scholarly journals The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Pesimena ◽  
Christopher J. Wilson ◽  
Marco Bertamini ◽  
Alessandro Soranzo

Attention is a process that alters how cognitive resources are allocated, and it allows individuals to efficiently process information at the attended location. The presence of visual or auditory cues in the environment can direct the focus of attention toward certain stimuli even if the cued stimuli are not the individual’s primary target. Samson et al. demonstrated that seeing another person in the scene (i.e., a person-like cue) caused a delay in responding to target stimuli not visible to that person: “alter-centric intrusion.” This phenomenon, they argue, is dependent upon the fact that the cue used resembled a person as opposed to a more generic directional indicator. The characteristics of the cue are the core of the debate of this special issue. Some maintain that the perceptual-directional characteristics of the cue are sufficient to generate the bias while others argue that the cuing is stronger when the cue has social characteristics (relates to what another individual can perceive). The research contained in this issue confirms that human attention is biased by the presence of a directional cue. We discuss and compare the different studies. The pattern that emerges seems to suggest that the social relevance of the cue is necessary in some contexts but not in others, depending on the cognitive demand of the experimental task. One possibility is that the social mechanisms are involved in perspective taking when the task is cognitively demanding, while they may not play a role in automatic attention allocation.

Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (8) ◽  
pp. 821-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Bertamini ◽  
Alessandro Soranzo

Human observers make errors when predicting what is visible in a mirror. This is true for perception with real mirrors as well as for reasoning about mirrors shown in diagrams. We created an illustration of a room, a top-down view, with a mirror on a wall and objects (nails) on the opposite wall. The task was to select which nails were visible in the mirror from a given position (viewpoint). To study the importance of the social nature of the viewpoint, we divided the sample ( N = 108) in two groups. One group ( n = 54) were tested with a scene in which there was the image of a person. The other group ( n = 54) were tested with the same scene but with a camera replacing the person. Participants were instructed to think about what would be captured by a camera on a tripod. This manipulation tests the effect of social perspective-taking in reasoning about mirrors. As predicted, performance on the task shows an overestimation of what can be seen in a mirror and a bias to underestimate the role of the different viewpoints, that is, a tendency to treat the mirror as if it captures information independently of viewpoint. In terms of the comparison between person and camera, there were more errors for the camera, suggesting an advantage for evaluating a human viewpoint as opposed to an artificial viewpoint. We suggest that social mechanisms may be involved in perspective-taking in reasoning rather than in automatic attention allocation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Fast ◽  
Emilia Ljungberg ◽  
Lotta Braunerhielm

Geomedia technologies represent an advanced set of digital media devices, hardwares, and softwares. Previous research indicates that these place contingent technologies are currently gaining significant social relevance, and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and spaces. However, research has yet to empirically examine how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant, as well as the role of these technologies in wider processes of social and spatial (re-)production. This special issue contributes valuable knowledge to existing research in the realm of communication geography, by viewing the current “geomediascape” through the lens of social constructivist perspectives, and by interrogating the reciprocal shaping of technology, the social, and space/place. Scrutinizing the social construction of geomedia technologies in various empirical contexts and in relation to different social groups, the essays deal with important questions of power and control, and ultimately challenge the notion of (geo)mediatization as a neutral process.


Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110136
Author(s):  
Caroline Bem ◽  
Susanna Paasonen

Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.


Author(s):  
S.A. Styazhkina

The article deals with the issues of criminological characteristics of female crime, analyzes the data of official statistics. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the causes and conditions of female crime. The paper substantiates the need to study women's crime, study its causes and conditions. The peculiarities of women's crime are determined by the gender status and the role of women in modern society. In this regard, the article analyzes the social characteristics and psychological characteristics of women in modern Russia. Special attention is paid to the prevention of women's crime. It is proposed to develop a national program for the prevention of women's crime. The program should be comprehensive in nature, and also contain a system of interaction between various bodies and services in the prevention of women's crime, ranging from educational institutions to law enforcement agencies.


Author(s):  
David R. Butler

Geomorphology is the science that studies landforms and landforming processes. Topics of research in geomorphology during the 1990s represent the diversity of the discipline, as practiced by both academics and nonacademic applied geographers in government and private positions. Discussions on the role and importance of scientific theory and social relevance in geomorphology have become increasingly common, although agreement has not been forthcoming. Issues of scale, both spatial and temporal, appear at the forefront of many current papers in the discipline, but little consensus has been reached as to what constitutes the appropriate scale for studies in geomorphology. The use of a broad diversity of research tools also characterizes American geomorphology, including fieldwork, computer and/or laboratory modeling, surface exposure dating, historical archival work, remote sensing, global positioning systems, and geographic information systems. Problems arise, however, when attempting to integrate the results of fine-scale fieldwork with coarser-scaled simulation models. The 1990s saw a renewed debate in the role of scientific theory in geomorphology. Prominent in that debate were issues of temporal and spatial scale. Significant discussions, culminating in the 2000 Binghamton Symposium on the integration of computer modeling and fieldwork in geomorphology, were also engendered by perceived clashes between the roles of fieldwork and the “new technology” in geomorphology. The 1990s have seen continuing interest in defining the role of geomorphology as a science. Most geomorphologists have accepted applied geomorphology (in the sense of Sherman 1989) as a logical extension of the environmental linkages of the science. The social relevancy of geomorphological research can be established without sacrificing the intellectual core of the discipline (Sherman 1994). However, questions continue as to what actually constitutes “the scientific nature of geomorphology”. Rhoads and Thorn (1993) raised the question of the role of theory in geomorphology in an essay that ultimately led to the 1996 Binghamton Symposium on the scientific nature of the discipline (Rhoads and Thorn 1996). Their goals in hosting the symposium were to “initiate a broad examination of contemporary perspectives on the scientific nature of geomorphology. This initial exploration of methodological and philosophical diversity within geomorphology is viewed as a necessary first step in the search for common ground among the diverse group of scientists who consider themselves geomorphologists” (ibid. p. x).


Risks ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Barlatier Jerome

In the context of the digitization of delinquent activities, perpetrated via the internet, the question of the most appropriate means of crime prevention and crime repression is once again being raised. Studies performed on police investigations have highlighted the over-determining nature of circumstantial factors in crime as a condition for their elucidation for more than fifty years. The emergence of mass delinquency, such as cybercrime, has thus strongly altered the role of investigation as a useful mode of knowledge production. This obsolescence has appeared gradually and can be summarized in four stages, which generates a suspicion about the social relevance of the investigation. It seems that the holistic approach of criminal intelligence is more adapted to the fight against new forms of crime. The investigation becomes a precision instrument assigned to functions that become more specific. This article considers this paradigm shift by the approaches to knowledge management of crime control. Cybercrime is then emblematic of this shift. This study is based on the criminological review and the delinquency analysis led by the central criminal intelligence service of the national gendarmerie. Its premise may likely guide the strategy of French law enforcement agencies.


1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Clément

This article deals with works in sport sociology based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and field. The work of Defrance introduced this theory in social history. Subsequently, Pociello and his team demonstrated the relations existing between the space of sports and that of social positions as well as the role of symbolic struggles involving various groups of sports participants in the dynamics of the sports system. The power of symbolism associated with sporting practices is closely bound to the social relevance of the physical dimension in sports. Also discussed is the equivalency between struggles for the definition of the legitimate body and social political struggles. The theoretical and methodological coherence of the works discussed here is sufficient to label them a “school” within sociology of sport.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.


Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Andrés Caballero-Calvo ◽  
José Luis Serrano-Montes

This study is the first analysis of the influence of the design of the logos of the National and Natural Parks of Spain on social attitudes toward these protected areas (PAs). The effect of certain elements in the logo of a PA on its attractiveness and on support for its conservation was explored through a questionnaire survey of groups of university students. The respondents were asked to choose between different park logos, using three main criteria: tourist interest, conservation priority, and willingness to pay for conservation. The results showed a higher preference for PAs whose logos include animals and a lower preference for those with heritage elements. No significant differences were found in terms of types of university programs. The results suggest that greater attention should be paid to the role of iconographic elements in considerations of the protection and management of landscapes. This study adds to our understanding of the social mechanisms that influence the interest of the public in Natural and National Parks. These results can be used to increase the involvement of the general population in conservation goals, contributing to the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of PAs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz D'Ambrosio ◽  
Marilyn Frankenstein ◽  
Rochelle Gutiérrez ◽  
Signe Kastberg ◽  
Danny Bernard Martin ◽  
...  

This is a dialogue extracted from a conversation among some members of the Equity Special Issue Editorial Panel (Beatriz D'Ambrosio; Marilyn Frankenstein; Rochelle Gutiérrez, Special Issue editor; Signe Kastberg; Danny Martin; Judit Moschkovich; Edd Taylor; and David Barnes) about racism in mathematics education. It raises issues about the use of terms such as race and racism; understanding fields of research outside of mathematics education; the kinds of racialization processes that occur for students, teachers, and researchers; the social context of students; the achievement gap; and the role of mathematics education in the production of race.


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