The Influence of Brand Specific Stimuli on the Perception of Music. An Experimental Approach

In an increased competitive market, the way music performers build their brand identity becomes of great importance. Starting from a gap in the literature, the present study aims to investigate the correlations between the existence of a visual identity of a singer and the perception of the singer’s song. Thus, the research inquires if the presence of visual brand elements can generate a better attitude on the song, stronger emotional reactions and attachment, and a deeper intentional behavior in terms of listening to the song again and recommending it to others. A 1x2 online survey-based experimental design has been developed. Contrary to expectations, the data reveal neither strong, nor significant relationships between most of the above-mentioned variables. However, being an impactful topic for the music specialists, research directions that can be further investigated have been emphasized.

Neurobehavioral Changes: An under looked aspect of Head Injury

Background: Different types of behavioral changes are seen in head injury patients, and these changes are directly or indirectly related to daily activities. Major alterations of personality after head injury are generally seen in the patients with severe head injury. However, disturbing post-concussional symptoms like headache, dizziness and memory problems generally persists for few months even in the less severely injured ones. Materials and methods: Objective: To analyze the neurobehavioral changes in adult head injured patients. Study design: Prospective analytical study. Sampling technique: Non - probability consecutive sampling. Site of study: National Institute of Neurological and Allied Sciences, Bansbari, Nepal. Inclusion Criteria: All head injured patients above the age of 16 years. Exclusion Criteria: Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale of less than 3 at 6 months follow up. Data Collection and Analysis: All patients above the age of 16 years with head injury who got admitted were enrolled in the study. Parameters like age, gender, mode of injury, GCS at presentation were recorded. Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale along with Neurobehavioral rating was evaluated at 6 months. Then neurobehavioral rating scale was obtained by direct interview. Data analysis was done using SPSS v.20. Results: Total number patients were 76 among which 71% were below 40 years of age and majorities (87%) were males. Neurobehavioral categories like abnormal intentional behavior, lowered emotional state, heightened emotional state, arousal state and language had significant association with GCS at presentation and EGOS at 6 months. Similarly, age had significant association with language, where there was absent to mild language difficulty in patients below 40 years of age. Likewise, language difficulty, lower emotional state and abnormal intentional behavior were significantly associated with gender, as it was mild to severe in 30% of the female population who had sustained head injury. Conclusion: Several neurobehavioral characters seem to be present in the various categories of the head injured patients in different ratios. Language problems seems to be less in the younger patients below the age of 40 years; although, few neurobehavioral parameters seems to affects the females more common compared to male counterparts. Also, family disruption and its extent of severity was significantly related to the severity of head injury.

“There’s No Sense to It”: A Posthumanist Ethnography of Agency in Methamphetamine Recovery

The orthodox construction of agency within addiction recovery discourse is built upon a fault line between two conflicting principles: that people who use drugs in harmful ways cannot control their behavior, but that they can also regain that control through intentional effort. The conceptual confusion inherent in this framework can harm people using drugs by producing inadequate accounts of commonly invoked aspects of recovery such as “triggers,” “self-control,” and “addictive behavior.” This ethnographic study involved qualitative interviews and observations with nine people over 6 months as they engaged in recovery from harmful methamphetamine use, to explore their experiences of agency, and how these experiences could be shaped by the discourse of volition/compulsion. Thematic analysis was conducted using a posthumanist theoretical framework. We found “relapse triggers” to be diffuse aspects of particular environments rather than specific stimuli, able to provoke what would normally be considered conscious, intentional behavior rather than only autonomic or “mindless” processes. Participants also described their identities as internally divided and multiple, with drug related behaviors separated from their true selves. Finally, agency was experienced as emergent and distributed rather than as a particular resource located within individuals. Attending to these complex experiences of agency can help resolve the tension between loss of control and personal responsibility for people who use drugs, by renegotiating the historically imposed categorical distinction between volitional and compelled actions, and the cultural constructions of “addictive” versus “normal” behavior.

The neuroethics of agency: the problem of attributing mental states to people with disorders of consciousness

How can we be certain that another creature is a conscious being? One path is to rely on introspective reports we can grasp in communication or observation of their behavior. Another path is to infer mentality and consciousness by means of markers tied to their intentional behavior, that is, agency. In this paper we will argue that even if agency is a marker of consciousness in several normal instances (paradigmatically, for mature and healthy human beings), it is not a good marker in several pathological instances, such as the blindsight case, the vegetative state, the akinetic mutism and the locked-in syndrome. If we are right, this can be of great utility in neuroethics; for those kinds of disorders of consciousness are not, after all, instances of complete absence of consciousness.

Causal versions of maximum entropy and principle of insufficient reason

The principle of insufficient reason (PIR) assigns equal probabilities to each alternative of a random experiment whenever there is no reason to prefer one over the other. The maximum entropy principle (MaxEnt) generalizes PIR to the case where statistical information like expectations are given. It is known that both principles result in paradoxical probability updates for joint distributions of cause and effect. This is because constraints on the conditional P ( effect ∣ cause ) P\left({\rm{effect}}| {\rm{cause}}) result in changes of P ( cause ) P\left({\rm{cause}}) that assign higher probability to those values of the cause that offer more options for the effect, suggesting “intentional behavior.” Earlier work therefore suggested sequentially maximizing (conditional) entropy according to the causal order, but without further justification apart from plausibility on toy examples. We justify causal modifications of PIR and MaxEnt by separating constraints into restrictions for the cause and restrictions for the mechanism that generates the effect from the cause. We further sketch why causal PIR also entails “Information Geometric Causal Inference.” We briefly discuss problems of generalizing the causal version of MaxEnt to arbitrary causal DAGs.

Translation and Validation of Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II for Pakistani Adults

Personal growth initiative is a person's active and intentional involvement in changing and developing as a person. Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II; Robitschek et al., 2012) provides evidence of multidimensionality of construct of personal growth. Present research was accomplished in three phases with aim to translate and validate PGIS-II in Urdu. Phase 1 addressed the translation of measure through forward-backward translation method. To establish the cross-language validity, translated and the English version was administered on bilingual university students (N = 100). Reliability of both versions was determined by computing test-retest technique with 15 days interval. Phase-2 was aimed to establish the construct validity by carrying out. Exploratory Factor Analysis on adult women (N = 300) with age range of 21 to 52 years. Results showed four factors namely, Planfulness, Readiness for Change, Intentional Behavior, and Using Resources are reflection of personal growth initiative. Phase-3 of the research was aimed to confirm the factorial validity on sample of women (N = 300) with age range from 19 to 50 years. Findings confirmed four factor solutions and suggested that PGIS-II Urdu version can be utilized as a valid and reliable measure for the assessment of personal growth initiative among adults in Pakistan.

Using Destination Image and Place Attachment to Explore Support for Tourism Development: The Case of Tourism Versus Non-tourism Employees in EILAT

Apart from the economic motive, little attention has been given to factors such as destination image and place attachment in explaining how potential differences in intentional behavior (support for tourism, intention to recommend) develop between tourism employees and non-tourism employees in a community. This study, conducted in the remote resort of Eilat, explores whether these resident groups’ representations of and attachment to their place shape their intentional behavior toward tourism, and tests the explanatory ability of the two factors to account for potential differences in groups’ intentional behavior. Findings suggest that the relationships between: (a) place attachment and destination image, (b) place attachment and intention to recommend, and (c) between destination image and intention to recommend, vary across the two groups. The study contributes to tourism theory by empirically validating the role of image and attachment as antecedent of such differentiation. Additional implications to tourism theory and practice are discussed.

THE OPPORTUNISTIC PROBLEM IN LABOUR PROTECTION

The article is devoted to the study of labor protection problems in the context of opportunism, which takes place in the midst of a variety of varieties of social and labor relations. The necessity of the deepening of ideas of the nature of labor opportunism is substantiated. The conclusion of the probability of intentional and accidental nature of opportunistic behavior is established. Herewith in case of accidental opportunistic behavior, that can be conscious and unconscious (in contrast with intentional behavior), as vindicated before, damnification to another entity isn’t end in itself. The approach presented in the work to the interpretation of the essence of opportunism served as the basis for the author’s development of recommendations intended to contribute to a real improvement in the state of preservation of life and health of workers in the course of work.

Critical Theory

Based on the historical developments in the philosophy of science, it can be claimed that the method of social sciences is mainly dominated by the method of the natural sciences. Social sciences, especially, economics have been affected by the method of physics. From a critical viewpoint, this study aims to scrutinize the method of social sciences by taking into account the concept of devaluation of human beings. The study puts forward that mainstream economics devalue human being at the level of its methodology by excluding the real creator of value from the analyses and by disregarding social and historical factors. The study demonstrates that by taking into consideration the neglected cultural, political and historical factors in addition to the economic ones, the critical theory includes human being and his/her values in the analyses, and hence, it unifies scientific knowledge with human behavior, which is the intentional behavior behind all economic decisions.