Putting the Pieces Together: Mental Construction of Semantically Congruent and Incongruent Scenes in Dementia

Scene construction refers to the process by which humans generate richly detailed and spatially cohesive scenes in the mind’s eye. The cognitive processes that underwrite this capacity remain unclear, particularly when the envisaged scene calls for the integration of various types of contextual information. Here, we explored social and non-social forms of scene construction in Alzheimer’s disease (AD; n = 11) and the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 15) relative to healthy older control participants (n = 16) using a novel adaptation of the scene construction task. Participants mentally constructed detailed scenes in response to scene–object cues that varied in terms of their sociality (social; non-social) and congruence (congruent; incongruent). A significant group × sociality × congruence interaction was found whereby performance on the incongruent social scene condition was significantly disrupted in both patient groups relative to controls. Moreover, bvFTD patients produced significantly less contextual detail in social relative to non-social incongruent scenes. Construction of social and non-social incongruent scenes in the patient groups combined was significantly associated with independent measures of semantic processing and visuospatial memory. Our findings demonstrate the influence of schema-incongruency on scene construction performance and reinforce the importance of episodic–semantic interactions during novel event construction.

Man versus Machine: Comparing manual with LIWC coding of perceptual and contextual details for verbal lie detection

Purpose: Truthful statements are theorized to be richer in perceptual and contextual detail than deceptive statements. The level of detail can be coded by humans or computers, with human coding argued to be superior. Direct comparisons of human and automated coding, however, are rare.Methods: We applied automatic identification of details with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software on truthful and deceptive statements from four datasets that had been manually coded for details.Results: We noted that the common way of scoring manual and LIWC coding hampers a direct comparison because they rely on different metrics – count and proportion scores, respectively. Lie-truth differences varied substantially across metric and dataset (LIWC: -0.09 ≤ Cohen’s d ≤ .89; Manual: 0.03 ≤ Cohen’s d ≤ .80). When set to the same metric, neither method seemed to outperform the other. Using count scores, both LIWC and manual coding indicated that truthful statements about past events contain more perceptual and contextual details than deceptive statements. Across the four datasets, we also observed considerable variation in manual coding.Conclusions: Human coding does not necessarily outperform LIWC coding of perceptual and contextual details in discriminating lies from truths. Our findings call for systematic comparison of human and automated verbal lie detection approaches on the same data, and we reiterate the need for better data sharing practices to help accomplish that aim.

Towards a unified open access dataset of molecular interactions

The International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) Consortium provides scientists with a single body of experimentally verified protein interactions curated in rich contextual detail to an internationally agreed standard. In this update to the work of the IMEx Consortium, we discuss how this initiative has been working in practice, how it has ensured database sustainability, and how it is meeting emerging annotation challenges through the introduction of new interactor types and data formats. Additionally, we provide examples of how IMEx data are being used by biomedical researchers and integrated in other bioinformatic tools and resources.

Introduction

The introduction lays the groundwork for the arguments made in the rest of the book. It maps out how, contrary to popular assumptions, some marginalized youth in Iran—termed the face-savers—are not a “generation in wait” prone to oppositional practices, but active agents who conform to social norms in an effort to change their lot in life. Through the repeated, daily practice of saving face, these youth increase public perceptions of their moral worth, which can subsequently lead them to gain incremental mobility within poverty. A historical overview of the interplay between state policies and struggles from below to make the most of life’s circumstances provides additional contextual detail of how the poor’s aspirations for the good life have been shaped by the perceived structures of constraints and opportunities that surround them. The introduction further provides a brief social history of the primary field site, Sari, Mazandaran, and incorporates details of the methodology of the study.

What is at stake in data visualization? A feminist critique of the rhetorical power of data visualizations in the media

Data visualizations are powerful semiotic resources, which, it is sometimes claimed, have the power to change the world. This chapter argues that to understand this power we need to consider the uses to which visualizations have been put. Using visualizations relating to abortion as a case study alongside Klein and D’Ignazio’s notion of a ‘Bring Back the Bodies’ in data visualization, I argue that visualizations tell a narrow story, removing contextual detail and omitting to ask questions important to women’s health. To grasp the significance of this I propose a new body issue: the neglect of the viewer and those affected by decisions taken based on visualized data. Far from being a simple device to graphically display numerical data, therefore, there are important social and ethical issues at stake in data visualization.

Taking account of context in systematic reviews and guidelines considering a complexity perspective

Systematic review teams and guideline development groups face considerable challenges when considering context within the evidence production process. Many complex interventions are context-dependent and are frequently evaluated within considerable contextual variation and change. This paper considers the extent to which current tools used within systematic reviews and guideline development are suitable in meeting these challenges. The paper briefly reviews strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches to specifying context. Illustrative tools are mapped to corresponding stages of the systematic review process. Collectively, systematic review and guideline production reveals a rich diversity of frameworks and tools for handling context. However, current approaches address only specific elements of context, are derived from primary studies which lack information or have not been tested within systematic reviews. A hypothetical example is used to illustrate how context could be integrated throughout the guideline development process. Guideline developers and evidence synthesis organisations should select an appropriate level of contextual detail for their specific guideline that is parsimonious and yet sensitive to health systems contexts and the values, preferences and needs of their target populations.

Encoding third-person epistemic states contributes to episodic reconstruction of memories

We propose an extension to Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) theory. For successful episodic memory formation, potentially relevant aspects of a situation need to be identified and encoded online and retained for prospective interactions. To be maximally convincing, the communicator not only has to encode not just any contextual detail, but also has to track information in relation to social partners.

Pragmatic Aspect of Translation: The Interpretation-Based Inference and Its Implications for Translation

The elements of encoding, transferring and decoding are crucial in all processes of communication, however, drawing the appropriate inference from the current context is equally important in communication according to relevance theory (Gutt, 1998, p. 41). Semantic content is not always sufficient to fully comprehend the exact meaning of a particular utterance as the meaning of that utterance may hinge upon the contextual detail with which it is inferentially associated. The success of the process of communication relies on whether or not the recipient makes use of the context intended by the speaker. Failure to do so would give rise to miscommunication (Gutt, 1998, p. 42). Translation, as a communicative act, involves interpretation made by the translator, which takes the context of the target text (TT) reader and his/her knowledge into consideration. The present paper argues that even though the translator, according to relevance theory, is required to reproduce a TT that can stand as a faithful rendering of the source text (ST), the translator, however, needs to make his/her translated text relevant to the target reader. This, in many instances, may demand following certain procedures of explications in the TT to equip the target reader with the relevant contextual information needed to draw the appropriate inferences from the utterance concerned, and therefore make the right interpretation. Such exegesis needs to be added to the target text as what is inferable for the ST user may not be inferable for the TT receiver owing to cognitive and cultural differences.

Modern slavery – the adult safeguarding interface

Purpose The inclusion of modern slavery in the Care Act 2014 as a form of abuse means that the subject of modern slavery is now included in the remit of adult safeguarding in England. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the background to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and its provisions. Design/methodology/approach A policy analysis was undertaken in 2016 drawing on research and commentary related to the interface between modern slavery and adult safeguarding. Findings There is little material as yet focussing on adult safeguarding and modern slavery but the inclusion of modern slavery in this area of practice and organisations will require practitioner responses, organisational collaboration and revisions of data collection and analysis. Newspaper accounts of criminal charges under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 may be important first evidence of the interface potentially between modern slavery and adults at risk of abuse and neglect that are the focus of adult safeguarding concern. Practical implications Information about modern slavery may provide relevant background and contextual detail for adult safeguarding communities, furnishing links and resources for this new area of their work. Originality/value This paper is likely to be of interest to policymakers, researchers and practitioners in examining their new duties under the Care Act 2014 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and to wider public and private bodies considering their responsibilities in responses to modern slavery more broadly.

Stereotype Threat Alters the Subjective Experience of Memory

There is now evidence that negative age-related stereotypes about memory reduce older adults’ memory performance, and inflate age differences in this domain. Here, we examine whether stereotype threat may also influence the basic feeling that one is more or less able to remember. Using the Remember/Know paradigm, we demonstrated that stereotype threat conducted older adults to a greater feeling of familiarity with events, while failing to retrieve any contextual detail. This finding indicates that stereotype threat alters older adults’ subjective experience of memory, and strengthens our understanding of the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat effects.