ObjectivesSocial anxiety has long been related to reduced eye contact. The present study aimed to determine whether gaze avoidance by more socially anxious individuals is a habit (related to social... Show moreObjectivesSocial anxiety has long been related to reduced eye contact. The present study aimed to determine whether gaze avoidance by more socially anxious individuals is a habit (related to social anxiety) or a momentary effect of state anxiety in a face-to-face conversation. Meanwhile, this study investigated the effect of conversational role and partner gaze direction on gaze behaviour during the conversation.MethodsParticipants (N = 61, age-range 17-30 years, 89% female) had a getting acquainted conversation with a same-sex confederate for approximately 10 minutes. We alternated conversational roles (talking vs. listening) and manipulated the confederate’s gaze direction (direct vs. averted). Participants’ gaze behaviour was registered with eye-tracking glasses. Their social anxiety and state anxiety were measured using questionnaires.ResultsThe results revealed greater state anxiety was associated with reduced eye gaze throughout the conversation whereas no effect of social anxiety was found. Furthermore, the results showed that the negative association between state anxiety and eye gaze was particularly strong when the confederate directly looked at the participant and also when the participant was talking. In addition, the study found main and interaction effects of conversational role and partner gaze direction on eye gaze behaviour during the conversation.ConclusionsTogether, the current results shed light on factors that influence eye gaze behaviour in a face-to-face social setting and provide initial evidence that, in the general population, eye gaze avoidance is more related to heightened state anxiety than to social anxiety. Show less
Social anxiety is anxiety about negative evaluation and rejection by others. Social anxiety has been long related to reduced eye contact, this feature is seen as a casual and a maintaining factor... Show moreSocial anxiety is anxiety about negative evaluation and rejection by others. Social anxiety has been long related to reduced eye contact, this feature is seen as a casual and a maintaining factor of social anxiety disorder. However, related empirical findings were equivocal. The dissertation sought to address three key questions: (1) Whether social anxiety is featured by gaze avoidance. (2) Under which conditions socially anxious individuals display gaze avoidance. (3) To what extent subjective experience of gaze avoidance corresponds with actual gaze behavior. Using the combination of naturalistic social settings and wearable eye-trackers, the dissertation provides evidence for the relationship between social anxiety and gaze avoidance particularly in naturalistic social situation, and further reveals that the relationship depends on severity of social anxiety symptoms, type of social situation and age group. Besides, gaze anxiety is moderately associated with actual gaze avoidance. Altogether, the dissertation sheds light on the nature of gaze behavior adopted by socially anxious individuals in naturalistic social interactions. Show less
Cyanobacterial blooms are a global ecological problem that directly threatens human health and crop safety. Cyanobacteria have toxic effects on aquatic microorganisms, which could drive the... Show moreCyanobacterial blooms are a global ecological problem that directly threatens human health and crop safety. Cyanobacteria have toxic effects on aquatic microorganisms, which could drive the selection for resistance genes. The effect of cyanobacterial blooms on the dispersal and abundance of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) of concern to human health remains poorly known. We herein investigated the effect of cyanobacterial blooms on ARG composition in Lake Taihu, China. The numbers and relative abundances of total ARGs increased obviously during a Planktothrix bloom. More pathogenic microorganisms were present during this bloom than during a Planktothrix bloom or during the non-bloom period. Microcosmic experiments using additional aquatic ecosystems (an urban river and Lake West) found that a coculture of Microcystis aeruginosa and Planktothrix agardhii increased the richness of the bacterial community, because its phycosphere provided a richer microniche for bacterial colonization and growth. Antibiotic-resistance bacteria were naturally in a rich position, successfully increasing the momentum for the emergence and spread of ARGs. These results demonstrate that cyanobacterial blooms are a crucial driver of ARG diffusion and enrichment in freshwater, thus providing a reference for the ecology and evolution of ARGs and ARBs and for better assessing and managing water quality. Show less
The aim of this thesis is to shed light on whether some capacities that are considered linked to, or characteristic for, language are shared between humans and nonhuman animals, which can help to... Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to shed light on whether some capacities that are considered linked to, or characteristic for, language are shared between humans and nonhuman animals, which can help to understand the basic cognitive abilities from which the evolution of human language may have arisen. The thesis starts with comparing human language with other communication systems. Then Chapter 2 addressed the question: what mechanisms are involved in learning a sequence of vocal items in zebra finches. Chapter 3 addressed whether zebra finches are able to discriminate between, and generalize, affixation patterns. Chapter 4 dealt with a controversial topic that is recently getting a lot of attention: whether animals show the ability to learn __algebraic__ rules that are relevant to syntax learning in humans. Chapter 5 examined the ability of zebra finch to learn nonadjacent dependency that is important for learning the hierarchical structure of languages. Altogether, this thesis provides positive evidence for similarities between humans and songbirds in using transitional information, generalizing surface transformations of human affixation patterns and detecting nonadjacent dependencies. Show less
