Holding eternity in an hour: A practical exploration of the arts in the health care of older people with dementia

This project involved creative artists working with older people with dementia and staff from two Belfast Health and Social Care Trust supported housing centres in a mixed programme of dance, painting, music and drama which culminated in an open workshop with relatives and friends of the tenants. The study steered away from traditional medical models of art/music/dance therapy where the participant is perceived as a ‘patient’ in favour of identifying the participant as a ‘student’ who avails of a life-long learning experience. A key premise was that access to the arts is a human right, especially in the context of advancing age and cognitive impairment. . According to one the tenants of Mullan Mews, the project served to ‘awaken - or reawaken - folk with dementia to the endless vista of possibility already in their lives if they will only look for it’. A phenomenographic analysis of video data generated by the project emphasises the importance of the individual experiences of participants in the programme. The evidence from these storylines gained strength from the development of a documentary-style film text that has proved successful in capturing and translating the live experience of the project participants into a supportive text that goes beyond the written word.

Perceived relevance and foods with health-related claims

Although consumer perception of the health claims and nutrition information has been studied widely there is relatively little understanding about the motivational factors underpinning claim perception. The objective of this study is to investigate how levels of perceived relevance influence consumers’ responses to health claims that either promise to reduce a targeted disease risk or improve well-being in comparison to other types of health-related messages, and how attitudes towards nutritionally healthy eating, functional food and previous experience relating to products with health claims affect the consumers’ perceptions of nutrition and health claims. The data (N=2385) were collected by paper and pencil surveys in Finland, the UK, Germany and Italy on a target group of consumers over 35 year old, solely or jointly responsible for the family’s food shopping. The results showed that relevance has a strong influence on perceptions of personal benefit and willingness to buy products with health claims. However the impact of relevance is much stronger when the health risks are relevant to self than when it is relevant to those close to oneself, especially when the claim promises a targeted risk reduction with detailed information about function and health outcome. Previous experience with products with health claims and interest in nutritionally healthy eating promoted the utility of all claims, regardless of whether they were health or nutrition claims. However, to be influenced by health claims consumers also need to have a positive attitude towards functional food products.

Expertise is perceived from both sound and body movement in musical performance

Music is a rich form of nonverbal communication, in which the movements that expert musicians make during performance can influence the perception of expressive and structural features of the music. Whether the actual skill of a musician is perceivable from vision of movement was examined. In Experiment 1, musicians and non-musicians rated performances by novice, intermediate and expert clarinettists from point-light animations of their movements, sound recordings, or both. Performances by clarinettists of more advanced skill level were rated significantly higher from vision of movements, although this effect was stronger when sound was also presented. In Experiment 2, movements and sound from the novice and expert clarinettists' performances were switched for half the presentations, and were matched for the rest. Ratings of novice music were significantly higher when presented with expert movements, although the opposite was not found for expert sound presented with novice movements. No perceptual effect of raters' own level of musicianship was found in either experiment. These results suggest that expertise is perceivable from vision of musicians' body movements, although perception of skill from sound is dominant. The results from Experiment 2 further indicate a cross-modal effect of vision and audition on the perception of musical expertise. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities

In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to ‘hunker down’ and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on
qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consistent with the contact hypothesis. There is also some support for Putnam’s theory that mixed environments can induce ‘hunkering down’ and that inter-group trust may be compromised. However, our data challenge Putnam’s argument that these responses are a consequence of ‘anomie’ or ‘social malaise’. Rather, we find that withdrawal from social activity in the neighbourhoods we observed was a calculated response at times of threat, often aimed at protecting existent positive inter-ethnic relations.