Memory for Body Movements in Namibian Hunter-Gatherer Children

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. M. Haun

Despite the global universality of physical space, different cultural groups vary substantially as to how they memorize it. Although European participants mostly prefer egocentric strategies (“left, right, front, back”) to memorize spatial relations, others use mostly allocentric strategies (“north, south, east, west”). Prior research has shown that some cultures show a general preference to memorize object locations and even also body movements in relation to the larger environment rather than in relation to their own body. Here, we investigate whether this cultural bias also applies to movements specifically directed at the participants’ own body, emphasizing the role of ego. We show that even participants with generally allocentric biases preferentially memorize self-directed movements using egocentric spatial strategies. These results demonstrate an intricate system of interacting cultural biases and momentary situational characteristics.

Author(s):  
Antonella Lopez ◽  
Alessandro Germani ◽  
Luigi Tinella ◽  
Alessandro Oronzo Caffò ◽  
Albert Postma ◽  
...  

Our spatial mental representations allow us to give refined descriptions of the environment in terms of the relative locations and distances between objects and landmarks. In this study, we investigated the effects of familiarity with the everyday environment, in terms of frequency of exploration and mode of transportation, on categorical and coordinate spatial relations, on young and elderly participants, controlling for socio-demographic factors. Participants were tested with a general anamnesis, a neuropsychological assessment, measures of explorations and the Landmark Positioning on a Map task. The results showed: (a) a modest difference in performance with categorical spatial relations; (b) a larger difference in coordinate spatial relations; (c) a significant moderating effect of age on the relationship between familiarity and spatial relations, with a stronger relation among the elderly than the young. Ceteris paribus, the role of direct experience with exploring their hometown on spatial mental representations appeared to be more important in the elderly than in the young. This advantage appears to make the elderly wiser and likely protects them from the detrimental effects of aging on spatial mental representations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 888-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara J. Blacker ◽  
Akiko Ikkai ◽  
Balaji M. Lakshmanan ◽  
Joshua B. Ewen ◽  
Susan M. Courtney

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-36
Author(s):  
Alberto Consolaro ◽  
Mauricio de Almeida Cardoso

ABSTRACT The teeth become very close to each other when they are crowded, but their structures remain individualized and, in this situation, the role of the epithelial rests of Malassez is fundamental to release the EGF. The concept of tensegrity is fundamental to understand the responses of tissues submitted to forces in body movements, including teeth and their stability in this process. The factors of tooth position stability in the arch - or dental tensegrity - should be considered when one plans and perform an orthodontic treatment. The direct causes of the mandibular anterior crowding are decisive to decide about the correct retainer indication: Should they be applied and indicated throughout life? Should they really be permanently used for lifetime? These aspects of the mandibular anterior crowding and their implication at the orthodontic practice will be discussed here to induct reflections and insights for new researches, as well as advances in knowledge and technology on this subject.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gholam Reza Mirie ◽  
Mohsen Sadeghi

The purpose of the present study was to determine the performance of responsible organizations in urban affairs administration as an important factor in the development of the city of Pars Abad. The statistical population of this research includes inhabitants of Parasabad city and managers and experts of urban affairs in 1396. The method of this study is descriptive-practical study. For data collection, library and field method is used for urban data and questionnaire. These data are analyzed using SPSS software and also used to test the hypothesis of T-test. The results of this study show that the performance of the responsible unit in the affairs of the city has a significant relationship with the management and organization of the physical-space development process, equipping the service space and organizing facilities and facilities in the city of Parsabad. While the responsibility of the responsible authority in affairs of the city is not significantly related to the development of the employment and business environment and the establishment of effective communication channels with citizens and the development of popular participation


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roxie Chuang ◽  
Kimin Eom ◽  
Heejung S. Kim

This study examined the role of religion in xenophobic responses to the threat of Ebola. Religious communities often offer members strong social ties and social support, which may help members cope with psychological and physical threat, including global threats like Ebola. Our analysis of a nationally representative sample in the U.S. (N = 1,000) found that overall, the more vulnerable to Ebola people felt, the more they exhibited xenophobic responses, but this relationship was moderated by importance of religion. Those who perceived religion as more important in their lives exhibited weaker xenophobic reactions than those who perceived religion as less important. Furthermore, social connectedness measured by collectivism explained the moderating role of religion, suggesting that higher collectivism associated with religion served as a psychological buffer. Religious people showed attenuated threat responses because they had a stronger social system that may offer resources for its members to cope with psychological and physical threats. The current research highlights that different cultural groups react to increased threats in divergent ways.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladislava Segen

The current study investigated a systematic bias in spatial memory in which people, following a perspective shift from encoding to recall, indicated the location of an object further to the direction of the shit. In Experiment 1, we documented this bias by asking participants to encode the position of an object in a virtual room and then indicate it from memory following a perspective shift induced by camera translation and rotation. In Experiment 2, we decoupled the influence of camera translations and camera rotations and examined also whether adding more information in the scene would reduce the bias. We also investigated the presence of age-related differences in the precision of object location estimates and the tendency to display the bias related to perspective shift. Overall, our results showed that camera translations led to greater systematic bias than camera rotations. Furthermore, the use of additional spatial information improved the precision with which object locations were estimated and reduced the bias associated with camera translation. Finally, we found that although older adults were as precise as younger participants when estimating object locations, they benefited less from additional spatial information and their responses were more biased in the direction of camera translations. We propose that accurate representation of camera translations requires more demanding mental computations than camera rotations, leading to greater uncertainty about the position of an object in memory. This uncertainty causes people to rely on an egocentric anchor thereby giving rise to the systematic bias in the direction of camera translation.


2016 ◽  
pp. 79-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek

The rules of the reservation. On the book Jewish Poland Revisited by Erica Lehrer The paper offers a review of Erica Lehrer’s Jewish Poland Revisited, a publication presenting outcomes of an anthropological research on Jewish-Polish memory projects in Cracow's former Jewish district of Kazimierz. In a discussion of the book's theses, the author critically analyses Lehrer's postulate of 'ethnography of possibility' and the resultant strategy of approval for contemporary Kazimierz as a 'space of encounter' alongside with its rules of participation, imposed by the Polish proprietors of the district on its visitors.The article focuses on two such rules that condition a visitor’s possibility of participation in shrinking public spaces of Kazimierz. First of these laws is discussed as an imperative of abandoning the immediacy of district's physical space and its histories signified by the surviving built environment. Instead, Lehrer introduces a conceptual division of "social" and "physical" spaces, which leads to silencing of otherwise immediately present evidence of the violent past. The second rule is analyzed as a requirement of accepting the contemporary Polish owners’ role of 'brokers" and "purveyors" of Jewish heritage, consequential with an approval of a doubtful legal and moral title to the appropriated spaces.Through focusing on these rules of participation that determine and perpetuate the conditionality of Jewish presence in the space of Kazimierz, the author argues for a necessity of questioning and re-defining the traditional divisions of disciplines that establish conceptual separations of "social" and "built" spaces, as well as for a necessity of a critical outlook on contemporary Central European understandings of "heritage". Such an inquiry is discussed as conditional for overcoming the largely avoided yet still present "heritages" in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the traditions of violence and exclusion, either social and spatial. Regulamin rezerwatu. O książce Jewish Poland Revisited Eriki LehrerArtykuł stanowi recenzję książki Jewish Poland Revisited Eriki Lehrer, prezentującej wyniki antropologicznych badań na temat żydowsko-polskich projektów pamięci realizowanych w byłej dzielnicy żydowskiej na krakowskim Kazimierzu. Omawiając tezy pracy, autor poddaje krytycznej analizie proponowany przez Lehrer projekt etnografii możliwości i wynikającą z niego strategię akceptacji współczesnego Kazimierza jako przestrzeni spotkania, za którą idzie akceptacja zasad uczestnictwa narzuconych gościom przez polskich zarządców Kazimierza.W artykule rozpatrywane są dwie takie zasady, warunkujące możliwość uczestnictwa gościa w kurczącej się przestrzeni publicznej Kazimierza. Pierwszą z nich autor opisuje jako nakaz porzucenia bezpośrednio dostępnej, fizycznej przestrzeni dzielnicy i niesionych przez nią historii, których znakiem jest ocalała zabudowa. W to miejsce Lehrer wprowadza podział na przestrzeń społeczną i fizyczną, skutkiem czego stłumione zostają ślady brutalnej przeszłości, w przeciwnym razie bezpośrednio obecne. Drugą zasadę autor odtwarza jako wymóg akceptacji roli współczesnych polskich właścicieli jako brokerów i pośredników żydowskiego dziedzictwa, co w konsekwencji pociąga za sobą akceptację ich wątpliwych prawnie i moralnie roszczeń do zawłaszczonej przestrzeni.Skupienie uwagi na regulaminie uczestnictwa, który ustanawia i utrzymuje warunkowy charakter żydowskiej obecności w przestrzeni Kazimierza, prowadzi autora do wniosku o konieczności rewaluacji i redefinicji tradycyjnego rozdziału dyscyplin, który tworzy konceptualny podział na społeczne przestrzenie i architektoniczne obiekty, oraz do krytycznego namysłu nad obowiązującym obecnie w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej rozumieniem pojęcia „dziedzictwo”. Tego rodzaju poszukiwanie uznaje autor za warunek przezwyciężenia ignorowanego zwykle, choć mimo wszystko obecnego w polsko-żydowskich stosunkach „dziedzictwa”: tradycji przemocy i wykluczenia, tak społecznego, jak i przestrzennego. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 816-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny McArthur

Infrastructure systems are critical to support sustainable and equitable urbanisation, and infrastructure is becoming more prominent within urban spatial strategies. However, the fragmented governance and delivery of spatial plans and infrastructure projects create a challenging environment to embed planning goals across the planning, delivery and operation of infrastructure systems. There is significant uncertainty around future needs and the complex ways that infrastructures influence socio-spatial relations and political-economic processes. Additionally, fragmented knowledge of infrastructure across different disciplines undermines the development of robust planning strategies. Comparative analysis of strategic spatial plans from Auckland, Melbourne and Vancouver examines how infrastructures are instrumentalised to support planning goals. Across the three cases, the analysis identified four common infrastructural modalities: rescaling socio-spatial relations through targeted intensification, intra-urban mobility upgrades and containment boundaries; re-localising socio-spatial relations to the suburban scale with ‘complete communities’; protection of ‘gateway’ precincts; and local planning provisions to support housing affordability. By examining infrastructure through a theoretical framework for suburban infrastructures, this analysis revealed how infrastructures exert agency as artefacts shaping socio-spatial relations and through the internalisation of political-economic processes. Each modality mobilised infrastructure to support goals of global competitiveness, economic growth and ‘liveability’. Findings suggest that spatial strategies should take a user-focused approach to infrastructure to meet the needs of diverse urban populations, and engage directly with the modes of infrastructure project delivery to embed planning goals across design, delivery and operations stages. Stronger institutional mandates to control land-use and provide affordable housing would improve outcomes in these city-regions.


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