Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences

Introduction: The aim of this systematic literature review was to assess the effects of creative arts therapies on the health and well-being of overweight/obese patients. Methods: The database search was conducted in “American Search Ultimate, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, MEDLINE (via PubMed), OpenDissertations, PSYNDEX Literature with PSYNDEX Test, SocINDEX, SocINDEX with Full Text,” covering the period from 2000 to 2024. Studies with evidence level I–IV, subjects with a BMI >25 were included. Results: Twelve studies, including five controlled studies, were analysed. Significant results were achieved in self-esteem, quality of life, body awareness, dissatisfaction with one’s own body, social relationships, changes in health and eating behaviour; there was a lower impact on body image, emotional eating, communication skills, and dealing with your own body shape. Discussion/Conclusion: Creative arts therapies can make a valuable contribution to the health promotion for overweight individuals. Increased integration into weight reduction programs would be a logical next step. Future research should place greater emphasis on increasing sample sizes, employing control groups, specifying types of interventions and settings, and expanding the inclusion of children and adolescents as target groups to validate existing findings and to enhance the informative value of the results.

Abstract Biodiversity loss is one of the planetary boundaries that is most urgently in need of action. However, very little is known about the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for products with higher (or lower) levels of biodiversity performance. Therefore, this research was conducted to investigate how consumers’ WTP is influenced by a product's impact on biodiversity. To address this question, we collected representative data from 524 German consumers in a survey‐based experiment. Drawing on prospect theory, we identified the shape of the WTP reaction function for a given product in relation to its biodiversity performance. We demonstrate that consumers with sufficiently high levels of education and concern about biodiversity loss are willing to pay more for products with above‐average biodiversity performance and less for products with below‐average biodiversity performance. However, the extent to which a product outperforms the industry average does not influence consumers’ increased WTP. From a sustainable development perspective, these observed patterns highlight the problematic contrast between the pressing need for substantial improvements in product biodiversity performance and the limited incentives provided by consumers. Consequently, the findings suggest that the incentives that consumers currently provide for corporate biodiversity management are insufficient to assist in staying within the planetary boundaries.

Abstract The geometrical planetary models that the 2nd century Greek scholar Ptolemy introduced in his major astronomical work, the Almagest were highly influential for more than a millennium. This paper briefly describes the characteristics of these models and the way in which astronomical activities in the Islamic world developed on the basis of Ptolemy’s work. It then discusses three cases of transmission of Islamic astronomy to surrounding parts of the world, namely to China under the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (13th and 14th century), to India during the Mughal empire (c. 1730), where it was used together with the latest European astronomical tables and to Europe, where a mixture of early Indian and Ptolemaic astronomy that had reached the western Islamic world in the 10th century remained influential until the beginning of the Renaissance.

Speech perception plays a key role in many fields of human development and social life but is often impaired by ambiguities on various levels of processing. While these phenomena have been extensively researched in the cognitive (neuro-) sciences according to empirical paradigms that adhere to the third-person perspective of externally measurable behavior, their first-personal and agentive dimensions remain mostly elusive. However, particularly the latter should not be neglected as they can in principle not completely be mapped on quantitative data but are crucial for people in lifeworld situations. We explored this point in the contexts of cognitive penetrability and mental action and conducted a mixed-methods study with qualitative reports on speech perceptual reversal (N = 63) as part of a series of related studies on other modalities. Exposed to respective stimuli, one half of the participants was instructed to voluntarily change their verbal percept, while the other half were told to hold a deliberately chosen word. Qualitative data analysis revealed four typical forms of mental activity, various strategies, and accompanying forms of intention and metacognitive feelings. On the one hand, this activity structure replicates that found in already published studies on vision and non-linguistic audition and thus lends itself to refinement of Posner and Petersen’s (Annual Reviews in Neuroscience, 13, 25–42, 1990) classic model of attentional shift. On the other hand, statistical testing of the quantified data strengthened our hypotheses about mental activities across conditions and modalities, thus also arguing for a cultivable agentive attention awareness in speech perception that even penetrates early stages of speech processing.

Einleitung Insbesondere in den letzten Jahren ist weltweit eine starke Zunahme von Menschen zu verzeichnen, die auf der Flucht aus ihrem Heimatland sind. Der Migrationsprozess führt Menschen häufig in gesundheitsbedrohliche Situationen. Künstlerisch-therapeutische Interventionen können einen großen Einfluss auf Emotionsregulation und Stressreduktion ausüben.

Bisher sind Eltern als zentrale Akteure gelingender Medienbildung nach ihrem medienerzieherischen Handeln in der Familie, aber kaum nach einer differenzierten Bewertung der schulischen Praxis befragt worden. Für die MünDig-Studie, eine bundesweit im Herbst 2019 durchgeführte Onlinebefragung von Eltern, älteren Schülerinnen und Schülern und Lehrkräften an reformpädagogischen Schulen, erwiesen sich gängige Befragungsinstrumente als ungeeignet. Daher wurde ein multidimensionales Befragungsinstrument entwickelt, das medienerzieherische Einstellungen und Aktivitäten differenziert nach verschiedenen Medien (mit und ohne Bildschirm), dem Alter des Kindes sowie Lern-/Bildungszielen (Medienkompetenzrahmen NRW plus 4 zusätzliche Bereiche) erfasst. Die in der MünDig-Studie befragten Montessori- und Waldorfeltern bewerten die schulische medienerzieherische Praxis mehrheitlich positiv, sehen jedoch in Teilbereichen Defizite. Zufriedenheit zeigt sich bezüglich des pädagogischen Ansatzes, der «ein selbständiges, kritisches Denken und Handeln unterstützt» (88 %) und der Förderung von Medienmündigkeit durch den Einsatz von Medien ohne Bildschirm (88 %). Für die oberen Klassen wird mehr Einsatz digitaler Bildschirmmedien gewünscht (Eltern-Zufriedenheit 70 % in den Klassen 1-3, 44 % in den Klassen 10-13), ebenso deutlich mehr pädagogische wie technische Unterstützung. Zufriedenheit besteht über Aktivitäten der Schule, die Kinder und Jugendliche im sozialen Miteinander (74 %) zum Schutz vor Digital-Risiken im realen Leben stärken. Erstmals ermöglichen die entwickelten innovativen Bewertungsdimensionen die Beschreibung einer interessanten medienerzieherischen Haltung, die jenseits einer angenommenen Dichotomie «bewahrpädagogische» wie auch «aktiv-handlungsorientierte» Ansätze zu vereinen scheint.

Pädagogische Fachkräfte werden täglich Zeuge von nachgespielten, nachgesprochenen oder anderweitig nachinszenierten Medienerfahrungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Insbesondere bei negativen, Ängste oder deviantes Verhalten auslösenden Medienerlebnissen fehlen meist entsprechende Routinen oder durchgängige Konzepte, um diesen angemessen begegnen zu können. Mit dem sechsstufigen DIAEDI-Modell (1. Dokumentiere deine Beobachtungen! 2. Informiere dich! 3. Analysiere! 4. Evaluiere deine Ergebnisse! 5. Diskutiere deine Ergebnisse! 6. Interveniere angemessen!) möchten wir diese Lücke füllen und einen Beitrag zur Bildungspraxis im Bereich „Kinder und Medien“ liefern. DIAEDI liefert zu jedem der sechs Schritte einen konkreten, in der Praxis erprobten Leitfaden mit zu klärenden Fragen und Handlungsvorschlägen. Hierbei werden im Sinne eines „Think out of the box“-Ansatzes unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf die Situation mit einbezogen: die Sicht der Kinder/Jugendlichen, von Erziehungsberechtigten, MedienpädagogInnen, unterschiedlichen „KindheitsexpertInnen“ sowie Mediensucht(-Präventions)-ExpertInnen. Jede Stufe wird anhand eines realen Beispiels anschaulich erläutert. Das beschriebene Beispiel entstammt dem Bereich der Früh- und Elementarpädagogik, jedoch wurde das entwickelte Modell auf alle zu betreuenden Altersbereiche von Kindern und Jugendlichen getestet und für alle Bereiche als sehr hilfreich empfunden.

In Germany, Basic Income has been discussed publicly since 2004. While the debate had its ups and downs especially concerning media attention, BI, however, still is contested but recognized as one major alternative to the existing welfare system. In this chapter, I will trace very briefly the beginning of the debate from 2003 till 2011, then turn to developments from 2010 on and have a look at where the debate stands today. Instead of presenting contested concepts, I will offer a general idea of prevailing arguments and objections. By doing so I will provide an overview of rather strong and weak arguments pro BI including some which are misleading. Finally, I will draw conclusions of the debate and will have a look at prospects of BI in Germany.