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This paper explores how cross-institutional Peer Observation of Teaching (PoT) provided a structured opportunity for professional conversations by which observers and observees shared and developed their perspectives on teaching experience and skills. Such professional conversations offer opportunities for both parties to gain a perspective on practices that may have been taken for granted. Participants from three Higher Education institutions engaged in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional PoT, followed by facilitated reflective conversations. This paper captures the factors for success that enabled continuing conversations on teaching and learning and highlights the value of supporting such conversations outside formal, uni-institutional peer observation programmes.

In contrast to cerebral or mentalistic psychological accounts of creative processes, this chapter argues for an approach based within the frameworks of ecological theory and 4E cognition—the idea that psychological functioning is embodied, extended, embedded, and enacted. The chapter considers “everyday” and exceptional notions of the creative process and reviews cognitive models of musical creativity as a form of decision-making, as well as the tension between individualistic and social perspectives. As an alternative, it offers an account that recognizes the reciprocal relationship between materials (instruments, notations, tuning systems, recording/playback systems) and human minds and bodies conceived individually and collectively, drawing attention to four important features of musical creating: (1) the different scales at which it takes place, (2) its temporality, (3) its distributed and collaborative character, and (4) its intimate entanglement with environmental affordances.

This article proposes a sensory studies methodology for the interpretation of museum objects. The proposed method unfolds in two phases: virtual encounter via an on-line catalog and actual exposure in the context of a handling workshop. In addition to exploring the écart between image and object, the “Sensing Art and Artifacts” exercise articulates a framework for arriving at a multisensory, cross-cultural, interactive understanding of aesthetic value. The case studies presented here involve four objects from the collection of the Hunterian Museum as sensed and interpreted by scholars of psychology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. It is proposed that aesthetic judgment in the expanded (cross-cultural) sense contemplated here involves apprehending the museum object through multiple sensory modalities in place of the conventional Western fixation on visible form.

Aim The aim of the study was to investigate the level of preparedness of newly qualified Irish-trained doctors for prescribing, and to investigate their attitudes towards prescribing and prescribing education, through a national survey. Methods A 29-item online survey was distributed to 686 newly qualified doctors 1 month prior to the completion of their first year of clinical practice (internship). Only graduates from Irish medical schools were included. Results The response rate was 20.4% (n = 140; female : male 56%:44%). The majority of respondents felt confident in prescription writing (89%), medication history taking (81%) and accessing drug information in the hospital setting (80%). Only 58% of respondents felt confident in drug dose calculation, and 35% felt confident in preparing and administering drugs. When asked if their undergraduate medical education had prepared them for prescribing in clinical practice, 28% of respondents agreed. Confidence that their undergraduate education had prepared them was associated with receiving formal training in prescribing skills (P = 0.0045; 27% vs. 0%). Thirty-seven per cent of respondents agreed that they felt stressed about prescribing medications. Conclusion This survey of newly qualified doctors in Ireland found that only 28% of respondents agreed that their undergraduate medical education had prepared them for prescribing, which was comparable to a previous survey of UK medical students and graduates. Investigating confidence and preparedness for prescribing provides important insights for educators. Dedicated teaching of prescribing, with an emphasis on practical training and assessment, may help graduates to feel more prepared for the challenges of prescribing in the clinical setting.

Objective. To design, deliver and evaluate a National Pharmacy Internship Programme to meet the educational needs of pharmacy graduates for registration as competent pharmacists, recognising the learning by way of an educational award. Methods. The programme was designed as a twelve month, full-time, blended-learning, competency-based programme leading to an educational award at Master’s Level. Intern performance was assessed academically and by pharmacy tutor (preceptor) appraisals. Interns who demonstrated competency were invited to sit the Professional Registration Examination (PRE). Feasibility and performance were evaluated and a longitudinal approach allowed intern and tutor views to be compared to the former pre-registration year. Results. Overall performance in the PRE was good and relatively consistent with almost all interns proceeding to register as pharmacists. Interns expressed a view that the programme had enabled them to develop the knowledge, skills and overall competencies required for future independent practice as a pharmacist. Tutors considered the programme to have built on prior learning and provided a sufficiently rounded experience for professional practice. Tutors also expressed the view that the programme was an improved educational experience over the former, less structured, pre-registration training. Conclusion. The National Pharmacy Internship Programme was a structured, competency-based programme at Master’s Level. The education and training was perceived to be an improvement on the previous pre-registration year. The programme quality assured pharmacy education outcomes at entry-to-practice on a national basis, and uniquely recognised the learning by way of an educational award.

Complementing the 2011 publication Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives, this edited volume of 17 essays is organized into three parts. The chapters in Part I (‘Music, consciousness, and the four Es’) question the assumption that consciousness is a matter of what is going on in individual brains, and investigate the ways in which musical consciousness arises through our embodied experience, is embedded in our social and cultural existence, extends out into world, and is manifested as we enact our relationships with and within it. Part II (‘Consciousness in musical practice’) engages with music as a corporeal and culturally embedded practice, conjoining individuals in the social sphere, and extending consciousness across actual and virtual spaces. The chapters in this part explore composition, improvisation, performance, and listening as practices, and consider how music, a paradigmatic example of meaningful action, reveals consciousness as grounded in doing, as well as being. Part III (‘Kinds of musical consciousness’) considers the nature of consciousness under a wide range of musical situations. The chapters in this part seek to deconstruct any invidious distinction between everyday and altered states of consciousness, suggesting that, through the manifold range of experiences it affords, music discloses consciousness across a phenomenological continuum encompassing multiple modalities. Taken as a whole, the volume exemplifies many fertile ways in which music studies can draw upon and contribute to larger debates about consciousness more generally.

Consciousness, both generally and in music, has been regarded as an individual capacity or attribute, despite increasing recognition of the extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive character of the human mind, and the intersubjectivity of human experience. This chapter proposes empathy as a fruitful way to engage with the collective quality of musical consciousness. It touches upon broader and narrower conceptions of empathy, and considers the ways in which aesthetic objects, including music, as well as living subjects, can afford empathic engagement. A discussion of neuroscientific, psychological, and cultural understandings of empathy leads to a consideration of empirical evidence for musically mediated empathy, and a more speculative attempt to understand people’s ‘strong experiences with music’ in terms of empathic musical consciousness—with a particular focus on the voice. Recordings of performances by Janis Joplin and Chet Baker illustrate what it is about their voices that may afford empathic engagement and a palpable sense of intersubjective musical consciousness.

Background The use of mobile devices such as tablets and laptops by students to support their learning is now ubiquitous. The clinical setting is an environment, which lends itself to the use of mobile devices as students are exposed to novel clinical scenarios that may require rapid location of information to address knowledge gaps. It is unknown what preferences students have for these devices and how they are used in the clinical environment. Methods In this study we explored medical students’ choices and their use of different devices in their first year of clinical attachments. We sought to evaluate learners’ experiences with these devices using a mixed methods approach. All students newly entered into the clinical years were given the option of a MacBook Air or iPad. We surveyed these students using an online survey tool followed by individual semi-structured interviews to explore survey findings in more depth. Results Students owned a multitude of devices however their preferences were for the 11 in. MacBook Air Laptop over the iPad mini. Students made constant use of online information to support their clinical learning, however three major themes emerged from the interview data: connection and devices (diverse personal ownership of technology by students and how this is applied to source educational materials), influence and interaction with patients (use of any device in a clinical setting) and influence and interaction with staff. In general students preferred to use their device in the absence of patients however context had a significant influence. Conclusions These mobile devices were useful in the clinical setting by allowing access to online educational material. However, the presence of patients, and the behaviour of senior teaching staff significantly influenced their utilisation by students. Understanding the preferences of students for devices and how they use their preferred devices can help inform educational policy and maximise the learning from online educational content.

E-Learning is becoming an integral part of undergraduate medicine, with many curricula incorporating a number of online activities and resources, in addition to more traditional teaching methods. This study examines physical attendance, online activity, and examination outcomes in a first-year undergraduate medical program. All 358 students who completed the Alimentary System module within the first semester of the program were included, 30 of whom were repeating the year, and thus the module. This systems-based, multidisciplinary module incorporated didactic lectures, cadaveric small group tutorials and additional e-Learning resources such as online histology tutorials. Significant differences were demonstrated in physical attendance and utilization of online resources between repeating students and those participating in the module for the first time. Subsequent analyses confirmed that physical attendance, access of online lecture resources, and utilization of online histology tutorials were all significantly correlated. In addition, both physical attendance and utilization of online resources significantly correlated with summative examination performance. While nonattendance may be due to a variety of factors, our data confirm that significant differences exist in both physical attendance and online activity between new entrants and repeating students, such that all students repeating a module or academic year should be routinely interviewed and offered appropriate supports to ensure that they continue to engage with the program. While the development of complex algorithmic models may be resource intensive, using readily available indices from virtual learning environments is a straightforward, albeit less powerful, means to identify struggling students prior to summative examinations. Anat Sci Educ 9: 555-564. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.

This paper, followed by two responses, discusses the application of ecological theory to an understanding of a number of issues in the aesthetics of music. It argues for an understanding of music as based in event perception, with an expanded conception of the sources that are specified by those events. Building on the theory of affordances, it considers the limitations of an information theoretic conception of musical complexity, discusses the importance of perceptual learning (understood as shaping by a structured environment) in understanding the affordances of music for different listeners, and raises the challenging problem of the terms in which musical materials might be appropriately described. The apparent tension between ecological and aesthetic positions—in which adaptation and accommodation seem to be at odds with a modernist aesthetic perspective which prioritizes the unsettling and defamiliarizing function of art—is confronted, before the paper concludes with some observations about different disciplinary perspectives on aesthetics, and matters of specificity and generality.

This chapter investigates the relationship between the fluid practices that frequently characterize the work of contemporary musicians, and the more solid roles of performer and composer that continue to hold sway in contemporary music. Focusing on a case study of the collaborative creation of Forlorn Hope for eleven-string alto guitar and electronics, by Gorton and Östersjö, the chapter analyses the processes that lead from research and experimentation with particular guitar tunings and playing techniques, through a more conventionally compositional phase, to the first public performance of the piece. The chapter demonstrates how the affordances of both the instrument in the hands of Östersjö and the particular tuning specified by Gorton combined with improvised discoveries, and the ‘filtering’ force of a piece by Dowland, result in a piece whose creative ecology is distributed across a variety of timescales and practices.

In an article entitled 'Sexist Pulp ads attacked', the Independent on Sunday (IoS) reported public reaction to the posters advertising Pulp's new album This is Hardcore (posters had been defaced with the words 'this is sexist'), and described the advertisements as part of a turn away from political correctness towards a new 'anything goes' realism (Kelly and Clay 1998). The poster shows the naked upper torso of a woman face down on a red leather cushion, in an awkward and ambivalent posture, with lipsticked, half-open mouth. Emblazoned across the centre of the image (which is a reproduction of the album cover) are the words 'This is Hardcore' in pink capitals. A leader in the paper on the same day, under the heading 'This is violent. This is offensive', interprets the image as a demeaning, sexist and violent representation of women and as an offence to the record-buying public. The leader asserts that 'Just to sell a few songs, it shows a woman violated', and concludes with the words: 'To ban it [the poster] now would only generate more publicity for Pulp. So the only advice we have is for anyone thinking of buying the album. Don't bother.' (IoS Leader, 1998, p. 4) Whether or not the image is really as demeaning as the IoS suggests (a matter to which we return), there are two possible interpretations of the newspaper's advice. Either the IoS assumes that the album is completely compromised by its offensive advertising, utterly discrediting any critical meaning or value that the music might have; or it assumes an identity between the advertising and album in which the music is as violent and offensive as the poster. In this second case, a fundamental issue is raised: how is it possible to attribute social content (in this case qualities such as 'violence against women', or 'offensiveness') to music? Furthermore, how might music be identified as having either a critical or an affirmative stance towards any such content? This paper is an attempt to show, for the specific case of 'This is Hardcore', that the music does indeed have a critical quality, albeit of a rather uncomfortable kind, and that the IoS's verdict on both the album and the poster is superficial and hasty. Although arguably many of the tracks on the album deal with related issues using methods similar to those discussed below, for the purposes of this paper we focus solely on the title track of the album. We start with the question: Is the track about the same subject matter as the poster, and if so how? An obvious place to start is with the words: the opening line of the track ('You are hardcore. You make me hard.') is unambivalent in its declaration that this is a track about a male experience of sex. In terms of content, the text contains few indications of a critical attitude to its subject matter - except perhaps for the lines 'It's what men in stained raincoats pay for' and 'I've seen the storyline played out

This chapter explores some aspects of the role of the body in performance, focusing on the case study of two performances by the same pianist of a single piece of music. In common with the dominant trend in modern cognitive psychology, a great deal of the psychology of music has adopted an almost entirely 'disembodied' approach to its matter. As a physical skill, musical performance has attracted the interest of cognitive psychologists studying complex spatial and temporal skills. Within the small number of existing empirical studies explicitly focusing on body movement in musical performance, Davidson, 1995 has demonstrated that information about both structural features and expressive intentions is communicated to observers through body movement. Finally there is an issue of causality: we neither want to assert that body movement determines the interpretation of structure, nor that a performer's conception of musical structure determines body movement.

Background: In mental health services what is commonplace across international frontiers is that to prevent aggressive patients from harming themselves, other patients or staff, coercive measures and foremost, violence management strategies are required. There is no agreement, recommendations or direction from the EU on which measures of coercion should be practiced across EU countries, and there is no overall one best practice approach. Methods: The project was conceived through an expert group, the European Violence in Psychiatry Research Group (EViPRG). The study aimed to incorporate an EU and multidisciplinary response in the determination of violence management practices and related research and education priorities across 17 European countries. From the EVIPRG members, one member from each country agreed to act as the national project coordinator for their country. Given the international spread of respondents, an eDelphi survey approach was selected for the study design and data collection. A survey instrument was developed, agreed and validated through members of EVIPRG. Results: The results included a total of 2809 respondents from 17 countries with 999 respondents who self-selected for round 2 eDelphi. The majority of respondents worked in acute psychiatry, 54% (n = 1511); outpatient departments, 10.5% (n = 295); and Forensic, 9.3% (n = 262). Other work areas of respondents include Rehabilitation, Primary Care and Emergency. It is of concern that 19.5% of respondents had not received training on violence management. The most commonly used interventions in the management of violent patients were physical restraint, seclusion and medications. The top priorities for education and research included: preventing violence; the influence of environment and staff on levels of violence; best practice in managing violence; risk assessment and the aetiology and triggers for violence and aggression. Conclusion: In many European countries there is an alarming lack of clarity on matters of procedure and policy pertaining to violence management in mental health services. Violence management practices in Europe appear to be fragmented with no identified ideological position or collaborative education and research. In Europe, language differences are a reality and may have contributed to insular thinking, however, it must not be seen as a barrier to sharing best practice.

In music, the rhythms of different instruments are often syncopated against each other to create tension. Existing perceptual theories of syncopation cannot adequately model such kinds of syncopation since they assume monophony. This study investigates the effects of polyphonic context, instrumentation and metrical location on the salience of syncopations. Musicians and nonmusicians were asked to tap along to rhythmic patterns of a drum kit and rate their stability; in these patterns, syncopations occurred among different numbers of streams, with different instrumentation and at different metrical locations. The results revealed that the stability of syncopations depends on all these factors and music training, in variously interacting ways. It is proposed that listeners’ experiences of syncopations are shaped by polyphonic and instrumental configuration, metrical structure, and individual music training, and a number of possible mechanisms are considered, including the rhythms’ acoustic properties, ecological associations, statistical learning, and timbral differentiation.

“Strong experiences of music”—to use Alf Gabrielsson’s (2011) term—commonly, but apparently paradoxically, seem to involve people in both losing themselves and finding themselves in music. How can this be? Who or what is lost, and, equally, who or what is found, and how can they both happen together? In this paper I offer an approach to these questions, framed within the perspectives of musical consciousness and musical subjectivity, that attempts to bring together perceptual, emotional and embodied components of musical experience, embedded in the ecology of everyday listening. In doing so, I also argue for the importance of paying proper attention to phenomenological qualities of listeners’ experiences, for the historically specific and changing nature of human subjectivity experienced through music, and for a dynamic and animated understanding of musical engagement.

If there is a topic on which the humanities might make a distinctive claim, it is that of consciousness—an essential aspect of human being. And within the humanities, music might make its own claims in relation to both consciousness and being human. To investigate this connection, David Clarke and Eric Clarke brought together a wide variety of contributors in the book Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011). The collection contributes to debates in consciousness studies at large, but also maps out areas peculiar to music and consciousness. Additionally, it lays bare the sheer multiplicity of discourses that emerges when consciousness is approached from even a single field of inquiry, such as music. If this poses a challenge for arriving at any agreed notion of consciousness (in relation to music or otherwise), this instability is something that might be best embraced rather than ‘resolved’. While the study of music and consciousness affirms the importance of the humanities, this is not to foreclose dialogue with scientific disciplines, even as this means maintaining awareness of how the different discursive formations of the humanities and sciences may connote different—and frequently incommensurable—sensibilities and values.

Recent empirical evidence suggests that – like other synchronized, collective actions – making music together with others fosters affiliation and pro-social behaviour. However, it is not yet known whether these effects are limited to active, interpersonal musical participation, or whether solitary music listening can also produce similar effects. This study examines the hypothesis that listening to music from a specific culture can evoke implicit affiliation towards members of that culture more generally. Furthermore, we hypothesized that listeners with high trait empathy would be more susceptible to the effects. Sixty-one participants listened to a track of either Indian or West African popular music, and subsequently completed an Implicit Association Test measuring implicit preference for Indian versus West African people. A significant interaction effect revealed that listeners with high trait empathy were more likely to display an implicit preference for the ethnic group to whose music they were exposed. We argue that music has particular attributes that may foster affective and motor resonance in listeners.

One of the most immediate and overt ways in which people respond to music is by moving their bodies to the beat. However, the extent to which the rhythmic complexity of groove-specifically its syncopation-contributes to how people spontaneously move to music is largely unexplored. Here, we measured free movements in hand and torso while participants listened to drum-breaks with various degrees of syncopation. We found that drum-breaks with medium degrees of syncopation were associated with the same amount of acceleration and synchronisation as low degrees of syncopation. Participants who enjoyed dancing made more complex movements than those who did not enjoy dancing. While for all participants hand movements accelerated more and were more complex, torso movements were more synchronised to the beat. Overall, movements were mostly synchronised to the main beat and half-beat level, depending on the body-part. We demonstrate that while people do not move or synchronise much to rhythms with high syncopation when dancing spontaneously to music, the relationship between rhythmic complexity and synchronisation is less linear than in simple finger-tapping studies.

The aim of the study was to investigate the level of preparedness of newly qualified Irish-trained doctors for prescribing, and to investigate their attitudes towards prescribing and prescribing education, through a national survey.A 29-item online survey was distributed to 686 newly qualified doctors 1 month prior to the completion of their first year of clinical practice (internship). Only graduates from Irish medical schools were included.The response rate was 20.4% (n = 140; female : male 56%:44%). The majority of respondents felt confident in prescription writing (89%), medication history taking (81%) and accessing drug information in the hospital setting (80%). Only 58% of respondents felt confident in drug dose calculation, and 35% felt confident in preparing and administering drugs. When asked if their undergraduate medical education had prepared them for prescribing in clinical practice, 28% of respondents agreed. Confidence that their undergraduate education had prepared them was associated with receiving formal training in prescribing skills (P = 0.0045; 27% vs. 0%). Thirty-seven per cent of respondents agreed that they felt stressed about prescribing medications.This survey of newly qualified doctors in Ireland found that only 28% of respondents agreed that their undergraduate medical education had prepared them for prescribing, which was comparable to a previous survey of UK medical students and graduates. Investigating confidence and preparedness for prescribing provides important insights for educators. Dedicated teaching of prescribing, with an emphasis on practical training and assessment, may help graduates to feel more prepared for the challenges of prescribing in the clinical setting.

Over the last few decades, a growing amount of research has suggested that dyslexics have particular difficulties with skills involving accurate or rapid timing, including musical timing skills. It has been hypothesised that music training may be able to remediate such timing difficulties, and have a positive effect on fundamental perceptual skills that are important in the development of language and literacy skills (Overy, 2000). In order to explore this hypothesis further, the nature and extent of dyslexics' musical difficulties need to be examined in more detail. In the present study, a collection of musical aptitude tests (MATs) were designed specifically for dyslexic children, in order to distinguish between a variety of musical skills and sub-skills. 15 dyslexic children (age 7-11, mean age 9.0) and 11 control children (age 7-10, mean age 8.9) were tested on the MATs, and their scores were compared. Results showed that the dyslexic group scored higher than the control group on 3 tests of pitch skills (possibly attributable to slightly greater musical experience), but lower than the control group on 7 out of 9 tests of timing skills. Particular difficulties were noted on one of the tests involving rapid temporal processing, in which a subgroup of 5 of the dyslexic children (33%) (mean age 8.4) was found to account for all the significant error. Also, an interesting correlation was found between spelling ability and the skill of tapping out the rhythm of a song, which both involve the skill of syllable segmentation. These results support suggestions that timing is a difficulty area for dyslexic children, and suggest that rhythm skills and rapid skills may need particular attention in any form of musical training with dyslexics.

The development of recording is arguably the most significant change to have affected music in the twentieth century. Never before have people had access to so much music and in so many different ways and with so many different patterns of use. This paper examines some of the effects of recording on listening, starting with a brief outline of an ecological theory of listening and focusing on three specific characteristics of recordings: the interpenetration of music and the wider environment; recordings as medium and as object; and the relationship between social and solitary listening practices. Recording has attracted both utopian and dystopian commentaries on its effects on musical culture, and the paper concludes by considering both the opportunities and the drawbacks of recordings as a means of access to music.

This article documents and analyses a creative collaboration between the composer Jeremy Thurlow and the violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved in the production of Ouija, a work for solo violin and laptop computer. The article situates the account of this creative process within recent literature on distributed and collaborative creativity, and focuses on three aspects of the project: verbal interaction between the two musicians, analysed in terms of ‘creative-talk’ and ‘face-talk’, and the relationship between immediate and more contextual concerns (‘inside/outside the room’); a quantitative analysis of changes in the musical material, focusing on timing; and a qualitative analysis of the role of the violinist's embodied and instrumental engagement with the music. The article discusses the findings in relation to forwards-orientated (process) and backwards-orientated (product) conceptions of creativity, the operation of different social components in creative collaboration and the relationship between craft, history and embodiment.

Music is capable of conveying emotional meaning and eliciting emotional responses. In musical performance, emotional expression is communicated through auditory cues such as articulation, timbre, vibrato, dynamics, and timing (Gabrielsson, 1999; Juslin & Timmers, 2010; Palmer, 1997), as well as by means of visual cues such as body posture, gestures, and facial expressions (Dahl & Friberg, 2007; Davidson, 1993, 1994; Thompson, Russo, & Quinto, 2008). Research conducted over the past two decades has unequivocally established that visual cues contribute significantly to observers' perceptions of the expressivity (Davidson, 1993, 1994; Vuoskoski, Thompson, Clarke, & Spence, 2014) and emotional expression (Dahl & Friberg, 2007; Krahe, Hahn, & Whitney, 2015; Thompson et al., 2008) of a musical performance, but less is known about the role of visual cues in the emotional responses that are elicited. Although some previous studies have attempted to investigate the effect of visual performance cues on observers' experienced emotions (Krahe et al., 2015; Vines, Krumhansl, Wanderley, Dalca, & Levitin, 2011), the challenges involved in distinguishing experienced emotion from perceived emotion using self-report (cf. Konecni, 2008) render the implications of the findings unclear.The psychological mechanisms of music-induced emotion have chiefly been considered from a unisensory, auditory perspective (Juslin & Vastfjall, 2008; Scherer & Zentner, 2001). Despite the fact that Juslin and Vastfjall actually proposed visual imagery as one of the potential mechanisms by which music can induce emotional responses in listeners, they discuss this mechanism in terms of nonmusical visual imagery that is conjured up by the music (such as images of nature, for example) rather than performance-related imagery. However, some theories of musicinduced emotion directly predict that the observation of a musical performance through multiple sensory modalities-auditory and visual-ought to lead to an enhanced, or more intense, emotional response (Livingstone & Thompson, 2009; Molnar-Szakacs & Overy, 2006). Molnar-Szakacs and Overy proposed that through the coupling of perception and action-a kind of "simulation" of the actions and affective cues present in musical performance-the mirror neuron system might account for some of the emotional responses that are elicited by music. Mirror neurons-first discovered in the macaque monkey-fire both when we perform a goal-directed action, and when we observe (see or hear) another agent performing the same action (di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, & Rizzolatti, 1992; Gallese, 2006; Kohler et al., 2002). In the context of musical performance, the mirror neuron system may respond to sound-producing actions as well as to the emotional expression conveyed by the performance (i.e., resonating with those auditory and gestural features in the music that resemble vocal and motor expressions of emotion; Overy & MolnarSzakacs, 2009). Although we are able to hear and mirror these actions and affective cues by means of auditory information alone (Kohler et al., 2002; Molnar-Szakacs & Overy, 2006), it has been hypothesized that the activation of multiple channels-auditory and visual-may result in a heightened emotional response due to the broader range of actions and cues available for mirroring (Livingstone & Thompson, 2009).This view, proposed by Livingstone and Thompson (2009), subsequently received empirical support: A recent meta-analysis revealed that-compared with audio-only presentations-audiovisual presentations consistently enhance observers' appreciation (defined as "liking," perceived "expressiveness," "overall quality," and "overall impression") of a musical performance (Platz & Kopiez, 2012). Moreover, Chapados and Levitin (2008) reported that observers' emotional reactivity to clarinet performances- measured using psychophysiological indices of emotional arousal- was heightened in the audiovisual presentation condition (as compared with the audio-only and video-only conditions). …

Recently, Vuoskoski, Thompson, Clarke, and Spence (2014) demonstrated that visual kinematic performance cues may be more important than auditory performance cues in terms of observers’ ratings of expressivity perceived in audiovisual excerpts of piano playing, and that visual kinematic performance cues had crossmodal effects on the perception of auditory expressivity. The present study was designed to extend these findings, and to provide additional information about the roles of sight and sound in the perception and experience of musical performance. Experiment 1 investigated the relative contributions of auditory and visual kinematic performance features to participants’ subjective emotional reactions evoked by piano performances, while Experiment 2 was designed to explore the effect of visual kinematic cues on the perception of loudness and tempo variability. Experiment 1 revealed that visual performance cues seem to be just as important as auditory performance cues in terms of the subjective emotional reaction of the observer, thus highlighting the importance of non-auditory cues for music-induced emotions. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that visual kinematic cues only affected ratings of loudness variability, but not ratings of tempo variability.

Aim. To incorporate an international and multidisciplinary consensus in the determination of the research and education priorities for wound healing and tissue repair. Background. A compelling reason for the study is the lack of an agreed list of priorities for wound care research and education. Furthermore, there is a growth in the prevalence of chronic wounds, a growth in wound care products and marketing, and an increase in clinician attendance at conferences and education programmes. Design. The study used a survey method. Methods. A four-round eDelphi technique was used to collect responses from an international population of health professionals across 24 countries. Results. Responses were obtained from 360 professionals representing many health care settings. The top education priorities related to the standardisation of all foundation education programmes in wound care, the inclusion of wound care in all professional undergraduate and postgraduate education programmes, selecting dressings and the prevention of pressure ulcers. The top research priorities related to the dressing selection, pressure ulcer prevention and wound infection. Conclusion. Professionals from different backgrounds and countries who are engaged in wound management share a common set of priorities for research and education. Most notably, the priorities identified relate to long-established clinical challenges in wound care and underpin the principles of good patient care practices. The priorities are closely allied to an ageing population and identify many challenges ahead for practitioners engaged in wound management services. Relevance to clinical practice. The provision of wound care is a major investment of health service resources and remains a clinical challenge today. Research is essential to building evidence-based practice and fundamental to development of quality in standards of practice; education is central to achieving competence to deliver effective care. The determination of research and education priorities is therefore an absolute requirement in developing services.

SummaryWe investigated how young adults aged 18-29 years would like to be notified of chlamydia screening test results, and, when they test positive, their willingness and preferred mechanism for informing their partners. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 6085 young adults and found that a call to their mobile phone was their preferred way of receiving positive test results (selected by 50%), followed by email. Text messages (short message service [SMS]) and calls to landline phones were unpopular options, selected by between 5 and 10%. Over 75% of respondents stated they would inform their current partner of a positive chlamydia diagnosis, and 50% would inform their previous partners. Most were willing to receive yearly reminders to go for a chlamydia test. Young adults preference for being informed of chlamydia test results by mobile phone call, rather than by email or SMS text, especially if they test positive, suggests they place high value on the security of the communication mechanism. Offering a range of mechanisms for receipt of test results may increase the acceptability and coverage of sexually transmitted infection (STI) control strategies.

Background This study measured the acceptability of urine-based chlamydia screening to young adults, where young adults wanted opportunistic chlamydia screening services to be located, and by whom they wanted to be offered screening. Methods A cross-sectional survey of 5685 university students and 400 young adult healthcares setting attendees (age: 1829 years). Results Ninety-six percent of males and 93 of females said that they would find it acceptable to be offered chlamydia screening. Seventy-six percent of males and 77 of females wanted to be offered screening by a doctor or nurse. Young women would prefer female staff. Most respondents preferred that screening be located in traditional healthcare settings such as General Practices, and offered by either doctors or nurses. More than 90 of respondents did not want screening services to be located in pharmacies and almost all rejected public non-health care screening settings. Conclusions Opportunistic chlamydia screening services should be located in traditional healthcare/medical settings, and screening should be offered by doctors and nurses.

"School for Surgeons" is a web-based distance learning program which provides online clinical-based tutorials to surgical trainees. Our aim was to determine surrogates of active participation and to assess the efficacy of methods to improve usage. Server logs of the 82 participants in the "School for Surgeons" were assessed for the two terms of the first year of the program. Data collected included total time online, mean session time, page requests, numbers of sessions online and the total number of assignments. An intervention regarding comparative peer usage patterns was delivered to the cohort between terms one and two. Of the 82 trainees enrolled, 83% (85% second term) logged into the program. Of all participants 88% (97% second term) submitted at least one assignment. Median submissions were four (eight second term) per trainee. Assignment submission closely correlated with number of sessions, total time online, downloads and page requests. Peer-based comparative feedback resulted in a significant increase in the number of assignments submitted (p < 0.01). Despite its recent introduction, "School for Surgeons" has a good participation rate. Assignment submission is a valid surrogate for usage. Students can be encouraged to move from passive observation to active participation in a virtual learning environment by providing structured comparative feedback ranking their performance.

A recording represents a paradoxical perceptual source: we can either attend to the sound of the medium, or to the virtual world conveyed by it, and the work of a record producer can be understood as either a process of capturing performances or one of creating virtual worlds. This paper demonstrates that the record producer John Culshaw had clear ideas about how recordings might approach the condition of a work of art, rather than being simply the trace of a moment in time. Culshaw's fundamental aesthetic and technical approach is described and illustrated with reference to a number of key recordings. Taking the relationship between sound recording and film as a starting point, and making use of the concept of subject-position, the tension between Culshaw's radical approach to the listener and traditional approach to the authority of the score is explored. Possible reasons are proposed for the abandonment of his ideas, and for the absence of a Culshaw legacy (apart from the recordings themselves). The paper ends with a brief discussion of the current paradigm for the recording of classical music, which seeks in various ways to reproduce “the live experience” in “the finest seat in the house”.