The current article aims to provide an up-to-date synopsis of available techniques to study affect dynamics using intensive longitudinal data (ILD). We do so by introducing the following eight dichotomies that help elucidate what kind of data one has, what process aspects are of interest, and what research questions are being considered: (1) single- versus multiple-person data; (2) univariate versus multivariate models; (3) stationary versus nonstationary models; (4) linear versus nonlinear models; (5) discrete time versus continuous time models; (...) (6) discrete versus continuous variables; (7) time versus frequency domain; and (8) modeling the process versus computing descriptives. In addition, we discuss what we believe to be the most urging future challenges regarding the modeling of affect dynamics. (shrink)

We discuss three varieties of affective dynamics ( affective instability, emotional inertia, and emotional differentiation). In each case, we suggest how these affective dynamics should be operationalized and measured in daily life using time-intensive methods, like ecological momentary assessment or ambulatory assessment, and recommend time-sensitive analyses that take into account not only the variability but also the temporal dependency of reports. Studies that explore how these affective dynamics are associated with psychological disorders and symptoms are reviewed, and (...) we emphasize that these affective processes are within a nexus of other components of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Everything is constantly changing. Our emotions are one of the primary ways we track, evaluate, organize, and motivate responsive action to those changes. Furthermore, emotions are inherently interpersonal. We learn what to feel from others, especially when we are children. We “catch” other people’s emotions just by being around them. We get caught in escalating response–counterresponse emotional sequences. This all takes place in time, generating complex patterns of interpersonal emotional dynamics. This review summarizes theory, empirical findings, and key challenges (...) for future research regarding three processes that contribute to interpersonal affective dynamics: (a) Convergence of social partners’ emotional responses to the external world, (b) emotional reactivity of social partners to each other, and (c) interpersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

In 1815, two benevolent organizations commenced operation in Antigua, the Female Refuge Society based in English Harbour and the Distressed Females’ Friend Society based in St John's. The driving force behind the establishment of the Female Refuge Society, on which the Distressed Females’ Friend Society was modelled, was Anne Hart Gilbert (1768–1834), the earliest known published African-Caribbean woman writer, the agent of the Female Refuge Society. The organizations were run on principle by women and the executive committees were multi-racial. They (...) accepted female subscribers only, but donations from women and men. For Gilbert, an affective poetics of life story and writing is crucial to the formation of an ethical community that she situates as an emerging and modernizing counter-culture to plantation slavery. Her civic ethic of caring centres on development and engagement of the ‘finer sensibilities’ in creating ‘bands of amity and love that are the ornament and glory of our nature’ (Female Refuge Society, 1822: 12). The annual reports of the Female Refuge Society had a profound impact on the direction of female anti-slavery activism in Britain. In this essay, I analyse the inscription of affect in extant letters, annual reports and published material about the work of the Female Refuge Society and Distressed Females’ Friend Society. I am interested in how the women in the Creole organizations and their male supporters represent their affective relations to the objects of their benevolence and appeals for funding, and how these relations are racialized, gendered and classed in the grounding of activism. I draw out the local and British affective reception of these relations. In the field of affect studies, the essay might be compared with projects that address ‘the cultural and historical contingency of emotions, and … emotions and emotion cultures as contingent technologies of subjects’ (Koivunen, 2010: 19). (shrink)

This article discusses the role of moment-to-moment affect dynamics in mental disorder and aims to integrate recent literature on this topic in the context of complex dynamical system theory. First, we will review the relevance of temporal and contextual aspects of affect dynamics in relation to psychopathology. Related to this, we will discuss recent insights resulting from a network view on affect dynamics in psychopathology. Next, we explore how we can reconcile literature findings from (...) a perspective of complex dynamical system theory. Finally, future directions with regard to personalized assessment of risk and diagnostic use are discussed. (shrink)

According to several researchers, core affect lies at the foundation of our affective lives and may be characterized as a consciously accessible state combining arousal (activated-deactivated) and valence (pleasure-displeasure). The interaction between these two dimensions is still a matter of debate. In this paper we provide a novel hypothesis concerning their interaction, by arguing that subjective arousal levels modulate the experience of a stimulus’ affective quality. All things being equal, the higher the arousal, the more a given stimulus would (...) be experienced as pleasant (or unpleasant). While marshaling some preliminary evidence in favor of this hypothesis, we also show how it might be relevant in reframing our conception of depressive disorders (i.e., major and bipolar depression). (shrink)

Emotions in scientific research are typically portrayed as short-lived responses or dispositions to manifest such responses. Some philosophers have argued that this fails to capture long-term emotions (e.g., love, hate, and grief). This article examines whether the emerging field of affect dynamics (or emotion dynamics), which studies how emotions fluctuate over time, can address the philosophical critique. I argue that there are still aspects of long-term emotion (i.e., their temporal components and temporal dynamics) missing from (...) class='Hi'>affect dynamics. I end by proposing a few positive steps psychologists working in affect dynamics can take to mitigate these shortcomings. (shrink)

Psychological constructivist models of emotion propose that emotions arise from the combinations of multiple processes, many of which are not emotion specific. These models attempt to describe both the homogeneity of instances of an emotional “kind” (why are fears similar?) and the heterogeneity of instances (why are different fears quite different?). In this article, we review the iterative reprocessing model of affect, and suggest that emotions, at least in part, arise from the processing of dynamical unfolding representations of valence (...) across time. Critical to this model is the hypothesis that affective trajectories—over time—provide important information that helps build emotional states. (shrink)

The study of affect dynamics aims to discover the patterns and regularities with which emotions and affective experiences and components change across time, the underlying mechanisms involved, and their potential relevance for healthy psychological functioning. The intention of this special section is to serve as a mini handbook covering the contemporary state of research into affect dynamics. Contributions address theoretical viewpoints on the origins and functions of emotional change, methodological and modeling approaches, biological and social perspectives (...) on affect dynamics, and the downstream consequences for well-being and psychopathology. (shrink)

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term 'language' as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably, limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault's study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language - the Distributed Language view - that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental (...) architecture of language can be localized as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organization that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organisation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales. Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault's book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualizes is always an event, not a thing that we 'use'. In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology. The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume 1 focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural-historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated. (shrink)

Affective dynamics are discussed from the perspective of a view of origin and functions of affective valence based in control processes. This view posits that affect reflects the error signal of a feedback loop managing rate of progress at goal attainment or threat avoidance. Negative feelings signal doing poorly, demanding more effort. Positive feelings signal doing better than necessary, allowing coasting, which yields goal attainment without unnecessary resource expenditure. Given multiple simultaneous goals, these functions assist in moment-to-moment priority (...) management, facilitating attainment of all. (shrink)

Theorists of affect and radical democracy have largely overlooked the importance of intentionally cultivating affective dynamics in the process of changing institutions. We address that lack by introducing the concept of musical groove as an intercorporeal feel for improvisational co-creation. Groove in a political context involves specific practices of modulating dynamics, receptivity, and affects in relationship to specific contexts, people, and practices to powerful effect. We explore how early democratic movements during the American Revolution sought to craft (...) institutional forms capacious enough for such democratic groove despite the fact that key intellectual leaders of the time, such as the Federalists and Benjamin Rush, feared the power of intercorporeal affective flows of democratic enthusiasm and popular improvisation. We read Rush’s critique and his efforts to diminish and control these emergences by harmonizing them in the order as a “negative image” of a radical democratic alternative that would foster improvisation and build enthusiasm for catalysing change today. We discuss how improvisation can, as Pierre Bourdieu perceived, simply function to reproduce the limits of a given socio-political game, which is deeply embedded within us as a “feel for the game” or set of affective dispositions. However, we turn Bourdieu’s own critique against itself to find openings for a habitus of political groove and democratic improvisation that he considered foreclosed. We conclude by fleshing out these insights in relation to affective dynamics among political organizing practices and modest institutional changes during a period of rich local transformation in which we participated in Durham, North Carolina. (shrink)

The vestibular system is critical for human locomotion. Any deteriorated vestibular system leads to gait instability. In the past decades, these alternations in gait patterns have been majorly measured by the spatial-temporal gait parameters and respective variabilities. However, measuring gait characteristics cannot capture the full aspect of motor controls. Thus, to further understand the effects of deteriorated vestibular system on gait performance, additional measurement needs to be taken into consideration. This study proposed using the margin of stability to identify the (...) patterns of dynamic control under different types of mastoid vibrations in walking. This study hypothesized that using the MOS method could facilitate the understanding of another aspect of motor control induced by different types of mastoid vibrations, and applying the mastoid vibrations could induce the asymmetric MOS. Twenty healthy young adults were recruited. Two electromechanical vibrotactile transducers were placed on the bilateral mastoid process to apply different types of vestibular vibrations. A motion capture system with eight cameras was used to measure the MOSap, MOSml, and respective variabilities. The results were in line with the hypotheses that both bilateral and unilateral mastoid vibrations significantly increased MOSap, MOSml, and respective variabilities p = 0.001, p < 0.001; p = 0.001, p < 0.01 when compared to the no vibration condition. Also, significantly larger MOSml, MOSml variability, MOSap, and MOSap variability were observed under the unilateral vibration condition than that observed under the bilateral vibration condition. The above-mentioned result found that different types of mastoid vibrations affected the MOS differently, suggesting different patterns of control mechanisms under different sensory-conflicted situations. Besides, a significant difference between the dominant and non-dominant legs was observed in MOSml. Moreover, applying the unilateral mastoid vibrations induced a greater symmetric index of MOSml, suggesting that more active control in balance was needed in the medial-lateral than in the anterior-posterior direction. (shrink)

The initial online publication contained several typesetting errors.

In this paper, illocutionary acts of commanding will be differentiated from perlocutionary acts that affect preferences of addressees in a new dynamic logic which combines the preference upgrade introduced in DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) by van Benthem and Liu with the deontic update introduced in ECL II (eliminative command logic II) by Yamada. The resulting logic will incorporate J. L. Austin’s distinction between illocutionary acts as acts having mere conventional effects and perlocutionary acts as acts having real effects (...) upon attitudes and actions of agents, and help us understand why saying so can make it so in explicit performative utterances. We will also discuss how acts of commanding give rise to so-called “deontic dilemmas” and how we can accommodate most deontic dilemmas without triggering so-called “deontic explosion”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious research has demonstrated that anxious individuals attend to negative emotional information at the expense of other information. This is commonly referred to as attentional bias. The field has historically conceived of this process as relatively static; however, research by [Zvielli, A., Bernstein, A., & Koster, E. H. W.. Dynamics of attentional bias to threat in anxious adults: Bias towards and/or away? PLoS ONE, 9, e104025; Zvielli, A., Bernstein, A., & Koster, E. H. W.. Temporal dynamics of attentional (...) bias. Clinical Psychological Science, 3, 772–788.], and others, challenges this assumption by demonstrating considerable temporal variability in attentional bias amongst anxious individuals. Still, the mechanisms driving these temporal dynamics are less well known. Using a modified dot-probe task, the present study examined the impact of two relevant contextual variables- affective valence and trial repetition. Affective context was instantiated by the presentation of... (shrink)

According to Discrete Emotion Theory, a number of emotions are distinguishable on the basis of neural, physiological, behavioral and expressive features. Critics of this view emphasize the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions. This paper discusses some of these criticisms, and argues that they do not undermine the claim that emotions are discrete. This paper also presents some works in dynamical affective science, and argues that to conceive of discrete emotions as self-organizing and softly assembled patterns of various processes accounts more (...) naturally than traditional Discrete Emotion Theory for the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions. (shrink)

Lewis describes the developmental core of dynamic systems theory. I offer recent data from developmental neuroscience on the sequential experience-dependent maturation of components of the limbic system over the stages of infancy. Increasing interconnectivity within the vertically integrated limbic system allows for more complex appraisals of emotional value. The earliest organization of limbic structures has an enduring impact on all later emotional processing.

The present study investigates the dynamics of emotional processing and awareness using an affective facial priming paradigm in conjunction with a multimodal assessment of awareness. Key facial primes are visually masked, and are presented for brief and extended durations. Using a preference measure, we examine whether the effects of the primes differ qualitatively . We show that: unconscious affective priming with faces emerges strongly in initial presentations and diminishes rapidly with repetition; conscious affective priming also emerges strongly in initial (...) presentations, however it persists in strength with repetition; and in contrast to other reports on the salience of negative stimuli, happy faces appear more salient than sad faces when presented outside awareness. We discuss the limits and extensions of unconscious affective priming with faces, and consider several methodological and conceptual questions concerning emotional processing out of awareness. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic hyperintensional logic of belief revision for non-omniscient agents, reducing the logical omniscience phenomena affecting standard doxastic/epistemic logic as well as AGM belief revision theory. Our agents don’t know all a priori truths; their belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; and their belief update policies are such that logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. We model both plain and conditional belief, then focus on dynamic belief revision. The key idea we (...) exploit to achieve non-omniscience focuses on topic- or subject matter-sensitivity: a feature of belief states which is gaining growing attention in the recent literature. (shrink)

More instability (MSSD) and variability (SD) of negative affect (NA) have been related to current and future depressive symptoms. We investigated whether NA instability and variability were predictive of the rate of symptom improvement during treatment and of reaching remission status. Forty-six individuals with major depressive disorder completed six days of ecological momentary assessments (10 beeps/day) before starting a combination of pharmacotherapy and supportive therapy. During and after treatment, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) diagnostic interview was performed monthly (...) for 18 months. The rate of change in HDRS scores over five months (during treatment) and remission status (HDRS ≤ 7) over eighteen months were predicted by the SD, MSSD and Mean of NA, and relevant baseline predictors. Higher Mean NA and baseline symptom severity, but not NA variability or instability, predicted stronger depressive symptom reduction during treatment. Higher odds of remitting were only associated with lower Mean NA. Higher mean NA may indicate more room for improvement and thus for a steeper rate of symptom change, while lower mean NA levels may imply that remission status is more readily reached. To resolve the inconclusive findings for instability and variability as predictors of symptom improvement replication in larger samples is required. (shrink)

Dynamics of perceiving oneself on femininity and masculinity dimensions in diverse contexts The article is about issues related to gender perceived as a result of social context and thus fits in the current, processual gender paradigm. Two studies have been conducted verifying hypotheses about perceiving oneself on the femininity and masculinity dimensions in various types of contexts. Expectations were that generic contexts would make perceiving oneself within the psychological gender dimensions more dynamic. Women were expected to perceive themselves as (...) more feminine and less masculine in contexts matching their gender, i.e. "feminine", comparing to "masculine", and men were expected to perceive themselves as more masculine and less feminine in "masculine" contexts comparing to "feminine" contexts. Research results do not confirm the above hypotheses and indicate dynamism in perceiving oneself on femininity and masculinity dimensions. However, the dynamism is perceived only on dimensions inconsistent with biological gender - situation affects women's perceiving of themselves on the masculinity dimension and men's - on femininity dimensions. (shrink)

The acquisition and evolution of speech production, discourse and communication can be negatively impacted by brain malformations. We describe, for the first time, a case of developmental dynamic dysphasia (DDD) in a right-handed adolescent boy (subject D) with cortical malformations involving language-eloquent regions (inferior frontal gyrus) in both the left and the right hemispheres. Language evaluation revealed a markedly reduced verbal output affecting phonemic and semantic fluency, phrase and sentence generation and verbal communication in everyday life. Auditory comprehension, repetition, naming, (...) reading and spelling were relatively preserved, but executive function was impaired. Multimodal neuroimaging showed a malformed cerebral cortex with atypical configuration and placement of white matter tracts bilaterally and abnormal callosal fibers. Dichotic listening showed right hemisphere dominance for language and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) additionally revealed dissociated hemispheric language representation with right frontal activation for phonology and bilateral dominance for semantic processing. Moreover, subject D also had congenital mirror movements (CMM), defined as involuntary movements of one side of the body that mirror intentional movements of the other side. Transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI during voluntary unimanual (left and right) hand movements showed bilateral motor cortex recruitment and tractography revealed a lack of decussation of bilateral corticospinal tracts. Genetic testing aimed to detect mutations that disrupt the development of commissural tracts correlating with CMM (e.g., Germline DCC mutations) was negative. Overall, our findings suggest that DDD in subject D resulted from the underdevelopment of the left inferior frontal gyrus with limited capacity for plastic reorganization by its homologous counterpart in the right hemisphere. Corpus callosum anomalies probably contributed to hinder interhemispheric connectivity necessary to compensate language and communication deficits after left frontal involvement. (shrink)

This paper provides an exploratory comparative assessment of the institutional pressures influencing corporate social responsibility in a developed country, UK, vs. a developing country, Brazil, based on a survey of different actors. Information on sustainability concerns, organizational strategies and mechanisms of pressure was collected through interviews with environmental regulatory agencies, financial institutions, media and non-governmental organizations. Our results confirm that the more advanced awareness and CSR responsiveness in the UK is a consequence of a predominance of coercive and normative forces (...) on the organizational field. The institutional forces tend to build a Brazilian organizational field that is relational based and risk intensive. The findings lend support to the view that CSR responses are unlikely to be easily transformed into uniform standardized practices across the globe. This paper contributes to a collective understanding of the organizational field and a common template for CSR in the context of developed and developing countries. (shrink)

Research on facial emotion expression has mostly focused on emotion recognition, assuming that a small number of discrete emotions is elicited and expressed via prototypical facial muscle configurations as captured in still photographs. These are expected to be recognized by observers, presumably via template matching. In contrast, appraisal theories of emotion propose a more dynamic approach, suggesting that specific elements of facial expressions are directly produced by the result of certain appraisals and predicting the facial patterns to be expected for (...) certain appraisal configurations. This approach has recently been extended to emotion perception, claiming that observers first infer individual appraisals and only then make categorical emotion judgments based on the estimated appraisal patterns, using semantic inference rules. Here we report two related studies to empirically investigate the facial action unit configurations that are used by actors to convey specific emotions in short affect bursts and to examine to what extent observers can infer a person’s emotions from the predicted facial expression configurations. The results show that 1) professional actors use many of the predicted facial action unit patterns to enact systematically specified appraisal outcomes in a realistic scenario setting, and 2) naïve observers infer the respective emotions based on highly similar facial movement configurations with a degree of accuracy comparable to earlier research findings. Based on estimates of underlying appraisal criteria for the different emotions we conclude that the patterns of facial action units identified in this research correspond largely to prior predictions and encourage further research on appraisal-driven expression and inference. (shrink)

Migraine is a chronic and idiopathic disorder leading to cognitive and affective problems. However, the neural basis of migraine without aura is still unclear. In this study, dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations analyses were performed in 21 patients with migraine without aura and 21 gender- and age-matched healthy controls to identify the voxel-level abnormal functional dynamics. Significantly decreased dALFF in the bilateral anterior insula, bilateral lateral orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, and left middle frontal (...) cortex were found in patients with migraine without aura. The dALFF values in the anterior cingulate cortex were negatively correlated with pain intensity, i.e., visual analog scale. Finally, support vector machine was used to classify patients with migraine without aura from healthy controls and achieved an accuracy of 83.33%, sensitivity of 90.48%, and specificity of 76.19%. Our findings provide the evidence that migraine influences the brain functional activity dynamics and reveal the neural basis for migraine, which could facilitate understanding the neuropathology of migraine and future treatment. (shrink)

Ubiquitination plays a central role in the regulation of stem cell self‐renewal, propagation, and differentiation. In this review, the functions of ubiquitin dynamics in a myriad of cellular processes, acting along side the pluripotency network, to regulate embryonic stem cell identity are highlighted. The implication of deubiquitinases (DUBs) and E3 Ubiquitin (Ub) ligases in cellular functions beyond protein degradation is reported, including key functions in the regulation of mRNA stability, protein translation, and intra‐cellular trafficking; and how it affects cell (...) metabolism, the micro‐environment, and chromatin organization is discussed. Finally, unsolved issues in the field are emphasized and will need to be tackled in order to fully understand the contribution of ubiquitin dynamics to stem cell self‐renewal and differentiation. (shrink)

The propositions, that what we see around us is real and that reality should be represented by the statevector, conflict with quantum theory. In quantum theory, the statevector can readily become a sum of states of comparable norm, each state representing a different reality. In this paper we present the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) theory, in which a modified Schrodinger equation, while scarcely affecting the dynamics of a microscopic system, rapidly "reduces" the statevector of a macroscopic system to a (...) state appropriate for representing individual reality. (shrink)

Numerous scholars have observed that the relationship between poverty and violent conflict is endogenous. As a result, the area of Peace Through Commerce argues as one of its central tenets that the institution of business may be able to contribute to sustainable peace by creating economic development where poverty is a critical issue. While this argument may be valid, it leaves the question open — what is the business case for engaging in poverty alleviation business strategies? Strategic Management scholars are (...) addressing this question, arguing the general proposition that poverty is not only experienced by the people, but also impacts businesses operating in environments where the phenomenon is pervasive. By addressing poverty, businesses can help themselves. Yet, organizational theory justifying this proposition is still emerging, consisting of only a few studies that generally suggest that these strategies can help firms develop competitive advantage through the lens of the resource-based view. This article extends the theoretical application of the resource-based view, suggesting that conditions of poverty directly suppress the value of organizational resources and capabilities that are or could be contributed by people affected by it. In addition, it characterizes poverty alleviation strategic capabilities as dynamic capabilities. Finally, it describes a framework of "base of the pyramid dynamic capabilities" that could guide both future discourse in the area and deductive-disconfirmatory research examining the efficacy of these strategies. (shrink)

When large-scale common land is taken from villagers by investors with little compensation, their labour unneeded, villagers’ livelihoods tend to be largely destroyed. This implies a tendency to focus on what has been taken from villagers during the land-based change, which has valid and has far-reaching social relevance. But as the rise of the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector in Guangxi shows, some villagers are capable of having their livelihoods maintained and even expanded when big investors come and acquire massive (...) amounts of land. This seems to be an anomaly at a first glance, considering what has been taken from villagers, but these unexpected and positive livelihood changes can be explained when one closely examines the dynamic of what is taken and what has been left to villagers. During this ITP boom, although large-scale collectively owned forestland is taken by investors and few work opportunities are created to incorporate those affected, villagers’ control over farmland plots and their access to off-farm work opportunities remain (including the land system and labour dynamics). This paper highlights the importance of analysing “taken-left” dynamics to more fully capture diverse livelihood changes. (shrink)

Gender issues are well-researched in the general management literature, particular in studies on new ventures. Unfortunately, gender issues have been largely ignored in the dynamic capabilities literature. We address this gap by analyzing the effects of gender diversity on dynamic capabilities among micro firms. We consider the gender of managers and personnel in 124 Ukrainian tourism micro firms. We examine how a manager’s gender affects the firm’s sensing capacities and investigate how it moderates team gender diversity’s impact on sensing capacities. (...) We also investigate how personnel composition impacts seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We find that female managers have several shortcomings concerning a firm’s sensing capacity but that personnel gender diversity increases this capacity. Team gender diversity has positive effects on a firm’s seizing and reconfiguration abilities. Our study advances research on gender diversity and its impact on firm capabilities and illustrates its relevance for staffing practices in micro firms. (shrink)

Epistemic logic with its possible worlds semantic model is a powerful framework that allows us to represent an agent’s information not only about propositional facts, but also about her own information. Nevertheless, agents represented in this framework are logically omniscient: their information is closed under logical consequence. This property, useful in some applications, is an unrealistic idealisation in some others. Many proposals to solve this problem focus on weakening the properties of the agent’s information, but some authors have argued that (...) solutions of this kind are not completely adequate because they do not look at the heart of the matter: the actions that allow the agent to reach such omniscient state. Recent works have explored how acts of observation, inference, consideration and forgetting affect an agent’s implicit and explicit knowledge; the present work focuses on acts that affect an agent’s implicit and explicit beliefs. It starts by proposing a framework in which these two notions can be represented, and then it looks into their dynamics, first by reviewing the existing notion of belief revision, and then by introducing a rich framework for representing diverse forms of inference that involve both knowledge and beliefs. (shrink)

Body feedback is the proprioceptive feedback that denominates the afferent information from position and movement of the body to the central nervous system. It is crucial in experiencing emotions, in forming attitudes and in regulating emotions and behavior. This paper investigates effects of dynamic body feedback on affect and attitudes, focusing on the impact of movement rhythms with smooth vs. sharp reversals as one basic category of movement qualities. It relates those qualities to already explored effects of approach vs. (...) avoidance motor behavior as one basic category of movement shape. Studies 1 and 2 tested the effects of one of two basic movement qualities (smooth vs. sharp rhythms) on affect and cognition. The third study tested those movement qualities in combination with movement shape (approach vs. avoidance motor behavior) and the effects of those combinations on affect and attitudes toward initially valence-free stimuli. Results suggest that movement rhythms influence affect (studies 1 and 2), and attitudes (study 3), and moderate the impact of approach and avoidance motor behavior on attitudes (study 3). Extending static body feedback research with a dynamic account, findings indicate that movement qualities – next to movement shape – play an important role, when movement of the lived body is an independent variable. (shrink)

Previous research on cross-situational word learning has demonstrated that learners are able to reduce ambiguity in mapping words to referents by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across learning events. In the current experiments, we examined whether learners are able to retain mappings over time. The results revealed that learners are able to retain mappings for up to 1 week later. However, there were interactions between the amount of retention and the different learning conditions. Interestingly, the strongest retention was associated with a learning (...) condition that engendered retrieval dynamics that initially challenged the learner but eventually led to more successful retrieval toward the end of learning. The ease/difficulty of retrieval is a critical process underlying cross-situational word learning and is a powerful example of how learning dynamics affect long-term learning outcomes. (shrink)

Forming intimate relationships is a fundamental human motive. Emotions play a critical role in intimate relationships—they are central to the development and maintenance of these bonds, and these very bonds can influence both individual and interpersonal emotional dynamics across time. Investigating emotional dynamics in an interpersonal context provides unique insight into the functioning of intimate relationships and, at the same time, provides a window into the interdependence of partners’ daily experiences. Reviewing a selection of the literature involving emotional (...) dynamics in intimate relationships, we explore how intimate relationships shape partner’s emotional experiences and the implications this may have for their relationship across time. (shrink)

Previous work demonstrated that dynamic pitch (i.e., pitch variation in speech) aids speech recognition in various types of noises. While this finding suggests dynamic pitch enhancement in target speech can benefit speech recognition in noise, it is of importance to know what noise characteristics affect dynamic pitch benefit and who will benefit from enhanced dynamic pitch cues. Following our recent finding that temporal modulation in noise influences dynamic pitch benefit, we examined the effect of speech masker characteristics on dynamic (...) pitch benefit. Specifically, the first goal of the study was to test the hypothesis that dynamic pitch benefit varies depending on the availability of pitch cues in the masker and the intelligibility of masker. The second goal of this study was to investigate whether older listeners as a group can benefit from dynamic pitch for speech recognition in speech maskers. In addition, individual factors of hearing loss and working memory capacity were examined for their impact on older listeners’ dynamic pitch benefit. Twenty-three younger listeners with normal hearing and 37 older listeners with varying levels of hearing sensitivity participated the study, in which speech reception thresholds were measured with sentences in speech maskers. While we did not find an effect of masker characteristics on dynamic pitch benefit, the results showed older listeners can benefit from dynamic pitch for recognizing speech in speech maskers. The data also suggest that among those older listeners with hearing loss, dynamic pitch benefit is stronger for individuals with higher working memory capacity. This can be attributed to their ability to exploit facilitated lexical access in processing of degraded speech signal. (shrink)