Postural instability and balance impairment are disabling symptoms in patients with acute unilateral peripheral vestibular hypofunction. Vestibular rehabilitation is known to improve the vestibular compensation process, but its effect on posture recovery remains poorly understood, little is known about when VR must be done, and whether the degree of vestibular loss matters is uncertain. We analyzed posture control under static and dynamic postural tasks performed in different visual conditions [eye open ; eyes closed ; and optokinetic stimulation] using (...) dynamic posturography. Non-linear analyses of the postural performance were performed in two groups of patients with UVH subjected to the same VR program based on the unidirectional rotation paradigm and performed either early or later after vertigo attack. Distribution of the angular horizontal vestibulo-ocular reflex gain values recorded on the hypofunction side before rehabilitation differentiated two distinct sub-groups with aVOR gains below or above 0.20. The postural performance of the four sub-groups of patients with UVH tested before VR showed significantly altered postural parameters compared with healthy controls. Greater instability, higher energy to control posture, larger sway without feedback corrections, and lower time of automatic control of posture were observed in static conditions. The four sub-groups recovered near-normal postural performance after VR in the EO and EC conditions, but still exhibited altered postural performance with optokinetic stimulation. In dynamic posturography conditions and before VR, the percentage of patients able to perform the postural tasks with EC and optokinetic stimulation was significantly lower in the two sub-groups with aVOR gain <0.20. After VR, the improvement of the postural parameters depended on the stage of rehabilitation and the degree of vestibular hypofunction. The best balance function recovery was found in the sub-group with early VR and pre-rehabilitation aVOR gain above 0.20, the worst in the sub-group with late rehabilitation and aVOR gain below 0.20. These differences were seen when the vestibular input remains the main sensory cue to control balance, that is, on unstable support without vision or altered visual motion cues. These findings extend to dynamic balance recovery the crucial roles of early rehabilitation and degree of vestibular hypofunction which we have already highlighted for vestibulo-ocular reflex recovery. (shrink)

Expansive body posture is the most commonly studied and widely described in psychological literature. For many years, expansive posture was universally identified as a pose of power, but more recent research has revealed that the link between expansive posture and power may be moderated by gender, culture or even contextual cues. Our findings show that with little variation added to expansive posture it does not necessarily lead to the sense of power, and may actually trigger the opposite effect: a (...) feeling of submissiveness. In three studies, persons assuming their body in a standing-at-attention posture were perceived as being more obedient, thus participants who expanded their body in a standing-at-attention manner displayed greater compliance to requests and declared greater submissiveness toward social norms. We discuss how the cultural and interpersonal context imprinted in specific body posture can modify the feedback of innate and universal body states. (shrink)

Human adaptive behavior in sensorimotor control is aimed to increase the confidence in feedforward mechanisms when sensory afferents are uncertain. It is thought that these feedforward mechanisms rely on predictions from internal models. We investigate whether the brain uses an internal model of physical laws to help estimate body equilibrium when tactile inputs from the foot sole are depressed by carrying extra weight. As direct experimental evidence for such a model is limited, we used Judoka athletes thought to have built (...) up internal models of external loads as compared with Non-Athlete participants and Dancers. Using electroencephalography, we first tested the hypothesis that the influence of tactile inputs was amplified by descending cortical efferent signals. We compared the amplitude of P1N1 somatosensory cortical potential evoked by electrical stimulation of the foot sole in participants standing still with their eyes closed. We showed smaller P1N1 amplitudes in the Load compared to No Load conditions in both Non-Athletes and Dancers. This decrease neural response to tactile stimulation was associated with greater postural oscillations. By contrast in the Judoka’s group, the neural early response to tactile stimulation was unregulated in the Load condition. This suggests that the brain can selectively increase the functional gain of sensory inputs, during challenging equilibrium tasks when tactile inputs were mechanically depressed by wearing a weighted vest. In Judokas, the activation of regions such as the right posterior inferior parietal cortex as early as the P1N1 is likely the source of the neural responses being maintained similar in both Load and No Load conditions. An overweight internal model stored in the right PPC known to be involved in maintaining a coherent representation of one’s body in space can optimize predictive mechanisms in situations with high balance constraints. This hypothesis has been confirmed by showing that postural reaction evoked by a translation of the support surface on which participants were standing wearing extra-weight was improved in Judokas. (shrink)

Sensory cues provided by compression garments can improve movement accuracy and potentially reduce inter-limb balance asymmetries and the associated risk of injury. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of CG wearing on inter-limb balance asymmetries. The hypothesis was that CG would reduce inter-limb balance asymmetries, especially in subjects with high level of asymmetries. Twenty-five sportsmen were recruited. They had to stand as motionless as possible in a one-leg stance in two postural tasks, while wearing (...) CG or not. Asymmetry indexes were calculated from center of foot pressure parameters. The effects of CG wearing were analyzed according to participants’ baseline level of asymmetry with correlation analyses. A qualitative analysis was also performed after a dichotomization procedure to check for a specific influence of CG on the dominant and non-dominant leg. Inter-limb balance asymmetries were reduced with CG in participants with high levels of asymmetries at baseline. However, asymmetries were increased with CG in participants with low levels of asymmetries at baseline. The dominant leg was more affected by this negative effect. CG wearing could reduce inter-limb balance asymmetries and the related injury risk in subjects with high levels of inter-limb balance asymmetries at baseline. Nevertheless, CG should not be used in individuals with low baseline balance asymmetries since it can increase asymmetries in these subjects, likely by confusing and overloading the sensorimotor processing on the dominant leg. (shrink)

In this study of the functionally referential alarm calls in the meerkats, we tested the hypothesis that the ability to refer to a specific location was an important factor in the evolution of discrete vocalizations. We investigated what information receivers gained about the location of the predator from alarm calls with high stimulus specificity compared to alarm calls with low stimulus specificity. Furthermore, we studied whether visual cues about the localization of the predator may be available from the posture (...) of the caller. We described the general behaviour of the caller, the caller’s posture, and in particular its gaze direction. We then observed receivers responding to the different call types, to determine whether the acoustic structure of the calls was enough for them to respond in the appropriate way, or whether they used additional visual cues from the caller. We tested this with specific manipulation experiments, using three set ups of playback experiments: no caller visible; model guard with specific gaze direction; and live sentinel. Natural observations and experiments confirmed that in high urgency situations the meerkats have enough information from the acoustic structure of the call to respond appropriately. When hearing low urgency calls that are less stimuli specific, meerkats used visual cues as an additional source of information in a few cases. This may indicate that functionally referential calls evolved to denote the location of the predator, rather than the predator type or its velocity of approach. However, when discussing this result in comparison to other functionally referential calls, such as the food associated calls and recruitment calls, this localization hypothesis does not appear to apply to the functionally referential calls in general. (shrink)

This essay responds to Jeffrey Perl’s introduction to a long-term project of Common Knowledge titled “Xenophilia: Symposium on Xenophobia’s Contrary.” Responding to a cue from Perl, Albera undertakes an archaeology of the intellectual tools that produced the unstable antinomy of the terms xenophilia and xenophobia. Despite the appearance of antiquity conferred by the Greek roots of both terms, they are the product of a fairly recent and quintessentially modern dynamic. They integrate tacit assumptions of a modern nationalist posture that produces (...) fixed identities and categorizations. Instead of this compromised pair of terms, Albera offers philoxenia, with its distinct genealogy, as it delimits a reciprocal commitment to hospitality, which is pragmatic and relatively unproblematic, rather than a demand for love or an expectation of loathing. The concept of xenophilia presupposes an abstract category—the xenos—that it regards as anterior to, and independent of, any concrete determinations, while philoxenia understands the xenos to be a quite specific individual. Philoxenia, moreover, does not subscribe to the identity principle: the alien, in the relationship known as philoxenia, is not conceived as differing radically from oneself or even as being self-identical or coherent. And finally, while the xenophile’s feelings tend to oscillate between supposedly coherent cultural positions, philoxenia is characterized by ambiguity, which produces none of the symptoms engendered by the ambivalence of xenophilia. (shrink)

In the present study, we addressed the problem of whether hand representations, derived from the control of hand gesture, are used in handedness recognition. Pictures of hands and fingers, assuming either common or uncommon postures, were presented to right-handed subjects, who were required to judge their handedness. In agreement with previous results (Parsons, 1987, 1994; Gentilucci, Daprati, & Gangitano, 1998), subjects recognized handedness through mental movement of their own hand in order to match the posture of the presented hand. This (...) was proved by a control experiment of physical matching. The new finding was that presentation of common finger postures affected responses differently from presentation of less common finger postures. These effects could be not attributed to mental matching movements nor related to richness in hand-finger cues useful for handedness recognition. The results of the present study are discussed in the context of the notion that implicit visual analysis of the presented hands is performed before mental movement of one's hand takes place (Parsons, 1987; Gentilucci et al., 1998). In this process, hand representation acquired by experience in the control and observation of one's and other people's hand gestures is used. We propose that such an immediate recognition mechanism belongs to the class of mental processes which are grouped under the name of intuition, that is, the processes by which situations or people's intentions are immediately understood, without conscious reasoning. (shrink)

The present study investigated how multisensory integration in peripersonal space is modulated by limb posture and limb congruency . This was done separately for the upper limbs and the lower limbs . The crossmodal congruency task was used to measure peripersonal space integration for the hands and the feet. It was found that the peripersonal space representation for the hands but not for the feet is dynamically updated based on both limb posture and limb congruency. Together these findings show how (...) dynamic cues from vision, proprioception, and touch are integrated in peripersonal limb space and highlight fundamental differences in the way in which peripersonal space is represented for the upper and lower extremity. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the widespread use of online hearings in arbitral proceedings, raising questions about the impact of such proceedings on the determination of facts underlying a dispute. This article explores the extent to which online hearings may hinder arbitrators’ ability to assess witness credibility by drawing upon the cognitive psychology literature on truthfulness determination and lie detection. A survey of the literature suggests that the ability to differentiate truthful from dishonest statements through verbal and nonverbal (...) class='Hi'>cues is limited, leading to the notion that observing behaviors like fidgeting, gaze aversion, vocal pitch, or body posture is not particularly relevant in assessing the credibility of a witness. Instead, focusing on the content of what is reported appears to be the most relevant strategy to determine credibility. Therefore, research does not support the idea that face-to-face contact with witnesses is essential to determine the facts of a dispute. Still, the use of in-person hearings may, in practice, continue to be preferred due to underlying cultural assumptions regarding the nature of hearings, the facilitation of communication between parties, counsel, and the tribunal, and a general sense of _Zoom fatigue_. (shrink)

The appearance of the body signals socially relevant states and traits, but the how these cues are perceived is not well understood. Here we examined judgments of emotion and sex from the body’s ap...

This essay examines the concept of sovereign debt in both political‐economic and theological registers. Elaborating the dynamics of monetary economy, I demonstrate how postures of indebtedness characterize the relationship between sovereign power and the governed. While taxation signals the debt of obedience and fealty owed to sovereignty, the monetary circuit reveals that sovereign power exists in a state of indebtedness to the governed. The morally valenced proximity between debt and guilt helps to perpetuate such relations. Tracing these resonances and resemblances (...) in the theological realm, I consider the centrality of debt as a structuring principle in key soteriological traditions within Christian thought. Not only does God appear to uphold debt logic, but God, I claim, becomes identified with debt and marked as a debtor. The divine sovereign as debtor and as enforcing debt provides cues for earthly sovereigns and legitimates cultures of debt. In light of the theopolitical legacy in the West, the mutual influence between theology and the political realm, refiguring this set of influential theological concepts may prove helpful in decentering debt as a governing principle in modern life. (shrink)

While traffic signals, signs, and road markings provide explicit guidelines for those operating in and around the roadways, some decisions, such as determinations of “who will go first,” are made by implicit negotiations between road users. In such situations, pedestrians are today often dependent on cues in drivers’ behavior such as eye contact, postures, and gestures. With the introduction of more automated functions and the transfer of control from the driver to the vehicle, pedestrians cannot rely on such non-verbal (...) cues anymore. To study how the interaction between pedestrians and automated vehicles (AVs) might look like in the future, and how this might be affected if AVs were to communicate their intent to pedestrians, we designed an external vehicle interface called automated vehicle interaction principle (AVIP) that communicates vehicles’ mode and intent to pedestrians. The interaction was explored in two experiments using a Wizard of Oz approach to simulate automated driving. The first experiment was carried out at a zebra crossing and involved nine pedestrians. While it focused mainly on assessing the usability of the interface, it also revealed initial indications related to pedestrians’ emotions and perceived safety when encountering an AV with/without the interface. The second experiment was carried out in a parking lot and involved 24 pedestrians, which enabled a more detailed assessment of pedestrians’ perceived safety when encountering an AV, both with and without the interface. For comparison purposes, these pedestrians also encountered a conventional vehicle. After a short training course, the interface was deemed easy for the pedestrians to interpret. The pedestrians stated that they felt significantly less safe when they encountered the AV without the interface, compared to the conventional vehicle and the AV with the interface. This suggests that the interface could contribute to a positive experience and improved perceived safety in pedestrian encounters with AVs – something that might be important for general acceptance of AVs. As such, this topic should be further investigated in future studies involving a larger sample and more dynamic conditions. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Contains texts of papers given at the Association's first annual conference in London, in October,1966.

Se apuntan algunas reflexiones relevantes sobre el ethos universitario en el contexto del exilio republicano español de 1939. En concreto, de autores como Fernando de los Ríos, Joaquín Xirau y José Gaos, exponentes todo ellos de un saber desarraigado en busca de nuevos resortes de poder. Se tiene además en cuenta el caso de María Zambrano, cuyo aparente desinterés por la cuestión universitaria es indicio de un saber coherente con su exilio e irreductible a la disciplina académica, de un saber (...) que ha renunciado al poder y exige un nuevo ethos. (shrink)

The particle internal clock conjectured by de Broglie in 1924 was investigated in a channeling experiment using a beam of ∼80 MeV electrons aligned along the 〈110〉 direction of a 1 μm thick silicon crystal. Some of the electrons undergo a rosette motion, in which they interact with a single atomic row. When the electron energy is finely varied, the rate of electron transmission at 0° shows a 8% dip within 0.5% of the resonance energy, 80.874 MeV, for which the (...) frequency of atomic collisions matches the electron’s internal clock frequency. A model is presented to show the compatibility of our data with the de Broglie hypothesis. (shrink)

This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacan's work bridges the gap between discourseanalytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavón Cuéllar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case (...) a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR). Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan's psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Zizek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)

The objective was to analyze the influence of the social context on bullying. A mixed investigation was proposed: the social context was analyzed, were applied questionnaires and interviews; were analyzed descriptively, normality tests and non-parametric tests; different manifestations of bullying are presented; their frequency varies between both high schools.

Hookups are uncommitted sexual encounters that range from kissing to intercourse and occur between individuals in whom there is no current dating relationship and no expressed or acknowledged expectations of a relationship following the hookup. Research over the last decade has begun to focus on hooking up among adolescents and young adults with significant research demonstrating how alcohol is often involved in hooking up. Given alcohol’s involvement with hooking up behavior, the array of health consequences associated with this relationship, as (...) well as its increasing prevalence from adolescence to young adulthood, it is important to determine the predictors and consequences associated with alcohol-related hooking up. The current review extends prior reviews by adding more recent research, including both qualitative and experimental studies (i.e. expanding to review more diverse methods), research that focuses on the use of technology in alcohol-related hookups (i.e. emerging issues), further develops prevention and intervention potentials and directions, and also offers a broader discussion of hooking up outside of college student populations (i.e., expanding generalization). This article will review the operationalization and ambiguity of the phrase hooking up, the relationship between hooking up and alcohol use at both the global and event levels, predictors of alcohol-related hooking up, and both positive and negative consequences, including sexual victimization, associated with alcohol-related hookups. Throughout, commentary is provided on the methodological issues present in the field, as well as limitations of the existing research. Future directions for research that could significantly advance our understanding of hookups and alcohol use are provided. (shrink)

Estamos a un año del cincuentenario de la aparición formal de la bioética en el escenario científico global. El afortunado neologismo usado por Potter en 1970 para vincular las ciencias experimentales con las ciencias humanísticas, creando un enfoque interdisciplinar indispensable -esencia de la bioética-, el cual pretende recuperar el liderazgo de la filosofía -particularmente de la ética- a fin de orientar apropiadamente los desarrollos de las ciencias prácticas en boga, como la biología, la ecología, la química, la cibernética, las nuevas (...) biotecnologías, la biomedicina, siempre con respeto de la dignidad del ser humano y su entorno. Es necesario estar alerta a ciertas tendencias actuales guiadas principalmente por intereses económicos y posverdad, corrientes transhumanistas que parecieran dar un nuevo giro copernicano en la reflexión científico-filosófica, en donde la esencia del ser humano pareciera esfumarse y quedar al libre arbitrio de las ciencias cibernéticas. ¿Qué hacer entonces? El reto que se vislumbra en el horizonte es volver a descubrir una racionalidad que la sustente, o como Potter decía en 1970: "El conocimiento de cómo utilizar el conocimiento" ¿Qué tan cerca está esta nueva ciencia de alcanzar las metas que su fundador Van Rensselaer Potter propuso para unir las ciencias experimentales con las ciencias humanísticas? ¿La biología con la filosofía, y a su vez destacar la urdimbre jurídica que de manera natural brota ante problemáticas y retos tan relevantes en el ámbito clínico, como son los que aborda y atiende la bioética como ciencia? En este contexto la bioética surge como una disciplina con un especial interés por discernir en esta multitud de nuevas posibilidades lo que es ético de lo que no lo es, lo que humaniza de lo que degrada, lo correcto de lo incorrecto, lo que concuerda con el respeto a la dignidad de las personas o no. De ahí el interés en aportar un conjunto de escritos científicos acerca de sus fundamentos y principales aplicaciones, tanto para personal de salud, alumnos de pregrado y posgrado, docentes, como a quienes pertenecen a comités hospitalarios: abogados, filósofos, representantes religiosos, así como profesionales de otros ámbitos, incluidas la investigación y la práctica clínica, que les permita tomar las decisiones correctas, dentro del marco del derecho sanitario vigente de nuestro país y conforme a los tratados internacionales de los que México es parte. El libro tiene como objetivo presentar a los estudiantes, docentes, investigadores y profesionales de distintas carreras, interesados en este ámbito, los fundamentos antropológicos y humanísticos de la novedosa y polémica ciencia de la bioética, sus campos de aplicación, los dilemas que suelen presentarse, así como algunas propuestas de solución de casos clínicos concretos por un grupo interdisciplinar de académicos de prestigiadas instituciones educativas de nuestro país. (shrink)

_Postures of the Mind _was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Annette Baier develops, in these essays, a posture in philosophy of mind and in ethics that grows out of her reading of Hume and the later Wittgenstein, and that challenges several Kantian or analytic articles of faith. She questions the assumption that intellect has authority over all (...) human feelings and traditions; that to recognize order we must recognize universal laws—descriptive or prescriptive; that the essential mental activity is representing; and that mental acts can be analyzed into discrete basic elements, combined according to statable rules of synthesis. In the first group of essays—"Varieties of Mental Postures"—Baier evaluates the positions taken by philosophers ranging from Descartes to Dennett and Davidson. Among her topics are remembering, intending, realizing, caring, representing, changing one's mind, justifying one's actions and feelings, and having conflicting reasons for them. The second group of essays—"Varieties of Moral Postures" - explores the sort of morality we get when all of these capacities become reflective and self-corrective. Some deal with particular moral issues—our treatment of animals, our policies regarding risk to human life, our contractual obligations; others, with more general questions on the role of moral philosophers and the place of moral theory. These essays respond to the theories of Hobbes, Kant, Rawls, and MacIntyre, but Baier's most positive reaction is to David Hume; _Postures of the Mind _ affirms and cultivates his version of a moral reflection that employs feeling and tradition as well as reason. (shrink)