| 1. |
- Arshamian, Artin, et al.
(författare)
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Human sickness detection is not dependent on cultural experience
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 288:1954
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Animals across phyla can detect early cues of infection in conspecifics, thereby reducing the risk of contamination. It is unknown, however, if humans can detect cues of sickness in people belonging to communities with whom they have limited or no experience. To test this, we presented Western faces photographed 2 h after the experimental induction of an acute immune response to one Western and five non-Western communities, including small-scale hunter-gatherer and large urban-dwelling communities. All communities could detect sick individuals. There were group differences in performance but Western participants, who observed faces from their own community, were not systematically better than all non-Western participants. At odds with the common belief that sickness detection of an out-group member should be biased to err on the side of caution, the majority of non-Western communities were unbiased. Our results show that subtle cues of a general immune response are recognized across cultures and may aid in detecting infectious threats.
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| 2. |
- Arshamian, Artin, et al.
(författare)
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Respiration Modulates Olfactory Memory Consolidation in Humans
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Neuroscience. - 0270-6474 .- 1529-2401. ; 38:48, s. 10286-10294
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In mammals respiratory-locked hippocampal rhythms are implicated in the scaffolding and transfer of information between sensory and memory networks. These oscillations are entrained by nasal respiration and driven by the olfactory bulb. They then travel to the piriform cortex where they propagate further downstream to the hippocampus and modulate neural processes critical for memory formation. In humans, bypassing nasal airflow through mouth-breathing abolishes these rhythms and impacts encoding as well as recognition processes thereby reducing memory performance. It has been hypothesized that similar behavior should be observed for the consolidation process, the stage between encoding and recognition, were memory is reactivated and strengthened. However, direct evidence for such an effect is lacking in human and nonhuman animals. Here we tested this hypothesis by examining the effect of respiration on consolidation of episodic odor memory. In two separate sessions, female and male participants encoded odors followed by a 1 h awake resting consolidation phase where they either breathed solely through their nose or mouth. Immediately after the consolidation phase, memory for odors was tested. Recognition memory significantly increased during nasal respiration compared with mouth respiration during consolidation. These results provide the first evidence that respiration directly impacts consolidation of episodic events, and lends further support to the notion that core cognitive functions are modulated by the respiratory cycle.
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| 3. |
- Arshamian, Artin, et al.
(författare)
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The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures
- 2022
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Ingår i: Current Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0960-9822 .- 1879-0445. ; 32:9, s. 2061-2066, e1-e3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint, but individual sensory experience nevertheless varies. In olfaction, it is not known to what degree sensory perception, particularly the perception of odor pleasantness, is founded on universal principles dictated by culture or merely a matter of personal taste. To address this, we asked 225 individuals from 9 diverse nonwestern cultures—hunter-gatherer to urban dwelling—to rank the monomolecular odorants from most to least pleasant. Contrary to expectations, culture explained only 6% of the variance in pleasantness rankings, whereas individual variability or personal taste explained 54%. Importantly, there was substantial global consistency, with molecular identity explaining 41% of the variance in odor pleasantness rankings. Critically, these universal rankings were predicted by the physicochemical properties of out-of-sample molecules and out-of-sample pleasantness ratings given by a tenth group of western urban participants. Taken together, this shows human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles.
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| 4. |
- Burenhult, Niclas, et al.
(författare)
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Olfaction in Aslian ideology and language
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Senses & Society. - 1745-8935. ; 6:1, s. 19-29
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The cognitive- and neuro-sciences have supposed that the perceptual world of the individual is dominated by vision, followed closely by audition, but that olfaction is merely vestigial. Aslian-speaking communities (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula) challenge this view. For the Jahai — a small group of rainforest foragers — odor plays a central role in both culture and language. Jahai ideology revolves around a complex set of beliefs which structures the human relationship with the supernatural. Central to this relationship are hearing, vision and olfaction. In Jahai language, olfaction also receives special attention. There are at least a dozen or so abstract descriptive odor categories that are basic, everyday terms. This lexical elaboration of odor is not unique to the Jahai but can seen across many contemporary Austroasiatic languages and transcends major cultural and environmental boundaries. These terms appear to be inherited from ancestral language states, suggesting a long-standing preoccupation with odor in this part of the world. Contrary to the prevailing assumption in the cognitive sciences, these languages and cultures demonstrate that odor is far from vestigial in humans.
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| 5. |
- Burenhult, Niclas, et al.
(författare)
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The coding of reciprocal events in Jahai
- 2011
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Ingår i: Reciprocals and semantic typology. ; , s. 163-176
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This work explores the linguistic encoding of reciprocal events in Jahai (Aslian, Mon-Khmer, Malay Peninsula) on the basis of linguistic descriptions of the video stimuli of the 'Reciprocal constructions and situation type' task (Evans et al. 2004). Reciprocal situation types find expression in three different constructions: distributive verb forms, reciprocal verb forms, and adjunct phrases containing a body part noun. Distributives represent the dominant strategy, reciprocal forms and body part adjuncts being highly restricted across event types and consultants. The distributive and reciprocal morphemes manifest intricate morphological processes typical of Aslian languages. The paper also addresses some analytical problems raised by the data, such as structural ambiguity and restrictions on derivation, as well as individual variation.
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| 6. |
- Croijmans, Ilja, et al.
(författare)
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Expertise Shapes Multimodal Imagery for Wine
- 2020
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Ingår i: Cognitive science. - : Wiley. - 0364-0213 .- 1551-6709. ; 44:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although taste and smell seem hard to imagine, some people nevertheless report vivid imagery in these sensory modalities. We investigate whether experts are better able to imagine smells and tastes because they have learned the ability, or whether they are better imaginers in the first place, and so become experts. To test this, we first compared a group of wine experts to yoked novices using a battery of questionnaires. We show for the first time that experts report greater vividness of wine imagery, with no difference in vividness across sensory modalities. In contrast, novices had more vivid color imagery than taste or odor imagery for wines. Experts and novices did not differ on other vividness of imagery measures, suggesting a domain-specific effect of expertise. Critically, in a second study, we followed a group of students commencing a wine course and a group of matched control participants. Students and controls did not differ before the course, but after the wine course students reported more vivid wine imagery. We provide evidence that expertise improves imagery, exemplifying the extent of plasticity of cognition underlying the chemical senses.
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| 7. |
- Croijmans, Ilja, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring Multisensory Imagery of Wine : the Vividness of Wine Imagery Questionnaire
- 2019
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Ingår i: Multisensory Research. - : Brill. - 2213-4794 .- 2213-4808. ; 32:3, s. 179-195
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When we imagine objects or events, we often engage in multisensory mental imagery. Yet, investigations of mental imagery have typically focused on only one sensory modality - vision. One reason for this is that the most common tool for the measurement of imagery, the questionnaire, has been restricted to unimodal ratings of the object. We present a new mental imagery questionnaire that measures multisensory imagery. Specifically, the newly developed Vividness of Wine Imagery Questionnaire (VWIQ) measures mental imagery of wine in the visual, olfactory, and gustatory modalities. Wine is an ideal domain to explore multisensory imagery because wine drinking is a multisensory experience, it involves the neglected chemical senses (smell and taste), and provides the opportunity to explore the effect of experience and expertise on imagery (from wine novices to experts). The VWIQ questionnaire showed high internal consistency and reliability, and correlated with other validated measures of imagery. Overall, the VWIQ may serve as a useful tool to explore mental imagery for researchers, as well as individuals in the wine industry during sommelier training and evaluation of wine professionals.
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| 8. |
- Croijmans, Ilja, et al.
(författare)
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Wine Experts' Recognition of Wine Odors Is Not Verbally Mediated
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of experimental psychology. General. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0096-3445 .- 1939-2222. ; 150:3, s. 545-559
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Experts have better memory for items within their domain of expertise. Critically, this does not depend on more efficient use of language. However, this conclusion is based mainly on findings from experts in visual and auditory domains. Olfactory experts constitute an interesting potential counterexample since language has been implicated to be critically involved in odor memory in previous studies. We examined the role language plays in odor recognition memory for wine experts, who typically display better wine odor memory than novices and who are also able to name odors better than lay people. This suggests wine experts' superior recognition memory for odors may be verbally mediated. In 2 experiments, recognition memory for wine odors, wine-related odors, and common odors was tested in wine experts and novices. The use of language was manipulated in Experiment 1 with an overt naming versus no-naming condition, and in Experiment 2, with a verbal interference task inhibiting covert verbalization. Across the two experiments the results showed wine experts have better recognition memory for wines, but not for wine-related or common odors, indicating their memory advantage is expertise specific. Critically, this effect was not verbally mediated, as there was no relationship between experts' ability to name wines and their memory for them. Likewise, directly inhibiting online use of verbalization did not affect memory for wine odors in experts. In sum, once expertise has been acquired, language does not play a causal role in recognition memory for odors.
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| 9. |
- Iqbal, Asifa, et al.
(författare)
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Shopping centers versus traditional open street bazaars: A comparative study of user’s preference in the city of Karachi, Pakistan
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Built Environment. - : Frontiers. - 2297-3362. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Bazaars have always been a center of social, economic, and cultural exchange. Bazaars as public spaces were responsible for creating an ideal public setting to enhance social interactions for everyone. However, over a period of time, the concept of Bazaars has changed. Modern shopping centers seem to be an appropriate alternative to bazaars in terms of accessibility, quality of space, maintenance, sense of safety and security, and leisure activities. Karachi, being the commercial hub of Pakistan, hosts a load of business centers and marketplaces around the city. However, parts of the old bazaars in Karachi have been slowly destroyed to make room for wider streets and roads in Karachi, and new forms of shopping centers have been emerging across the city. This research will investigate the preference of people for traditional bazaars vs. shopping centers and the attribute of shopping centers that aided in their preference. This aim will be achieved by 1) understanding the evolving concepts of public spaces in Karachi and 2) investigating people’s preference for shopping centers vs. Bazaars and the impact of services offered by shopping centers on user satisfaction. A comparative case study technique is used. Data is collected through an online survey in relation to a traditional bazaar and a newly built shopping center in Karachi, Pakistan. The finding results show that the success of shopping centers is generally influenced by indicators like atmosphere, safety, accessibility, and leisure activities while people visit traditional open street bazaars in Karachi for the economical prices and accessibility to public transportation. On the other hand, the avoiding behavior of users towards traditional bazaars is reported due to narrow pathways, unmaintained environment, no parking and toilet facilities, and a large influx of people. Although these results are not the first ones in the literature, they are new in relying on findings from a cosmopolitan city in Pakistan. Finally, this study provides some recommendations that can serve urban planners and other practitioners to integrate these indicators at the earliest conceptual design phases when planning and managing open street bazaars in developing countries.
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| 10. |
- Kruspe, Nicole, et al.
(författare)
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The linguistics of odour in Semaq Beri and Semelai, two Austroasiatic languages of the Malay Peninsula
- 2023
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Ingår i: Studies in Language. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 0378-4177 .- 1569-9978. ; 47:3, s. 599-642
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a long history presuming smell is not expressible in language, but numerous studies in recent years challenge this presupposition. Large smell lexica have been reported around the world thereby showing high lexical codability in this domain. Psycholinguistic studies likewise find smell can be described with relatively high agreement, demonstrating high efficient codability. Often the two go hand-in-hand: languages with high lexical codability also display high efficient codability. This study compares two Austroasiatic (Aslian) languages – Semaq Beri and Semelai – previously shown to diverge in their efficient codability for smell: Semaq Beri showed relatively high efficient codability, whereas Semelai did not. Despite this, we demonstrate that both languages have high lexical codability, i.e., large lexica of basic smell terms. This seems to be a feature of the Aslian language family, suggesting a long-standing preoccupation with odours. More generally, the dissociation between lexical and efficient codability suggests a more nuanced approach towards linguistic expressibility is necessary.
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