Towards a Sustainable Local Development of Instructional Material: An Impact Assessment of Locally Produced Videos on EFL Learners' Skills and Individual Difference Factors.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the sustainability of local videos development, their integration in the EFL classroom, and their impact on students' learning outcomes. The research aims as well to assess the impact of the videos on learners' English language skills achievement and individual difference factors. We recruited a random sample of 100 and 76 students learning different levels of English in our English institute through an online survey. A cross-sectional study of perceived English language skill achievement and individual difference factors such as motivation, attitude, and cultural awareness was carried out. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used for data collection and analysis. Our conceptual framework showed that the sustainability of the local video production and its integration in the EFL classroom depends on the university's funding policy, which is subjected to the positive impact of the videos on students' learning outcomes. Also, the obtained results revealed that the videos fostered learners' English language skills as well as their motivation to learn the language, positive attitudes toward its integration, and local cultural awareness. This work contributes to existing knowledge of sustainable local curriculum development by providing the first empirical evidence on the positive impact of sustainable local videos as an instructional material on students' learning outcomes.

Exposure to trauma-relevant pictures is associated with tachycardia in victims who had experienced an intense peritraumatic defensive response: the tonic immobility.

Tonic immobility is an involuntary, last-ditch defensive reaction characterized by physical inactivity in a context of inescapable threat that has been described in many species, including humans. The occurrence of this defensive response is a predictor of the severity of psychiatric disorders and may be considered as an index of an intense reaction to a traumatic event. Here, we investigated whether the retrospective reports of peritraumatic tonic immobility reaction in participants exposed to a traumatic event would modify their cardiac responses to pictures related to their trauma. Using a questionnaire of life-threating events, we selected students who experienced violent crime as their most intense trauma and students who had never experienced a violent crime trauma, but experienced other traumatic events. All participants completed a questionnaire that estimated the intensity of tonic immobility during their most intense trauma. Electrocardiographic recordings were collected during exposure to pictures. Participants viewed emotional pictures (human attack with guns) and neutral pictures. These emotional stimuli were selected to be trauma-relevant to the violent crime group and non trauma-relevant to the no violent crime trauma group. Violent crime group showed a positive correlation between heart rate changes after viewing trauma-related pictures and tonic immobility scores. We observed that low tonic immobility scores were associated with bradycardia and high scores with tachycardia in response to trauma-relevant pictures. For the no violent crime group, no significant correlation was detected. These results suggest that the relevance of the stimuli and the magnitude of the defensive response during a previous trauma event were important factors triggering more intense defensive responses.

Diferenças individuais em mulheres na avaliação da atratividade facial: uma revisão / Individual differences in women in the assessment of facial attractiveness: a review

Este artigo apresenta uma revisão teórica sobre três fatores que podem influenciar no julgamento da atratividade facial: cuidado parental, fatores psicológicos e percepção da dominância, todos relacionados às diferenças individuais. Discute-se se eles afetam os resultados de estudos que envolvam percepção facial, de modo a refutar a hipótese dos hormônios como os maiores influenciadores no julgamento da atratividade. Encontrar as possíveis variáveis que influenciam a atratividade facial pode ajudar a explicar os resultados controversos, além de ampliar o conhecimento sobre a escolha do parceiro. (AU)

This paper is about a review on three factors that may affect the judgment of facial attractiveness: parenting care, psychological factors and dominance. They are all related to individual differences. It is discussed whether they may affect the results of studies involving face perception, refuting the hypothesis that hormones have major influence in attractiveness judgments. Finding possible variables that influence facial attractiveness may help to explain the controversial results in this area broadening our understanding about mate choice. (AU)

Individual differences in the immobility behavior in juvenile and adult rats are associated with monoaminergic neurotransmission and with the expression of corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1 in the nucleus accumbens.

The study of individual differences provides an important methodological approach to analyze the neurobehavioral spectrum of a given cohort in order to understand brain function and disease. Based on immobility time in the forced swimming test (FST) juvenile and adult rats were classified as subgroups with low and high immobility. Afterwards, we compared behavior, neurochemical parameters, and gene expression profiles in some brain areas of rats with low and high immobility only. No differences in the open field test (OFT) were observed between subgroups. Regarding neurochemistry, juvenile animals with low immobility showed higher accumbal dopamine turnover and lower hippocampal norepinephrine concentrations, whereas adult rats only differed for accumbal dopamine, although in an opposite direction from that observed in juveniles. Moreover, the expression of accumbal corticotrophin-releasing factor receptor 1 (CRFR1) was significantly different in animals with low and high immobility at both ages, with animals less immobile showing higher levels of CRFR1 mRNA levels. Taken together, our findings suggest that differences in monoaminergic neurotransmission and CRFR1 expression are associated with the coping strategy adopted by the animal and with the tendency to develop depression-related behaviors. Concerning monoaminergic neurotransmission such association is modulated by age, and such modulation could be related to the differential behavioral results observed between juvenile and adult rats.