The Role of Relationship Quality for Solitude Experiences during the Pandemic

As time spent at home has significantly increased during the pandemic, reports of household conflict has also risen among people living with others (Usher et al., 2020). One solution to alleviate the potential stress of increased time with others could be carving out time to oneself. The present study investigated how living conditions (e.g., with others vs. alone) are associated with everyday desire for solitude and whether daily solitude experience comes with improved daily emotional well-being in people living with others. Furthermore, it also explored whether relationship quality is associated with solitude experience in a similar manner as living conditions. To do so, we used repeated daily life assessments from a lifespan sample (N = 215; M age = 38.3 years, SD age = 17.5; 78 % female) collected during the early pandemic (April to August 2020). Findings indicate that neither living conditions nor relationship quality were directly associated with daily desire for solitude, but higher relationship well-being was related to low preference for solitude when measured as an individual trait. In addition, relationship quality significantly moderated everyday solitude–affect links: higher relationship quality was related to reduced negative affect during solitude, and conflict was related to increased positive and decreased negative affect on solitude as compared to non-solitude days. The results imply that it is the subjective experience of relationships rather than objective living conditions that shape daily affective quality during solitude.

How Character-Centric Game Icon Design Affects the Perception of Gameplay

Mobile games are developing rapidly as an important part of the national economy. Gameplay is an important attribute, and a game’s icon sometimes determines the user’s initial impression. Whether the user can accurately perceive gameplay and affective quality through the icon is particularly critical. In this article, a two-stage perceptual matching procedure is used to evaluate the perceptual quality of six categories of games whose icons include characters as elements. First, 60 highly visual matching icons were selected as second-stage objects through classification tasks. Second, through the semantic differential method and correlation analysis, highly visual matching icons’ affective matching quality was measured. Finally, a series of icon samples were determined, and element analysis was carried out. Several methods were proposed for improving the perceptual quality of game icons. Studying the perceptual matching relationship can better enhance the interaction between designers, developers, and users.

A voice without a mouth no more: The neurobiology of language, consciousness, and mental health

Most research on the neurobiology of language ignores consciousness and vice versa. Here, language and inner speech are proposed to cause and sustain self-awareness and meta-self-awareness, i.e., extended consciousness. Converging empirical evidence supporting this proposal is reviewed and explanatory mechanisms are described. The latter are embedded in a ‘HOLISTIC’ model of the supporting neurobiology that involves a ‘core’ set of inner speech production regions that initiate conscious ‘overhearing’ of words. These have an affective quality deriving from activation of associated sensory, motor, and emotional representations, involving a largely unconscious dynamic ‘periphery’, distributed throughout the whole brain. This is the basis for inner conversations, involving ‘default mode’ activation and prefrontal and thalamic/brainstem selection of contextually relevant responses. Entrenched patterns of connectivity in these networks form the basis of diminished wellbeing and mental health problems. Overall, this framework constitutes a more parsimonious and complete account of the ‘neural correlates’ of extended consciousness than existing models that consider language peripherally if at all and provides a viable mechanistic account of psychotherapy.

Considerations of Consciousness and Emotive Memory

The role of chemistry is generally overlooked in theories of consciousness; most neuroscientists focus exclusively on electrodynamic signaling. We argue that chemodynamic signaling modes must also be considered. As an aide to continuing this discourse, we clarify key terms, namely: Feelings, Emotions, Code and Neural net. In particular, we distinguish between “memory” as applied to the binary formatted “information” employed by computers, which lack any affective quality, and “emotive memory”, the recall of subjective “cognitive information” experienced by neural nets. Most concepts of consciousness focused on the electrodynamic activation, witness the many popular books and movies, as well as scientific papers based on this premise. However, the discovery of neurotransmitters (NTs) and development of psychoactive drugs indicates that consciousness is also enabled by chemodynamic processes, which particularly impact affective states. A graphic timeline is presented which highlights the historical milestones in the neuroscientific clarification of signaling modes pertinent to consciousness. We opine that a combined chemodynamic and electrodynamic description of emotive memory will clarify the causative processes from which the experiential consciousness of the neural net emerges. Consider that without chemically encoded emotive memory, a conscious creature could not long survive; its consciousness would be moot.

Thinking Outside the Park: Connecting Visitors’ Sound Affect in a Nature-Based Tourism Setting with Perceptions of Their Urban Home and Work Soundscapes

This study examined the potential for Perceived Affective Quality (PAQ; pleasantness, eventfulness, familiarity) soundscape measures developed within urban settings to enrich current soundscape management approaches within protected areas (PAs). Drawing on the premise that people bring experiences from other life contexts into PA settings and PA visitors are increasingly coming from urban areas, research integrated urban visitors’ soundscape perceptions of their home and work acoustic environments with their perceptions of acoustic environments in PAs. Two-phased survey research (n = 333) separated visitors into urban density groups and compared PAQ variables across home, work, and PA contexts. Significant differences resulted, both in ratings of the three acoustic contexts (PA, home, work) for all three PAQ components and between urban density groups. The importance of pleasantness was confirmed across all contexts; however, alone, this dimension lacked sufficient contrast to interpret the complexity of soundscape perceptions, especially considering diverse Healthy Parks, Healthy People (HPHP) visitor experience scenarios and goals. Thus, managers should consider (1) additional PAQ variables that can provide more useful and contrasting information; (2) incorporating methods that integrate PAQ measures across visitors’ different acoustic contexts, and (3) including urban density measures within HPHP research.

Sound Environments in Large Public Buildings for Crowd Transit: A Systematic Review

Sound environments in large public buildings are likely to be different from those of performance spaces, as well as those not specifically designed for acoustic “performance”, but where sounds still play an important role because of the function they can promote (or disrupt). The aim of this study was identifying common strategies and empirical approaches researchers have been implementing for these acoustically complex enclosures and to provide some methodological indications for future studies on the topic. Studies conducted in three building types for crowd transit, such as museums/exhibition spaces, shopping malls, and transportation hubs/stations, which were collecting data about either physical outcomes or individual responses for such sound environments, were selected. The Scopus databases were searched for peer-reviewed journal papers published in English without time limitations. An additional manual search was performed on the reference lists of the retrieved items. The general consideration on inclusion was to meet the requirement that the case belonged to the three building types, and then the specific inclusion criteria were: (1) including at least an objective acoustic measure of the space; or (2) including at least a subjective measure of the space. The search returned 1060 results; after removing duplicates, two authors screened titles and abstracts and selected 117 papers for further analysis. Twenty-six studies were eventually included. Due to the limited number of items and differences in measures across studies, a quantitative meta-analysis could not be performed, and a qualitative approach was adopted instead. The most commonly used objective measures were SPL, and more specifically often considered as LAeq, and T. The intervals across studies were currently of inconsistency, and the selection is recommended to take space scale factor into account. The used subjective measures can be classified into four categories as annoyance, affective quality, room-acoustic quality, and acoustic spatiality. Four basic perceptual assessments concerning dynamic contents are accordingly suggested as “annoying-not annoying”, “crowded-uncrowded”, “long-short (reverberation)”, and “far away-nearby”. The other descriptors can be project-specific. The methodologies involve measurement, questionnaire/interview, listening test, and software simulation. It is necessary for the former two to consider temporal and spatial features of such spaces, and the adoption of the latter two will lead to better understanding of users’ exposure in such spaces, e.g., acoustic sequences and user amount. The outputs of investigations inform that background noise level, e.g., 90 dB in museum/exhibition spaces, and sound reverberation, e.g., 4.0 to 5.0 s in shopping malls and transportation hubs/station, are of fundamental importance to the design of such spaces. Sufficient acoustic comfort can be achieved with integrated design of indoor soundscape.

Personal Meanings Inspired by the Beauty of Paintings

For many generations, works of art have been a source for experiencing beauty. They add to the wealth of our culture because they convey universal themes and values. In this study, we treat paintings as a stimulus for personal story-telling. The purpose was to explore the affective quality of personal meanings present in autobiographical narratives. Our findings show that subjective ratings of the beauty of figurative paintings are linked with the quality and theme of personal experiences recalled in response to viewing them, but not related to the length of the story. ‘Beautiful’ pictures elicit descriptions of desirable experiences associated with passive contemplation and satisfied self-enhancement motive. ‘Non-beautiful’ pictures call to mind difficult experiences linked with frustration. The experts formulated longer self-narratives inspired by paintings rated beautiful in comparison to laypersons, and laypersons formulated longer self-narratives inspired by paintings rated not beautiful in comparison to experts. The results are discussed in connection to the nature of the aesthetic experience and specificity of personal maenings.

The Minor-Mode Sonata

Minor-mode sonatas constitute a special case within classical—and later—sonata practice. In part this is because of the special affective quality historically assigned to the minor mode, along with many of the characteristic moods and colors associated with it. This chapter elaborates the “extra burden” of sonata forms in the minor mode, which often entails its drive—often thwarted—to be converted into the major, a drama that rose to central importance only in the last two or three decades of the eighteenth century, with Haydn playing a large role in it. Supplementing and updating the consideration of minor-mode sonatas in Elements of Sonata Theory, this chapter also incorporates new information gleaned from Riley’s and Graves’s separate studies of eighteenth-century minor-mode practice. Issues covered include the affective range of the minor mode; standardized minor-mode styles and “topics”; characteristic intervallic figures (like the “pathotype” figure); the aspiration and techniques of “escape into the major,” whether locally or permanently; the eighteenth-century convention of the “mediant tutti”; and the evolving concept of “tragic plot/comic plot,” relating to whether the sonata will end in minor or overcome that minor by a modal reversal into the major.