Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP) is a pedagogical method aimed at enhancing our listening skills. Listening, from the point of view of the APP, could be defined as how we actively profit from our physiological hearing. Listening is therefore considered a skill that can be improved or optimised at any age. “To listen well” means to have the ability to concentrate on what we hear, moving from the passive stage of “hearing” a sound message, to the active stage of paying attention to it and, finally, to decode it properly.
The Audio-Psycho-Phonology method promotes therefore the development of the basic conditions to strengthen the self-learning process: the improvement of attention, concentration, memory and the development of group communication.
These are the reasons why this method is used for groups of seniors and even more for intergenerational groups.
During this experimentation, to engage the brain in the listening process, LIT was used, an iPad software that applies a continuous and unpredictable change to sounds in the equalisation curve. The APP calls this effect the “Gating Effect”. The Gating Effect, based on the principles of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) works as a sound bait for the auditory cortex of our brain, that is gently forced to pay attention to the sounds it is hearing, keeping awake the crucial process of listening.
Once we get the attention of the brain the APP approach uses some psychoacoustic principles to improve specific skills or to alleviate specific issues. Therefore, the brain is trained on two different levels: first the gating effect captures its attention; then special filters, developed following psychoacoustics principles, influence its mood in order to improve memory, concentration, communication skills, stimulate imagination, reduce stress or anxiety, improve body awareness and coordination. To obtain this result, the LIT software proposes 3 types of sound tracks: “Basic”, “Motor (or Focus)” and “Recharge”.
The hair cells in the cochlea, stimulated by the APP method, transform the sensorial information sent by the filtering engine of the software, into an electric current, which “feeds” the brain. At the same time the training also stimulates the vestibular system which is the core of equilibrium and body coordination. Thinking, concentrating, memorising, creating, communicating and moving: all these activities demand a great deal of energy which is likely to be lacking in old age.
Aging brings a reduction of sensory functions and elderly people often experience a loss of vitality and energy, especially when they live in a retirement home. This loss of perception is both cause and effect of many issues: less physical movement, less communication, fewer intellectual demands and less motivation. Like in a vicious circle, receiving less stimulation from the senses makes us less curious to explore the world around us which reduces even further our chances to find new stimulation to compensate for that which we have lost. So the challenge of the APP approach, for the elderly, is to break this circle and open them once more to the world.
Finally, and this concerns many elderly people, hearing problems can be lessened thanks to the listening sessions. Even though the hearing loss itself cannot be restored, exercising the muscles of the middle ear, through the APP training, helps the subjects to put to better use what is left of their hearing function. The benefits achieved can vary, from subject to subject, in a vast range of situations, from feeling less discomfort in noisy environments, to improvements in body balance and coordination (thanks to the vestibular activation).
The sessions have a direct impact on the emotional pathways and thereby on the level of communication. They allow a decrease of anxiety while the ability to relax and the desire to communicate are improved. Self-confidence and creativity are increased.
We could conclude that the APP Approach prevents elderly people from feeling isolated and encourages them to keep busy and active, because “for the brain, there is no vacation or retirement!”
Biography Work aims at developing a beneficial self-concept and broadening the horizon of possible choices in the present and future. It encourages beneficial behaviour and decision-making processes and empowers vision. It invites people to narrate their life stories using the strong power of memory and to open up biographical potentials for shaping one’s life in the present and future.
All kind of creative methods can be used to evoke memory. Biography Work as an adult’s educative approach is mainly oriented on one’s resources and potentials. But it also may help to overcome hindering patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. Through Biography Work people explore how they handled difficult situations in their life: How did I manage similar situations in the past? How did other people or other members of my family with whom I shared the memory manage it? It supports – especially as to marginalized people lacking space, time and means of self-determination – in gaining self-awareness as well as courage and the desire to realize one’s potential.
TBW supports the enhancement of self-esteem and the awareness of one’s competences. While working biographically especially in a group people should experience optimism and vitality. A positive personal condition motivates to make decisions to learn and to create visions for ones future. Therefore it prepares the ground for education and working carriers. TBW works on basic key competences to enable satisfying study and working life balance. With their participation people gain a sense for their meaningful contribution in society. Biography Work is a relatively slow process. It needs time and space to make unexpected learning processes and transformation possible. Transcultural Biography Work is oriented towards a realization process. Goals are set but unexpected results are around the corner and mostly appreciated if not highly valued. Biographical approach has already been used in and described for many professional fields – like care and elderly care, social work, support of foster and adopted children, adult education, therapy, counselling and coaching. Through Biography Work people experience how instructive and educative it is to talk to each other biographically, to listen to biographies, to compare and to learn from each other, to inspire each other. Biographical narration shows how people have become what they are now, why they express certain opinions, how they put their views and ideas forward, and why they react in a certain way under different circumstances. The mutual understanding grows. This concrete practice amplifies the horizon of people, their reservoir of imaginations to perceive unknown (and also familiar) people in general.
Culture is a multi-layered term – broadly discussed for example in cultural anthropology or cultural studies. In our case we define culture very simply as the way how people create, organize, express, but also think, verbalize and reflect their living on earth; how they create a common understanding they can share.
“Transcultural” – following the arguments of philosopher Wolfgang Welsch (http://www2.uni-jena.de/welsch/) – is based on the idea that cultures always change, mix, and influence each other. They are no fixed entities but there are nettings. Every human community or network defined as “a culture” went through a long historic and ongoing transformation process. Culture is not a thing but something people learn, do, transform, experience and share. So the English term “doing culture” is quite adequate. People create themselves culturally. To be socialised in an environment, in a period means to be familiarized with what people around you think, feel, do; to select how to think, act, feel; to be forced into thoughts, emotions, actions. So this is “doing culture” as well as we “do gender” – being forced to decide about oneself at the same time. As soon as people with different (“cultural”) background meet they influence each other and something will change. Rejecting each other because of “cultural features” or defining each other as members of certain “cultures” means to construct those cultures mentally, emotionally and even materially.
Orienting Biography Work transculturally focuses on:
Transcultural biographical self-exploration leads to a qualitative exchange which has the potential to change mind sets. An important stimulus for such change is the recognition that human beings – regardless of their cultural background, gender and age – are similar in terms of basic needs and emotional patterns and reactions. A transcultural mind set and related practice does not eradicate differences but extends possibilities of mutual understanding. Approaching other people as “basically similar” creates a different perception and reflection on one selves’ and others’ behaviour, a different way of decision making and comportment than approaching other people as “basically foreign”. TBW aims at activating communication, mutual understanding and learning processes; at stimulating comprehensive communication among participants of different origin in communication processes. TBW helps us to express ourselves, rediscover and share our memories, engage in dialogue with each other and understand our dependencies and differences on the basis of mutual respect and understanding. TBW encourages participants to regard people’s unique experience, to start from their horizon of experience and understanding. It helps to overcome misunderstanding and stereotypical perceptions among people. With TBW, communication processes are initiated to gain mutual empathic understanding of experience and motivations. Transcultural communication can be practiced and trained on this basis of a communicative style which supposes and therefore is aware of connection, relation, empathy, similarity, and difference in degree of human beings rather than separation and unbridgeable difference in kind.
Transcultural biographical self-awareness raises individual self-esteem, but at the same time it strengthens the consciousness of human interdependence, of the ongoing mutual influence. It makes one aware that the liberty to shape the interdependency grows with its acknowledgement. Living means learning by facing new situations, people, culture-nets, or ages. And learning means transforming oneself.
The definition oral history was first used, in the sense that we still assign to it, by the American Winslow C. Watson on 20th October 1863 in Montpellier: the term (more precisely “use of oral sources”
) refers to adding to traditional sources, generally used by historians for research, oral testimonies of protagonists or participants in past events under examination.
This specific feature represents the difference between oral history and oral tradition. Oral tradition refers to the system of oral transmission, replication and reprocessing of cultural heritage in a group of people, without the use of writing; oral sources are individual informal stories: in other words actual “inquiry processes” searching through the memories of participants in past events.
The basic tool of oral history is represented by the interview, a dialogue between two or more people, and characterised by an interviewer asking questions to the interviewee with a goal of collecting information. It is clear that this kind of conversation envisages a direct relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee, a relationship that plays a crucial role in the success of the interview.
The interview may enable the collection of essential information, if the interview is realized applying the appropriate instructions. Existing techniques are too complex to be reduced in simple statements, and are strongly linked to the attention, empathy and experience of the researcher.
In general, you should remember that above all the interview represents a relationship between people rather than a relationship between individuals, objects and documents.
A useful tip to facilitate this kind of relationship is to spend some time before the recording with the person to interview, in a certain sense to become familiar with the person, also with a goal of understanding what kinds of questions to ask afterwards and to identify potential “negotiations” to make. These considerations do not refer only to the difference between subjects that may generally be easily explored and embarrassing issues that may annoy the interviewee. As a matter of fact, in relation to the kind of information that we wish to collect, the direct question may be useless. For instance: undoubtedly tales and proverbs are part of formal literary folklore, nevertheless if we ask our subjects a few tales the stories will be easily shared with us (obviously if they know these stories); differently, if we ask our testimonies to tell us proverbs they probably won’t answer our question, even if they know some proverbs. Proverbs are used by the population when needed, as part of the everyday ordinary language and, as a consequence, it is quite difficult to “extract” these elements from the context of everyday life and make them become the subject of a specific knowledge.
The interview, as suggested by the word, tries to view; usually through questions. This element represents both the charming and the frustrating aspect of the research: the awareness that everything, potentially, could be simply obtained through the right questions and that, at the same time, the question is related to several practical and methodological problems. Also the question itself is characterised and influenced by the nature of the relationship and it is clear that each question influences, in a certain sense, also the answer.
The interview represents the crucial moment characterised by the conflict of two worlds, each one is observing and is observed at the same time; that “quid” that will arise through our work is only achieved through the dialectic encounter of two personalities, the observer and the observed, and through the intellectual creation deriving from it; and if some types of data collection – for instance statistical, quantitative – the observer may “disappear” acting as a zoom lens, an indifferent recorder, during face-to-face interviews it is, first of all, necessary to ask questions; already in the definition of the question the interviewer undoubtedly expresses himself/herself, the involvement is already deep. The interviewer should free him/herself from ancestral, limiting (even if invisible) burdens. As long as the researcher moves forward his/her inquiry, even if strictly “objective” in his/her intention, while remaining basically stranger to the field of observation, he/she doesn’t reduce his/her prejudices: the emotional sympathy may be enough if he/she doesn’t succeed in being deeply involved in the essence of the research.
Therefore the communication should be based on the mutual willingness to listen to each other: the interviewer should be open to receiving the memories that the subject is willing to share, respecting him or her, while at the same time the witness should be willing to tell thus enabling the developing of a bridge between them, a bridge enabling an effective transmission of knowledge. Therefore in certain cases, when communication is easily established, it is possible to collect intimate and personal memories, often hidden or inaccessible to the wider audience. This often is the case of histories told by women, often “invisible” to official history, but deeply interesting thanks to their ability to describe a whole world which was there and, somehow, supported the “official” world.
The most important element is constituted by the richness and liveliness in details that may arise from an oral testimony. It’s a colour vision: a variety of different types of individuals, of characteristics, of episodes that help to understand better how rich in conflicts and also in passionate personal tragedies was the history lived by mankind.
The interview offers the possibility to widen the number of subjective, memory-based and documentary historical sources – in comparison to historiographical customs. In this sense it is possible to highlight a sort of “democratisation” of this kind source, characterised by the increasing value in terms of historiography of elements that previously couldn’t access this category. The historiographical practice used to generally refer to “practitioners”, and to their attitudes and approaches well-established in traditions.
This aspect is particularly relevant in relation to some historiographical fields and themes. As a matter of fact oral sources may be exploited for a variety of topics, such as the history of individuals, of families, of work, of political movements, of local communities, but also of specific events/episodes (wars, economic crisis, environmental disasters). Therefore these sources are not limited to a specific theme but they confirm their nature of actual historical source.
History is made up of both documents and testimonies. The oral source represents an important and complex tool of historical analysis, and it is able to enrich the official history through contents and meanings, thus providing a wider and more detailed perspective of what actually happened. The interview, both the written text, the tape, the hard-disk or any other technical device recording and preserving memories actually represent historical documents, testimonies that, if available, may be used by historians.
These kinds of documents or testimonies are characterised by the same textual or philological problems concerning any other type of document or historical testimony. The general principle, the basis of the historical work – as of any other scientific work – is that all documents, testimonies etc. should be accepted evaluating their authenticity and reliability.
Banca della Memoria Onlus cultural association was established in June 2009, and it developed and followed-up the international Memoro – the Bank of Memories project, a website devoted to the collection, classification and sharing of the memories, experiences and life stories of people born before 1950. The collection of memories is realised through video and audio recordings of interviews. During the interview the person is free to tell about one or more events that he/she considers interesting, to be preserved and passed on to the younger generations. The video and audio recordings are the chosen tools: the video represents a direct tool, that preserves the original message. Voices, faces and expressions represent an essential element of a person and of his or her tales. Audio recordings date back in time, to tales of people who are no longer with us: recorded voices, significant and precious memories. Moreover audio recordings simplify the collection of memories for those who do not own a video camera, for instance recording by phone.
Internet, the tool chosen to share the memories, enables much flexibility and accessibility of the content. Moreover internet enables everyone with a computer to contribute to our growing archive and to organize content effectively through thematic pathways enabling others to easily access and browse it. Moreover Internet represents the media of young people: the fundamental beneficiaries of memories and the future keepers of past experiences.
Memoro – the Bank of Memories aims at representing the electronic version of stories that traditionally grandfathers told to their nephews. And more than that: Memoro – the Bank of Memories also represents a community jointly developing contents, following updates through newsletters and on social media, comments and votes videos, organizes training activities and projects in partnership with associations and public Regional and Local Authorities.
Among the project goals it is important to highlight the aim of promoting in the wider audience the desire to take part in the collection of memories, thus providing the individuals interviewed with the precious opportunity to be the actual focus and protagonists of history. To this purpose the Memoro project developed the role of “memory hunter” (anyone who uploads a video) and “witness” (anyone sharing his memories through an interview). Anyone uploading a video becomes a memory hunter and is provided with his own personalised webpage featuring his repertory of collected memories. Such profiles may be easily enriched through the creation of specific thematic pathways as well as through news and oddities.
A specific webpage for witnesses features their videos, photos, personal data and a short biography: this section was conceived to provide the witnesses taking part in the project as “interviewees” a personal space on the Memoro website.
Memory represents a universal value. For this reason, since the beginning, the project was conceived in an international dimension. When an individual, a group of people or an association expresses the interest to develop the Memoro project in another Country, Memoro the Bank of Memories starts a cooperation process that results in the establishment of a new Memoro branch. Through the years the cooperation enabled the creation of new Memoro branches that enriched the Memoro web portal. Today the Memoro web portal features several different national websites, easily accessible through the international home page.