Search results for "Behavioral sciences"
showing 10 items of 139 documents
Evidence for unintentional emotional contagion beyond dyads.
2013
International audience; Little is known about the spread of emotions beyond dyads. Yet, it is of importance for explaining the emergence of crowd behaviors. Here, we experimentally addressed whether emotional homogeneity within a crowd might result from a cascade of local emotional transmissions where the perception of another's emotional expression produces, in the observer's face and body, sufficient information to allow for the transmission of the emotion to a third party. We reproduced a minimal element of a crowd situation and recorded the facial electromyographic activity and the skin conductance response of an individual C observing the face of an individual B watching an individual …
Subjective impressions do not mirror online reading effort: concurrent EEG-eyetracking evidence from the reading of books and digital media
2013
In the rapidly changing circumstances of our increasingly digital world, reading is also becoming an increasingly digital experience: electronic books (e-books) are now outselling print books in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, many readers still view e-books as less readable than print books. The present study thus used combined EEG and eyetracking measures in order to test whether reading from digital media requires higher cognitive effort than reading conventional books. Young and elderly adults read short texts on three different reading devices: a paper page, an e-reader and a tablet computer and answered comprehension questions about them while their eye movemen…
Statistical and biological gene-lifestyle interactions of MC4R and FTO with diet and physical activity on obesity: new effects on alcohol consumption
2012
Background: Fat mass and obesity (FTO) and melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) and are relevant genes associated with obesity. This could be through food intake, but results are contradictory. Modulation by diet or other lifestyle factors is also not well understood. Objective: To investigate whether MC4R and FTO associations with body-weight are modulated by diet and physical activity (PA), and to study their association with alcohol and food intake. Methods: Adherence to Mediterranean diet (AdMedDiet) and physical activity (PA) were assessed by validated questionnaires in 7,052 high cardiovascular risk subjects. MC4R rs17782313 and FTO rs9939609 were determined. Independent and joint associati…
Auditory Short-Term Memory Activation during Score Reading
2013
Performing music on the basis of reading a score requires reading ahead of what is being played in order to anticipate the necessary actions to produce the notes. Score reading thus not only involves the decoding of a visual score and the comparison to the auditory feedback, but also short-term storage of the musical information due to the delay of the auditory feedback during reading ahead. This study investigates the mechanisms of encoding of musical information in short-term memory during such a complicated procedure. There were three parts in this study. First, professional musicians participated in an electroencephalographic (EEG) experiment to study the slow wave potentials during a t…
The Role of Textured Material in Supporting Perceptual-Motor Functions
2013
Simple deformation of the skin surface with textured materials can improve human perceptual-motor performance. The implications of these findings are inexpensive, adaptable and easily integrated clothing, equipment and tools for improving perceptual-motor functionality. However, some clarification is needed because mixed results have been reported in the literature, highlighting positive, absent and/or negative effects of added texture on measures of perceptual-motor performance. Therefore the aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of textured materials for enhancing perceptual-motor functionality. The systematic review uncovered two variables suitable for sub-group analysis within …
The Right Frontopolar Cortex Is Involved in Visual-Spatial Prospective Memory
2013
The involvement of frontopolar cortex in mediating prospective memory processes has been evidenced by various studies, mainly by means of neuroimaging techniques. Recently, one transcranial magnetic stimulation study documented that transient inhibition of left Brodmann Area (BA) 10 impaired verbal prospective memory. This result raises the issue of whether the BA 10 involvement in prospective memory functioning may be modulated by the physical characteristics of the stimuli used. The present study aimed to investigate the role of the frontopolar cortex in visual-spatial PM by means of the application of inhibitory theta-burst stimulation. Twelve volunteers were evaluated after inhibitory t…
Introducing migratory flows in life table construction
2012
The purpose of life tables is to describe the mortality behav iour of particular groups. The construction of general life tables is based on death statis tics and census figures of resident populations under the hypothesis of closed demographic sys tem. Among other assumptions, this hypothesis implicitly assumes that entries (immigrants) a nd exits (emigrants) of the population are usually not significant (being almost of the same magnitu de for each age compensating each other). This paper theoretically extends the classical sol ution to open demographic systems and studies the impact of this hypothesis in constructing a life table. In particular, using the data of residential variations m…
Welfare State Development, Individual Deprivations and Income Inequality: A cross-country analysis in Latin America and the Caribbean
2019
Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development –as a one-dimensional and multidimensional variable-, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivat…
T-pattern analysis for the study of temporal structure of animal and human behavior : a comprehensive review
2014
A basic tenet in the realm of modern behavioral sciences is that behavior consists of patterns in time. For this reason, investigations of behavior deal with sequences that are not easily perceivable by the unaided observer. This problem calls for improved means of detection, data handling and analysis. This review focuses on the analysis of the temporal structure of behavior carried out by means of a multivariate approach known as T-pattern analysis. Using this technique, recurring sequences of behavioral events, usually hard to detect, can be unveiled and carefully described. T-pattern analysis has been successfully applied in the study of various aspects of human or animal behavior such …
Appetizer or main dish? Explaining the use of Facebook news posts as a substitute for other news sources
2019
An increasing number of, especially younger, users use Facebook as their primary source for news about political and societal issues. At the same time, research suggests that Facebook use contributes to societal knowledge gaps. Against this background, we investigate the antecedents of using Facebook as a substitute for other news sources. We argue that exposure to news posts on Facebook increases the feeling of being well-informed, regardless of actual knowledge acquisition. This might lead users, especially those with a low need for cognition (NfC), to use Facebook as a substitute for other news sources. We test these assumptions with an online survey (n=390) of German Internet users. Res…