"What I thought was so important isn't really that important": international perspectives on making meaning during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the physical and mental health of people everywhere. The aim of the study is to understand how people living in 15 countries around the globe experience an unexpected crisis which threatens their health and that of loved ones, and how they make meaning of this disruption in their narratives. METHODS: Data were collected through an anonymous online survey during May-September 2020, which was during or just after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, depending on the country. The questionnaire included demographic and three open-ended questions as prompts for stories about experiences during the initial months of the pandemic. The text was analyzed through inductive thematic content analysis and quantified for full sample description, demographic and subsequently international comparisons. RESULTS: The final qualitative dataset included stories from n = 1685 respondents. The sample was 73.6% women and 26.4% men. The mean age of participants was 39.55 years (SD = 14.71). The identified four groups of overarching themes were: The presence and absence of others; Rediscovering oneself; The meaning of daily life; Rethinking societal and environmental values. We discuss the prevalence of each theme for the sample as a whole and differences by demographic groups. The most prevalent theme referred to disruptions in interpersonal contacts, made meaningful by the increased appreciation of the value of relationships, present in (45.6%) of stories. It was more prevalent in the stories of women compared to men (χ² = 24.88, p = .001). CONCLUSIONS: The paper provides a detailed overview of the methodology, the main themes identified inductively in the stories and differences according to select demographic variables. We identify several major ways of making meaning of the pandemic. The pandemic has impacted many aspects of people's lives which give it meaning, no matter where they live.

Endoplasmic reticulum stress enhances endocytosis in calreticulin deficient cells.

Calreticulin an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperone that is involved in the quality control process and plays an important role as a regulator of intracellular calcium homeostasis. Previously, we illustrated that loss of calreticulin (crt-/-) results in the activation of ubiquitin-proteasome pathway facilitating the increased resistance to apoptosis. Our preliminary data illustrated a significant increase in the endocytosis in the calreticulin knockout mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (crt-/-). Therefore, we hypothesized that the mechanism for this increased endocytosis in the crt-/- cells is due to onset of ER stress. To test this hypothesis, we measured endocytosis in the wild type (wt) and crt-/- cells using uptake of fluorescent dextran and showed a significant increase in the rate of its uptake in crt-/- cells as compared to wt cells. To determine the endocytic pathway involved we examined both clathrin and caveolin-1 dependent endocytosis. Our results illustrated no change in the expression of clathrin heavy chain while there was a significant increase in the expression of caveolin-1 in the crt-/- cells as compared to the wt cells. Furthermore, using shRNA we illustrated that knockdown of clathrin heavy chain had no effect on endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. While knock-down of caveolin-1 significantly reduced endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. Finally, we illustrated that a chemical chaperone, 4­phenylbutyrate significantly reduced both the endoplasmic reticulum stress and endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. Our data shows for the first time, that ER stress led to enhanced caveolin-1 mediated endocytosis and reversal of ER stress reduces endocytosis.

How Easy is it to Read the Minds of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

How well can neurotypical adults' interpret mental states in people with ASD? 'Targets' (ASD and neurotypical) reactions to four events were video-recorded then shown to neurotypical participants whose task was to identify which event the target had experienced. In study 1 participants were more successful for neurotypical than ASD targets. In study 2, participants rated ASD targets equally expressive as neurotypical targets for three of the events, while in study 3 participants gave different verbal descriptions of the reactions of ASD and neurotypical targets. It thus seems people with ASD react differently but not less expressively to events. Because neurotypicals are ineffective in interpreting the behaviour of those with ASD, this could contribute to the social difficulties in ASD.

Using other minds as a window onto the world: guessing what happened from clues in behaviour.

It has been proposed that mentalising involves retrodicting as well as predicting behaviour, by inferring previous mental states of a target. This study investigated whether retrodiction is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Participants watched videos of real people reacting to the researcher behaving in one of four possible ways. Their task was to decide which of these four "scenarios" each person responded to. Participants' eye movements were recorded. Participants with ASD were poorer than comparison participants at identifying the scenario to which people in the videos were responding. There were no group differences in time spent looking at the eyes or mouth. The findings imply those with ASD are impaired in using mentalising skills for retrodiction.

Can people guess what happened to others from their reactions?

Are we able to infer what happened to a person from a brief sample of his/her behaviour? It has been proposed that mentalising skills can be used to retrodict as well as predict behaviour, that is, to determine what mental states of a target have already occurred. The current study aimed to develop a paradigm to explore these processes, which takes into account the intricacies of real-life situations in which reasoning about mental states, as embodied in behaviour, may be utilised. A novel task was devised which involved observing subtle and naturalistic reactions of others in order to determine the event that had previously taken place. Thirty-five participants viewed videos of real individuals reacting to the researcher behaving in one of four possible ways, and were asked to judge which of the four 'scenarios' they thought the individual was responding to. Their eye movements were recorded to establish the visual strategies used. Participants were able to deduce successfully from a small sample of behaviour which scenario had previously occurred. Surprisingly, looking at the eye region was associated with poorer identification of the scenarios, and eye movement strategy varied depending on the event experienced by the person in the video. This suggests people flexibly deploy their attention using a retrodictive mindreading process to infer events.