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Cognition Oct 2023Compared to audio only (AO) conditions, audiovisual (AV) information can enhance the aesthetic experience of a music performance. However, such beneficial multimodal...
Compared to audio only (AO) conditions, audiovisual (AV) information can enhance the aesthetic experience of a music performance. However, such beneficial multimodal effects have yet to be studied in naturalistic music performance settings. Further, peripheral physiological correlates of aesthetic experiences are not well-understood. Here, participants were invited to a concert hall for piano performances of Bach, Messiaen, and Beethoven, which were presented in two conditions: AV and AO. They rated their aesthetic experience (AE) after each piece (Experiment 1 and 2), while peripheral signals (cardiorespiratory measures, skin conductance, and facial muscle activity) were continuously measured (Experiment 2). Factor scores of AE were significantly higher in the AV condition in both experiments. LF/HF ratio, a heart rhythm that represents activation of the sympathetic nervous system, was higher in the AO condition, suggesting increased arousal, likely caused by less predictable sound onsets in the AO condition. We present partial evidence that breathing was faster and facial muscle activity was higher in the AV condition, suggesting that observing a performer's movements likely enhances motor mimicry in these more voluntary peripheral measures. Further, zygomaticus ('smiling') muscle activity was a significant predictor of AE. Thus, we suggest physiological measures are related to AE, but at different levels: the more involuntary measures (i.e., heart rhythms) may reflect more sensory aspects, while the more voluntary measures (i.e., muscular control of breathing and facial responses) may reflect the liking aspect of an AE. In summary, we replicate and extend previous findings that AV information enhances AE in a naturalistic music performance setting. We further show that a combination of self-report and peripheral measures benefit a meaningful assessment of AE in naturalistic music performance settings.
Topics: Humans; Music; Auditory Perception; Arousal; Sympathetic Nervous System; Movement
PubMed: 37487303
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105537 -
Perception Jul 2022A wealth of studies have shown that humans are remarkably poor at determining whether two face images show the same person or not (face matching). Given the prevalence...
A wealth of studies have shown that humans are remarkably poor at determining whether two face images show the same person or not (face matching). Given the prevalence of photo-ID, and the fact that people employed to check photo-ID are typically unfamiliar with the person pictured, there is a need to improve unfamiliar face matching accuracy. One method of improvement is to have participants complete the task in a pair, which results in subsequent improvements in the low performer ("the pairs training effect"). Here, we sought to replicate the original finding, to test the longevity of the pairs training effect, and to shed light on the potential underlying mechanisms. In two experiments, we replicated the pairs training effect and showed it is maintained after a delay (Experiment 1). We found no differences between high and low performers in confidence (Experiment 1) or response times (Experiment 2), and the content of the pairs' discussions (Experiment 2) did not explain the results. The pairs training effect in unfamiliar face matching is robust, but the mechanisms underlying the effects remain as yet unexplained.
Topics: Face; Facial Recognition; Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Reaction Time; Recognition, Psychology
PubMed: 35581726
DOI: 10.1177/03010066221096987 -
Journal of Occupational Medicine and... Jan 2024Mild traumatic brain injuries receive voluminous attention in the research literature, but this is confined almost entirely to sports and military contexts. As an...
BACKGROUND
Mild traumatic brain injuries receive voluminous attention in the research literature, but this is confined almost entirely to sports and military contexts. As an occupation, performing stunts in film, television, and entertainment places the head at high risk of repetitive impact and whiplash, but stunt performers do not enjoy the same level of healthcare supervision and access as that provided to sports participants. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate stunt performers' qualitative perceptions of reporting and management of head trauma in their industry.
METHODS
After giving their informed consent, 87 motion picture and television stunt performers responded to a query about their views of ways to improve how stunt performers' occupational head trauma-specifically head impacts and head whips that could cause a concussion-are reported and managed. We analyzed their responses via content and thematic analyses. Two researchers independently marked and categorized key words, phrases, and texts to identify codes that described participants' comments. They then revised, discussed, and resolved coding discrepancies through consensus to establish inter-coder reliability. Next, we identified thematic patterns that described participants' understanding of the stunt performer industry and what must change to facilitate reporting of head trauma. We derived themes from data that occurred multiple times, both within and across short answer responses.
RESULTS
We identified three primary themes cited by the stunt performers as needs in their industry: (1) Need to Reduce the Stigma of Reporting a Stunt-Related Injury, (2) Need to Eliminate the "Cowboy Culture," and (3) Need to Improve the Quality of the Work Environment.
CONCLUSIONS
Stunt performers are crucial members of a global entertainment industry valued at approximately US$100 billion annually. A large segment of the world's population consumes their work in motion pictures, television, and live entertainment. When they are given an anonymous opportunity to speak, stunt performers offer insight into and recommendations for industry changes-primarily cultural and educational in nature-that could improve their physical and mental health, career longevity, and employability when they are confronted with head trauma.
PubMed: 38297318
DOI: 10.1186/s12995-024-00401-0 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2023Classical singers train intensively for many years to achieve a high level of vocal control and specific sound characteristics. However, the actual span of singers'...
Classical singers train intensively for many years to achieve a high level of vocal control and specific sound characteristics. However, the actual span of singers' activities often includes venues other than opera halls and requires performing in styles outside their strict training (e.g., singing pop songs at weddings). We examine classical singers' ability to adjust their vocal productions to other styles, in relation with their formal training. Twenty-two highly trained female classical singers (aged from 22 to 45 years old; vocal training ranging from 4.5 to 27 years) performed six different melody excerpts a cappella in contrasting ways: as an opera aria, as a pop song and as a lullaby. All melodies were sung both with lyrics and with a /lu/ sound. All productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of seven common acoustic descriptors of voice/singing performances and perceptually evaluated by a total of 50 lay listeners (aged from 21 to 73 years old) who were asked to identify the intended singing style in a forced-choice lab experiment. Acoustic analyses of the 792 performances suggest distinct acoustic profiles, implying that singers were able to produce contrasting sounding performances. Furthermore, the high overall style recognition rate (78.5% Correct Responses, hence CR) confirmed singers' proficiency in performing in operatic style (86% CR) and their versatility when it comes to lullaby (80% CR) and pop performances (69% CR), albeit with occasional confusion between the latter two. Interestingly, different levels of competence among singers appeared, with versatility (as estimated based on correct recognition in pop/lullaby styles) ranging from 62 to 83% depending on the singer. Importantly, this variability was not linked to formal training . Our results indicate that classical singers are versatile, and prompt the need for further investigations to clarify the role of singers' broader professional and personal experiences in the development of this valuable ability.
PubMed: 38023013
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1215370 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2022Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a prevalent phenomenon with potentially serious consequences to a musician's wellbeing and professional career. Yet, MPA does not...
Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a prevalent phenomenon with potentially serious consequences to a musician's wellbeing and professional career. Yet, MPA does not always affect performance quality. It is hypothesized that trait anxiety, situational stress, and task mastery can exacerbate the effects of MPA and affect performance quality. Furthermore, it is unclear whether these effects are noticeable to both listeners and performing musicians. We measure performance quality as the expressiveness scores assigned by musicians and listeners to a set of pre-recorded performances. We selected three pianists with low, mid, and high MPA. Each pianist performed two pieces of their choice, familiar and unfamiliar, which were performed in rehearsal and recital conditions. The performances were videoed and edited into shorter clips for being presented to the performing pianists and to a set of online raters. Listeners and pianists will be asked to rate the expressiveness of all clips. We will determine the difference between the listeners' perceived expressiveness and the pianists' own expressiveness scores to estimate how well did listeners understand the pianists' expressive intentions. We investigate (1) what is the effect of trait anxiety, situational stress, and task mastery on the listener's perception of expressiveness and (2) what is the effect of these same variables on the listeners' understanding of expressiveness.
PubMed: 36710752
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1061922 -
Complex & Intelligent Systems 2022Swarm-based optimization algorithms have been popularly used these days for optimization of various real world problems but sometimes it becomes hard to estimate the...
Swarm-based optimization algorithms have been popularly used these days for optimization of various real world problems but sometimes it becomes hard to estimate the associated characteristics due to their stochastic nature. To ensure a steady performance of these techniques, it is essential to have knowledge about the range of variables, in which a particular algorithm always provides stable performance and performing stability analysis of an algorithm can help in providing some knowledge regarding the same. Many researchers have performed the stability analysis of several optimization algorithms and analyzed their behavior. Social Group Optimization (SGO) is a newly developed algorithm which has been proven to yield promising results when applied to many real world problems but in literature no work can be found on stability analysis of SGO. In this paper, Von Neumann stability analysis approach has been used for performing stability analysis of Social Group Optimization (SGO) to analyze the behavior of its algorithmic parameters and estimate the range in which they always give stable convergence. The results obtained have been supported by sufficient experimental analysis and simulated using eight benchmark function suite along with their shifted and rotated variations which prove that the algorithm performs better within the stable range and hence convergence is ensured.
PubMed: 35223377
DOI: 10.1007/s40747-022-00684-y -
Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 2020This study examines how text-based mobile communication practices are performatively constructed as individuals compose messages key-by-key on virtual keyboards, and how...
This study examines how text-based mobile communication practices are performatively constructed as individuals compose messages key-by-key on virtual keyboards, and how these (Mobile interface theory: embodied space and locative media. New York, NY: Routledge) reflect the iterative process of constructing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. In doing so, this study reports on keystroke-logging analysis (see Writ. Commun. 30, 358-392) in order to observe how participants ( 10) composed text as part of everyday mobile communication for the period of one week, subsequently producing 179,996 individual keystroke log-file records. Participants used LogKey, a virtual keyboard application made exclusively for this study to run on the Android mobile operating system. Analysis of keystroke log-file data suggest that timing processes of composing text-messages may differ as participants messaged with different categories of interlocutors, composed on different communication applications, and composed paralinguistic features-such as variants of and Thurlow and Brown, (Discourse Anal. Online, 2003, 1, 1); Tagg, (Discourse of text messaging. 2012, Bloomsbury, UK)-at different turn-taking positions. This evidence suggests that keystroke-logging methods may contribute to understanding of how individuals manage interpersonal relationships in real-time (Please reply! the replying norm in adolescent SMS communication," in The inside text: social, cultural and design perspectives on SMS. (Norwell, MA: Springer), 53-73); (Beyond genre: closings and relational work in texting," in Digital discourse: language in the new media. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 67-85), and suggests future direction for methodologically studying linguistic performances as part of text-based mobile communication.
PubMed: 33733201
DOI: 10.3389/frai.2020.539920 -
Readmission Rates After Passage of the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program: A Pre-Post Analysis.Annals of Internal Medicine Mar 2017Whether hospitals with the highest risk-standardized readmission rates (RSRRs) subsequently experienced the greatest improvement after passage of the Medicare Hospital...
BACKGROUND
Whether hospitals with the highest risk-standardized readmission rates (RSRRs) subsequently experienced the greatest improvement after passage of the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) is unknown.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether passage of the HRRP was followed by acceleration in improvement in 30-day RSRRs after hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), congestive heart failure (CHF), or pneumonia and whether the lowest-performing hospitals had faster acceleration in improvement after passage of the law than hospitals that were already performing well.
DESIGN
Pre-post analysis stratified by hospital performance groups.
SETTING
U.S. acute care hospitals.
PATIENTS
15 170 008 Medicare patients discharged alive from 2000 to 2013.
INTERVENTION
Passage of the HRRP.
MEASUREMENTS
30-day readmission rates after hospitalization for AMI, CHF, or pneumonia for hospitals in the highest-performance (0% penalty), average-performance (>0% and <0.50% penalty), low-performance (≥0.50% and <0.99% penalty), and lowest-performance (≥0.99% penalty) groups.
RESULTS
Of 2868 hospitals serving 1 109 530 Medicare discharges annually, 30.1% were highest performers, 44.0% were average performers, 16.8% were low performers, and 9.0% were lowest performers. After controlling for prelaw trends, an additional 67.6 (95% CI, 66.6 to 68.4), 74.8 (CI, 74.0 to 75.4), 85.4 (CI, 84.0 to 86.8), and 95.1 (CI, 92.6 to 97.5) readmissions per 10 000 discharges were found to have been averted per year in the highest-, average-, low-, and lowest-performance groups, respectively, after passage of the law.
LIMITATION
Inability to distinguish between improvement caused by the magnitude of the penalty or by different levels of health improvement in different patient populations.
CONCLUSION
After passage of the HRRP, 30-day RSRRs for myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia decreased more rapidly than before the law's passage. Improvement was most marked for hospitals with the lowest prelaw performance.
PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
National Institutes of Health.
Topics: Aged; Female; Heart Failure; Hospitals; Humans; Male; Medicare; Myocardial Infarction; Outcome Assessment, Health Care; Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Patient Readmission; Pneumonia; United States
PubMed: 28024302
DOI: 10.7326/M16-0185 -
International Journal of STEM Education 2020Identity provides a useful conceptual lens for understanding educational inequalities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In this paper, we...
BACKGROUND
Identity provides a useful conceptual lens for understanding educational inequalities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In this paper, we examine how paying attention to physical and digital 'materiality' enriches our understanding of identity work, by going beyond the spoken, written and embodied dimensions of identity performances that currently dominate the area of STEM identity scholarship. We draw on a multimodal ethnographic study with 36 young people aged 11-14 carried out over the course of one year at four UK-based informal STEM learning settings. Data collection included a series of interviews, observations and youth-created portfolios focused on STEM experiences. Illustrative case studies of two young men who took part in a community-based digital arts centre are discussed in detail through the theoretical lenses of Judith Butler's and Karen Barad's .
RESULTS
We argue that physical and digital materiality mattered for the performances of 'tech identity' in that (i) the focus on the material changed our understanding of tech identity performances; (ii) digital spaces supported identity performances alongside, with and beyond physical bodies, and drew attention to new forms of identity recognition; (iii) identity performances across spaces were unpredictable and contained by the limits of material possibilities; and (iv) particular identity performances associated with technology were aligned with dominant enactments of masculinity and might thus be less accessible to some young people.
CONCLUSION
We conclude the paper by suggesting that accounting for materiality in STEM identity research not only guides researchers in going beyond what participants say and are observed doing (and thus engendering richer insights), but also offers more equitable ways of enacting research. Further, we argue that more needs to be done to support the translation of identity resources across spaces, such as between experiences within informal and online spaces, on the one hand, and formal education, on the other.
PubMed: 33088672
DOI: 10.1186/s40594-020-00249-w -
Journal of Sports Science & Medicine Jun 2016Current theories, like Ecological Dynamics, propose that inter-trial movement variability is functional when acquiring or refining movement coordination. Here, we...
Current theories, like Ecological Dynamics, propose that inter-trial movement variability is functional when acquiring or refining movement coordination. Here, we examined how age-based experience levels of gymnasts constrained differences in emergent movement pattern variability during task performance. Specifically, we investigated different roles of movement pattern variability when gymnasts in different age groups performed longswings on a high bar, capturing the range of experience from beginner to advanced status. We also investigated the functionality of the relationships between levels of inter-trial variability and longswing amplitude during performance. One-hundred and thirteen male gymnasts in five age groups were observed performing longswings (with three different experience levels: beginners, intermediates and advanced performers). Performance was evaluated by analysis of key events in coordination of longswing focused on the arm-trunk and trunk-thigh segmental relations. Results revealed that 10 of 18 inter-trial variability measures changed significantly as a function of increasing task experience. Four of ten variability measures conformed to a U-shaped function with age implying exploratory strategies amongst beginners and functional adaptive variability amongst advanced performers. Inter-trial variability of arm-trunk coordination variables (6 of 10) conformed to a \-shaped curve, as values were reduced to complete the longswings. Changes in coordination variability from beginner to intermediate status were largely restrictive, with only one variability measure related to exploration. Data revealed how inter-trial movement variability in gymnastics, relative to performance outcomes, needs careful interpretation, implying different roles as task experience changes. Key pointsInter-trial variability while performing longswings on a high bar was assessed in a large sample (113 participants) divided into five age groups (form beginners to advanced gymnasts). Longswing assessment allowed us to evaluate inter-trial variability in representative performance context.Coordination variability presented two different configurations across experience levels depending on the variable of interest: either a U-shaped or a L- or \-shaped graph.Increased inter-trial variability of the functional phase events offered flexibility to adapt the longswing performance in the advanced gymnasts, while decreasing variability in arm-trunk coordination modes was critical to improve longswing and to achieve the most advanced level.In addition, the relationship between variability measures and the global performance outcome (i.e. the swing amplitude) revealed different functional roles of movement variability (exploratory or restrictive) as a function of changes in experience levels.
PubMed: 27274664
DOI: No ID Found