pragmatism and action

I've been preparing a presentation on action research the last couple of days while at the hospital with Yoojin [he's getting better slowly, we hope he can be set free tomorrow tuesdayy at the latest].

a couple of thoughts from that writing should bring me back to my dissertation, particularly relating to what Peter Reason (2003) was trying to explain about Richard Rorty's pragmatism.. I really a am trying to redescribe something. I think that we all know about emotions -- they clearly fit into the "we all know an emotion, when we see it" category, yet we see different emotions from the same expressions. not always, and maybe not in consistent ways and national culture is hardly the only thing going on with that interpretive process.

how can I redescribe those processes in ways that help people understand one another better?

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Reason, P. (2003). Pragmatist Philosophy and Action Research: Readings and Conversation with Richard Rorty. Action Research, 1(1), 103-123

wanted to post this section of an article I was reading today:

The effects of cultural exposure on neural activation have also been found in the areas of emotion recognition and inferences of intentions. Neural responses to emotional expressions in Japanese and Caucasian faces by native Japanese participants in Japan and Caucasian participants in the United States were examined by Chiao et al. (2008). Distinct neural responses were found in response to ingroup members, with individuals from both cultures showing greater amygdala activation to faces expressing fear of members of their own cultural groups. Moreover, Moriguchi et al. (2005) also found activation to Japanese fear expressions in emotion-related areas of the brain in Caucasians who had lived in Japan for more than a year. These two studies suggest that exposure to a culture can affect neural responses to emotional expressions. In another study, the ability to infer intentions was evaluated from a “reading the mind in the eyes” task used in studies examining the ability to infer intentions and feelings from pictures of the eyes. This task agrees with traditional tests of theory of mind and has been demonstrated to reliably differentiate between nonclinical samples and populations exhibiting psychopathologic disorders marked by impaired theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). Japanese participants showed more activation in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), an area found to be activated in previous neuroimaging studies examining inferences of intentions, when they were judging the intentions of Japanese as compared to American targets from pictures of their eyes. Americans participants showed the opposite pattern, with more STS activation when judging intentions from Caucasian as compared to Japanese eyes (Adams et al., 2009). Thus, there seem to be selective neural responses to cultural ingroup faces, probably due to more exposure to these faces.

here is the link to the full text: http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/18/6/342.full

I often quote Schumann saying something to the effect that psychological behaviors we see and categorize may or may not have neurological representations, and therefore we should be cautious about concluding the absolute veracity of our psychological interpretations, while I simultaneously go about making psychological interpretations :).

it is nice to find this article that seems to support my psychological conclusions on a neurological level! will reference this one (and since I have all the authors' references with links, I hope to read and reference others) in the paper.

final themes (really, I mean it this time!)

I spent the morning revising the themes/codes. this is the final time, I think. but I plan to completely recode the four transcripts, so I could be fooling myself :).

anyway, here they are:

Theme 1. How did they interpret emotion meaning(s)?

• Theme 1.1 [They can’t explain why they “see” the emotion]
• Theme 1.2 [They use a circular definition]
• Theme 1.3 [They use situational interpretation]
• Theme 1.3.1 [Interpretation based on situation in film]
• Theme 1.3.2 [“Reverse” situational interpretation]
• Theme 1.4 [They use a behavioral/paralinguistic interpretation]
• Theme 1.5 [They use a lexical interpretation]
• Theme 1.6 [They use a combination of interpretations] [situational and paralinguistic cues used]
• Theme 1.7 [side note: They use an interpretation embedded in character assessment]. [ie. emotion=characteristic/temperament]

Theme 2. How did scripts play a role?

• Theme 2.1 [Participants recognize the importance of scripts]
• Theme 2.2.1 [Scripts get referenced in proverbs and sayings]
• Theme 2.1.2 [Scripts get referenced in archetypes]
• Theme 2.1.3 [Scripts are gendered].
• Theme 2.1.4 [Scripts can be embedded in certain culturally emotional acts (e.g. “doing noonchi”)]
• Theme 2.1.5 [Scripts can respond to emotional temperament]
• Theme 2.2 [Scripts may require contradictory, masked, or diminished emotional expressions].
• Theme 2.3 [When script is not followed, that creates cognitive dissonance].
• Theme 2.3.1 [Cases of behavior seen dominantly]
• Theme 2.3.2 [Cases where situational appraisal is seen dominantly]
• Theme 2.4 [How do non-natives interpret the scripts of the other]
• Theme 2.4.1 [Non-natives interpret the script accurately]
• Theme 2.4.2 [Non-natives interpret the script inaccurately]
• Theme 2.4.3 [Non-natives interpret the script with partial accuracy!]

Theme 3 How did the focus groups show the social construction of emotional interpretation?

• Theme 3.1 [Participants persuading one another to change their opinion]
• Theme 3.2 [Multiple/complex emotions likely to be “sussed” and discussed]
• Theme 3.3 [The process of “sussing out” the other’s cultural script requires group consideration].

Theme 4 What are the implications for teaching discussed by participants?

• Theme 4.1 [Are movies real?]
• 4.1.1 Movie depictions can accurately represent real life
• 4.1.2 But movie depictions may not be universal
• 4.1.3 Cinema and cinematic effects affect emotional interpretations.
• Theme 4.2 [Questions of linguistics, like language register, diction, and profanity differences may be more important for FL learners].
• Theme 4.3 [FL education’s focus on translation]

trapped

I cannot get any time to work on the dissertation. I have been trapped by revisions on the wiki paper. who knew there were so many different non-parametric statistics?

only one more day on this--less, I hope.

don't let this happen to you

this is your brain. this is your brain doing data analysis




some piles of data

thematic codes

first things first:

• I ejected the ‘basic emotions” stuff to the linguistic counting section . . . the simple point to make from that data is that we humans are not really that basic in our communication of emotions. we need more vocabulary, more than “basic,” to understand one another.
• also completely eliminated the “cognitive/conscious/unconscious/social” stuff, because there are too many definitional problems.

so I am left with four main codes to work through:

1. what did their explanations of their “interpretation of emotions across cultures” look like? (what did they say they were doing as individuals)
2. how did their cultural scripts come into play?
3. when there was disagreement, what social and cognitive processes did they demonstrate in their focus group interactions?
4. finally, what insights we draw for the teaching cross-cultural emotional interpretation?

now I have to sort out the sub themes.

final codes

just want to list the final codes and give a brief summary of my thoughts on each.

ultimately, I have four different sets of codes.

one set is a “linguistic” coding (although more like counting) set. what words did the focus groups use in their discussions? does this linguistic data show that the different groups even though they were looking at identical clips discuss the same or different things? even if they did not use identical words were there synonyms being used in similar discussions? were there things that both Korean groups discussed that neither (or just one) western group did? and vice versa, were there notions that the westerners discussed that the koreans did not? were there things that only one group discussed?

another set is the “intensity” coding comparisons of the basic emotion list. I have yet to do this, but the sample size is small. actually, I think I should drop this, because it mixes the methods more than I would like. in the end, the comparison is going to be statistical and may prove very little. did the Korean groups’ intensity ratings differ significantly form the intensity ratings of the westerners? the standard deviation seem to be fairly broad, so I don't see much chance for statistical significance with a small sample like this one. in the future, this could be a fairly simple correlative study.

a third set of codes is the “channel” coding. what aspects of the communicative event did the westerners and koreans look at in determining what emotions were being expressed? are there differences between and amongst the different groups? there is an excel chart that summarizes these results on a previous post.

the final, hardest, and most important (I think) set is the “thematic” coding. that deserves a separate post.