposed.     

Psychic skin: psychotic defences, borderline process and delusions

In this paper, I apply the concept of psychic skin to analytic work with people suffering from personality disorders and psychoses. When psychoses emerge, the defensive skin which protects the ego is breached and violent unconscious forces rip through the personality. Some of the patients diagnosed as schizophrenic with whom I work have identified with archetypal characters such as Christ, Satan, John Lennon and the Queen. I attempt to show how the adoption of these inflated personas can serve as secondary psychic skins. Such delusional identifications can provide a protective shield to hide the denuded self and prevent intrusion from the external world. Through clinical example, I try to demonstrate how these archetypal 'second skins' can preserve life until internal and external conditions make it possible for the self to emerge. I contrast such psychotic identifications with 'thin-skinned' and 'thick-skinned' narcissism as well as 'defences of the self' in borderline states where the psychic skin may be damaged but does not disintegrate. I also look at the ways in which Jung's own personal experience was different from this and how he managed to avert psychotic breakdown.     

Nanocrystallization in a Zr 57 Ti 5 Cu 20 Al 10 Ni 8 bulk metallic glass

The first stages of thermal relaxation towards equilibrium in a Zr 57 Ti 5 Cu 20 Al 10 Ni 8 bulk metallic glass have been studied by differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and high-resolution electron microscopy. These coupled experiments rule out for this glass the existence of a phase separation on the nanometric scale preceding the onset of crystallization. The first step of crystallization is of the primary type, that is it consists of the nucleation of nanocrystallites in the amorphous matrix with which they coexist in metastable equilibrium. The very high nucleation rate leads to a nanometric composite structure with a number density of about 7 2 10 24 m -3 of 3-4nm crystallites, occupying a volume fraction of about 15%. These features, as well as the crystallization kinetics observed during isochronal or isothermal heating, are discussed.     

The Protective Influence of Relationship Commitment on the Effects of Facebook Addiction on Marital Disaffection

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that Facebook use can lead to adverse romantic relationship outcomes due to interpersonal conflicts, interactions with potential romantic alternatives, and jealousy. However, these associations have been explored mainly with undergraduates, focusing primarily on conflict rather than emotional disengagement. The current study examined the associations between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection (e.g., loss of love, emotional disengagement) amongst 138 (95 females and 43 males) cohabiting married Facebook users residing in the United States. The results revealed that Facebook addiction and marital disaffection were positively related, even after controlling for relationship commitment. Additionally, greater relationship commitment weakened the association between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection. There are likely multiple explanations for the current findings; however, results suggest that higher levels of relationship commitment may protect spouses against the negative relationship outcomes associated with Facebook addiction. Future longitudinal work with couples is needed to clarify the directionality of the relationship between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection.     

Shaftesbury on life as a work of art

ABSTRACT

This paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.     

Inheritance,Originality and the Will: Bergson and Heidegger on Creation

Abstract

In the work of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger we find different responses to traditional ideas of ‘creation’. Bergson advances a philosophy of creation, wherein ‘creation’ is presented as the production of a ‘radical’ or ‘absolute’ novelty, not only in art, but in all forms of human experience and biological life. Heidegger, in contrast, comes to criticise ideas of ‘creation’ in art as the expression of an alienated ‘humanism’ and ‘subjectivism’ essential to the modern age. This paper illuminates this divergence by showing how Bergson and Heidegger, despite appearances, grapple with the question of art-production – and with the attendant issues of inheritance and originality – in similar ways. It is only in recognising this proximity, I argue, that it is possible to perceive adequately what essentially distinguishes their approaches: Bergson’s conception of creation as a function of the will.