To date, COVID-19 has spread across the world, changing our way of life and forcing us to wear face masks. This report demonstrates that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial configurations. Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These findings are (...) of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning, and young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks. (shrink)

This essay explores the intersection of contingency and aesthetics in contemporary artistic practices, challenging the historical dichotomy between reason and fact, and between necessity and contingency. Through the lens of Italian feminist thought, particularly the work of Carla Lonzi, it examines how contingency can redefine aesthetic gestures and suggests the concept of “dynamic liminality” as the conceptual operator of such redefinition. The study identifies four main components of “dynamic liminality” – instability, repetition, impermanence, and unproductiveness – showing how contemporary artists (...) like Nao Bustamante, Marcel Broodthaers, Chiara Camoni, Lucia Cristiani, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Laura Grisi, and Beatrice Meoni embody these concepts. Their works demonstrate the critical and transformative potential of contingency, proposing an aesthetics that embraces transient, unstable, and unproductive elements as essential to artistic expression and cultural critique. (shrink)

While many sociocultural, contextual, biological, behavioral, and psychological variables may contribute to the widespread under-representation of girls and women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics field, this study focused on STEM-gender stereotypes, school experiences, and adolescence as critical factors in driving students' interest and motivation in STEM. Based on this, the study investigated differences by gender and national context in adolescents' STEM-gender stereotypes, school empowerment, and school engagement in a preliminary step, and simultaneously examined how adolescents' STEM-gender stereotypes were (...) related to school empowerment and school engagement as well as to socioeconomic status. These latter relations were considered within the context of the potential moderating role of gender and national context. Participants included 213 Italian adolescents and 214 Nigerian adolescents, who completed measures of school empowerment and engagement, STEM-gender stereotypes, and SES. A multivariate analysis of covariance showed that Nigerian girls and boys reported significantly higher levels of school empowerment, school engagement, and STEM-gender stereotypes than their Italian peers. Moreover, regardless of the national context, boys scored significantly higher on school empowerment and STEM-gender stereotypes than girls. Furthermore, a multiple-group path analysis revealed how higher school empowerment was related to lower STEM-gender stereotypes in both Italian and Nigerian girls' groups, while higher school engagement was associated with lower STEM-gender stereotypes only in the Nigerian groups. Regardless of gender and nationality, higher SES was linked to lower STEM-gender stereotypes. These findings particularly suggest that school empowerment and school engagement can be relevant dimensions to be studied and to develop strategies to counteract STEM-gender stereotypes in adolescence. Nonetheless, gender and national context are key factors to be considered. Limitations, strengths, future research, and educational implications are discussed. (shrink)

Whether pattern-parsing mechanisms are specific to language or apply across multiple cognitive domains remains unresolved. Formal language theory provides a mathematical framework for classifying pattern-generating rule sets (or “grammars”) according to complexity. This framework applies to patterns at any level of complexity, stretching from simple sequences, to highly complex tree-like or net-like structures, to any Turing-computable set of strings. Here, we explored human pattern-processing capabilities in the visual domain by generating abstract visual sequences made up of abstract tiles differing in (...) form and color. We constructed different sets of sequences, using artificial “grammars” (rule sets) at three key complexity levels. Because human linguistic syntax is classed as “mildly context-sensitive,” we specifically included a visual grammar at this complexity level. Acquisition of these three grammars was tested in an artificial grammar-learning paradigm: after exposure to a set of well-formed strings, participants were asked to discriminate novel grammatical patterns from non-grammatical patterns. Participants successfully acquired all three grammars after only minutes of exposure, correctly generalizing to novel stimuli and to novel stimulus lengths. A Bayesian analysis excluded multiple alternative hypotheses and shows that the success in rule acquisition applies both at the group level and for most participants analyzed individually. These experimental results demonstrate rapid pattern learning for abstract visual patterns, extending to the mildly context-sensitive level characterizing language. We suggest that a formal equivalence of processing at the mildly context sensitive level in the visual and linguistic domains implies that cognitive mechanisms with the computational power to process linguistic syntax are not specific to the domain of language, but extend to abstract visual patterns with no meaning. (shrink)

Una gran parte de las arquitecturas de la posmodernidad, se presenta como expresiones indecisas y de nomenclatura ambigua. El ejercicio que realizan estos arquitectos, a través de sus edificaciones, refleja con nitidez el cambio provocado por el auge del sector informático y la expansión de la economía global, dos fenómenos entrelazados de manera inextricable, han contribuido a generar una nueva geografía de la centralidad y la marginalidad (Sassen), por eso, el proyecto que reflejan los dibujos de estas arquitecturas, puede ser (...) alterado en su imagen mediante toda suerte de yuxtaposiciones, analogías, contrastes, adulteraciones formales y distorsiones espaciales, porque todo es intercambiable en la nueva realidad espacio‐temporal de la telemática; materiales,texturas y formas aleatorias, la imagen pública tiende a excluir el espacio público. (shrink)

Frictions between work and family life have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing negative consequences on the mental health and quality of life of workers. Without validated instruments, it is not possible to determine the impact of Work-Family and Family-Work conflict. To date, no studies have been conducted to provide evidence of the validity and reliability of The Survey Work-Home Interaction Nijmegen in the population of Argentine workers. The SWING was administered to 611 Argentine workers of both sexes aged between (...) 18 and 70 years selected from a non-probabilistic accidental sampling. The confirmatory factor analysis showed satisfactory fit indices of the original four-factor model. The level of reliability was acceptable. The relationships of the subscale scores with the engagement and burnout variables were as expected according to previous studies. Having an instrument adequately adapted to the population of Argentine workers facilitates the development of studies aimed at evaluating the role of W-F or F-W interactions and their implications for health and productivity. (shrink)

Employability is an important issue in the labor context. Currently, the European Union presents employability as the path to full employment and active citizenship, and a strategy to reduce unemployment and poverty. This study develops and validates an Employability Appraisal Scale. Specifically, we propose a multidimensional employability scale that analyzes both individual indicators and personal circumstances from the Bioecological Model of Employability. The Employability Appraisal Scale (EAS) assesses personal and social dimensions of employability. It was developed and tested using data (...) from 489 people from a very heterogeneous sample (precarious workers, professionals, prisoners, long-term unemployed, socially excluded, etc.). Results provide evidence for the multi-dimensional structure and validity of the EAS. This scale is a valid and reliable instrument to measure employability, and it provides criteria for interpreting scores. Finally, we present theoretical and practical implications of the EAS for social and labor integration, job transition, and career development. Our findings have positive implications for identifying effectiveness indicators in training programs, and they contribute to designing intervention policies to increase employability. (shrink)

According to some recent empirical studies revealing that creativity is linked to sensorimotor components, the current research was aimed at evaluating whether sensory afferences could modulate originality in drawing of children and adolescents. Sixty-nine children from 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades were required to produce a man who exists and a man who doesn’t exist with fingers or stylus on a tablet and with a pen on paper. Drawings were assessed with an originality scale comparing original drawings to unoriginal (...) ones. Since, in comparison to drawings made on paper with a pen, drawing with fingers enhances proprioceptive information, this condition was expected, according to cognitive load theory, to favor originality in drawing by reducing cognitive resources devoted to motor control of the graphic gesture. On the contrary, since the use of a stylus involves a proprioceptive loss of information, which enhances intrinsic load by increasing cognitive resources devoted to motor control, it was expected that drawing with a stylus on the tablet would lead to the least original drawings. Results only partially confirmed these hypotheses. While the use of fingers on the tablet led to the highest original scores, using a stylus on the tablet did not impair originality in drawing of children and adolescents. On the opposite, the use of a stylus led 3rd–8th graders to perform better than with pen on paper. This modulation of the tool on originality does not confirm the hypotheses formulated in accordance with the cognitive load framework. However, it could be explained according to an embodied perspective of creativity considering the creative process as relying on a sensorimotor prediction process in which sensory afferences are central to generating and evaluate creative ideas. This research opens new avenues on creativity and proposes to consider the development of predictive motor control as a significant part of creativity development. (shrink)

O filósofo Dominique Lecourt, nascido em 05 de fevereiro de 1944, em Paris, é professor da Universidade Paris Diderot-7, e discute questões como ética, política e ciência, atentando ao biocatastrofismo e ao cientificismo. Tais questões são pertinentes na presente obra, a qual é dividida em quatro capítulos.

(1980). Differences between the Views of Teachers and Students to Aspects of Sixth Form Organization at three Contrasting Comprehensive Schools in South Wales. Educational Studies: Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 225-239.

A book with the sole intention of mediating the thought of G. K. Chesterton would seem unnecessary. Is not Chesterton himself known and loved precisely for his uncanny ability to mediate for us—through his utterly translucent prose—what often seems an incomprehensible and opaque universe? However, just as the multiple mediators in the Divine Comedy, the Virgin Mary, Lucia, Beatrice, Virgil, and St. Bernard, in virtue of whom Dante was finally proffered the visio Dei, did in no way dim (...) his final illumination, so also does Schall’s mediation of the light of Chesterton diminish none of its brightness. On the contrary, Schall’s reflections serve only to focus and intensify it. (shrink)

Recent studies reveal that violence significantly contributes to explaining individual’s facial preferences. Women who feel at higher risk of violence prefer less-masculine male faces. Given the importance of violence, we explore its influence on people’s preferences for a different physical trait. Masculinity correlates positively with male strength and weight or body mass index. In fact, masculinity and BMI tend to load on the same component of trait perception. Therefore we predicted that individuals’ perceptions of danger from violence will relate to (...) preferences for facial cues to low-BMI. In two studies in Colombia, men and women from Bogota, Medellin, and surrounding communities were shown pairs of faces transformed to epitomize the shape correlates of men with high or low-BMI. The images were of European, Salvadoran, or Colombian men. Participants were asked to choose the face they considered most attractive. Subsequently, participants answered a survey about their health, media access, education level, and experiences/perceptions of violence in study 1 and about specific types of violence in study 2. Results from both studies showed that women who experienced/perceived higher levels of violence preferred faces of low-BMI Salvadoran men. Preferences for low-BMI facial cues were significantly explained by violence, even after controlling for all other variables. These results may reflect women’s strategy to avoid male partners capable of inflicting harm. (shrink)

The informational disorder that permeated recent events such as the Brazilian and American elections, the pandemic crisis and the refutation of climate issues highlighted by several scientists highlights a complex phenomenon that presents itself with transnational characteristics, as it is experienced in societies on all continents. Therefore, this scenario has led social and international actors to reflect on this informational environment, seeking to understand its causes and characteristics and point out measures that can mitigate the harmful effects they are capable (...) of causing. The emergence of the extreme right in several countries contributed to this situation being established and maintained. Thus, Hannah Arendt's understanding of the relationship between truth, lies and politics, as well as the contributions regarding propaganda perpetrated by the totalitarian regimes she studied - Nazism and Bolshevism - prove to be a pertinent reference for approaching the phenomena that cause informational disorder in society. present. This article aims to establish a dialogue between Arendt's understandings and the contemporary scenario, in which there is an intense dissemination of untrue and disinformative content, such as fake news and denialism. The intention of this work is, therefore, to identify to what extent Arendt's conclusions about totalitarian propaganda are close to/far from the communicational model of the contemporary extreme right. The research is qualitative and documentary and aims to carry out context analysis based on Arendtian understandings. In the end, we can see points of rapprochement between the two movements – totalitarianism and the contemporary extreme right. (shrink)

El artículo presenta el análisis de las implicaciones de evaluar la comprensión de lectura y la redacción en pruebas de ingreso a la educación superior, como una consideración necesaria para el desarrollo de una política de competencia comunicativa. Se describe el diseño de un instrumento, partiendo de la concepción sociosemiótica de la lengua, del enfoque metodológico de la comprensión por niveles intra, inter y extratextual, ligado a procesos cognitivos, y la escritura como tecnología. Se incluye, además, un concepto de evaluación (...) enmarcado en el desarrollo de competencia, es decir, los resultados de la prueba se utilizan, por fuera de concepciones deterministas excluyentes, para mostrar un estado de la competencia y las acciones posibles de mejoramiento de la misma. La competencia comunicativa se demuestra como saber transversal, inter y transdisciplinario. (shrink)

L’open data des décisions de justice a ouvert le marché des algorithmes de justice prédictive. Depuis, nombreuses sont les innovations alliant intelligence artificielle et monde du droit. La justice prédictive est un outil technologique au service de l’avocat mais peut-elle ne rester qu’un accessoire pertinent? Se substitue-t-elle au travail humain? Quel retour en tirer pour les professionnels du droit? Quels conseils d’utilisation donner pour intégrer de manière adéquate le changement à la pratique?

Resumen El presente artículo se ocupa de analizar las estrategias comunicativas de la prensa digital española destinadas a amenazar la imagen de la mujer política. Metodológicamente nos situamos en la Lingüística pragmática, en los estudios de la (des)cortesía y en el Análisis del Discurso. La hipótesis que se plantea es que los medios de comunicación que se examinan no participan en el progreso que experimenta la sociedad en materia de igualdad de género, aunque en apariencia lo hacen mediante lo políticamente (...) correcto. Sin embargo, se advierten estrategias comunicativas orientadas a la agresión. El objetivo del artículo, por tanto, se centra en comprobar si efectivamente existen estrategias comunicativas en los periódicos destinadas a agredir la imagen de la mujer política, en cuanto mujer, con la finalidad de desvirtuar y desautorizar su ejercicio político. Para dicho fin se analiza un corpus de textos periodísticos diferentes géneros recogidos en cuatro rotativos digitales españoles de distinto perfil ideológico-político. Los resultados muestran que la aplicación de la corrección política, el eufemismo o pseudo-eufemismo en el lenguaje del periódico junto a otras estrategias de comunicación ligadas al lector, son aprovechadas por el medio para encubrir posibles ataques dirigidos a la imagen de la mujer política. (shrink)

Long description: Unter welchen Bedingungen kann Authentizität entstehen? Wie wird sie wahrgenommen und warum misst man ihr gegenwärtig so viel Bedeutung bei? Dieser Band fasst mit kritischem Blick die theoretischen Möglichkeiten und Begrenzungen ins Auge, die dem Authentizitäts-Konzept innewohnen. Die Beiträge aus unterschiedlichen geisteswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen bestimmen ”Authentizität“ als ästhetische wie lebenswirkliche Kategorie, die ihre Relevanz gerade aus einer paradoxen Wechselbeziehung zwischen Essenz und Konstruktion, zwischen Wahrhaftigkeit und Performanz bezieht. Somit liefert die theoretische Betrachtung der Authentizität ein sinnfälliges Beschreibungsmuster für die (...) Epistemologie der Postmoderne - und stellt diese zugleich in Frage. (shrink)

The concept of well-being has been and continues to be topical and a contested subject among scholars. It has generated different meanings and conversations within disciplines such as Economics, Ethics, Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology. Furthermore, well-being has been more conceptualised within Western literature than African literature. In an attempt to define the concept, Ruggeri et al, say that ‘It is a sustainable condition that allows the individual or population to develop and thrive’’ (2009:2). The definition provided above suggests that the (...) concept goes beyond the conditions of being happy, flourishing, and even the absence of ill-being to anything that helps the individual’s or population’s mental health or helps them to prosper. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined positive mental health as ‘a state of well-being in which the individual realises her or his own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can make a contribution to his or her community’ (2001). Whereas the Western understanding encapsulates various themes such as happiness, flourishing and mental health with a focus on the individual, the traditional African understanding of well-being is often understood to be a harmonious interconnectedness of the self with the community, the natural environment and the spiritual beings. The question of which of these three ought to be given primacy has never been a vexation for the traditional African, who naturally understands that her or his well-being, sustainability and progress rely on all of these three simultaneously. Regardless of what well-being is taken to mean, whether happiness or fulfilment, the traditional African finds it in living a shared social life with members of her or his community, in a good human-nature relatedness, and in maintaining a cordial relationship with her or his spiritual beings. However, a critical look at our society today, portrays that a large number of Africans are failing to either achieve or maintain the traditional African notion of well-being. There seem to be two ways of looking at the current situation: The first is to place the blame on colonialism, modernity and the making of Africa and its communities, a capitalist society. Colonialism and modernity as political agendas severely altered the African way of life and promoted Western individualistic norms. The second way of looking at the current situation is to blame it on ourselves. Africans seem to have ignored the important values and principles handed down to us by our forefathers, which define who we are. In this chapter, we aim to show what well-being in contemporary Africa should look like. We contend that contemporary Africans have ignored the essential aspects found in the traditional African understanding of well-being. Thus, there is a need for contemporary Africans to reassess their values and perception of well-being if they are to properly address their current needs and reach their aspirations. We argue that these ignored factors of the African notion of well-being in the traditional social setting could be integrated into the dominating global discourse/Western notion. This could be done to develop a plausible notion of well-being that will suit contemporary African societies. (shrink)

O artigo faz uma reflexão crítica dos impactos da pandemia para as crianças da Educação Infantil no Brasil. Delineia algumas concepções de criança e infância nos discursos normativos, apontando possibilidades que valorizem a experiência infantil.

Cet article est constitué de deux parties : la première concerne l’arrivée au Brésil en 1816, de Marie Joséphine Durocher (1809-1893), accompagnée de sa mère, et leur installation dans le nouveau pays en tant que « marchandes de modes » ; la seconde traite de la trajectoire professionnelle de Mme Durocher en tant que sage-femme. De fait, en 1834, elle devient la première sage-femme diplômée du pays, exerçant ce métier pendant plus de cinquante ans à Rio de Janeiro. L’approche biographique (...) nous permet de constater que derrière une image de femme d’exception, sa vie ressemble à celle d’autres femmes vivant dans les villes brésiliennes du XIXe siècle, notamment les couturières et modistes françaises qui traversent l’Atlantique pour « faire l’Amérique » et les sages-femmes françaises et brésilienne qui y exercent leur profession. (shrink)

The word “virtual” comes from the latin virtus, virtue, which itself comes from the latin vir, man. As for the word “real” it comes from the latin res, thing. One could say that the virtual is the man and the real is the thing. How does one resist the temptation of placing the virtual in opposition to the real, as a metaphor of the man who places himself “in” the world and who confronts things? The virtual opposes the real, as (...) man does the world, in order to transform it and even transcend it. (shrink)