The distinctive role of executive functions in implicit emotion regulation

Several theoretical models stress the role of executive functions in emotion regulation (ER). However, most of the previous studies on ER employed explicit regulatory strategies that could have engaged executive functions, beyond regulatory processes per se. Recently, there has been renewed interest in implicit forms of ER, believed to be closer to daily-life requirements. While various studies have shown that implicit and explicit ER engage partially overlapping neurocognitive processes, the contribution of different executive functions in implicit ER has not been investigated. In the present study, we presented participants with negatively valenced pictures of varying emotional intensity preceded by short texts describing them as either fictional or real. This manipulation was meant to induce a spontaneous emotional down-regulation. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) and subjective reports of emotion arousal. Executive functions (updating, switching, and inhibition) were also assessed. No difference was found between the fictional and real condition on EDA. A diminished self-reported arousal was observed, however, when pictures were described as fictional for high- and mild-intensity material, but not for neutral material. The amount of down-regulation in the fictional condition was found to be predicted by interindividual variability in updating performances, but not by the other measures of executive functions, suggesting its implication even in implicit forms of ER. The relationship between down-regulation and updating was significant only for high-intensity material. We discuss the role of updating in relation to the consciousness of one's emotional state.

Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic

One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study (n = 310) tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant media fictions, including horror and pandemic films, was associated with greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic. Since morbid curiosity has previously been associated with horror media use during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also tested whether trait morbid curiosity was associated with pandemic preparedness and psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that fans of horror films exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic and that fans of “prepper” genres (alien-invasion, apocalyptic, and zombie films) exhibited both greater resilience and preparedness. We also found that trait morbid curiosity was associated with positive resilience and interest in pandemic films during the pandemic. Taken together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.

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Fans of horror films exhibit less psychological distress during COVID-19.

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Fans of “prepper” films reported being more prepared for the pandemic.

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Morbidly curious people exhibit greater positive resilience during COVID-19.

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Morbidly curious people are more interested in pandemic films during the pandemic.

The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance

For over forty years, philosophers have struggled with the "paradox of fiction", which is the issue of how we can get emotionally involved with fictional characters and events. The few neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have evidenced that midline cortical structures and lateral fronto-parietal regions are more engaged for real and fictional entities, respectively. Interestingly, the former network is engaged in autobiographical memory retrieval and self-reference, processes that are known to boost emotional reactivity, while the latter underpins emotion regulation. Thus, a possible modulation of the emotional response according to the nature (real or fictional) of the stimulus is conceivable. To test this hypothesis, we presented short emotional (negative and positive) and neutral video as fictional or real. For negative material, we found that subjective emotional experience, but not physiological arousal measured by electrodermal activity, was reduced in the fictional condition. Moreover, the amount of personal memories linked to the scenes counteracted this effect boosting the subjective emotional response. On the contrary, personal memories elicited by the scenes, but not fiction, modulate the emotional response for positive material. These results suggest that when a stimulus triggers a personal memory, the emotional response is less prone to be modulated by contextual factors, and suggest that personal engagement could be responsible for emotional reaction toward fiction. We discuss these results in the emotion regulation framework and underline their implications in informing theoretical accounts of emotion in the neuroscientific domain and the philosophical debate on the paradox of emotional response to fiction.

Pretending with realistic and fantastical stories facilitates executive function in 3-year-old children

Fictional stories can affect many aspects of children's behavior and cognition, yet little is known about how they might help or hinder children's executive function skills. The current study investigated the role of story content (fantasy or reality) and mode of engagement with the story (pretense or a non-pretense control) on children's inhibitory control, an important component of early executive function. A total of 60 3-year-olds were randomly assigned to hear a fantastical or realistic story and were encouraged to engage in either pretense or a non-pretense activity related to the story. They then completed the Less Is More task of inhibitory control. Story content had no impact on children's inhibitory control; children performed equally well after hearing a fantastical or realistic story. However, children who engaged in story-related pretend play showed greater inhibitory control than those who engaged in a non-pretense activity. We found no interaction between story content and play engagement type. These results held when controlling for baseline inhibitory control, receptive vocabulary, age, gender, affect, and propensity toward pretense. Therefore, mode of play engagement with a story was more important in promoting children's inhibitory control skills than the degree of realism in the story.

Impact of a fictional reading intervention on empathy development in student pharmacists

OBJECTIVE

Determine the impact of a short longitudinal literary fiction intervention on empathy development in student pharmacists as measured by the Jefferson Scale of Empathy - Health Profession Students (JSE-HPS) version.

METHODS

Twenty-one student pharmacists were randomized to an intervention consisting of reading short excerpts of literary fiction over eight weeks (n=11) or a control group not participating in the intervention (n=10). Both groups completed the JSE-HPS at baseline and completion of the literary intervention. Categorical data were compared using a chi-square or Fisher's exact test, and continuous data were compared using paired or independent t-tests for within and across group comparisons respectively.

RESULTS

JSE-HPS scores increased in the intervention group (112.1±10.7 to 116.1±7.4; p=0.201) while they decreased in the control group (118.7±12.6 to 113.0±15.9; p=0.188). Changes across groups were not statistically significant (p=0.061).

CONCLUSIONS

Students randomized to an eight-week literature intervention demonstrated a non-statistically significant increase in empathy as measured by the JSE-HPS questionnaire. Similar increases were not observed in students randomized to a control group. As a result, this intervention may represent a novel way to foster empathy in student pharmacists using an intervention requiring few resources. Further research is needed with larger sample sizes, ideally across multiple institutions, in order to validate the effectiveness of this intervention.

Systematic review and meta-analyses of suicidal outcomes following fictional portrayals of suicide and suicide attempt in entertainment media

BACKGROUND

Guidelines to encourage responsible reporting of suicide in news media are a key component of suicide prevention strategies. Recent guidelines have been developed on portrayal of suicide in entertainment media although the relationship between these portrayals and subsequent suicidal behaviour has received considerably less attention in research.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the association between portrayals of suicide and suicide attempt in entertainment media and suicidal behaviour in the population. We searched PubMed, Scopus, Embase, PsycInfo, Web of Science and Google Scholar until April 20, 2021. We included studies adopting interrupted time series or single/multiple arm pre-post designs. Separate analyses were undertaken for studies of suicide and suicide attempts. We synthesized studies at moderate risk of bias and included studies at serious risk in a sensitivity analysis. Using a random-effects meta-analysis, we synthesized studies at moderate risk of bias and included studies at serious risk in a sensitivity analysis. Study registration: PROSPERO (CRD42020221333).

FINDINGS

Twelve studies met our inclusion criteria. Six studies were about suicide. Two of these were at moderate risk of bias and both examined the effects of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. The pooled rate ratio (RR) for these studies was 1·18 (95% CI 1·09 to 1·27, p<0·001). Heterogeneity was low (I² = 29%). Six studies focused on suicide attempts, and two of them were at moderate risk of bias. The pooled RR for these two studies was 1·33 (95% CI 0·84 to 2·09, p = 0·22). Heterogeneity was high (I² = 92%). Enhanced funnel plots indicated likely publication bias for studies of suicide and possible bias for studies of attempted suicide.

INTERPRETATION

Portrayals of suicide in entertainment media may increase suicides and attempted suicide in the population. More studies that limit the potential sources of bias are needed to fully understand the circumstances under which fictional portrayals may influence suicidal behaviour.

FUNDING

None.

Exploring the Relationship Between Fiction Reading and Emotion Recognition

Fiction reading experience affects emotion recognition abilities, yet the causal link remains underspecified. Current theory suggests fiction reading promotes the simulation of fictional minds, which supports emotion recognition skills. We examine the extent to which contextualized statistical experience with emotion category labels in language is associated with emotion recognition. Using corpus analyses, we demonstrate fiction texts reliably use emotion category labels in an emotive sense (e.g., cry of relief), whereas other genres often use alternative senses (e.g., hurricane relief fund). Furthermore, fiction texts were shown to be a particularly reliable source of information about complex emotions. The extent to which these patterns affect human emotion concepts was analyzed in two behavioral experiments. In experiment 1 (n = 134), experience with fiction text predicted recognition of emotions employed in an emotive sense in fiction texts. In experiment 2 (n = 387), fiction reading experience predicted emotion recognition abilities, overall. These results suggest that long-term language experience, and fiction reading, in particular, supports emotion concepts through exposure to these emotions in context.

The Magic School Bus dilemma: How fantasy affects children's learning from stories

Although children's books often include fantasy, research suggests that children do not learn as well from fantastical stories as from realistic ones. The current studies investigated whether the type of fantasy matters, in effect testing two possible mechanisms for fantasy's interference. Across two studies, 110 5-year-olds were read different types of fantastical stories containing a problem and then were asked to solve an analogous problem in a real lab setting. Children who were read a minimally fantastical version of the story, in which the story occurred on another planet "that looked just like Earth," were no more likely to transfer the solution than children who heard a story that was slightly more fantastical in that the story occurred on another planet and that planet looked different from Earth (e.g., orange grass, a green sky). In contrast, significantly higher rates of learning were observed when the story contained those elements and two physically impossible events (e.g., walking through walls). Furthermore, this improvement was obtained only when the impossible events preceded, and not when they followed, the educational content. Although fantasy may sometimes detract from learning (as other research has shown), these new studies suggest that minimal fantasy does not and that particular types of fantasy may even increase learning. We propose that the mechanism for this may be that a small dose of impossible events induces deeper processing of the subsequent events in the story.

Learning misinformation from fictional sources: understanding the contributions of transportation and item-specific processing

People often pick up incorrect information about the world from movies, novels and other fictional sources. The question asked here is whether such sources are a particularly potent source of misinformation. On the one hand, story-reading involves transportation into a fictional world, with a possible reduction in access to one's prior knowledge (likely reducing the chances that the reader will notice errors). On the other hand, stories encourage relational processing as readers create mental models, decreasing the likelihood that they will encode and remember more peripheral details like erroneous facts. To test these ideas, we examined suggestibility after readers were exposed to misleading references embedded in stories and lists that were matched on a number of dimensions. In two experiments, suggestibility was greater following exposure to misinformation in a list of sentences rather than a coherent story, even though the story was rated as more engaging than the list. Furthermore, processing the story with an item-specific processing task (inserting missing letters) increased later suggestibility, whereas this task had no impact on suggestibility when misinformation was presented within a list. The type of processing used when reading a text affects suggestibility more than engagement with the text.

Testing the validity of a self-report scale, author recognition test, and book counting as measures of lifetime exposure to print fiction

We report a study testing the validity of the three most commonly used indicators of lifetime exposure to print fiction, namely a self-report scale, an author recognition test (ART), and book counting, in a sample of older adults (N=306; Mage = 59.29 years, SDage = 7.01). Convergent validity of the self-report scale and book counting was assessed through correlations with the fiction sub-score of the ART; divergent validity of these two indicators was examined via correlations with the non-fiction sub-score of that ART. We also assessed criterion-related validity by testing the degree to which each of the three indicators predicted participants' performance in a vocabulary test. The self-report scale and book counting were significantly more positively associated with the ART fiction sub-score than the ART non-fiction sub-score. Regression analyses, controlling for gender and non-fiction exposure, revealed that the ART fiction sub-score had the highest explanatory power among all indicators under investigation for predicting vocabulary test performance. The present results suggest that only ARTs may have satisfactory levels of both construct and criterion-related validity. Recommendations for the assessment of fiction exposure and future directions are discussed.

Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy

The ability to modulate our emotional experience, depending on our current goal and context, is of critical importance for adaptive behavior. This ability encompasses various emotion regulation strategies, such as fictional reappraisal, at stake whenever one engages in fictional works (e.g., movies, books, video games, virtual environments). Neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have reported the involvement of brain structures related to self-relevance and emotion regulation, suggesting a threefold interaction between the appraisal of reality, aspects of the Self, and emotions. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of implicit fictional reappraisal on different components of emotion, as well as on the modulatory role of autobiographical and conceptual self-relevance. While recording electrodermal, cardiac, and brain activity (EEG), we presented negative and neutral pictures to 33 participants, describing them as either real or fictional. After each stimulus, the participants reported their subjective emotional experience, self-relevance of the stimuli, as well as their agreement with their description. Using the Bayesian mixed-modeling framework, we showed that stimuli presented as fictional, compared with real, were subjectively appraised as less intense and less negative, and elicited lower skin conductance response, stronger heart-rate deceleration, and lower late positive potential amplitudes. Finally, these phenomenal and physiological changes did, to a moderate extent, rely on variations of specific aspects of self-relevance. Implications for the neuroscientific study of implicit emotion regulation are discussed.

Facets of morbid jealousy: With an anecdote from a historical Tamil romance

Morbid jealousy is a symptom which occurs in many psychiatric conditions. The complex emotional aspects of jealousy have been discussed by earlier authors. The clinical, cultural, social, and forensic aspects, are touched upon. Morbid jealousy is a favourite topic among novelists and dramatists. "Othello" is a classic example. This topic is covered in one of the famous historical romances of the Tamil author, Kalki.

Children's generic interpretation of pretense

We report two experiments investigating how 3- to 5-year-olds learn general knowledge from pretend play-how they learn about kinds of things (e.g., information about dogs) from information about particular individuals in pretend play (a certain dog in a pretend scenario). Children watched pretend-play enactments in which animals showed certain behaviors or heard utterances conveying the same information. When children were subsequently asked about who shows the behavior, children who watched pretend play were more likely to give generic responses than were children who heard the utterances. These findings show that children generalize information from pretend play to kinds even without being prompted to think about kinds, that pretend play can be informative about familiar kinds, and also that pretend play is a more potent source for general knowledge than are utterances about individuals.

Ordinary tales from endoscopic odysseys: fiction, ethics, and the gastroenterological journey

Fiction (i.e. novels, short stories, and movies) provides an opportunity for imaginative moral reflection and can serve as a basis for moral argument. Narratives play a role in moral reasoning because they are exemplars as well as tests. Those who care for sick people, should be interested in patient's and literary stories. Exploring the representation of gastroenterological ailments in fiction gives insight in the experience of undergoing colonoscopy, farting, pain, the borders of intimacy, hygiene and the lack of it, taboos and the doctor-patient-relationship. Included authors are, among others: Michel Faber, Alan Bennett, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Roche and James Joyce. Several movies are discussed as well. Though in general gastroenterological problems don't seem often at foreground in fiction, in some cases they are represented in a more symbolic way, and touch upon some fundamental aspects of the human condition.

The effect of character similarity on children's learning from fictional stories: The roles of race and gender

Factors that make stories more or less similar to children's lives may influence learning. One such factor, the similarity of characters in a story to its readers, may influence learning because of children's social preference for similar others, because of stronger identification with similar characters, or because some types of similarity may indicate to children whether the story is relevant to their lives. The current studies examined the effects of two types of character similarity (race and gender) on 6- to 8-year-olds' learning from stories to begin to disambiguate these possibilities. In Study 1, White children demonstrated greater learning on implicit measures (i.e., free recall) from a story with a White character versus a Black character. Although children said that they were more similar to and identified more strongly with a White character than a Black character, these factors did not predict learning. In Study 2, character gender did not influence learning or identification. Children showed preferences for own-race and own-gender playmates, but these preferences did not predict learning. These findings suggest that White children's greater learning from the White character was not due to social preference for similar others or to stronger identification with the White character. One explanation for the divergent findings for race and gender is that, because of the differing roles of race and gender within U.S. society, children may use race but not gender as a cue as to whether the information provided in a story is relevant for them.

COVID and Camus: Reflections on The Plague, collective experience, and qualitative inquiry during a pandemic

As a social worker and qualitative researcher, I read Albert Camus's The Plague as I lay recovering from COVID-19. The existential novella documents the experience of the citizens of Oran, Algeria during a fictional epidemic, and The Narrator's documentation is explicitly based on qualitative "data" from participant observation, key informant accounts, and document analysis. Camus's text forces the reader to reflect on what it means to qualitatively study an issue or an event when the researcher is also affected by it. Just as readers of The Plague must ponder the objectives and interpretation of The Narrator who is "closely involved in all that he proposed to narrate," qualitative researchers must contemplate their own assumptions, aims, and subjectivity, which is both foundational and often overlooked in qualitative inquiry. While this is particularly critical when studying shared or collective experiences, like that of a pandemic, these assumptions and aims should always be made transparent in qualitative research. To this end, I suggest a series of reflective questions for researchers to iteratively grapple with throughout the research process.

Do embodiment and fictionality affect young children's learning?

Preschool-aged children can learn from fictional, pretend, and imaginative activities. However, many studies showing this learning involve children as physically passive while consuming fictional narratives rather than as actively, physically engaged. Physical engagement may add to cognitive processes already at play when watching narratives, making children more likely to retain or understand information. Children's natural pretend involves physical movement, role play, and embodiment. To test learning from embodied pretense, we conducted two studies in which we experimentally manipulated whether children were physically passive while consuming narratives or physically actively engaged with them through embodied pretend play using puppets or costumes. In Study 1, children were shown/engaged in television-based narratives, all of which contained fantastical content. In Study 2, children were shown/engaged in lab-created stories, some of which contained fantastical elements. We measured children's learning and perceptions of realism. In Study 1, neither perception of fictionality nor embodiment immediately affected learning, although older preschoolers learned more than younger preschoolers. In Study 2, neither perception nor presence of fantastical content affected learning, but embodiment did. Children learned more from both embodied conditions compared with the physically passive condition. We also included 2-week follow-up tests of recall and found that although children retained very little, embodiment still affected retention in both studies. Overall, children did not use realism judgments to differentiate learning. These findings show the complexity of different elements involved in children's learning from pretense and the need to understand what elements affect learning from fantastical and embodied pretend play and stories.

Creativity and Fiction: Interpretative Horizons on the Emergence of the New in the Relationship Between Individual and Culture

This article aims to establish, in the light of Semiotic-Cultural Constructivism in Psychology, a contribution to the research of creative processes through a reflection on the emergence of the new in the relationship between self-other-world. It is intended to advance in the classic approaches to creativity, by focusing on the unusual and ambiguous, affective-singularizing and, simultaneously, everyday-cultural face of the perspective of the possible and the new in the course of human action. In this way, the article focuses on fiction as a psychic reality that participates in the intersubjective field inherent to creative dynamics, as well as addresses affectivity in the Boeschian grammar from the place of the ambivalence and the dynamics between myths and fantasms in the forms of meaning construction in the face of disturbing experiences and uncertainty about the future. As an interpretive exercise, this text discusses a comic strip by a pair of elementary school students about a character who studies in a school where nothing was prohibited. The discussion of the data seeks to broaden the reading about the ways of fictionalizing the lived experience, pervasive to the everyday plot of the self, and its relationship with creativity in the future of human action.

Story stimuli for instantiating true and false beliefs about the world

We offer short story (“vignette”) materials that have been developed and tested with the intention of influencing people’s true and false beliefs about the world. First, we present norming data on the baseline rates at which participants from both U.S.-census matched and general U.S. online samples were correctly able to classify a selected set of accurate (e.g., aerobic exercise strengthens your heart and lungs) and inaccurate (e.g., aerobic exercise weakens your heart and lungs) assertions as “True” or “False.” Next, we present data which validate that reading vignettes in which people discuss these accurate and inaccurate assertions influences participants’ subsequent judgments of the validity of the asserted claims. These vignettes are brief, easy-to-read, allow for flexible and accountable online data collection, and reflect realistic accurate and inaccurate claims that people routinely encounter (e.g., preventative health behaviors, use of alternative medicines and therapies, etc.). As intended, vignettes containing inaccurate assertions increased participants’ subsequent judgment errors, while vignettes containing accurate assertions decreased participants’ subsequent judgment errors, both relative to participants’ judgments after not reading related information. In an additional experiment, we used the vignette materials to replicate findings from Salovich et al. (2021), wherein participants reported lower confidence in correct judgments and higher confidence in incorrect judgments after having read inaccurate assertions. Overall, these materials are well suited for investigations on the consequences of exposures to accurate and inaccurate information, address limitations in currently available stimuli, and align with trends in research practice (e.g., online sampling) within psychological science.

Too beautiful to be fake: Attractive faces are less likely to be judged as artificially generated

Technological advances render the distinction between artificial (e.g., computer-generated faces) and real stimuli increasingly difficult, yet the factors driving our beliefs regarding the nature of ambiguous stimuli remain largely unknown. In this study, 150 participants rated 109 pictures of faces on 4 characteristics (attractiveness, beauty, trustworthiness, familiarity). The stimuli were then presented again with the new information that some of them were AI-generated, and participants had to rate each image according to whether they believed them to be real or fake. Despite all images being pictures of real faces from the same database, most participants did indeed rate a large portion of them as 'fake' (often with high confidence), with strong intra- and inter-individual variability. Our results suggest a gender-dependent role of attractiveness on reality judgements, with faces rated as more attractive being classified as more real. We also report links between reality beliefs tendencies and dispositional traits such as narcissism and paranoid ideation.

Finding Time for Fiction

With growing advances in psychiatric care come growing amounts of knowledge to be read by psychiatry trainees. This essay presents one resident's experience putting aside some of the official psychiatric literature during residency in favor of more fiction, and his self-perceived growth because of that. Fiction, in the author's perspective, can make us all better psychiatrists.

Fictional experimental modeling in biology: In vivo representation

It is commonly held that in vivo biological experimental models are concrete and non-fictional. This belief is primarily supported by the fact that in vivo studies involve biological models which are alive, and what is alive cannot be fictional. However, I argue that this is not always the case. The design of an experimental model could still render an in vivo model fictional because fictional elements and processes can be built into these in vivo experimental models. These fictional elements are essential parts of a credentialed fiction because the designs of in vivo experimental models are constrained by imaginability, conceivability, and credit-worthiness. Therefore, despite its fictionality, it is credible for an in vivo experimental model to stand in for the phenomenon of interest.

Buffering effect of fiction on negative emotions: engagement with negatively valenced fiction decreases the intensity of negative emotions

Previous research has investigated how the context of perception affects emotional response. This study investigated how engagement with perceived fictional content vs perceived everyday-life content affects the way people experience negative emotions. Four studies with an experimental design tested how engagement with perceived fictional content vs perceived everyday life content affects the intensity of negative emotional response to negative emotional content, the motivation to decrease negative emotions, and cognitive reappraisal. Participants were presented with negatively valenced images and were asked to imagine either that they were witnessing them, or that a bystander was witnessing them, or that they were viewing a movie including these scenes. After the manipulation, all participants observed a different set of negatively valenced images or a set of negatively valenced videos and reported their emotional response. We found that the intensity of negative emotions and motivation to decrease them was lower among participants in the fiction condition compared to participants in the everyday life condition. Although perspective-taking had a similar effect on negative emotions, fiction condition was more successful in decreasing negative emotions. This might indicate that fiction plays a buffering role in decreasing the negative emotions people experience when facing negative emotional content.

Scientific counterfactuals as make-believe

Counterfactuals abound in science, especially when reasoning about and with models. This often requires entertaining counterfactual conditionals with nomologically or metaphysically impossible antecedents, namely, counternomics or counterpossibles. In this paper I defend the make-believe view of scientific counterfactuals, a naturalised fiction-based account of counterfactuals in science which provides a means to evaluate their meanings independently of the possibility of the states of affairs their antecedents describe, and under which they have non-trivial truth-values. Fiction is here understood as imagination (in contrast with its most typical association with falsity), characterised as a propositional attitude of pretense or 'make-believe' (Walton 1990). The application of this theory to scientific counterfactuals makes their evaluation a game of make-believe: a counterfactual is (fictionally) true iff its antecedent and the rules of the game prescribe the imagining of its consequent (Kimpton-Nye 2020). The result is a practice-based account of counterfactuals and counterfactual reasoning in science which incorporates insights from theoretical and experimental analytic philosophy as well as cognitive science. This way, the make-believe view of scientific counterfactuals shows that the evaluation of scientific counterfactuals is none other than a question of scientific representation in disguise.

On the Lookout for a Crack: Disruptive Becomings in Karoline Georges's Novel Under the Stone

Informed by medical science and biotechnology, Karoline Georges's novel Under the Stone offers a reflection on suffering bodies and imagines responses to an overwhelming sense of fear and passivity that embodied trauma and the world's many crises can create. In line with the editors' reclaiming of the milieu for the medical humanities, I draw on Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophy and Sara Ahmed's notions of stranger and encounter for reading the novel's spatialization of oppressive power dynamics and its imagination of subversive emergence. I also complicate the literary text's discourse on space and body by relying on wonder studies to examine further its alternative forms of careful attunement enacted through the protagonist's affective and disembodied awakening, the latter fueled by his escape from "the incessant movement of automatic components that delineat[e] [his] presence in the world" (Georges 2016, 61). Happening from and because of the Tower's milieu, this escape becomes a mitigating force to physical, affective, and social struggles. I thus contend that Georges's text provides thought-provoking material about the functions and effects of art for addressing the dangers and promises of bioethics, body sovereignty, and life protection.