Humanities and Social Sciences Communications最新文献

Socio-emotional learning (SEL) is thought to increase children and youth's social competencies such as empathy, however it has not been widely integrated in educational settings. This may be due to a lack of randomized-controlled trial (RCT) designs and objective and quantitative measurements, including of its neurobiological underpinnings, particularly in adolescence. This study examined the effect of a 1-week SEL intervention, and of a group-bonding task within it, on salivary oxytocin levels, and on the Multifaceted Empathy Test, using an RCT design and a repeated measures between subjects ANOVA, in 88 adolescents (35 female and 53 male). We found that salivary oxytocin was increased by performing the group-bonding task (p = 0.007, η²p = 0.089), but the 1-week intervention as whole did not augment this increase. The intervention increased emotional empathy, at a statistical trend level, in females. Lastly, an emotional empathy increase (from the first time to second time performing the group-bonding task) was positively correlated with an oxytocin increase (r = 0.235, p = 0.033), regardless of intervention. These findings point to a positive impact of SEL on emotional empathy, and of group-bonding tasks on endogenous oxytocin release, albeit preliminarily; with further replicatory research warranted.

In Turkey, anti-genderism is notably influenced by top-down politics, which are largely integrated into social engineering within a majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian political agenda. While grassroots support for this agenda remains limited, it is equally challenging to claim that sweeping resistance from below exists against such politics. Social justice activism based on gender issues can be a common ground for front-line workers, activists, and scholars to resist these politics. In this endeavour, a transformative feminist social justice approach is required that highlights the visibility and autonomy of women's and LGBTQ+ movements while also incorporating men's participation. This inclusion is crucial, as top-down anti-gender politics jeopardise these movements' capability to connect with broader society amidst state-sanctioned violence. Despite growing discontent towards the ruling power's political agenda, men may struggle to adopt a gender-sensitive perspective and engage in transformative feminist social justice efforts due to their contentious positionalities in the feminist movement. I identify this struggle as a manifestation of slow violence that hinders sociological and political imaginations for an empowering ethical-political stance required for a radical societal transformation. The article explores possibilities of collaborating with men for lasting social transformation toward gender equality and justice, and preventing gendered violence within a feminist framework using the capabilities approach. Benefiting from four studies on gendered violence in Turkey, the article presents novel and robust insights into men's engagement and proposes the capabilities approach through continuum thinking, emphasising the context of interlinked forms and layered effects of gendered violence alongside ongoing anti-gender politics rooted in masculinist entrenchment. This revealed the challenges male scholars, front-line workers, and activists face in addressing social injustices and violence, highlighting the need for critical reflexivity to overcome these issues. Finally, the article discusses the possible conditions for fostering an environment that can facilitate the cultivation of critical reflexivity for male scholars, front-line workers, activists, and men in general.

Digital resources such as laptops have the potential to improve access to educational resources and provide personalized and uninterrupted learning opportunities for students. The impacts of these technologies may be especially salient in contexts where classroom sizes are large and schooling quality is poor. Here, we study the impacts of access to laptops on foundational math proficiency in one such context, i.e., India, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the implementation of the Tamil Nadu Free Laptop Scheme (TFLS). Introduced in 2011, the TFLS was one of the largest and targeted free laptop programs in the world, distributing over 5 million laptops. Using data from the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) and India Human Development Survey (IHDS) within a double difference design, we show positive effects of access to laptops on foundational math proficiency of students, with the largest improvements experienced by those in economically disadvantaged households. We further find that these positive effects on foundational math proficiency are complemented by improvements in other education-related outcomes of students, such as more time spent on learning, better comprehension of language, and a reduction in private tuition. We provide evidence that laptops are able to close economic and gender divides in education. Our results remain robust to a variety of falsification and sensitivity checks.

In the Replicating a Rembrandt Study project, which revisited the attribution of two portraits of Rembrandt while exploring the strengths and limitations of replication studies in art history, dendrochronological research was carried out to reproduce and replicate research conducted in the 1990s. One of the portraits, at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, Germany, had then been attributed to Rembrandt, whereas the other one, at the collections of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, The Netherlands, was considered a copy. In this study, the reproduction involved reassessing the results obtained for the two panels in the 1990s by comparing the tree-ring measurements produced then with reference oak chronologies from the source area (Poland and the eastern Baltic), and with a third panel from the Rijksmuseum that had matched the wood of the Nuremberg portrait, and seemingly originated from the same oak tree. The replication entailed remeasuring the tree rings in the panels through digital photography and using modern software to compare them to new reference chronologies and the Rijksmuseum panel. Both approaches confirmed the original results, including the southern Baltic provenance of the wood and a same-tree match between the Nuremberg and Rijksmuseum panels. However, the reproduction identified measurement errors in the initial study, while the replication corrected these errors. Furthermore, thanks to the improved reference datasets currently available, the replication provided more accurate interpretations about the felling dates of the trees. This research demonstrates that dendrochronology is a reliable science that should yield consistent results if applied rigorously, regardless of the software or ring-width acquisition method employed. However, for reproducibility, detailed reporting, including reference datasets used and statistical values obtained, is required. Long-term storage of dendrochronological data and digital images from the tree-ring sequences allows for verification and reanalysis without the need to re-examine the artworks. Therefore, it is advised that museums and art collectors commissioning dendrochronological research request dendrochronological reports that contain detailed graphs and information, as well as the shared stewardship of the tree-ring datasets and digital images produced by dendrochronologists.

School career information advice and guidance in England has typically focused on pupils aged 13-18. However, pupils aged under 11 have already formed career aspirations. Career aspirations are used as a proxy for future occupational destinations. This study tracks the individual career aspirations over 3 years for 78 children aged 7-9 at the start of study, from three schools in the North East England taking part in a STEM outreach project. The data are also used to explore the applicability of aspiration development frameworks for younger children. The majority of children were able to name at least one career aspiration with nearly 70% naming more, although these aspirations were drawn from a relatively narrow pool of jobs related to children's interests and jobs they see around them. 38% of the children had the same aspiration over time, but 60% of children changed their careers aspirations completely over the 3 years of the study. Career aspirations were strongly gendered, with boys naming a smaller pool of jobs most often. Between 2019 and 2021, there was an increase in STEM aspirations named by boys, and a decrease by girls. Thematic analysis of the reasons given for different aspirations identified four themes: self-actualisation, altruism, characteristics of the job, and role models. These themes were related to the aspiration frameworks. This study shows that there is both flux and stability in children's aspirations between the ages of 7 and 11. The gendered career choices at both time points indicate that there is a need for educators to challenge stereotypes about who can do what type of job from a much earlier age. All aspirations were drawn from a relatively small pool of job suggesting that introducing children to a wider range of jobs at an earlier age could support development of aspirations.

Provenance studies of ancient white marble provide essential insights into the economic, cultural, and technological dimensions of the Roman Empire. By identifying the geological and geographical origins of marble, such studies illuminate production patterns, trade dynamics, and elite consumption practices across regions. Archaeometric approaches-especially petrography, geochemistry, and isotopic analysis-have become indispensable in this context, particularly when direct quarry evidence is absent. These methods bridge the gap between material science and archaeology, enabling a deeper understanding of how marble circulated, how it was selected, and how it was valued. Despite significant advances in the Western provinces and Asia Minor, the Balkans-and especially Roman Thrace-remain a terra incognita in marble provenance research. This study addresses this gap by investigating the production and distribution of white marble in Thracian cities, villas, and sanctuaries, using a combined archaeological and archaeometrical approach. The findings contribute to reconstructing local quarry exploitation, regional exchange systems, and the integration of Thrace into broader imperial markets. Through this case, the study highlights the significance of marble as both an economic resource and a cultural marker, revising current models of the Roman stone trade in the Eastern Mediterranean.

A lack of a shared understanding of key terms is acknowledged as a significant barrier to interdisciplinary research. This paper examines the ways in which a broadly interdisciplinary team of academics and youth co-researchers involved in mental health research interpreted a number of research and mental health terms that are central to their work in order to understand conceptual differences in how different stakeholder groups approach these terms. Data was collected in four phases (interviews, written responses, and two participatory 'living labs') and was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results revealed a wide disparity in the way participants understood key terms (including: 'research', 'data', 'loneliness', 'safe space' and 'resilience'). Our study highlights the need for more inclusive approaches to mental health research, where diverse perspectives and lived experiences inform both methodology and practice from the outset. In conclusion we suggest a new framework (the EQUITY framework) as a tool to operationalise these findings.

This paper presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) with Monte Carlo sampling, designed to simulate the deterioration processes within a population of objects over time. The model incorporates damage functions with the risk parameters of the ABC framework to simulate adverse events. As a result, it combines continuous and probabilistic degradation. This hybrid approach makes it possible to study the emergent behavior of the system and explore the range of possible lifetimes of collections with cultural value or scientific interest within galleries, museums, archives or libraries. A toy application of the model is tested with paper, with the main outcome of the model being the decay in condition of a collection as a consequence of all the combined degradation processes. The model is based on six hypotheses that are described for further testing. This paper presents a first attempt at a universal implementation of Collections Demography principles, with the hope that it will generate discussion and the identification of research gaps.

Similar to other countries from Central and South-Eastern Europe, Romania's cultural field developed as a literature-centric system. Throughout the process of nation-making and state-building that unfolded starting with the early nineteenth century, literary figures (writers, poets, and other men of letters) have played a critical role in shaping Romanians' historical consciousness and national identity. This paper intersects the conceptual perspective derived from the tenets of critical place-name scholarship with historical contextualisation provided by literary studies to examine the patterns of spatial inscription of literary figures in Romania's urban street names. Using as dataset the entire collection of street names in Romania's cities and towns (N = 49,469), the article analyses who are the canonical writers commemorated in the country's streetscape and how the presence of writers had changed after Romania's regime change of 1989. It then charts the spatial distribution of writers' names across the country's geo-historical regions, investigates the gender disparity, as well as, the ethnic structuring of the literary namescape. The first to combine critical place-name research with literary studies in a quantitative approach to a large-N set of spatial data, the study contributes to several bodies of scholarship by mapping the memorial literaturisation of street nomenclature at the national level as well as its longitudinal dynamics, regional variation, gender disparity, and ethnic structure.

Linguistic choices, crucially including negatively valenced words and divisive messages, can bias people's feelings, thoughts, and judgments. However, these phenomena have been typically captured with small groups in controlled settings, casting doubt on their robustness and ecological validity. Here we examined whether such effects hold in a massive public gathering. During a large TEDx event (n = 3139), participants engaged in an interactive musical game and then evaluated their perception of (active and vicarious) enjoyment and (ingroup and outgroup) performance through surveys that manipulated (a) the initial framing ('divisive' or 'communal') and (b) the questions' valence ('positive', 'neutral', 'negative'). Results showed that negatively valenced words reduced enjoyment and performance ratings, particularly under divisive framings. Active enjoyment also decreased under communal framings. These results were corroborated upon adjusting for sociodemographic variables. Briefly, linguistic manipulations of affect immediately altered a crowd's perception of enjoyment and performance. These insights extend psycholinguistic models and contribute to discussions on public communication.