SummaryThe aim of the study was to assess the relationship between adverse life events, a tendency to respond with a high level of anxiety, and height and adiposity of adolescents. The sample included 575 persons aged 10–15 from the Wielkopolska region of Poland. The influence of adverse events during the 6 months before the examination and anxiety trait, as assessed with a STAIC questionnaire, on body height and BMI was analysed. Also sex, age, chronic diseases and socioeconomic status indicators were (...) assessed. One-way and two-way ANOVA was used for assessment of relationships. Adverse events had no influence on body height and BMI. Subjects with a high level of anxiety trait were shorter than subjects with a normal level of anxiety trait. The association of anxiety trait and body height was significant after adjustment for sex, age, chronic diseases and history of adverse life events. The analysis showed no statistically significant influence of adverse life events on height and BMI and a significant relationship between the general tendency to respond with anxiety and body height of adolescents. This suggests that psychological characteristics associated with the cognitive tendency to interpret events as threatening, and consequently, to respond with stress, may be involved in the variability of biological traits regardless of the objective harmfulness of the situation. (shrink)

Our understanding of body ownership largely relies on the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) paradigm where synchronous stroking of the real and fake hands leads to an illusion of ownership of RH provided its physical, anatomical, and spatial plausibility. Self-attribution of a fake hand also occurs during visuomotor synchrony, when the visual feedback of self-initiated movements follows the trajectory of the instantiated motor command. In both cases, the experience of ownership is established through bottom-up integration and top-down prediction of multisensory (proximodistal) (...) cues within the peripersonal space. It seems, however, that depending on whether the signals are externally or self-generated, top-down expectation signals are qualitatively different. On the one hand, in RHI, the sensory correlations are modulated by empirically induced priors about the internal model of the body. On the other hand, in mRHI, body ownership is actively shaped by processes allowing for continuous comparison between the actual and predicted sensory consequences of the actions. Ample research demonstrates that the differential processing of the predicted and the actual reafferent information is addressed by the central nervous system via an internal Forward Model (FM). Indeed, results from mRHI suggest that in action-contexts mechanism underlying body ownership could be similar to the FM. Crucially FMs integrate across all sensory input including not only proximodistal (visuomotor) but also purely distal sensory signals (visuoauditory). Thus if body ownership results from a consistency of FM, it would be affected by the (in)congruency of purely distal signals provided that they inform about the action-consequences relevant to the task. Here we explicitly address this question. To test our hypothesis, we devise an embodied VR-based task where action outcomes were signaled by distinct auditory cues. By manipulating the cues with respect to their spatial, temporal and semantic congruency, we show that purely distal feedback violating predictions about action outcomes compromises both body ownership and performance. These results demonstrate that body ownership is influenced by cues which not only pertain to the body itself but also those arising outside of the body, and suggest that in goal-oriented tasks body ownership might result from the consistency of forward models. (shrink)

Hands are commonly held up as an exemplar of well-known, familiar objects. However, conceptual knowledge of the hand has been found to show highly stereotyped distortions. Specifically, people judge their knuckles as farther forward in the hand than they actually are. The cause of this distal bias remains unclear. In Experiment 1, we tested whether both visual and tactile information contribute to the distortion. Participants judged the location of their knuckles by pointing to the location on their palm directly opposite (...) each knuckle with: 1) a metal baton (using vision and touch) 2) a metal baton while blindfolded (using touch), 3) a laser pointer (using vision). In Experiment 2, we investigated whether judgments are influenced by visual landmarks such as the creases at the base of each finger on the palm. Participants localized their knuckles on either a photograph or a silhouette of their hand. In both experiments, clear distortions were found across conditions, of generally similar magnitude. These results show that distal bias is resistant to changes in the stimulus information and does not rely on any specific stimulus cue or single sensory modality, suggesting that such mislocalisations reflect a conceptual misrepresentation of hand structure. (shrink)

Recent debates within broadly considered posthumanities have been populated by various conceptual personae. One such figure is the diplomat. First proposed in this context by Isabelle Stengers in her Cosmopolitics series, the diplomat has been subsequently taken up and further developed by Bruno Latour, particularly in his AIME project, and most recently by Baptiste Morizot in Les Diplomates. This article traces the metamorphosis of this conceptual character in the work of Stengers, Latour and Morizot. As all three versions are relatively (...) close to each other, this article proposes three companion figures: the heretic (for Stengers), the designer (for Latour) and the amateur (for Morizot) that allow us to carefully examine the differences between, and the specific stakes of, each iteration of the diplomat. Furthermore, the article critically evaluates the theoretical pertinence of the diplomat figure for each philosopher’s project and considers its potential for thinking about the future of our more-than-human worlds. (shrink)

Scholars in multispecies ethnography, the ontological turn, new materialisms, science and technology studies (STS), assemblage urbanism and other movements within the posthumanities broadly considered often treat cosmopolitics, initially proposed by Isabelle Stengers and subsequently taken up by Bruno Latour, as a single coherent concept. However, Stengers’s cosmopolitics differs considerably from Latour’s. The difference is most clearly visible in their contrasting positions on the concept of universality. Even though their divergence on universality could be considered a minor philosophical dispute among intellectual (...) allies, it should not be underestimated. It determines what sort of political practice each of these philosophers envisions with cosmopolitics. Their visions of political practice are substantially different. This article will examine Latour’s and Stengers’s diverging positions on universality, delineate the two types of cosmopolitics, and, finally, analyze what sort of political practice each of these cosmopolitics implies. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to confront Hegel's ideas on the interaction between universality, particularity and singularity with those of Butler and to show that Butler's universal is dynamic and infinitely self-renewing. Second, it aims to engage with Butler's politics of translation and to demonstrate how a Levinasian perspective on Hegelian dialectics changes the functioning of the universal. In relation to this claim, the article will also demonstrate how the structural failure in translation and performativity (...) allows for the constant circulation of the universal and, as a consequence, brings about social and political transformation. (shrink)

The question of politics is underdeveloped in René Girard's mimetic theory. This can be fairly easily accounted for. First, mimesis is essentially an ethical mechanism. In Girard, it pertains both to a set of moral prescriptions and to an ethos, understood here as a way of being that exchanges harmful repetitions for favorable ones.1 Throughout his work, Girard advances an ethics of generosity that steers clear of reciprocity, which, in his framework, would lead to violence.2 Second, Girard concentrates on social (...) structures and religious institutions that have been developed over the ages to deal with mimetic crises. These structures of containment protect communities from an all-consuming outbreak of violence by... (shrink)

This contribution considers the question of scale in Peter Sloterdijk’s work in relation to some of the recent tendencies in contemporary French thought. It examines theoretical conditions for approaching philosophy as an exercise in constructing grand narratives and interrogates the legitimacy of such a gesture after poststructuralist critique. What is to be gained from new grand narratives?

This article attempts to respond to the fractional presence of feminist discourse around René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. I will first briefly examine the relevant critical stands on mimesis and then proceed to rehabilitate it for feminism via an analysis of Judith Butler’s theory of performative gender. By bringing together selected aspects of Girard and Butler’s work, it will be possible to build a constructive dialogue between the two thinkers. Due to the scope of the paper I will not (...) be able to give an exhaustive account of the respective theories, and hence I will discuss only the most relevant aspects. Girard is concerned with giving an account of conflictual mimetic desire in social and cultural.. (shrink)

The class DA of diagonalizable algebras enjoys the interpolation property . Using LDA-Gentzen System corresponding to DA, we show that it has the strong amalgamation property as well.

The article attempts to answer the question concerning the possibility of reinterpreting tapas and locating it in the risk society. The authors, referring to Ulrich Beck’s concept, look for the ways out of the “kingdom of shadows”, possessed by a constant sense of threat, both in the global and local sphere. The article takes a cross-sectional look at tapas in old Indian literature, looking for possibilities of its contemporary implementation on non-Indian grounds, as a response to the deteriorating psycho-physical state (...) of 21st century society. (shrink)

Response to spatial and nonspatial change in wild and Wistar rats The purpose of the experiment was to investigate the effects of domestication on exploration in rats. The comparison was made between wild Warsaw-Wild-Captive-Pisula-Stryjek rats and Wistar laboratory rats. The study used a purpose-built maze divided into zones connected with a corridor. Objects were placed in two out of four zones. Their location and shape were subject to experimental manipulation. Transporter used to move rats to the maze provided the opportunity (...) for spontaneous exploration of the experimental arena. Rats were subjected to a series of 10 sessions, followed by a spatial or nonspatial change in the experimental arena, after which another 5 experimental sessions were conducted. The study revealed that wild rats had much higher exploration latency than their laboratory counterparts. At each analyzed stage, WWCPS rats spent much more time in the transporter than Wistar rats. Wistar rats spent much more time during the experiment on object interaction in the experimental arena. In post-manipulation sessions, however, it was wild rats that explored object zones relatively longer than laboratory rats. No differences in the animals' behavior depending on the type of change were observed. Results suggest that wild rats tend to explore much more cautiously than laboratory rats and are more sensitive to changes in their environment. The underlying cause of these differences is likely to be the higher level of stress in wild rats, resulting from threats in their natural habitat. (shrink)

This study aimed to verify the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Grit-S questionnaire. Grit is understood here as the perseverance and passion for long-term goals, and it encompasses two dimensions: Consistency of Interest and Perseverance of Effort. The sample comprised N = 270 participants aged 18-34. We performed confirmatory factor analyses to verify the dimensional structure of grit, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to compare the structure across gender, and correlation analysis to examine external validity. Findings showed satisfactory (...) parameters for Grit-S including: reliability, structural and external validity, and measurement invariance across gender groups. The results support the possibility of using the Grit-S questionnaire in research exploring the predictors of success. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe often use our own emotions to understand other people’s emotions. However, emotional egocentric biases, namely the tendency to use one’s own emotional state when relating to others...

University study can be a life period of heightened psychological distress for many students. The development of new preventive and intervention programs to support well-being in university students is a fundamental challenge for mental health professionals. We designed an 8-week online mindfulness-based program combining a face-to-face approach, text, audio, video components, and support psychotherapy principles with a unique intensive reminder system using the Facebook Messenger and Slack applications in two separate runs. We assessed the program’s effect on mindful experiencing, perceived (...) stress, emotion regulation strategies, self-compassion, negative affect, and quality of life. The results of the presented pilot study confirmed that eMBP is a feasible and effective tool in university students’ mental health support. The students who completed the eMBP reported a reduction of perceived stress with a large effect size as well as a decrease of negative affect experience frequency and intensity, an increase of being mindful in their life, and a higher rate of self-compassion with a medium effect size. A small effect size was found in the frequency of using a cognitive reappraisal strategy. One new result is the observation of an eMBP effect on the decrease in attributed importance to the quality-of-life components replicated in two consecutive runs of the program. The study affirms that mindfulness-based interventions can be effectively delivered in an eHealth form to university students. (shrink)

In a context of global change, inland navigation transport has gained interest with economic and environmental benefits. The development of this means of conveyance requires the improvement of its management rules to deal with the increase of navigation and the potential impact of global change. To achieve this aim, it is first necessary to have a better knowledge about the dynamics of inland navigation networks and their interaction with the environment. Second, the potential effects of global change have to be (...) anticipated. This article focuses on the modeling of inland navigation reaches. An inland navigation network is a large-scale distributed system composed of several interconnected reaches. These reaches are characterized by non-linearities, time delays, and generally no significant slope. To deal with these particularities, a gray-box model is proposed. It consists in determining the delays according to the physical characteristics of the system. The parameters of the model are identified with measured data. The gray-box model is used to reproduce the dynamics of the Cuinchy–Fontinettes reach located in the north of France. (shrink)

This volume aims to generate a dialogue between scholarship on populism and social and political theory. It focuses on citizenship, class, gender, cleavages, sovereignty, accountability, participation, leadership, and parties. The volume explores how classical and current theorists developed these categories, how they were used by scholars of populism, and what populism tells us about their heuristic advantages and limitations. The authors of this book have studied populism in Europe, the US, and Latin America from distinct perspectives. The chapters thus focus (...) on experiences in both the Global North and South. Contributors are: Cecilia Biancalana, Paula Diehl, Reinhard Heinisch, Klaudia Koxha, Alfio Mastropaolo, Oscar Mazzoleni, Enrique Peruzzotti, Kenneth M. Roberts, Luis Roniger, and Carlos de la Torre. (shrink)

Zum Alltag gehort, dass nicht immer alles glatt lauft. Uberraschendes passiert, Routinen greifen nicht mehr, das Selbstverstandliche wird problematisch. Wie reagieren Menschen auf solche Irritationen, die aus dem "plotzlichen Einbruch des Neuen" (H. Schmitz) resultieren? Wie es scheint, haufig spontan, intuitiv, improvisierend. Was aber heisst Improvisation und wie gelingt sie? Und wie spielen Irritation und Improvisation in alltaglichen und beruflichen Situationen konkret zusammen? Die Beitrage des Buches behandeln diese Fragen aus der Perspektive der Neuen Phanomenologie. Mit Beitragen von Heinz Becker, (...) Walter Burger, Sabine Dorpinghaus, Jurgen Hasse, Henning Hintze, Robby Jacob, Robert Josef Kozljanic, Gudula Linck, Hermann Schmitz, Klaudia Schultheis, Viola Straubenmuller und Barbara Wolf. (shrink)