Words matter when inferring emotions: a conceptual replication and extension

It is long known that facial configurations play a critical role when inferring mental and emotional states from others. Nevertheless, there is still a scientific debate on how we infer emotions from facial configurations. The theory of constructed emotion (TCE) suggests that we may infer different emotions from the same facial configuration, depending on the context (e.g. provided by visual and lexical cues) in which they are perceived. For instance, a recent study found that participants were more accurate in inferring mental and emotional states across three different datasets (i.e. RMET, static and dynamic emojis) when words were provided (i.e. forced-choice task), compared to when they were not (i.e. free-labelling task), suggesting that words serve as contexts that modulate the inference from facial configurations. The goal of the current within-subject study was to replicate and extend these findings by adding a fourth dataset (KDEF-dyn), consisting of morphed human faces (to increase the ecological validity). Replicating previous findings, we observed that words increased accuracy across the three (previously used) datasets, an effect that was also observed for the facial morphed stimuli. Our findings are in line with the TCE, providing support for the importance of contextual verbal cues in emotion perception.

Self-made material in physical education: Teacher perceptions of the use of an emerging pedagogical model before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic changes in education, which had to adapt to changing scenarios (online, face-to-face, hybrid teaching). Within physical education (PE), strategies such as 'do not use or share equipment' were proposed to avoid infections. These strategies fit with an emerging pedagogical model called the Self-made Material Model (SMM), which involves students creating their own PE equipment. The objectives of the present study were: (a) to analyse PE teachers' beliefs about the use of self-made material in their classes, (b) to evaluate teachers' perceptions of the impact of the use of self-made material in PE lessons during the pandemic and (c) to examine gender/age differences. A quantitative, snowball research design was followed. The Self-made Material Questionnaire ( Méndez-Giménez and Fernández-Río, 2011) comprising two scales (41 items) was adapted: Teachers' beliefs about the use of self-made material scale and Teachers' perceptions of the impact of self-made material usage during the pandemic scale. In total, 1093 in-service teachers (443 women, 40.5%; M = 41.39, SD = 9.54) from 13 Ibero-American countries participated. Descriptive statistics were calculated, Student's T test was conducted for comparisons by gender and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run for comparisons by age ranges. Overall, the scores were high, emphasising the potential to promote recycling and students' creativity and respect for the material. Women scored higher in items such as promoting interdisciplinarity, equality, attention to disability and education in values. In total, 833 (76.21%) teachers used self-made material during the pandemic and reported high levels of satisfaction, expectations of use, usefulness and profitability. No gender differences were found. In the COVID-19 era, the SMM is playing a relevant role as a meaningful framework and a helpful teaching methodology in different educational scenarios.

Integrating Computational Thinking and Empowering Metacognitive Awareness in Stem Education

Education digitization highly enthuses learners for deeper learning and developing thought processes in formulating problems and their solutions effectively in their real-life circumstances. Implementing computational thinking skills through programming in Malaysian primary and secondary school STEM curriculum create huge challenges, especially among STEM educators. This study highlights the integration of four major theories in developing the Metacognitive Empowerment by Computational Thinking (ME-CoT) learning module by cultivating computational thinking through programming skills to promote metacognitive awareness in Biology students. Pilot research was conducted to investigate the reliability of the ME-CoT learning module. Since the study sample was less than 30 students then, the consistency of the measurements, Pearson's r was calculated to identify stability reliability. Findings revealed that the ME-CoT learning module has very strong stability reliability with a value of r = 0.974 and provides advantages such as assisting students to understand the content of the lesson more actively and in a fun way.

Unsupervised classification reveals consistency and degeneracy in neural network patterns of emotion

In the present study, we used an unsupervised classification algorithm to reveal both consistency and degeneracy in neural network connectivity during anger and anxiety. Degeneracy refers to the ability of different biological pathways to produce the same outcomes. Previous research is suggestive of degeneracy in emotion, but little research has explicitly examined whether degenerate functional connectivity patterns exist for emotion categories such as anger and anxiety. Twenty-four subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to unpleasant music and self-generating experiences of anger and anxiety. A data-driven model building algorithm with unsupervised classification (subgrouping Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation) identified patterns of connectivity among 11 intrinsic networks that were associated with anger vs anxiety. As predicted, degenerate functional connectivity patterns existed within these overarching consistent patterns. Degenerate patterns were not attributable to differences in emotional experience or other individual-level factors. These findings are consistent with the constructionist account that emotions emerge from flexible functional neuronal assemblies and that emotion categories such as anger and anxiety each describe populations of highly variable instances.

Daring to speak its name: Perceptions of suicidal ideation among Australian gay men

Suicidal ideation is approximately three times more prevalent in gay men than heterosexual men with research tending to focus on causation rather than protective factors. This exploratory study examined how gay men perceived suicidal ideation among members of their own community, and whether the support of gay friends was perceived as protective. Twenty-three Australian gay men (aged between 18 and 65) participated in the study, with qualitative data obtained through the method of story completion. Constructionist thematic analysis highlighted ways in which a fictitious gay male protagonist with suicidal thoughts was viewed as reluctant to reveal these thoughts. However, when the character did, he was seen to benefit from the compassionate involvement of his gay friend. Additionally, the gay protagonist was perceived as experiencing stressors that heightened his community's minority status. Practically, the findings indicated that gay friends could play an important role in assisting their peers recover from suicidal ideation.

Defining Food Safety Inspection

Food safety inspections are a key health protection measure applied by governments to prevent foodborne illness, yet they remain the subject of sustained criticism. These criticisms include inconsistency and inadequacy of methods applied to inspection, and ineffectiveness in preventing foodborne illness. Investigating the validity of these criticisms represent important areas for further research. However, a defined construct around the meanings society attributes to food safety inspection must first be established. Through critical examination of available literature, this review identified meanings attributed to food safety inspection and explicates some of the key elements that compose food safety inspection as a social construct. A total of 18 meanings were found to be attributed to food safety inspection. Variation in meanings were found between consumers, food business associates and food safety inspectors. For some, inspection meant a source of assurance, for others a threat to fairness, while most view inspection as a product of resources and inspector training. The meanings were then examined in light of common criticisms directed at food safety inspection, to expound their influence in how food safety inspection is realized, shaped, and rationalized. This review highlights the influence of sociological factors in defining food safety inspection.

Music Communicates Affects, Not Basic Emotions - A Constructionist Account of Attribution of Emotional Meanings to Music

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music's ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener's mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur.

'Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant?' Transcending the accuracy-inaccuracy dualism in prejudice and stereotyping research

Research on prejudice seeks to understand and transform inaccurate beliefs about others. Indeed, historically such research has offered a cautionary tale of the biased nature of human cognition. Recently, however, this view has been challenged by work defending the essential rationality of intergroup perception, a theme captured controversially in Jussim and colleagues' (2009) research on the 'unbearable accuracy of stereotyping'. The present paper argues that in its own terms the 'rationalist turn' in socio-cognitive research on stereotyping presents an important challenge to the prejudice tradition, raising troubling questions about its conceptual and empirical foundations. However, it also argues for the necessity of transcending those terms. By focusing on the correspondence between individual beliefs and the supposedly 'objective' characteristics of others, we neglect the historical and discursive practices through which the social realities that we 'perceive' are actively constructed and institutionalized. We mask their social origins, contested and perspectival nature, relativity, and relationship to wider structures of power. By implication, moving beyond the Allportian perspective that has dominated both the prejudice tradition and the emerging stereotype accuracy paradigm, we may now need to prioritize other kinds of questions. Reversing Allport's famous definition of prejudice, it may now be time to ask: How, and with what consequences, does 'thinking ill of others' become sufficiently warranted? How does such thinking become part of institutionalized relations of power and an accepted way of perceiving, evaluating and treating others? What should social psychologists be doing to challenge this state of affairs?

Collaboration: A critical exploration of the care continuum

The purpose of this research was to explore the concept of collaboration within a specific healthcare context and to include the perspectives of healthcare users, a position largely lacking in previous studies. In applying a critical theoretical approach, the focus was on, as an exemplar, mothers with newborn babies who had spent more than 48 hr in a special care nursery. Semistructured interviews were undertaken with child health nurses, midwives and mothers. The three key theoretical findings on collaboration generated in the study point to layers of meanings around identity, knowledge and institutions of care. Findings from the interview data analysis were further examined through the lens of key policy documents. The research outcomes indicate that the concept of collaboration serves an important function in healthcare in obscuring the complexities and ambiguities that characterise the care continuum. The study concludes the need for a more critical approach to the assumptions that underlie the language of collaboration and the implications for practice in healthcare.

Gay/queer dynamics and the question of sexual history and identity

This article examines how the essentialist/constructionist and gay/queer divides have been structured by a division between closed and open notions, and it then argues that these gay and queer notions also interrelate. It argues that unhistoricist queer theory has recently drawn attention to this closed/open interrelationship by inadvertently raising (a) doubts about the irreducible openness of queer; (b) questions about its fundamentalism; and (c) reservations about its ability to handle the re-emerging issues of consonances between sexual concepts across history and the importance, usages, and allure of sexual identities. I argue that these concerns are well grounded, and that queer theory may thus have reached its expiration date.