Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures

Building on a new materialist ontology, this article explores the significance of viewing the postsecondary institution and learner as assemblages co-emerging in material relationality. Bodies of thought from social cognitive neuroscience, somatic psychotherapy, and physical cultural studies inform an analysis of the evaluation culture predominant in Western postsecondary education. These disciplines are used to interrogate representational performativity and point to new possibilities for material-inclusive learning. A new materialist pedagogy holds possibilities to reconfigure learning architectures to recognise and attend to the corpomaterialities of learners while allowing for new and creative lines of flight in education, as illustrated by physical cultural practices such as sport training, dance, and capoeira.

Chapter 9 - Theory of Mind and Joint Attention - The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents

The present chapter provides an overview from the perspective of social cognitive neuroscience (SCN) regarding theory of mind (ToM) and joint attention (JA) as crucial mechanisms of social cognition and discusses how these mechanisms have been investigated in social interaction with artificial agents. In the final sections, the chapter reviews computational models of ToM and JA in social robots (SRs) and intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and discusses the current challenges and future directions.

Neuroleadership: A Conceptual Analysis and Educational Implications

Interpreting findings in neuroscience by field experts and educators regarding educational processes and transferring them to a practical context is gaining importance. From this aspect, neuroleadership studies with the development of social cognitive neuroscience started to serve as a guide for making sense of educational leaders’ behaviors at the biological level. In this study, the term of neuroleadership is analyzed conceptually and its implications for the educational leadership field are explored. To do so, a systematic literature analysis method was employed. Forty-four studies (published between January 2010 and May 2020) were examined as they relate to neuroleadership and its educational and managerial implications. In the light of these studies, the analysis of basic concepts related to neuroleadership has been made, and the neuro-educational leadership implications are listed. In those studies, it is seen that neuroleadership is generally conceptualized as “applying the findings of neuroscience to the leadership area.” In addition, the educational and managerial implications of neuroleadership, some of which are multi-tasking, emotion management, optimum learning, psychological basis, are explained under the themes. The findings of this study can help schools take advantage of the opportunities offered by neuroscience and coordinate educational processes with evidence-based approaches.

Aging and financial exploitation risk

Financial exploitation among older adults is an increasing public health concern. Whether in-person or online, financial risks are becoming omnipresent in our increasingly connected and wired world. Understanding why some older adults are more vulnerable to financial exploitation than others, and the specific contexts in which this vulnerability is most likely to emerge, is necessary to design more target surveillance and intervention tools. In this review, we identify the cognitive, socioemotional, and brain changes in aging that increase financial exploitation risks in later life. Next, we build on this review to propose a new social cognitive neuroscience model of financial exploitation risk. In the final section we review emerging work to develop profiles for older adults, towards novel intervention techniques to reduce the burden of financial exploitation in later life.

Please Empathize! Instructions to empathize strengthen response facilitation after pain observation

Recent research has shown that observing others in pain leads to a general facilitation of reaction times. The current study sheds further light on the relationship between pain observation and reaction time by exploring how bottom-up processes, in the form of perceived pain intensity, and top-down processes, in the form of explicit instructions to empathize, influence response facilitation after pain observation. Participants watched videos of a hand getting pierced by a needle or touched by a Q-tip. To manipulate bottom-up information, participants saw videos depicting either deep or shallow insertion of the needle. To investigate potential top-down modulation, half the participants were explicitly requested to empathize with the person in the video, while the other half were told to simply watch and attend to the video. Results from two experiments corroborate previous results showing response facilitation after pain observation. Critically, experiment 2 provides robust evidence that explicit instructions to empathize with a person in pain strengthen response facilitation. We discuss these results considering social cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology studies of empathy and pain observation.

Awareness of Employee Stress Response: How Employers Can Mitigate Workplace Burnout and Workplace Depression

By examining the science behind leadership, management practices and how they relate to social cognitive neuroscience, we can understand how to target the most effective conditions for preventing workplace burnout and workplace depression. This process begins with the ability of managers to recognise and react responsively to create a culture of trust within the organisation, and identify and promote prosocial behaviours to prevent feelings of disengagement and displacement. This review discusses how one’s ability to inspire employees is particularly important, because followers with low self-concepts are drawn to a highly personalised vision. Through the promotion of the brain chemical, oxytocin, the material presents eight building blocks to promote a culture of trust, while mitigating the factors associated with workplace burnout and workplace depression.