Mental Imagery and Social Pain in Adolescents—Analysis of Imagery Characteristics and Perspective—A Pilot Study

Background: Mental imagery (MI) may play a key role in the development of various mental disorders in adolescents. Adolescence is known to be a fragile life period, in which acceptance by one’s favored peer group is extremely important, and social rejection is particularly painful. This is the first pilot study investigating MI and its relationship to social pain (SP). Method: A sample of 80 adolescents (14–20 years; 75.3% female) completed a web-based quasi-experimental design about the contents and characteristics of their spontaneous positive and negative MI and associated emotions, and were asked to complete the Social Pain Questionnaire, the Becks Depression Inventory and the Social Phobia Inventory. Results: A higher score of SP was significantly associated with increased fear, sadness, and feelings of guilt, and less control over negative MI. Characteristics of negative MI were more precisely predicted by SP scores than depression- and social anxiety scores. Adolescents with higher SP-scores more often reported negative images including social situations and were more likely to perceive negative images in a combination of field-and observer perspectives than adolescents with lower SP scores. Conclusion: SP-sensitivity seems to be linked to unique characteristics of negative MI, which reveals the strong emotional impact of social exclusion in youths. The results do not allow causal conclusions to be drawn, but raise questions about previous studies comparing each imagery perspective individually.

Technical Solution Discussion for Key Challenges of Operational Convolutional Neural Network-Based Building-Damage Assessment from Satellite Imagery: Perspective from Benchmark xBD Dataset

Earth Observation satellite imaging helps building diagnosis during a disaster. Several models are put forward on the xBD dataset, which can be divided into two levels: the building level and the pixel level. Models from two levels evolve into several versions that will be reviewed in this paper. There are four key challenges hindering researchers from moving forward on this task, and this paper tries to give technical solutions. First, metrics on different levels could not be compared directly. We put forward a fairer metric and give a method to convert between metrics of two levels. Secondly, drone images may be another important source, but drone data may have only a post-disaster image. This paper shows and compares methods of directly detecting and generating. Thirdly, the class imbalance is a typical feature of the xBD dataset and leads to a bad F1 score for minor damage and major damage. This paper provides four specific data resampling strategies, which are Main-Label Over-Sampling (MLOS), Discrimination After Cropping (DAC), Dilation of Area with Minority (DAM) and Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE), as well as cost-sensitive re-weighting schemes. Fourthly, faster prediction meets the need for a real-time situation. This paper recommends three specific methods, feature-map subtraction, parameter sharing, and knowledge distillation. Finally, we developed our AI-driven Damage Diagnose Platform (ADDP). This paper introduces the structure of ADDP and technical details. Customized settings, interface preview, and upload and download satellite images are major services our platform provides.

Mental Imagery, Optimism, and Self-efficacy: The Role of Imagery Perspective and Imagery Modality in Positive Cognition

This study examined whether using different imagery perspectives and modalities plays a role in the link between vividness of imagining positive events and positive cognition such as optimism, self-efficacy and memory for positive mood. We asked participants to complete self-rating scales of positive cognition and to imagine doing various actions in positive situations from the external and internal perspectives of visual modality and when using kinesthetic modality. We found that vividness of imagining actions in positive situations from an external perspective predicts all positive cognitions: optimism and self-efficacy and memory of positive mood. The vividness of imagining actions in positive situations from the internal perspective of visual modality and kinesthetic imagery predicted only self-efficacy and memory of positive mood but not optimism. We discuss the findings in light of existing theories regarding imagery and positive cognition and suggest several possibilities of using imagery perspective for imagery interventions.

Imagery Ability and Imagery Perspective Preference: A Study of Their Relationship and Age- and Gender-Related Changes

This study examined if imagery ability (i.e., vividness and temporal congruence between imagined and executed knee extensions) and imagery perspective preference were affected by ageing and gender. Ninety-four participants, 31 young, 43 intermediate, and 20 older adults completed the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire-2 and a knee extension temporal congruence test to reflect on their imagery ability and an imagery perspective preference test. Male participants had a better imagery ability than the female participants (F 4,85=2.84, p=.029, η2=.118). However, significant age-related changes in imagery ability were not found in the three age groups. Change in imagery perspective preference with a trend towards an external imagery perspective was observed with ageing (F 3,89=3.16, p=.028, η2=.096) but not between male and female. The results suggest that imagery ability may be preserved with ageing. As individuals age, their preference for using an imagery perspective shifts from a more internal to a more external perspective. This understanding is important when designing future imagery research and real-life application or clinical intervention.

ЗАГОЛОВОК ЯК ЕЛЕМЕНТ СИЛЬНОЇ ПОЗИЦІЇ У ОПОВІДАННЯХ С. МОЕМА

The paper deals with functioning of strong position elements, particularly, the title in short stories of the English fiction. The analysis is based on 60 short stories of a famous English writer S. Maugham. Strong position is understood as completeness of a fictional text in the title, epigraph, beginning and the ending, organizing the decoding strategy and facilitating the perception of the main idea of the text. Different approaches to the issue of strong position (as a type of foregrounding or actualization in the decoding stylistics or as a frame element in literature studies) are considered. An attempt is made to classify the titles of the author’s short stories as the title-symbol, the title-thesis, the title-citation, the title-message, the title-narration. A more detailed analysis of the short story «Rain» revealed that the foregrounding elements have a symbolic character, determine the interrelations between the text fragments and provide for a holistic concept of the text. The title-symbol «Rain» becomes the key image of the work. Constant repetition of the key word «rain», its strong position as a title extends the meaning of the word to the symbolic meaning, creates the imagery perspective of the story. The word itself undergoes semantic changes resulting in a new individual artistic meaning which is realized retrospectively. The analysis of peculiarities of strong position elements proved that one of their main functions is foregrounding the most important information. The title has a decisive position in the content structure: it performs nominative, informative, communicative, expressive-appealing, delimiting, symbolic, evaluative functions. Consideration of the elements of strong position and, primarily, the title enhances the decoding of structural integrity and completeness of the text, understanding of its deep level meaning encoded in the title.

To stay or switch: breaking the habit of status quo through imagery perspective

Purpose When consumers imagine themselves in various consumption scenarios, they can do so from the actor or the observer perspective. These different vantage points are known as imagery perspectives. This paper aims to investigate how imagery perspectives can influence consumers’ decisions to stay with the status quo (default option) or to switch to an alternative. Design/methodology/approach A series of four experimental design studies were conducted in both lab and online settings to study consumers’ switching tendency and choice. The empirical testing involved products, brands and services, including cameras (Study 1), vacation hotels (Study 2), toilet paper (Study 3) and food (Study 4). Findings The authors demonstrate that compared with actor imagery that tends to perpetuate the default product and brand choice, observer imagery increases consumers’ tendency to change and switch to new products and brands. Research limitations/implications Due to the methods used in empirical testing, the research results may lack generalizability. Practical implications Marketers spend a considerable amount of resources in an attempt to get consumers to switch products and brands. The results of this paper shed light on how marketers can promote switching behaviors through imagery perspective. Originality/value The research contributes to the streams of research in mental imagery, de-biasing and status quos, which have progressed in isolation from one another to date. This research is one of the first to investigate imagery perspective in the context of choice architecture.