This work is comprised of personal essays by some of the most noted Holocaust educators working in or with Holocaust museums, resource centers, or educational organizations across the globe.

The main aim of the study was to check: attachment-related differences in alexithymia and the mediating role of mind-mindedness in attachment-alexithymia relationship. Method: Attachment, alexithymia and mind-mindedness were measured in the sample of 128 Polish undergraduates. Results: Positive associations were seen between attachment anxiety and overall alexithymia scores and difficulty identifying emotions. Attachment avoidance was positively associated with overall alexithymia score, difficulty describing feelings and externally oriented thinking. Mind-mindedness was not related to neither attachment or alexithymia. Conclusion: There are attachment-related (...) differences in alexithymia, but mind-mindedness seems not to mediate attachment-alexithymia relationship. (shrink)

Generating and Understanding Jokes by Five- And Nine-Year-Olds as an Expression of Theory of Mind The main aim of the presented research is to describe children's ability to generate and understand humorous stories and pictures drawn by their peers and older or younger children. From the perspective of research on children's theories of mind, we assume that in middle childhood we will observe a transition from the basic, copy theory of mind to the interpretative one. We examined 60 five- and (...) nine-year-old children in two phases. During the first phase, the children were asked to draw a funny picture and then justify what made it funny and they had also to present the funny story. Two months later, the children were presented with some pictures chosen after the first phase as the most typical one. They had to justify why these pictures are funny. The obtained results indicate that there is a relation between the age of the subjects and the kind of interpretations of funny pictures which are consistent with the author's intentions. Significantly more nine-year-olds than five-year-olds accurately understood the author's intentions when interpreting his picture. The presented data indicate that changes in the theory of mind take place also in middle childhood and lead to a complex, interpretative theory of mind which can be discovered when researching children's understanding of jokes. (shrink)

Emotion understanding (EU) is the capacity to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of the emotional experience of the self and others. The cultural differences and similarities in the development of EU are still not well recognized, especially within Slavic culture and language. We tested 180 Polish children aged 5–11 years using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and compared their results with data from British and Italian children. We revealed a similar pattern of EU development between the three groups, showing (...) a growing number of the core EU components with age. In all samples, the three difficulty-differentiated clusters of EU components were distinguishable. Some cultural differences were observed only in a few EU components – especially, British and Italian children recognized the cognitively-based individualistic aspect of emotions to a higher degree than Polish children. These results supplement the current knowledge about EU development in children within European cultures. (shrink)

Deleuze put forth a description of fluid control in computerized society in his text ‘Postscript on Control Societies’. With the help of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, we can broaden and complexify this view and understand digital systems through the concept of modulation. These modulatory systems intervene in human individuation by controlling individuals as ‘dividuals’. In contemporary digital technologies, like blockchain platforms, the modulatory dividual control can be fierce and even total. Simondon’s concepts of pre-individual, individuation, and transindividuation present us (...) with an ontology for this contemporary mode of control and enable us to better understand the complex relations between the being of humans and technical networks. (shrink)

We review studies on catching that reveal internalization of physics for action control. In catching free-falling balls, an internal model of gravity is used by the brain to time anticipatory muscle activation, modulation of reflex responses, and tuning of limb impedance. An internal model of the expected momentum of the ball at impact is used to scale the amplitude of anticipatory muscle activity. [Barlow; Hecht; Shepard].

The development of self-regulation in early childhood is related to development of emotional regulation and attention, in particular executive attention. As the ability to self-regulate is crucial in life, it is important to reveal early predictors of self-regulation. The aim of the paper is to present the results of longitudinal studies on the relationships between the functioning of attention, regulation of emotion and later self-regulatory abilities. 310 children were assessed at three time points. At 12 months of age emotional regulation (...) in situation of frustration and attention regulation were assessed. At 18 and 24 months behavioral-emotional regulation in the Snack Delay Task was measured. Additionally parents assessed executive attention using The Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire when children were 26 months old. Structural equation modelling revealed two different paths to development of self-regulatory abilities at 18 months: emotional and emotionalattentional and only one emotional-attentional path at 24 months. The early ability to focus attention and later executive attention functioning revealed to be important predictors of self-regulatory abilities both at 18 and 24 months of age. (shrink)

Nurses are responsible for the well-being and quality of life of many people, and therefore must meet high standards of technical and ethical competence. The most common form of ethical guidance is a code of ethics/professional practice; however, little research on how codes are viewed or used in practice has been undertaken. This study, carried out in six European countries, explored nurses’ opinions of the content and function of codes and their use in nursing practice. A total of 49 focus (...) groups involving 311 nurses were held. Purposive sampling ensured a mix of participants from a range of specialisms. Qualitative analysis enabled emerging themes to be identified on both national and comparative bases. Most participants had a poor understanding of their codes. They were unfamiliar with the content and believed they have little practical value because of extensive barriers to their effective use. In many countries nursing codes appear to be ‘paper tigers’ with little or no impact; changes are needed in the way they are developed and written, introduced in nurse education, and reinforced/implemented in clinical practice. (shrink)

The objective of the presented research was to test whether working memory, measured using the Spin the Pots task, is an important factor in passive vocabulary development in 2- and 3-year-old children. Two longitudinal studies were conducted. In the first, 135 children participated in the first study. At 18 months their responding to joint attention was measured, and then at 24 months their working memory and passive vocabulary was tested. It was demonstrated that responding to joint attention predicts the level (...) of development of working memory, which in turn influences the extent of the passive vocabulary. In the second study, 113 children participated - at 30 months their working memory was measured, and at 24 months and then 36 months their passive vocabulary was tested. It was observed that at the age of 3 working memory is still a significant predictor of passive vocabulary. The usefulness of the Spin the Pots task for measuring the working memory of young children was shown and discussed in conclusions. (shrink)

Background: We define compassion as an enduring disposition that centers upon empathetic concern for another person's suffering and the motivation to act to alleviate it. The contribution of specific candidate genes to the development of dispositional compassion for others is currently unknown. We examine candidate genes in the oxytocin and dopamine signaling pathways.Methods: In a 32-year follow-up of the Young Finns Study, we examined with multiple indicators latent growth curve modeling the molecular genetic underpinnings of dispositional compassion for others across (...) the life span. We selected five single nucleotide polymorphisms whose functions are known in humans: rs2268498, rs3796863, rs1800497, rs4680, and rs1611115. Compassion was measured with Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory on three repeated observations spanning 15 years. Differences between gender were tested.Results: We did not find an effect of the five SNPs in oxytocin and dopamine pathway genes on the initial levels of dispositional compassion for others. Individuals who carry one or two copies of the T-allele of DBH rs1611115, however, tend to increase faster in compassion over time than those homozygotes for the C-allele, b = 0.063. This effect was largely driven by male participants, 0.206, and was not significant in female participants when analyzed separately.Conclusions: Men who are known to have, on average, lower compassion than women seem to reduce this difference over time if they carry the T-allele of DBH rs1611115. The direction of the association indicates that dopamine signaling activity rather than overall dopamine levels might drive the development of compassion. (shrink)

Most studies on bilingual language development focus on children’s second language (L2). Here, we investigated first language (L1) development of Polish-English early migrant bilinguals in four domains: vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing and discourse. We first compared Polish language skills between bilinguals and their Polish non-migrant monolingual peers, and then investigated the influence of the cumulative exposure to L1 and L2 on bilinguals’ performance. We then examined whether high exposure to L1 could possibly minimize the gap between monolinguals and bilinguals. We (...) analyzed data from 233 typically developing children (88 bilingual, 145 monolingual) aged 4;0 to 7;5 (years; months) on six language measures in Polish: receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, productive grammar (sentence repetition), phonological processing (non-word repetition) and discourse abilities (narration). Information about language exposure was obtained via parental questionnaires. For each language task, we analyzed the data from the subsample of bilinguals who had completed all the tasks in question and from monolinguals matched one-on-one to the bilingual group on age, SES (measured by years of mother’s education), gender, non-verbal IQ and short term memory. The bilingual children scored lower than monolinguals in all language domains, except discourse. The group differences were more pronounced on the productive tasks (vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing) and moderate on the receptive tasks (vocabulary and grammar). L1 exposure correlated positively with the vocabulary size and phonological processing. Grammar scores were not related to the levels of L1 exposure, but were predicted by general cognitive abilities. L2 exposure negatively influenced productive grammar in L1, suggesting possible L2 transfer effects on L1 grammatical performance. Children’s narrative skills benefitted from exposure to two languages: both L1 and L2 exposure influenced story structure scores in L1. Importantly, we did not find any evidence (in any of the tasks in which the gap was present) that the performance gap between monolinguals and bilinguals could be fully closed with high amounts of L1 input. (shrink)

Building on recent work by Delia Graff Fara and Ora Matushansky on appellative constructions like ‘Mirka called Roger handsome’, I argue that if Millianism about proper names is true, then the quantifier ‘something’ in ‘Mirka called Roger something’ is best understood as a kind of substitutional quantifier. Any adequate semantics for such quantifiers must explain both the logical behavior of ‘Mirka called Roger something’ and the acceptability of ‘so’-anaphora in ‘Mirka called Roger something, and everyone so (...) called is handsome’. Millianism about proper names is inconsistent with such quantifiers being standard non-substitutional second-order quantifiers. But this is not the only option for Millianism: I provide two different propositional semantics for substitutional quantification, each of which is adequate in the sense above, given Millianism. One of these is based on Tobias Rosefeldt’s work on non-nominal quantification, and I identify in what way Rosefeldt’s semantics is substitutional. (shrink)

Myślą Ludwika Gumplowicza polscy uczeni zainteresowali się stosunkowo późno. Jej pierwsze opracowania autorstwa Jana Karola Kochanowskiego, Stanisława Posnera, Mieczysława Szerera, Jana Stanisława Bystronia, Aleksandra Kraushara przypadają na lata 1910–1917, a więc na okres zwany Młodą Polską, który wpisuje się w ogólnoeuropejski modernizm. Nowa generacja uczonych, pisarzy i artystów, działająca w okresie młodopolskim znacząco różniła się w przyjmowanych założeniach filozoficzno-ideowych od pokolenia pozytywistów i realistów krytycznych. Niemniej ukształtowane w pozytywizmie nawyki myślenia nie zanikły po roku 1890 całkowicie – pozostały one indywidualnym (...) a zarazem wspólnym dorobkiem intelektualnym generacji szkół i uczonych wykształconych w dobie pozytywizmu. Postawy światopoglądowe pozytywizmu i modernizmu przenikały się, zaś zasadniczym łączącym je elementem, pomimo programowego buntu modernizmu wobec haseł pozytywistycznych, było zadłużenie wobec naturalizmu. Jednak że schyłkowe lata XIX wieku przynoszą antyscjentystyczne niepokoje, w tym krytykę pozytywistycznego modelu nauki, teorii ewolucjonizmu i jemu właściwego rozumienia postępu, protest przeciwko utylitaryzmowi i odrodzenie metafizyki. […] W polskich pracach z lat 1910–30 poświeconych socjologii L. Gumplowicza interesujące są trzy wątki, wskazujące na kierunek i postać, jaki przybrała recepcja dzieła socjologa z Grazu: zespół wspólne podzielanych przekonań odnośnie genezy systemu Gumplowicza oraz dwie warstwy wartościowania jego dorobku: pozytywna i negatywna. Zatem nasze ujęcie opinii, sądów i ocen sformułowanych przez St. Posnera, M. Szerera, J. St. Bystronia, A. Kraushara oraz F. Mirka pod adresem teorii Gumplowicza będzie miało charakter syntetyzującego przeglądu, uwzględniającego specyfikę stanowisk w kwestiach, które znacząco się od siebie różnią. Ta uwaga odnosi się przede wszystkim do bardzo zindywidualizowanej krytyki spuścizny Gumplowicza. Jako odrębne w tym przeglądzie wyróżnione zostanie stanowisko J. K. Kochanowskiego z uwagi na jego odmienność: oryginalne i twórcze nawiązanie polskiego historyka i socjologa do myśliciela z Grazu. (shrink)

El concepto de tópico musical fue acuñado por Leonard Ratner en la década de los 80’ en su libro Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style. Esta primera aproximación sugirió un cambio notable que se observaría luego en la semiología de la música, en concreto, en el estudio de las prácticas musicales del clasicismo y romanticismo –un ejemplo claro de esto es el The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, editado por Danuta Mirka y publicado en 2014 por la editorial Oxford (...) University Press... (shrink)