Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-193).

Music is a human universal and has the ability to evoke powerful, genuine emotions. But does music influence our capacity to understand and feel with others? A growing body of evidence indicates that empathy (sharing another’s feelings) and compassion (a feeling of concern toward others) are behaviorally and neutrally distinct, both from each other and from the social cognitive process theory of mind (ToM; i.e., inferring others’ mental states). Yet little is known as to whether and how these dissociable routes to feeling with and understanding others can be independently modulated. The goal of the current study was to investigate if emotional music has the potential to enhance social affect and/or social cognition. Using a naturalistic, video based paradigm which disentangles empathy, compassion, and ToM, we demonstrate selective enhancement of social affect through music during the videos. Specifically, we found enhanced empathy and compassion when emotional, but not when neutral music was present during videos displaying emotionally negative narrations. No such enhancement was present for ToM performance. Similarly, prosocial decision making increased after emotionally negative videos with emotional music. These findings demonstrate how emotional music can enhance empathic responding, compassion and prosocial decisions as well as contribute to the growing evidence for separable processes within the social mind.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:24:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gleiciane Oliveira de Morais.pdf: 1303339 bytes, checksum: 6cc322262950212a007c9e63260b6cc8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-07 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / This thesis aims at investigating the senses and meanings that are shared by students, in a public school in São Paulo, on the teaching and learning of English, and the relationship between these shared senses and meanings and the building of their learner identity. It is a Critical Interpretive piece of research (Lopes, 1994) since it seeks, in the participants senses and meanings about themselves and about their social contexts, the insights on the studied phenomenon. The Theoretical Framework used to understand and interpret the investigated problem is that of the Socio-Cultural-Historical Theory (Vigotsky 1934/2001/2003/2005), Aguiar (2006), Leontiev (2004), Gonzáles Rey (2005), Smolka (2004), Bakhtin, (1992/2000); besides the concepts of inclusion/exclusion (Sawaia, 1999; Sacristán, 1998), identity (Hall, 2003; Coracini, 2003; Moita Lopes, 2006; Sawaia, 1999; Sacristán, 2002; Rajagopalan, 2006, among others). Data is analyzed by means of the thematic content that emerged from two interviews carried out with eight high school students. Furthermore, participants utterance positions and the voices (Bronckart, 1999) were also analyzed in order to verify their views on the investigated theme. Taking the analysis categories mentioned above into account, results discussion points to the important role played by participants socio-historical contexts in the constitution of their identities as learners of a foreign language. However, instead of building emancipated identities, these contexts actually seem to foster the construction of a negative learner identity that often makes them see themselves as solely responsible for their own school failure / O objetivo do presente trabalho é investigar quais são os sentidos e os significados compartilhados por alunos de uma escola pública de São Paulo sobre o ensinoaprendizagem de língua inglesa e qual a relação entre esses sentidos e significados partilhados para a construção de suas identidades como aprendizes. É uma pesquisa Interpretativista Crítica (Lopes, 1994), pois busca nos sentidos e significados dos participantes sobre si e sobre os seus contextos sociais a compreensão do fenômeno estudado. A Fundamentação Teórica para compreensão e interpretação do problema investigado encontra-se na Teoria Sócio-Histórico-Cultural Vigotsky (1934/2001/ 2003/2005), Aguiar (2006), Leontiev (2004), Gonzáles Rey (2005), Smolka (2004), Bakhtin (1992/2000); no conceito de inclusão/exclusão (Sawaia, 1999, Sacristán, 1998); e na concepção de identidade (Hall, 2003, Coracini, 2003, Moita Lopes, 2006, Coracini, 2003, Sawaia, 1999, Sacristán, 2002, Rajagopalan, 2006, entre outros). A análise dos dados é feita a partir dos conteúdos temáticos que emergiram de duas entrevistas realizadas com oito alunos do ensino médio. Também foram analisados os posicionamentos enunciativos e as vozes (Bronckart, 1999) para verificar o posicionamento dos mesmos em relação ao tema investigado. A partir das categorias de análise citadas anteriormente, a interpretação dos dados aponta para o importante papel do contexto sócio-cultural dos participantes na constituição das suas identidades como aprendizes de língua estrangeira. Contudo, essa influencia, ao invés de contribuir para a constitução de identidades emancipadoras, parece, na verdade, colaborar com a formação de uma identidade negativa dos aprendizes e que, muitas vezes, faz com que se posicionem como únicos responsáveis pelo próprio fracasso escolar