Helmholtz Versus Haute Couture: How Horizontal Stripes and Dark Clothes Make You Look Thinner

In Helmholtz’s illusion, a square with horizontal stripes appears taller than an identical square with vertical stripes. This effect has also been observed in experiments with human stimuli, where a human figure wearing a dress with horizontal stripes appears thinner than a drawing clad in vertical stripes. These findings do not agree with the common belief that clothes with horizontal stripes make someone appear wider, neither do they disentangle whether the horizontal or vertical stripes account for the thinning effect. In the present study, we focused on the effect of horizontal stripes in clothes comparing horizontal stripes against no-stripes (not against vertical; Experiments 1 and 2), using photos of a real-life female model, and controlling for the average luminance of the stripes (Experiment 2). Results showed that horizontal stripes and lower luminance have—independently—a small-to-moderate thinning effect on the perceived size of the body, and the effect is larger when the two variables are combined. In Experiment 3, we further show that the thinning effect due to the luminance of the dress is enhanced when the general background gets darker.

Sekse- en genderdualiteit in discussie. Spreken over mannelijk en vrouwelijk in kerk en theologie

Speaking about two sexes and two kinds of gender connected with those sexes is the consequence of an ideology that disconnects the gender role and identity from the sex. Gender identity is according to this ideology a choice. The notion of two sexes is a modern invention; premodernity knew of only one sex. The experience of friction between sex and gender identities reinforces uncertainty, as does that of persons who have both male and female sexual characteristics. Some theologians argue in favour of abandoning the binary male-female model of human sexuality. This article argues that contemporary discussions of human sexuality challenge church and theology in the tradition of the Reformation to think through and define their position.

Values, Constraints, and Maneuvers

For about a decade, ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin women have been applying to higher education academic institutions in Israel in order to study despite bans from their conservative communities. Academic studies instill learning and culture, create an encounter with knowledge for the individual and thus carry a high degree of threat to the rigid conservative enclave. This article examines how conservative societies cope with the wheels of change as the process of higher education for women expands. The case studies in this article are 60 educated women from Jewish ultra-Orthodox society and from Negev Bedouin groups in Israel. As shown by the findings, a theoretical flow model based on three parameters emerges: value-constraint-maneuver. In summary, it appears that this model reflects the development of a new conservative female model that combines traditional values with contemporary indicators.

Social Synchronization During Joint Attention in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: This study examined the social synchronization in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when responding to others’ joint attention. Social synchronization refers to an individuals’ temporal coordination during social interactions, which has been found to play a crucial role in social development. Deficient joint attention has been repeatedly found in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, and previous studies have demonstrated various explanations about it. In a more recent perspective, joint attention could be associated with spontaneous social motor synchronization, and it is possible to explore social synchronization as a pathway to understanding the impairments of joint attention in children with ASD.Methods: Forty-one children aged 5 to 8 with ASD and 43 age-matched typically developing (TD) children watched a video to completed the response to joint attention (RJA) tasks, during which their gaze data were collected. The synchronization of gaze-shift behaviors between children and the female model in the video was measured with the cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Results: We found that children with ASD had the ability, to some extent, to synchronize their gaze shifts with the female model in the video during RJA tasks. However, compared to the TD children, children with ASD displayed lower levels of synchronization and longer latency in this synchronized behavior. Limitations: The RJA task in our study was not a real social interaction task but rather a one-way interaction. Social interaction between two persons through live video or a natural scenario should be further explored. Besides, additional work is necessary to determine whether our findings generalize to individuals across the full autism spectrum. Conclusion: These findings provide a new avenue to deepen our understanding of the impairments of joint attention in children with ASD. Notably, the analytic method can be further applied to explore the social synchronization of numerous other social interactive behaviors in ASD. Additionally, the impairment of social synchronization may be a new implicit indicator for the evaluation of autism and can be utilized to screen children with ASD along with other indicators.

Investigation of the effect of a male singing model on kindergarten children’s use of singing voice achievement

Replicable singing models are important as children learn to use their singing voices. Previous research indicates that for elementary school-aged children a child model is most effective, then a female model, then a male falsetto model, then a male baritone model. In my work with preschool children in a more informal setting, I noticed that many of these children did not seem to have difficulties singing along with male undergraduate students. In a recent study I conducted, significant differences in male and female models were found, favouring the female model. However, gains in singing were not noted until the second half of the year and the male teacher was only part of instruction for the first half of the year. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a male singing model over an entire academic year of instruction on kindergarten children’s singing voice achievement. Kindergarten children (N=15, N=10) received informal music guidance once a week for 30‐40 minutes from October to May from a team of two music teachers, one female and one male. The teachers sang together during activities, but sometimes the female teacher would take the lead; other times the male teacher. The Singing Voice Development Measure (SVDM) was administered four times during the instructional period. For each test time, the female teacher administered the test with her voice as the singing model; on a different day the male teacher administered the test with his baritone voice as the singing model. Two raters evaluated the randomized recordings of the children’s singing; reliabilities were acceptable. A three-way repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant interaction by time and model. The children’s scores, while quite high on the pretest, showed an increase over time for both models except for the final performances when singing with text with the female model; one of these performances appears to be an outlier.

Sex differences in the ability of corticostriatal oscillations to predict rodent alcohol consumption

Background Although male and female rats differ in their patterns of alcohol use, little is known regarding the neural circuit activity that underlies these differences in behavior. The current study used a machine learning approach to characterize sex differences in local field potential (LFP) oscillations that may relate to sex differences in alcohol-drinking behavior. Methods LFP oscillations were recorded from the nucleus accumbens shell and the rodent medial prefrontal cortex of adult male and female Sprague-Dawley rats. Recordings occurred before rats were exposed to alcohol (n = 10/sex × 2 recordings/rat) and during sessions of limited access to alcohol (n = 5/sex × 5 recordings/rat). Oscillations were also recorded from each female rat in each phase of estrous prior to alcohol exposure. Using machine learning, we built predictive models with oscillation data to classify rats based on: (1) biological sex, (2) phase of estrous, and (3) alcohol intake levels. We evaluated model performance from real data by comparing it to the performance of models built and tested on permutations of the data. Results Our data demonstrate that corticostriatal oscillations were able to predict alcohol intake levels in males (p < 0.01), but not in females (p = 0.45). The accuracies of models predicting biological sex and phase of estrous were related to fluctuations observed in alcohol drinking levels; females in diestrus drank more alcohol than males (p = 0.052), and the male vs. diestrus female model had the highest accuracy (71.01%) compared to chance estimates. Conversely, females in estrus drank very similar amounts of alcohol to males (p = 0.702), and the male vs. estrus female model had the lowest accuracy (56.14%) compared to chance estimates. Conclusions The current data demonstrate that oscillations recorded from corticostriatal circuits contain significant information regarding alcohol drinking in males, but not alcohol drinking in females. Future work will focus on identifying where to record LFP oscillations in order to predict alcohol drinking in females, which may help elucidate sex-specific neural targets for future therapeutic development.

Sex differences in the ability of corticostriatal oscillations to predict rodent alcohol consumption

BackgroundAlthough male and female rats differ in their patterns of alcohol use, little is known regarding the neural circuit activity that underlies these differences in behavior. The current study used a machine learning approach to characterize sex differences in local field potential (LFP) oscillations that may relate to sex differences in alcohol drinking behavior.MethodsLFP oscillations were recorded from the nucleus accumbens shell and the rodent medial prefrontal cortex of adult male and female Sprague-Dawley rats. Recordings occurred before rats were exposed to alcohol (n=10/sex X 2 recordings/rat) and during sessions of limited access to alcohol (n=5/sex X 5 recordings/rat). Oscillations were also recorded from each female rat in each phase of estrous prior to alcohol exposure. Using machine-learning, we built predictive models to classify rats based on: 1) biological sex; 2) phase of estrous; and 3) alcohol intake levels. We evaluated model performance from real data by comparing it to the performance of models built and tested on permutations of the data.ResultsOur data demonstrate that corticostriatal oscillations were able to predict alcohol intake levels in males (p<0.01), but not in females (p=0.45). The accuracies of models predicting biological sex and phase of estrous were related to fluctuations observed in alcohol drinking levels; females in diestrus drank more alcohol than males (p=0.052), and the male vs. diestrus female model had the highest accuracy (71.01%) compared to chance estimates.Conversely, females in estrus drank similar amounts of alcohol to males (p=0.702), and the male vs. estrus female model had the lowest accuracy (56.14%) compared to chance estimates.ConclusionsThe current data demonstrate that oscillations recorded from corticostriatal circuits contain significant information regarding alcohol drinking in males, but not alcohol drinking in females. Future work will focus on identifying where to record LFP oscillations in order to predict alcohol drinking in females, which may help elucidate sex-specific neural targets for future therapeutic development.