A design of a multi-agent recommendation system using ontologies and rule-based reasoning: pandemic context

Learners attend their courses in remote or hybrid systems find it difficult to follow one size fits all courses. These difficulties have increased with the pandemic, lockdown, and the stress they cause. Hence, the role of adaptive systems to recommend personalized learning resources according to the learner's profile. The purpose of this paper is to design a system for recommending learning objects according learner's condition, including his mental state, his COVID-19 history, as well as his social situation and ability to connect to the e-learning system on a regular basis. In this article, we present an architecture of a recommendation system for personalized learning objects based on ontologies and on rule-based reasoning, and we will also describe the inference rules required for the adaptation of the educational content to the needs of the learners, taking into account the learner’s health and mental state, as well as his social situation. The system designed, and validated using the unified modeling language (UML). It additionally allows teachers to have a holistic view of learners’ progress and situations.

A Two-Person Neuroscience Approach for Social Anxiety: A Paradigm With Interbrain Synchrony and Neurofeedback

Social anxiety disorder has been widely recognised as one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders. Individuals with social anxiety disorder experience difficulties during social interactions that are essential in the regular functioning of daily routines; perpetually motivating research into the aetiology, maintenance and treatment methods. Traditionally, social and clinical neuroscience studies incorporated protocols testing one participant at a time. However, it has been recently suggested that such protocols are unable to directly assess social interaction performance, which can be revealed by testing multiple individuals simultaneously. The principle of two-person neuroscience highlights the interpersonal aspect of social interactions that observes behaviour and brain activity from both (or all) constituents of the interaction, rather than analysing on an individual level or an individual observation of a social situation. Therefore, two-person neuroscience could be a promising direction for assessment and intervention of the social anxiety disorder. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm which integrates two-person neuroscience in a neurofeedback protocol. Neurofeedback and interbrain synchrony, a branch of two-person neuroscience, are discussed in their own capacities for their relationship with social anxiety disorder and relevance to the paradigm. The newly proposed paradigm sets out to assess the social interaction performance using interbrain synchrony between interacting individuals, and to employ a multi-user neurofeedback protocol for intervention of the social anxiety.

Social Dimensions of Roma Marginalization

The paper aims to analyze aspects of Roma marginalization, by identifying and assessing the dimensions of social needs within a compact Roma community, located in a marginalized urban area. The effects of the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic increase inequalities regarding the economic and social situation. The major challenge is to reduce the risk of poverty, especially among families with children, people with disabilities and chronic diseases, but also the social exclusion of people at social risk, based on accurate measurements of social phenomena. The community profile indicates the social status of the inhabitants, which provides a picture of the degree of marginalization and social exclusion of Roma. Thus, the study was conducted by constructing a questionnaire as a research tool, which summarizes the results of the activity of information collection and processing, both based on statistical methods and percentage analysis. The problems faced by marginalized Roma communities are low participation in education, early school leaving, difficult transition to tertiary education, lack of adult skills, low skills among vulnerable people in the labor market, low access to services, poor health and housing. Measures for early detection of situations of social risk and intervention lead to positive effects in preventing marginalization and social exclusion.

The Six Components of Social Interactions: Actor, Partner, Relation, Activities, Context, and Evaluation

Social interactions are essential aspects of social relationships. Despite their centrality, there is a lack of a standardized approach to systematize social interactions. The present research developed (Study 1) and tested (Study 2) a taxonomy of social interactions. In Study 1 (5,676 descriptions of social interactions from N = 708 participants, age range 18–83 years), we combined a bottom-up approach based on the grounded theory with a top-down approach integrating existing empirical and theoretical literature to develop the taxonomy. The resulting taxonomy (APRACE) comprises the components Actor, Partner, Relation, Activities, Context, and Evaluation, each specified by features on three levels of abstraction. A social situation can be described by a combination of the components and their features on the respective abstraction level. Study 2 tested the APRACE using another dataset (N = 303, age range 18–88 years) with 1,899 descriptions of social interactions. The index scores of the six components, the frequencies of the features on the most abstract level, and their correlations were largely consistent across both studies, which supports the generalizability of the APRACE. The APRACE offers a generalizable tool for the comprehensive, parsimonious, and systematic description of social interactions and, thus, enables networked research on social interactions and application in a number of practical fields.

Can Acting Out Online Improve Adolescents’ Well-Being During Contact Restrictions? A First Insight Into the Dysfunctional Role of Cyberbullying and the Need to Belong in Well-Being During COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Contact Restrictions

Connecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences. The difficult social situation during contact restrictions, more time for online communication and maladaptive emotion regulation might lead to aggressive communication patterns in the form of cyberbullying perpetration. In an online study with N = 205 adolescents aged 14–19 (M = 15.83, SD = 1.44; 57% girls), we assessed the frequency of online and offline contacts, need to belong, emotion regulation problems, feelings of loneliness, and cyberbullying perpetration as predictors of adolescents’ well-being. In particular, we explored whether cyberbullying perpetration might function as a maladaptive strategy to deal with feelings of loneliness and therefore predicts well-being. This effect was expected to be stronger for those with a higher need to belong and with higher emotion regulation problems. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that well-being was significantly predicted by less emotion regulation difficulties, less feeling isolated and more cyberbullying perpetration. We also tested whether the need to belong or emotion regulation problems moderated the association between cyberbullying and well-being. While the results for emotion regulation problems were not significant, the moderation effect for the need to belong was significant: For students with a high need to belong, well-being was more strongly related to cyberbullying perpetration than for students with a medium need to belong. For students with a low need to belong, cyberbullying was not significantly associated with well-being. That cyberbullying perpetration predicted well-being positively is rather surprising in the light of previous research showing negative psychosocial outcomes also for cyberbullying perpetrators. The moderation analysis provides a hint at underlying processes: In times of distance learning and contact restrictions, cyberbullying may be a way of coming into contact with others and to regulate loneliness maladaptively.

Intellectual decline in patients with schizophrenia with comorbid type ii diabetes mellitus and alcoholism

Comorbid conditions in general psychopathological practice need equally research in the field of psychiatry and narcology, as well as the development of issues of social practice in relation to mental patients. There is an opinion that comorbid mental pathologies are even more common than “pure” forms of diseases. In most cases of comorbid conditions, the medical community increasingly encounters clinical situations where “classic” symptoms and syndromes are deformed, mutually intertwined and, superimposed on the actual social situation of the patient, acquire an “unreal fancy character”.Schizophrenia remains one of the most urgent problems at the stage of modern psychiatry formation. Up to date there are 1.1% of men and 1.9% of women in the general population of patients. Schizophrenic spectrum disorders are often combined with a number of chronic pathologies that increase the negative impact on the neuro-cognitive sphere of a person. One of the main problems of modern urbanized society is type II diabetes and alcoholism. By increasing the negative impact on a person’s cognitive abilities, they accelerate the process of disintegration of personality and its social functioning. The intellectual level of patients with those chronic diseases that require patients to actively and consciously participate in the treatment process and social functioning can significantly affect the patient’s ability to learn, independently manage the disease, establish a high level of compliance and, as a result, the effectiveness of therapy. An attentive study of the issue of the state of intelligence of patients with comorbid pathology will lead to an improvement in the patient’s social adaptation, a more careful attitude to their somatic health and reduce the risk of disability of the able-bodied population.

The possibilities of using fairy tale therapy in dealing with destructive psychological scenarios of first-year students of educational institutions of higher education

The article considers one of such obstacles to qualitative constructive changes in personality development, namely the destructive behavioral scenario. Many people repeatedly lose certain behavioral scenarios without realizing their constructiveness or destructiveness. Close people in the process of raising a child influence the formation of beliefs, values and norms, including through fairy tales, initially offering certain fairy tales to the child, guided by their own preferences and assessments of the actions of the characters. Recently, this genre of folk folklore has been actively used in psychology and pedagogy as an element of correction. The purpose of the study was to identify destructive behavioral scenarios. The communicative-cognitive and psychosomatic approaches were used, the study was conducted in the 2019-2020 academic year in educational institutions of higher education of the Moscow region. The respondents of the study were 60 first-year students of various (average age 18.7 years). Male and female students were equally present. The results of the study show that first-year students of educational institutions of higher education demonstrate a certain attitude towards themselves and the world, reflected in the fundamental resource life attitudes formed in childhood through fairy tales. This attitude affects their current state, which is characterized by a commitment to the previous lifestyle, but also a desire for transformations associated with a change in the social situation of development

FUNCTIONING DISCOURSE MARKERS TO CONSTRUCT A SOCIAL SITUATION IN SPEECH

This study relates the discussion of discourse markers to their functions from a social context. It aims to identify discourse markers and analyze their function to construct a social situation in Steve Jobs’ speech delivered at Stanford Commencement Address. To analyze the data in this study, the researchers used a qualitative descriptive method. This study showed that the dominant discourse markers used were connective, followed by cause result, temporal adverb, and marker of response, respectively, in which the last marker was the least used. Furthermore, all discourse markers functioned to gain coherent message delivery in the speech by considering the “setting and scene," "participants," "ends,” “act sequence,” “key,” “instrumentalities,” “norms of interaction,” and “genre,” all of which were shortened in the acronym of “speaking.” Finally, based on its social situation, the present study is expected to broaden the understanding of discourse markers in a particular text.

Poverty Plus Pandemic Equal to Lethal Epidemics in Mexico

For Mexican society it is relevant to know the prospects of well-being in an environment of instability and social insecurity; therefore, this research has the purpose of publicizing the health, economic, and social situation from COVID-19 in Mexico. The work has a qualitative, analytical, and descriptive research design considering current information from the Bank of Mexico with recent indicators of economic activity, The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) with data on occupation and employment, as well as the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) regarding the consequences of poverty in Mexican society and other documents that refer to the problem, all this analysis in order to form an idea of the near future of Mexicans. Currently, there is an increase in poverty and inequality resulting from the mismanagement of government policies and the lack of proposals to improve the social sector.

Social Justice Leadership for Co-Educating Refugee and Migrant Students in Greek Primary Schools Through Distance Education During COVID-19

2020 is the year marked by the global pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19), which affected humanity to a great extent, creating unfavorable social, health, and economic conditions. As in the world, so in Greece the school is affected by this new social situation, resulting in schools having been closed for long periods of time and the lessons for all their students done remotely through a special electronic platform. Principals are called upon to manage a crisis situation, creating smooth e-learning conditions for all the students, including the children who belong to ethnic minorities. This study aims to demonstrate that school leaders can play a significant role in the co-education of the refugee and migrant students through distance learning. At the same time, the author also offers proposals regarding the implementation of relevant actions in this direction.