Evaluating the Framed Portrait Experience as an Intervention to Enhance Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem in a Sample of Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors: Results of a Pilot Study.

Cancer diagnosis and treatments negatively affect quality of life and developmental processes of adolescents and young adults (AYAs), with self-esteem, self-efficacy, and body image discomfort reported. Despite increasing awareness of the psychosocial issues experienced by this group, a paucity of psychosocial interventions has been developed. This study aims to investigate the Framed Portrait Experience (FPE) as an intervention to promote well-being among AYA cancer survivors. A pilot study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design. The sample included 18 AYA leukemia survivors. Individuals in the intervention group (n = 10) participated in the FPE, a psychosocial program consisting of two sessions. In the first one, starting from the illness narrative recollected by the individual, pictures representing the subject in meaningful contexts are taken. Then, a selected number of pictures are used in a second encounter with a therapist to integrate the disease within past, present, and future of the participant. Survivors in the comparison group (n = 8) were offered usual psychosocial care at the participating institute. Measures of personality traits, coping, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and body image were compared at pre-test and 3 months later. Significant differences in self-efficacy and self-esteem scores were identified at post-test between the intervention and comparison group (p < 0.05). No significant differences were identified for body self-esteem. These findings provide initial evidence supporting the FPE as a low-cost and easy-to-implement intervention to promote self-efficacy and self-esteem among AYA survivors. Further research with larger samples, with more rigorous designs, and different cancer types is needed.

Portraits on the crack user built by the media.

OBJECTIVE: evaluate how the crack user is portrayed by the media. METHOD: qualitative study, using fourth generation evaluation. The data were collected in interviews and field observations in a mental health network service of the Porto Alegre-RS metropolitan area. The participants were 10 users, 11 family members, 08 health service professionals and 07 managers. RESULTS: the findings revealed that media relates the crack user profile to violence, crime and disease, which does not correspond to the reality experienced in the health service. This image disregards the different ways of using the drug and the different productions of life of these individuals, increasing social exclusion and stigma. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: The challenge is to build shared, integrated, clear and honest information.

Portraits on the crack user built by the media / Retratos construidos por los medios de comunicación sobre el usuario de crack / Retratos construídos pela mídia sobre o usuário de crack

ABSTRACT Objective: evaluate how the crack user is portrayed by the media. Method: qualitative study, using fourth generation evaluation. The data were collected in interviews and field observations in a mental health network service of the Porto Alegre-RS metropolitan area. The participants were 10 users, 11 family members, 08 health service professionals and 07 managers. Results: the findings revealed that media relates the crack user profile to violence, crime and disease, which does not correspond to the reality experienced in the health service. This image disregards the different ways of using the drug and the different productions of life of these individuals, increasing social exclusion and stigma. Final considerations: The challenge is to build shared, integrated, clear and honest information.

RESUMEN Objetivo: evaluar cómo el usuario de crack es retratado por los medios de comunicación. Método: estudio cualitativo, utilizando la evaluación de cuarta generación. Los datos fueron recolectados en entrevistas y observaciones de campo en un servicio de la red de salud mental del área metropolitana de Porto Alegre-RS. Participaron 10 usuarios, 11 familiares, 08 profesionales del servicio de salud y 07 gestores. Resultados: Los resultados revelaron que los medios de comunicación divulgan un perfil del usuario de crack vinculado a la violencia, la criminalidad y la enfermedad, lo que no corresponde a la realidad vivida en el servicio de salud. Esta imagen desconsidera las diferentes maneras de uso de la droga y las diferentes producciones de vida de esos individuos, aumentando la exclusión social y el estigma. Consideraciones finales: el desafío es construir informaciones compartidas, integradas, claras y honestas.

RESUMO Objetivo: avaliar como o usuário de crack é retratado pela mídia. Método: estudo qualitativo, utilizando-se avaliação de quarta geração. Os dados foram coletados em entrevistas e observações de campo em um serviço da rede de saúde mental da região metropolitana de Porto Alegre-RS. Os participantes foram 10 usuários, 11 familiares, oito profissionais do serviço de saúde e sete gestores. Resultados: os achados revelaram que a mídia divulga um perfil do usuário de crack ligado à violência, criminalidade e doença, o que não corresponde à realidade vivenciada no serviço de saúde. Essa imagem desconsidera as diferentes maneiras de uso da droga e as diferentes produções de vida desses indivíduos, aumentando a exclusão social e o estigma. Considerações finais: o desafio é construir informações compartilhadas, integradas, claras e honestas.

Reading and writing direction effects on the aesthetic appreciation of photographs.

Does reading and writing direction (RWD) influence the aesthetic appreciation of photography? Pérez González showed that nineteenth-century Iranian and Spanish professional photographers manifest lateral biases linked to RWD in their compositions. The present study aimed to test whether a population sample showed similar biases. Photographs with left-to-right (L-R) and right-to-left (R-L) directionality were selected from Pérez González's collections and presented in both original and mirror-reversed forms to Spanish (L-R readers) and Moroccan (R-L readers) participants. In Experiment 1, participants rated each picture for its aesthetic pleasingness. The results showed neither effects of lateral organization nor interactions with RWD. In Experiment 2, each picture and its mirror version were presented together and participants chose the one they liked better. Spaniards preferred rightward versions and Moroccans preferred leftward versions. RWD therefore affects aesthetic impressions of photography in our participants when people pay attention to the lateral spatial dimension of pictures. The observed directional aesthetic preferences were not sensitive to the sex of the model in the photographs, failing to support expectations from the hypotheses of emotionality and agency. Preferences were attributable to the interaction between general scanning strategies and scanning habits linked to RWD.

Composition in portraits: Selfies and wefies reveal similar biases in untrained modern youths and ancient masters.

Previous analyses suggest that artists prefer poses showing the left side of the subject's face when composing a portrait, but showing the right side when composing their own self-portrait. There is also some evidence that artists may prefer compositions with key features on the right of the picture. Do these findings generalize to spontaneous, pseudo-artistic productions by individuals with no formal training in painting and art history? To investigate this issue, we tested a sample of 104 British schoolchildren and teenagers (mean age = 13.8 years; 80 females). We analysed posing biases in individual photographic self-portraits ("selfies") as well as of self-portraits including also the portrait of a friend ("wefies"). Our results document a bias for showing the left cheek in selfies, a bias for placing the selfie-taker on the right in wefies, and a bias for showing two left cheeks over two right cheeks, again in wefies. These biases are reminiscent of what has been reported for selfies in adult non-artists and for portraits and self-portraits by artists in the 16th-18th centuries. Thus, these results provide new evidence in support of a biological basis for side biases in portraits and self-portraits independently of training and expertise.

Celebrity chefs put their left cheek forward: Cover image orientation in celebrity cookbooks.

Portrait pose orientations influence perception: the left cheek is more emotionally expressive; females' right cheeks appear more attractive. Posing biases are established in paintings, photographs, and advertisements, however, book covers have not previously been examined. This paper assesses cover image orientation in a book genre that frequently features a cover portrait: the celebrity cookbook. If marketers intuitively choose to enhance chefs' emotional expressivity, left cheek poses should predominate; if attractiveness is more important, right cheek poses will be more frequent for females, with a left or no cheek bias for males. Celebrity cookbook covers (N = 493) were sourced online; identity, portrait orientation, photo type, and sex were coded. For celebrity cookbooks, left cheek covers (39.6%) were more frequent than right cheek (31.6%) or midline covers (28.8%); sex did not predict pose orientation. An interaction between photo type and sex bordered on significance: photo type did not influence females' pose orientation; for males, the left cheek bias present for head and torso images was absent for full body and head only photos. Overall, the left cheek bias for celebrity cookbook covers implies that marketers intuitively select images that make the chefs appear happier and/or more emotionally expressive, enhancing engagement with the audience.

O impacto da doença de Alzheimer nos autorretratos de William Utermohlen / The impact of Alzheimer's disease in William Utermohlen's self-portraits / El impacto de la enfermedad de Alzheimer en los autorretratos de William Utermohlen

A doença de Alzheimer (DA) desencadeia o declínio progressivo da função cognitiva, particularmente da memória. A doença compromete o córtex frontal e temporoparietal, impactando nas habilidades cognitivas e motoras do paciente. Neste artigo, descrevem-se as mudanças no estilo visual dos autorretratos do artista norte-americano William Utermohlen, produzidas após o diagnóstico de DA, correlacionando-as com as habilidades analisadas com os testes de função cognitiva, a fim de destacar a magnitude da expressão gráfica para a compreensão desta doença.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) triggers the progressive decline in cognitive function, particularly memory. The disease affects the frontal and temporoparietal cortex, affecting the patient's cognitive and motor skills. This article describes the changes in the visual style of self-portraits by American artist William Utermohlen produced after AD diagnosis, correlating them with skills analyzed with cognitive function tests in order to highlight the magnitude of the graphic expression for the understanding of this disease.

La enfermedad de Alzheimer (EA) desencadena la disminución progresiva de la función cognitiva, particularmente de la memoria. La enfermedad compromete el cortex frontal y parietotemporal, impactando en las habilidades cognitivas y motoras del paciente. En este artículo, se describen los cambios en el estilo visual de los autorretratos del artista norteamericano William Utermohlen, producidos después el diagnóstico de EA, relacionándolos con las habilidades analizadas con pruebas de función cognitiva, a fin de destacar la magnitud de la expresión gráfica para la comprensión de esta enfermedad.

Selfie and the city: a world-wide, large, and ecologically valid database reveals a two-pronged side bias in naïve self-portraits.

Self-portraits are more likely to show the artist's right than left cheek. This phenomenon may have a psychobiological basis: Self-portraitists often copy their subject from mirrors and, if they prefer to present their left cheek (more expressive due to right-lateralization of emotions) to the mirror, this would result in a right-cheek bias in the painting. We tested this hypothesis using SelfieCity (3200 selfies posted on Instagram from December 4 through 12, 2013 from New York, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Moskow, and Bangkok), which includes two selfie-taking styles: a "standard" (photograph of selfie-taker) and a "mirror" (photograph of mirror reflection of selfie-taker) style. We show that the first style reveals a left cheek bias, whereas the second reveals a right cheek bias. Thus side biases observed in a world-wide, large, and ecologically valid database of naïve self-portraits provide strong support for a role of psychobiological factors in the artistic composition of self-portraits.

Pictures of pain: their contribution to the neuroscience of empathy.

The study of empathy, a translation of the term 'Einfühlung', originated in 19th century Germany in the sphere of aesthetics, and was followed by studies in psychology and then neuroscience. During the past decade the links between empathy and art have started to be investigated, but now from the neuroscientific perspective, and two different approaches have emerged. Recently, the primacy of the mirror neuron system and its association with automaticity and imitative, simulated movement has been envisaged. But earlier, a number of eminent art historians had pointed to the importance of cognitive responses to art; these responses might plausibly be subserved by alternative neural networks. Focusing here mainly on pictures depicting pain and evoking empathy, both approaches are considered by summarizing the evidence that either supports the involvement of the mirror neuron system, or alternatively suggests other neural networks are likely to be implicated. The use of such pictures in experimental studies exploring the underlying neural processes, however, raises a number of concerns, and suggests caution is exercised in drawing conclusions concerning the networks that might be engaged. These various networks are discussed next, taking into account the affective and sensory components of the pain experience, before concluding that both mirror neuron and alternative neural networks are likelyto be enlisted in the empathetic response to images of pain. A somewhat similar duality of spontaneous and cognitive processes may perhaps also be paralleled in the creation of such images. While noting that some have repudiated the neuroscientific approach to the subject, pictures are nevertheless shown here to represent an unusual but invaluable tool in the study of pain and empathy.

Put a face to a name: a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of providing clinician photographs on inpatients' recall.

BACKGROUND: Inpatients are visited by many health care providers daily; many cannot remember the name of even one member of their clinical care team. We provided inpatients with photographs of their clinicians and evaluated the impact on patient recall and communication with their health care providers. METHODS: A concealed allocation, randomized controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01658644) was conducted between September 2012 and April 2013 in the general internal medicine wards of a large teaching hospital in Toronto, Canada. Consenting patients were randomized into 3 groups: the control group received the current standard of care; the second group received handouts with the names and roles of their clinical care team; and the third group received handouts with the names, roles, and photographs of their clinical care team. Before discharge, patients completed a survey on their ability to recall their clinicians and were asked to rate the quality of communication with their care team. RESULTS: Of the 186 patients (mean age 61 years, female = 44%) who completed surveys (control n = 60; names n = 65; photos n = 61), those receiving photos in the handout correctly identified significantly more clinicians by photograph (P = .001) and recalled more names (P = .002) than patients assigned to the control group. Regarding the perceived quality of communication, the results did not show differences between the control and intervention groups. CONCLUSION: In this era of patient-centered care, providing patients with more information about who is directly involved with their health care appears to be warranted.

Accuracy and consensus in judgments of trustworthiness from faces: behavioral and neural correlates.

Perceivers' inferences about individuals based on their faces often show high interrater consensus and can even accurately predict behavior in some domains. Here we investigated the consensus and accuracy of judgments of trustworthiness. In Study 1, we showed that the type of photo judged makes a significant difference for whether an individual is judged as trustworthy. In Study 2, we found that inferences of trustworthiness made from the faces of corporate criminals did not differ from inferences made from the faces of noncriminal executives. In Study 3, we found that judgments of trustworthiness did not differ between the faces of military criminals and the faces of military heroes. In Study 4, we tempted undergraduates to cheat on a test. Although we found that judgments of intelligence from the students' faces were related to students' scores on the test and that judgments of students' extraversion were correlated with self-reported extraversion, there was no relationship between judgments of trustworthiness from the students' faces and students' cheating behavior. Finally, in Study 5, we examined the neural correlates of the accuracy of judgments of trustworthiness from faces. Replicating previous research, we found that perceptions of trustworthiness from the faces in Study 4 corresponded to participants' amygdala response. However, we found no relationship between the amygdala response and the targets' actual cheating behavior. These data suggest that judgments of trustworthiness may not be accurate but, rather, reflect subjective impressions for which people show high agreement.

Profile orientation and social distance in portrait painting.

A study of portrait paintings by various artists revealed that the sitter's face is more likely to be illuminated by a light source to the artist's left than to his right. Although the sitter's face may be turned towards the artist's left or right side with equal frequency, the interaction of illumination and profile orientation does not appear to be arbitrary. This finding is interpreted in the context of other findings on left and right in picture perception, and a new explanation of the relationship between profile orientation and the personality of the sitter is offered.

Comparison of eye movements over faces in photographic positives and negatives.

Eye movements were recorded while subjects viewed ordinary portraits and photographic negatives of those portraits. Under both conditions they first studied sixteen portraits and then tried to decide which of forty-eight portraits they had just seen. They made more errors of recognition while viewing negatives, and their fixation patterns were significantly altered: there was a decrease in the percentage of fixations directed to the eyes, nose, and mouth, and an increase for such details as the ears, cheeks, chin, cap, and necktie. There was also a decrease in the ratio of fixations to the most fixated detail compared to the least fixated detail.

A refutation of the hypothesis of the superfidelity of caricatures relative to photographs.

The experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that caricatures, relative to photographs, are 'superfaithful' carriers of information for facial recognition. Subjects were shown fifteen pictures of people's faces and were then asked to pick those same people out of a set of fifty-four pictures. There were three sets of pictures: caricatures, profile-view photographs, and three-quarter-view photographs. There were nine groups of subjects: for three groups the exposure and test stimuli were in the same medium, for six groups the test stimuli were in one of the media not previously seen. Points were scored for the number of people correctly identified and the number of false positives. Facial recognition within medium was very good, but was seriously disrupted by any medium shift, especially those involving caricatures. It is argued that the superfidelity of caricature may be manifest only when the task involves recognition of actual persons rather than their pictures.

Configurational information in face perception.

A new facial composites technique is demonstrated, in which photographs of the top and bottom halves of different familiar faces fuse to form unfamiliar faces when aligned with each other. The perception of a novel configuration in such composite stimuli is sufficiently convincing to interfere with identification of the constituent parts (experiment 1), but this effect disappears when stimuli are inverted (experiment 2). Difficulty in identifying the parts of upright composites is found even for stimuli made from parts of unfamiliar faces that have only ever been encountered as face fragments (experiment 3). An equivalent effect is found for composites made from internal and external facial features of well-known people (experiment 4). These findings demonstrate the importance of configurational information in face perception, and that configurations are only properly perceived in upright faces.

Dealing with complexity in research processes and findings: how do older women negotiate and challenge images of aging?

The Representing Self-Representing Ageing initiative has been funded by the ESRC as part of the New Dynamics of Ageing cross-council research program. It has consisted of four projects with older women using visual research methods and participatory approaches to enable women to articulate their experiences of aging and to create alternative images of aging. Complex research processes were utilized. Innovative methods included the use of art elicitation, photo diaries, film booths, and phototherapy.

How academics face the world: a study of 5829 homepage pictures.

It is now standard practice, at Universities around the world, for academics to place pictures of themselves on a personal profile page maintained as part of their University's web-site. Here we investigated what these pictures reveal about the way academics see themselves. Since there is an asymmetry in the degree to which emotional information is conveyed by the face, with the left side being more expressive than the right, we hypothesised that academics in the sciences would seek to pose as non-emotional rationalists and put their right cheek forward, while academics in the arts would express their emotionality and pose with the left cheek forward. We sourced 5829 pictures of academics from their University websites and found that, consistent with the hypotheses, there was a significant difference in the direction of face posing between science academics and English academics with English academics showing a more leftward orientation. Academics in the Fine Arts and Performing Arts however, did not show the expected left cheek forward bias. We also analysed profile pictures of psychology academics and found a greater bias toward presenting the left check compared to science academics which makes psychologists appear more like arts academics than scientists. These findings indicate that the personal website pictures of academics mirror the cultural perceptions of emotional expressiveness across disciplines.

Sexual portraits: Edward Melcarth and homoeroticism in modern American art.

Although one will not find Edward Melcarth (1914-73) in the best recent histories of male homosexuality and American art, he was not always so spectral. Named in Life magazine in 1950 as one of the best young American artists, he exhibited as a painter, draftsman and sculptor and also practised as an illustrator, photographer and designer. His work survives in the Forbes Collection, in the Smithsonian Institution and in the art archives at the Kinsey Institute. We argue that Melcarth's vision of the erotic was far broader than the traditional categories of sexuality that are perpetuated in art histories of homoeroticism in modern America ­ and that such a revisioning enables a reinterpretation of some of the better known images of homosexual art.