The Experience of Apathy in Dementia: A Qualitative Study

We aimed to explore and gain an understanding into how people with dementia experience apathy, and consequently suggest effective interventions to help them and their carers. Twelve participants (6 dyads of 6 people with dementia and their family carers) were recruited from “memory cafes” (meeting groups for people with dementia and their families), social groups, seminars, and patient and public involvement (PPI) meetings. People with dementia and their carers were interviewed separately and simultaneously. Quantitative data were collected using validated scales for apathy, cognition, anxiety, and depression. The interviews were semi-structured, focusing on the subjective interpretation of apathy and impacts on behaviour, habits, hobbies, relationships, mood, and activities of daily living. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), which generated codes and patterns that were collated into themes. Four major themes were identified, three of which highlighted the challenging aspects of apathy. One described the positive aspects of the individuals’ efforts to overcome apathy and remain connected with the world and people around them. This study is the first to illustrate the subjective experience of apathy in dementia, portraying it as a more complex and active phenomenon than previously assumed. Apathy and its effects warrant more attention from clinicians, researchers, and others involved in dementia care.

Remembering Bombay

This chapter focuses on understanding Bombay’s social and political complexities as it grew exponentially over the 19th and 20th centuries. A typical colonial city it had a function as an entrepot in the trade routes that tracked around the globe as well as about the subcontinent. Its particularity as a city however was in part a product of the mix of its produce and its industries but also of what was brought to the city – social, political and economic diversity with elements of cultural, intellectual and creative benefit. It was a city that from its beginnings gloried in accommodating a mix of populations, ethnicities, social groups and religious adherents and of the urban spaces they severally occupied. In considering the locality as a city feature and as an active phenomenon implicitly and explicitly understood by its inhabitants, the chapter uses the idea of mental maps or templates that gave city spaces their characteristics as was also evident in those times of massive social conflict evident during riots and Bombay’s other forms of crowd aggregations. In drawing on notions of physical space as represented in the city’s localities or in mental maps of what might be understood as accustomed space, the research methods adopted in this chapter involved using city space and its patterns of customary behavior through the prism of the author’s subjective memories of the city from the 1960s as also textual research and analysis.

Implementation of Quantum Teaching Learning Strategies for Technician Training Program in Prima Data, Padang

This research was motivated by the active phenomenon of computer technician training at the Prima Data Institute Padang in Padang. This is evidenced by the presence, attention, concentration and activity of student in the learning process. This study aims to look at the application of quantum teaching learning strategies at the prima data institute in padang. This research is quantitative descriptive reseach. The sampling technique used is simple random sampling. Samples were taken as much as 75% of the population so there were 15 people. The technique of collecting data uses a questionnaire. Data collection tool is a list of statements. The data analysis technique uses the percentage formula. The results showed that the quantum teaching learning strategy at the Prima Data Institute in Padang from the aspects of growth, natural, namai, demostrated, and celebrating the applied by the instructor is very good. This is evidenced by the majority of students giving statements always. Based on the results of the study, it was suggested that instructors continue to improve their activity and maintain quantum teaching learning strategies in computer technician training at the Prima Data Institute in Padang.Keywords: Quantum Teaching, Learning Activity

Spanish ‘depalatalization’: the synchronic, diachronic and perception perspectives

Spanish has a restriction on palatal nasals and laterals in the coda causing them to be realized as dental/alveolar coronals. In the onset position, the palatal point of articulation is retained, bello ‘beautiful-masc.’, beldad ‘beauty’; doña ‘Madam’, don ‘Mister’. Alternations such as these led phonologists to propose a rule of depalatalization that turns an underlying palatal nasal/lateral into a coronal (Contreras 1977; Harris 1983). Pensado (1997) and Harris (1999) later tried to debunk this rule, the former on psycholinguistic grounds, and the latter on the basis of the word structure of Spanish (palatals are always followed by –e). More recently, within an optimality-theoretic framework and through loan word evidence, Lloret and Mascaró (2006) argue again in favor of an active process of depalatalization in Modern Spanish. Taking Lloret and Mascaró as its point of departure, this paper expands the discussion on depalatalization to consider diachronic data and the role of the underlying representation and the perception grammar. Historical data supports depalatalization as an active phenomenon in Old and Medieval Spanish; yet the morphophonological alternations cannot be considered active/productive synchronically. Unlike previous serial models of phonology, an OT framework allows for the incorporation of diachronic data into the analysis, thus explaining how the current situation came about and shedding light on synchronic alternations. OT also provides a formalization of the role of the underlying representation in the diachronic change and in synchronic loanword evidence, thus providing support for depalatalization as an active phonotactic restriction.

Quantitative analysis of harmonic convergence in mosquito auditory interactions

This article analyses the hearing and behaviour of mosquitoes in the context of inter-individual acoustic interactions. The acoustic interactions of tethered live pairs of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, from same and opposite sex mosquitoes of the species, are recorded on independent and unique audio channels, together with the response of tethered individual mosquitoes to playbacks of pre-recorded flight tones of lone or paired individuals. A time-dependent representation of each mosquito's non-stationary wing beat frequency signature is constructed, based on Hilbert spectral analysis. A range of algorithmic tools is developed to automatically analyse these data, and used to perform a robust quantitative identification of the ‘harmonic convergence’ phenomenon. The results suggest that harmonic convergence is an active phenomenon, which does not occur by chance. It occurs for live pairs, as well as for lone individuals responding to playback recordings, whether from the same or opposite sex. Male–female behaviour is dominated by frequency convergence at a wider range of harmonic combinations than previously reported, and requires participation from both partners in the duet. New evidence is found to show that male–male interactions are more varied than strict frequency avoidance. Rather, they can be divided into two groups: convergent pairs, typified by tightly bound wing beat frequencies, and divergent pairs, that remain widely spaced in the frequency domain. Overall, the results reveal that mosquito acoustic interaction is a delicate and intricate time-dependent active process that involves both individuals, takes place at many different frequencies, and which merits further enquiry.

Spanish Morphophonology

In recent years a sizable number of morphophonological phenomena have attracted considerable attention from Spanish phonologists. This article presents a current view of the controversies within the context of two recurring topics: the validity of morphophonological generalizations and the interaction of morphological and phonological processes. Some of the processes discussed are velar and coronal softening, diphthongization, word-classes, stem formatives, nasal depalatalization, diminutive formation and the nature of final -e. It is shown that some phenomena cannot be said to be synchronically active (i.e. coronal and velar softening, final epenthesis, diphthongization, and depalatalization), consisting instead of lexicalized alternants. Plural epenthesis, on the other hand, is argued (contra Bonet) to be an active phenomenon. Pluralization and diminutive formation are said to be morphophonological, not just phonological. Finally, the article addresses the connection between the interaction of morphological and phonological processes to the design of the morphophonological component of the grammar, introducing the issue of a derivational element in non-derivational models of phonology.