Languages are known to describe the world in diverse ways. Across lexicons, diversity is pervasive, appearing through phenomena such as lexical gaps and untranslatability. However, in computational resources, such as multilingual lexical databases, diversity is hardly ever represented. In this paper, we introduce a method to enrich computational lexicons with content relating to linguistic diversity. The method is verified through two large-scale case studies on kinship terminology, a domain known to be diverse across languages and cultures: one case study deals with seven Arabic dialects, while the other one with three Indonesian languages. Our results, made available as browseable and downloadable computational resources, extend prior linguistics research on kinship terminology, and provide insight into the extent of diversity even within linguistically and culturally close communities. In contrast, the Gulf word ابن العُود ibn alood meaning elder brother does not exist in Algerian, which instead uses the word سِيدي siedi.The culture and the social structure of a community are reflected in the language spoken by its members. One of the most salient examples of this phenomenon is the worldwide diversity of terms used to describe family structures and relationships. While, thanks to studies such as Murdock , kin terhis cousin gave birth to a twin, Google Translate provides the Arabic translation أنجب ابن عمه توأما a'njaba ibna a'mihi tawaman that means His father's brother's son gave birth to a twin. This syntactically correct yet unintended meaning of a male giving birth output is due to a lexical gap, i.e., a non-existent equivalent Arabic term for cousin. Such cases of techno-linguistic bias—where language technology provides better results by design in certain languages than in others—tend to remain hidden in monolingual resources but are revealed in multilingual settings  and three languages from Indonesia . We consider kin terms as a domain particularly well-suited both for research on the methodology of collecting and producing diversity-aware linguistic data, and for comparative studies on diversity across languages.Our paper aims to provide four contributions: (1) a general method for collecting multilingual lexical data from native speakers for a given domain (in our case the domain of kin terms), in a diversity-aware manner; (2) 223 kin terms and 1,619 lexical gaps collected in seven Arabic dialects and three Indonesian languages; (3) a qualitative and quantitative discussion of our results regarding the diversity observed across the dialects and languages covered; and (4) the publication of our results as an open, computer-processable dataset, as well as its integration into the Universal Knowledge Core multilingual database. Our starting point is state-of-the-art datasets on worldwide kinship terminology from ethnography Murdock,  and compThe structure of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we give an overview of lexical typology and the phenomena of lexical untranslatability and lexical gaps with respect to the domain of kinship in particular. The Universal Knowledge Core resource is presented in Section 3. In Section 4, we describe our data collection method. Sections 5 and 6 introduce two case studies on Arabic dialects and Indonesian languages, respectively. Section 7 discusses previous studies related to our work. Finally, we provide conclusions in Section 8.go beachward” and (kavai) meaning “go inland with respect to the beach”, the language of the coastal Papua New Guinea country, the lack of vocabulary for the word meaning “sailing” in Mongolian, which is the language of a landlocked country, or the Arabic word تَسنَّم meaning “to ascend a camel's hump”.Linguists understand translation from one language to another as a complex and multidimensional problem, ranging from multiple coexisting forms of meaning equivalence to untranslatability Catford, . The divThe domain of kinship terms, which is the subject of our paper, is known to be extremely varied across languages, due to the different ways family structures are organized around the world. Matriarchal societies may describe certain female relatives with more detail, while strongly patriarchal ones are more descriptive with respect to male relatives. Arabic dialects, for instance, distinguish paternal and maternal brothers but also blood brothers, full brothers, and breastfeeding brothers. Thus, not only are kinship-related vocabularies “richer” or “poorer” across languages, they are also structured in different manners.sibling), (adhi/younger sibling), (kangmas/elder brother), and (Mbakyu/elder sister)—are used for expressing the sibling relationship, and accordingly, translating this sentence through Google Translate (my sister is ten years older than me) to Javanese gives this non-sensical sentence (adhiku luwih tuwa sepuluh taun tinimbang aku) meaning (my younger sibling is ten years older than me). This result is due to the lack of Javanese vocabulary for the word meaning (sister), and also lacks the term meaning “younger sister”, so the machine translator uses (adhi) meaning “younger sibling,” which finally produces the semantically absurd output.In this research, we focus on lexical untranslatability, which manifests most clearly through the lexical gap phenomenon when a word in a source language does not have a concise and precise translation in a given target language. Lexical gaps are often the linguistic manifestation of culturally or spatially defined specificities of a community of language speakers that cannot entirely be predicted or explained through systematic principles or recurrent patterns Lehrer, . Table 1Lexical typology is a field of linguistics that studies the diversity across languages according to the structural features of languages with respect to specific semantic fields The UKC is divided into a supra-lingual concept layer  letters are added to the ISO code: e.g., for Syrian Arabic, the code This section presents the general method by which we collected and produced lexicalizations and gaps from native speakers and language experts. The same method presented below was employed in an independent manner for each Arabic dialect and Indonesian language covered by our study. The contents of this section aim to serve as a tried and tested recipe for gathering lexical data in a diversity-aware manner, that we intend to reuse in future lexicon development projects.We exploit the UKC to import language-independent concepts  to be used as an input dataset to our method and use its data representation model to formalize our data. We reuse an already broad and well-formalized hierarchy of 184 kinship concepts from the KinDiv database, which includes kinship terms and gaps in 699 languages. Data in KinDiv is based on the well-known results of Murdock , as wellOur work extends KinDiv data by new concepts, lexicalizations, and lexical gaps in languages and dialects that are either not present in KinDiv or are incompletely covered. A lexical-semantic expert generates a contribution (kinship terms and gaps) task, then a group of native speakers collects contributions from a dialect . After that, two steps for validating collected contributions: language experts evaluate collected lexical units and gaps of a dialect, and a lexical-semantic expert evaluates explored kinship concepts (not existing in UKC). Additionally, resulting data  is used to update and enrich UKC. So, gaps and words are merged into the lexicons of the UKC while new concepts are integrated with the (top) concept layer. A general view of the method is depicted in Accordingly, the macro-steps of our methodology are as follows:Contribution task generation: First, prepare the materials: the dataset of inputs to be examined and the architecture of the supra-lingual concept layer of each subdomain.Contribution collection: The actual contribution effort is carried out by a native speaker in a local language or dialect.Lexicon-level validation: Provided words and gaps are evaluated and corrected by a language expert.Concept-level validation: New concepts and unclear contributions  are verified by a lexico-semantic expert.This section describes the material needed during the execution of the next steps of the methodology. Hence, two constituents must be prepared in this step as described below:Dataset of inputs: Constructing the dataset of general word meanings is the first step of studying diversity across dialects and represents the inputs of the contribution collection phase. In this context, the UKC lexicon is employed to build a dataset, which contains several facilities that support retrieving categorized data from its interlingual shared meaning layer as introduced in Section 3. Moreover, typology datasets or other approaches can be used for that, such as the kinship dataset from Murdock  within the speaker community. The following are the most notable instructions they are given:They are given the authority to skip concepts, stop contributions, or leave a comment when they deem the terms are becoming too culture-specific and consequently need an exact answer.They are asked to provide a lexicalization in a local language  that gives meaning equal to the concept's meaning.They are asked explicitly to identify lexical gaps where no local  lexicalization exists.Within a local language  and a subdomain , they are asked to provide new concepts that did not exist in the list of inputs which is imported from the UKC by providing a word (lemma) and a clear description of its meaning.The process of providing such contributions is depicted in two flowcharts; for instance, A new concept collection is a third contribution in this phase, where the steps of a candidate new concept exploration in a local language can be seen in Our lexicon-level validation method formally and explicitly addresses individual gap identifications and their quality, as well as equivalent word meanings and new concepts. It allows a qualitative evaluation of the entire list of provided contributions through word-by-word and gap-by-gap in a loop between a native speaker and a validator. A word, a gap, or a new concept does not pass this validation until the native speaker provides the correct answer for each of them, as shown in the flowcharts in A language expert who is also a native speaker of the determined language  will carry out this validation on a spreadsheet containing the data and results gathered in the previous step with two additional empty columns: the evaluation and lexicon-level validator's comment, producing the following information:Equivalent word meanings: validate the correctness of all provided words in the local language  by marking them up as correct, incorrect, or unclear for borderline cases and by providing correct words or indicating them as lexical gaps for incorrect ones.Lexical gaps: validate the word meanings marked as lexical gaps by the native speaker in the local language, either as confirmed gaps or as non-gaps due to an existing lexicalization in that language, which the validator needs to indicate.New concepts: validate all proposed new word meanings in each subdomain by marking them up as correct, correct but not new , or not accepted .Correct equivalent word meanings and gaps are integrated with the local language lexicon on the fly. Also, correct new concepts are passed to the next step to be validated at the concept level before merging them with the supra-lingual shared meaning layer. While in case the evaluation is an incorrect equivalent word or a gap, or not accepted new concept, the validator returns each of them with a comment describing the reason to the native speaker to review and address the problem; when the native speaker finishes revising them, then he/she returns the new version of a contribution to the validator. This cycle  is still alive until the validator confirms the correctness of the contribution or skips it.In this step, a lexical-semantic expert who is the manager of the UKC system verifies the new concepts and their quality as accept or reject to add them into the supra-lingual concept layer as well as addresses unclear words and non-confirmed gaps/non-gaps that are borderline cases. This validation is based on a discussion session with the language expert responsible for lexicon-level validation through concept-by-concept and case-by-case issue validation. A spreadsheet containing all new concepts and determined (words and gaps) to be examined is used. Columns of this sheet are the same columns in the previous step and two additional empty ones: the evaluation and concept-level validator's comment. The following tasks are used:New concepts: Validate all proposed new concepts in each subdomain by marking them up as correct, correct but not new , or not accepted .Unclear words: Validate the correctness of unclear word cases considered in the border-area by the lexicon-level validator by marking them as correct or incorrect and writing a comment.Non-confirmed gaps/non-gaps: Validate the word meanings that do not have confirmation as lexical gaps or non-gaps by providing a judgment with a comment.Correct new concepts are imported into UKC by merging them with the supra-lingual conceptual layer. In contrast, not-accepted ones and those correct but not new are returned to the validator at the lexicon level, who may also return them with a comment describing the reason to the native speaker to address an included problem. In a new cycle, modified new concepts by the native speaker are transferred to this phase through the validator of lexicon-level; then, the validator at this level reviews the updates and decides whether to finish the revision cycle by accepting or rejecting the new concepts or issue a new one for more review, as shown in mother's elder brother,” which has no equivalent in South Levantine or Moroccan; instead, they use the more general word الخَال meaning “mother's brother,” which can be used for both meanings “mother's younger brother” or “mother's elder brother”. In this paper, we perform an experiment on the Arabic dialects to capture their diversity in the kinship domain. The resulting dataset with dialect-specific kinship terms will be integrated with an instance of the Universal Knowledge Core for Arabic (Arabic UKC)This section demonstrates the use of the methodology described in Section 4 on kinship terminology from seven dialects of the Arabic language. Arabic is the official language of more than four hundred million native speakers in twenty-two countries in the Middle East and northern Africa. Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) refers to the standard form of the language used in academic writing, formal communication, classical poetry, and religious sermons  explored in this experiment. For example, the brotherhood hierarchy is shown in the top layer of the UKC in Participant 1: a native Algerian speaker with good command of English.Participant 2: a native Egyptian speaker with good command of English.Participant 3: a native Tunisian speaker with good command of English and French.Participant 4: a native Gulf speaker with good command of English and Arabic-Palestinian.Participant 5: a native Moroccan speaker with good command of English and Italian.Participant 6: a native Palestinian speaker with good command of Arabic-Syrian and English.Participant 7: a native Syrian speaker with good command of English.Seven experiments  are performed to explore lexical units and gaps using our method. In each experiment, a spreadsheet of kinship concepts is imported from the UKC , which serves as an input dataset to the contribution (diversity-aspects) collection step. These kinship domain concepts are language-independent units representing lexical meaning shared across 699 languages and spanning 184 distinct concepts. UKC categorizes kinship concepts into six groups; each one contains a distinct subset of concepts sharing a common kinship type meaning called a subdomain, for example, sibling and cousin subdomains. The spreadsheet (the dataset) consists of six sheets, and each one represents a kinship subdomain. See Fiqh AlArabiyya typology book  is a lexical unit in Syrian. In contrast, a low count indicates a lexical gap; for example, الخؤولة meaning “maternal cousin,” has 158 thousand hits. Google hits of other cousin terms are shown in fatha” above a letter or “kassra” under it), thus, each word is typed in two forms. Note that the content of this matrix cannot be considered the only criterion for gap exploration because word hits may contain a count of other hits resulting from searching in other Arabic dialects for the same word.In the contribution collection, a native speaker answers by filling a lexical unit or gap in a row empty slot specified for each concept. Linguistic resources and Google Search are used to provide answers as precise as possible. For example, the المعاني Almaany dictionarybreastfeeding brother was found in all seven dialects, لأمّ أَخٌت meaning maternal sister was found both in Syrian and in Egyptian, while أبْيِه meaning elder cousin, son of mother's brother only exists in Egyptian.The overall contribution collection effort resulted in 180 words, 1,108 lexical gaps, and 19 new concepts identified, formalized, and collected. Detailed statistics about the collected gaps and words are shown in Validation was carried out in two phases; in the first phase, words and gaps were validated at the lexicon level by the first author, a Ph.D. student in lexical semantics and a native speaker of Arabic, and the third author, an Arabic native speaker with linguistic-semantic experience and good knowledge in Arabic dialects. In the second phase, new concepts are verified and approved to be added to the concept layer of the UKC by the second author, a lexical-semantic expert, and the UKC system manager.maternal grandmother, لالّة for the meaning paternal grandmother, جَدّ for the meaning grandfather, and الشيخ باب for the meaning grandparent. The validator indicated maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, and grandparent as gaps, while he replaced the mistaken word جَدّ with the correct word الشيخ باب for grandfather. For gap evaluation, the linguistic expert validates a lexical gap by confirming it as a gap or as a non-gap due to an existing word in a dialect, for which he must provide the correct word. For instance, Participant 1 identified the meanings elder sister, father's elder sister and mother's elder sister as gaps in Algerian, but the validator did not accept them and provided the polysemous word لالّة for each of them. Evidence for validation was obtained from the dictionary Dictionnaire arabe algérienUsing the lexicon-level validation method, the first author evaluated the collected data in Palestinian and Syrian, while the third author validated the remaining five dialects. Results can be seen in breastfeeding brother,” is set up as a sub-node for a newly created concept of the brother, “a male person who has the same father, mother, or both parents as another person or has the same breastfeeding woman.”, also, from the figure, can be seen أَخٌت لأب meaning “paternal brother” and أَخٌت لأمّ meaning “maternal brother” are inserted and connected the half-brother concept. New concepts and lexicalization are marked with white nodes and connected with blue lines.In this study, we use the UKC for creating the input dataset and the domain hierarchy and for storing and visualizing diversity data. Thus, the 19 new concepts were merged with the UKC by reconstructing a domain hierarchy at the supra-lingual concept layer. For example, the hierarchy of siblings was redesigned to contain five new brotherhood concepts and five new sisterhood concepts. For instance, in the Arabic-Egyptian lexicon, as shown in Additionally, resulting lexical units and gaps were added into UKC lexicons. The website of the UKC provides several services for system users, such as browsable online access to database contents, source materials, and data visualization tools. The interactive exploration of linguistic diversity data in lexicons is the central feature of the website. The user can browse: (1) all meanings within a language of a word typed in by the user; and (2) lexicalizations and gaps of a concept in all languages contained in the database.parent's father”. On the left-hand side of the screenshot, details are provided on the lexicalization of the concept in Arabic, such as synonymous words, a definition, and a part of speech. The middle part of the screenshot shows an interactive clickable map of all lexicons that either contain the concept or, on the contrary, lack it due to their languages being known not to lexicalize it. The color-coded dots indicate the language family, while the black circled dot represents a lexical gap. This map presents an instant global typological overview of the concept selected; for instance, from As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the resulting Arabic dataset will be imported into the Arabic UKC, which is an instance of the UKC system; the top layer contains independent language concepts, and the bottom layer contains twenty lexicons as the number of Arabic dialects. A screenshot of the homepage of the Arabic UKC is shown in breastfeeding sister” and أَخٌ لأب meaning “paternal brother”. The others (nine concepts) are specific to the dialects, such as the Egyptian word أبْلَه meaning “elder daughter of mother's sister”, which returns to the Turkish word “kuzen”. Mostly, the origin of these Egyptian-specific concepts is the Ottoman Turkish language, when the Egyptian dialect was influenced by it during the Ottoman occupation of Egypt in the period (1517 AD to 1867 AD).The lexical diversity we observed across the seven dialects was higher than our original expectations, with 19 new concepts identified. Ten of these concepts are lexicalized in MSA, such as أخت في الرضاعة meaning “d and languages la, …, ln, the formula below calculates the similarity of the two languages in terms of the overlap of lexicalized concepts from that domain, where LexConcepts stands for the set of domain concepts that are lexicalized by the language l.Several shared meaning overlaps have been found between dialect pairs. Likewise, intersections also existed between gaps. For a given domain K) as follows:More detail about the analysis of shared coverage between the rest of the Arabic dialects can be found in the same dataset uploaded to GitHub.We find these overlaps—e.g., an overlap of 59.5% between Gulf and Tunisian, or the overall overlap of 47.1% among all seven dialects—lower than our initial expectations on dialectal variations. Arab dialectologists justify such differences with two major factors: linguistic and religious influence  identified in this experiment, as shown in the top layer of the UKC in In this study, three native speakers (one per language), born and educated (high school level) within the speaker community, were recruited to contribute. The participants' linguistic backgrounds are listed below:Participant 1: a native Indonesian speaker with good command of English, Javanese, and Banjarese.Participant 2: a native Banjarese speaker with good command of Indonesian and English.Participant 3: a native Javanese speaker with good command of Indonesian and English.Kamus Bahasa Banjar Dialek Hulu-Indonesia .Statistics on the data collected for each language are shown in As in Arabic, a two-step validation was carried out in this study. The first step validated words and gaps contributed by native speakers, carried out by the fourth author, a native Indonesian speaker with a good command of all three languages. The second validation step was done on the concept level, performed by the second author, a lexical-semantic expert and UKC system manager for new concept validation. In this step, the new concepts were verified and approved to be added to the concept layer of the UKC.The produced kinship datasets from this experiment will be merged with the under-construction Indonesian UKCsaudara, which means “sibling” in English. The left-hand side of the screenshot explains synonymous words (lemmas) and the definition of the typed word. The middle of the screenshot displays the map of a global typological overview of the concept. Most languages do not lexicalize this concept, marked by the black-circled dot. Only a few languages lexicalize it, such as Indonesian, Swedish, Ainu, and Malayalam, marked by white-circled dots. The right-hand side shows the lexico-semantic relations of the concept.The UKC lexicon is also equipped with several interactive visualization services that can be used to browse lexical units and gaps by domain in all supported languages. More than 90% of our 184 initial kinship concepts were found to be gaps in the three Indonesian languages, as shown in Finally, using Formula 1, we computed the overlaps between Arabic dialects and Indonesian languages. Ethnologists and linguists have for a long time studied how family structures map to kinship terminology across languages and social groups. The most famous and comprehensive ethnographic study on kin term patterns is that of Murdock , upon whson of father's brother as pronounced by a male speaker to be a lexical gap in Javanese, while Kinbank maps the Javanese term sedulur misan, simply meaning cousin, to this and 95 other meanings. Our work, instead, identifies the Javanese term as the general meaning of cousin and considers all other (more specific) cousin terms as lexical gaps. This distinction is useful in comparative linguistics and cross-lingual applications where the explicit indication of the lack of precise meaning equivalence can be exploited.The exploration of kin terminology and the building of large-scale databases on the topic has also been the subject of more recent efforts—we only cite two examples here. The AustKin projectconcept sets of Concepticon serve the same purpose as the supra-lingual concepts of the UKC in our study, namely to provide meaning-based mappings among lists of terms (aka concept lists in Concepticon) across languages. As of mid-2023, Concepticon consists of nearly 4,000 concept sets, principally targeting core vocabularies (basic-level categories) that are the main subject of study of historical and comparative linguistics. Concepticon is under continuous development and has more recently evolved from a flat list of meanings to a hierarchy with broader–narrower relations. At the time of writing, the kinship domain seems to be partially represented in Concepticon: while sibling or grandparent relations are widely covered, fine-grained cousin relationships are mostly missing from it. The UKC, which contains over 100,000 supra-lingual concepts and a wide range of lexical and lexico-semantic relations, was a more suitable resource for our study due to its more complete coverage of the kinship domain and its explicit support for representing term untranslatability via lexical gaps.Concepticon  to the Arabic synset of عَمْ, which means “the brother of your father.”Multilingual computational applications being in the core of our focus, we also review relevant resources from computational linguistics. For NLP applications, the most popular and widely-known representation of lexico-semantic knowledge is that of  Miller, . The word Vossen —an experd Vossen  map the sister, which means “a female person who has the same parents as another person,” was mapped to the Indonesian word kakak which means “elder sibling.”A similar situation is observed for Indonesian. As far as we know, the only Indonesian Wordnet currently accessible is Bahasa Wordnet—a bilingual Wordnet for standard Indonesian and Malay languages . The task of Our paper formally captures lexical diversity across languages and dialects by representing language- or dialect-specific concepts and linguistic gaps. It introduces a systematic method to produce such data in a human-based manner from one semantic domain rather than from general domains, as the efforts of covering the WordNet domains  provide essential information to cross-lingual applications, such as multilingual NLP tasks or cross-lingual language models. In the future, we plan to use this resource in implementing one such application, i.e., machine translation.https://github.com/HadiPTUK/kinship_dialect.The original contributions presented in the study are publicly available. This data can be found here: FG and GB conceptualized and supervised the study. GB and HK imported and formatted the dataset of inputs. HK wrote the original manuscript draft and performed the Arabic experiments. AF and HK validated the collected Arabic data at the lexicon level. SD performed the Indonesian experiments and validated the results at the lexicon level. GB validated the identified diverse data at the concept level. FG, GB, AF, and HK analyzed the Arabic and Indonesian data. FG, GB, AF, SD, and HK reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed to the research and approved the submitted version.


N = 50), and the second experiment involved Russian students (N = 51). It was found that formal explanations, despite their intentional tautology, were still rated as more convincing compared to explicit tautologies (but less convincing than proper explanations). Furthermore, this effect did not depend on participants’ previous knowledge (the label’s definitions) or linguistic and cultural background. Taking all this into account, we consider this effect as a relatively universal psychological phenomenon and relate our findings to existing theories of formal explanations.It is known that formal explanations with categorical labels are more satisfying than explicit tautologies. However, would they still be more satisfying if they are implicitly tautological themselves? In two experiments, we compared the degree of satisfaction between tautological formal explanations, explicit tautologies, and proper explanations. Additionally, we examined whether participants knew the correct definitions for the labels used in the formal explanations. Finally, we asked whether cultural and linguistic differences can play a role in the treatment of formal explanations with categorical labels. To this end, the first experiment involved Chilean students ( DiffereFirst, despite the debates surrounding informativeness and tautology, the effects of formal explanations are not always tested on complete tautologies. From a common interpretation, to which we shall also align in this article, tautology is an “unnecessary repetition, usually in close proximity, of the same word, phrase, idea, argument” . Thus, eSecond, many of these experiments employ either simplistic categories  or artificial categories with provided definitions. Consequently, participants are always aware of the category to which the label refers in a formal explanation. This allows them to supplement the explanation of a specific example with categorical information based on their prior knowledge during interpretation . HoweverFinally, the existing body of research has not yet directly assessed the potential cultural and linguistic effects on the evaluation of formal explanations. Previous experiments have mainly focused on native English speakers e.g.,  leaving 1.2.Hypothesis 1). We also assumed that the satisfactoriness of tautological formal explanations will vary based on participants’ prior knowledge of the concept under consideration. Specifically, tautological formal explanations will be rated as more satisfactory when participants have no or incomplete prior knowledge of the concept compared to when they possess accurate prior knowledge about the concept (Hypothesis 2). Additionally, if the observed effects are inherent cognitive phenomena, they should be observable across different languages and cultures (Hypothesis 3). To investigate this, the study was conducted among Spanish speakers in Chile and Russian speakers in Russia.In the present study, we hypothesized, that tautological formal explanations  will be perceived as more satisfactory compared to explicitly tautological explanations , but as less satisfactory compared to “real” explanations  . All of them read and signed an informed consent. They received an amount equivalent to approximately 5 USD (in Chilean pesos) for their participation.2.2.because it belongs to a kind of phenomena unified by this property (is a carcinogen / is an inert gas / is a succulent). In a few instances where naming a specific object posed difficulty (such as when describing an atom that is an ion), we contextually clarified that we were referring to some individual entity (“This atom possesses an electric charge because it is an ion”). Two fillers were also added to each domain (1 filler for “label” and 1 for “explanation” conditions), which were obviously incorrect statements . We did this in order to reduce the possibility of participants judging the satisfiability of an explanation solely based on its formal characteristics, as well as to balance the average number of characters in the statements across the three conditions. Thus, in total, this section consisted of 32 questions (24 items and 8 fillers).We designed 24 items across 4 domains: Biology, Chemistry, Social Sciences, and Linguistics (6 items in each domain). For each item, three variants of explanations were constructed see : expliciIn addition, we developed a multiple-choice questionnaire in which participants were required to select the correct definition for each item from three possible options. For instance, to test one’s understanding of the term “polyglot,” we provided the following question: “Which of these definitions best fits the word ‘polyglot’?” and supplied three answers for selection: a) A person who speaks many languages, b) A person trained as a linguist, and c) A person who has spoken two languages since childhood. This section consisted of 24 questions (in accordance with the number of items from the previous section). We used Latin square experimental design with one within-subject and within-items factor (type of explanation) with three levels, and one within-subject between-item factor with two levels (known vs. unknown). The levels of this second factor emerge from the multiple-choice questionnaire.2.3.Each participant was assigned to one (out of three) experimental lists, presenting all items in one condition each, and the same number of each condition. This allowed us to have all items presented in every condition across participants. Participants were instructed to evaluate the explanations provided by different people for various phenomena. In this stage, participants were asked, “How satisfactory do you find the following explanation?” We used the term satisfaction, because it has been previously used to study label effects see . The que2.4.Before analysis, we checked the quality of the data by plotting the frequency of the responses (from 1 to 7) at the participant level. This is to ensure that we detect whether any participant responded mindlessly by pressing the same digit all the time. While, in principle participants should respond 8 trials as 1 (for the control condition), and respond 8 trials as 7 (for the explanation condition), it is less clear whether their responses for the label condition will tend to either of the extremes of the scale. However, our hypothesis dictates that this condition will fall between in between the extremes values. Thus, we tolerated up to 50% of responses equal to 7 . This criterion resulted in the exclusion of 2 participants in the Chilean sample. Accuracy was not considered an exclusion criteria since we were interested in having a range of known and unknown concepts. Yet, no participant in the Chilean sample exhibited accuracy at or below chance .As per preregistration,https://osf.io/zjsf2/.Inferential analysis was carried out using a mixed-effects regression approach with the lme4  and lmer2.5.se = 0.216, t-value = 6.50, p <. 001) and between the ratings for the label condition and those for the control conditions . left panel) shows the pattern of the results in Experiment 1. As predicted, we found the lower rates for the control condition, the highest rates in the explanation condition and the label condition fell in between, being statistically different than the other conditions as shown by the results of the linear mixed effect regression.3.3.1.A sample of 51 Russian students were recruited through advertisements among several university teachers and students . Students received credit for courses or payment for participation. All of them read and sign an informed consent.3.2.The materials, design, procedures, and data analysis were identical to those used in Experiment 1, except that all materials and instructions were in the Russian language. Consequently, we also check data quality using the same criteria as in the Chilean sample, which resulted in the exclusion of 3 participants. We therefore simulated 1,000 experiments with 48 participants, 24 items and the means and SD observed in the Russian sample, as well as the same simulations but with 100 participants. As for the Chilean sample, we found enough power for our first hypothesis even with 48 participant , but, even with simulations for 100 participant, we did not found enough statistical power for our second hypothesis (with 100 participants: power for the difference between the label condition when knowing the concept compared to when not knowing the concept = 0.14). Thus, we also applied our stop rule here, as we did for Experiment 1.3.3.se = 0.197, t-value = 4.94, p <. 001) and between the ratings for the label condition and those for the control conditions . right panel) shows the pattern of the results in Experiment 2. As predicted, we found the lower rates for the control condition and the highest rates in the explanation condition, while for the label condition rating appeared in between, being statistically different than the other two conditions, result confirmed through the linear mixed effect regression.4.anova R function. The results indicate that in neither of the experiments did a model with disciplines as a predictor perform better than a model without them , suggesting that disciplines had no effect in the way participants rated the explanations.As stated in our preregistration, although we did not have a specific hypothesis about any potential differences between the four disciplines , we include this variable in an exploratory analysis. This analysis was based on descriptive statistics initially see , followe5.The current study investigated, in two distinct populations, whether the effect previously observed in formal explanations extends to cases involving full tautologies, and explored whether this effect depends on prior knowledge about the explained concepts, and on cultural and linguistic background. Our first hypothesis predicted that participants would perceive tautological formal explanations as more satisfying compared to explicit tautologies, but less satisfying compared to proper explanations. This hypothesis was confirmed in both the Russian and Chilean samples. The second hypothesis predicted that prior knowledge would influence this effect; we supposed that participants who could correctly indicate the definition of a label would also evaluate tautological formal explanations as less satisfying compared to those who indicated incorrect definitions. Our results do not support that hypothesis. Using the observed means and SDs, we calculated the power for that effect simulating 100 participants on each sample. The results of those simulations show that even with that large sample size we would not be able to detect the effect more than 10% of the time, which can be interpreted as the effect being too small to be relevant, or if the effect is large enough to be relevant, it cannot be detected by our task. While we acknowledge that the replication of this study on a larger sample could theoretically yield different outcomes, nevertheless, the results of these simulations indicate that even with a twofold increase in the sample size, the detection of the effect remains improbable. Therefore, we favor the first interpretation and believe that both Russian and Chilean participants evaluated tautological formal explanations as more satisfying than explicitly tautological explanations regardless of whether they were familiar with the label definition or not. These findings are somewhat counterintuitive in nature.carcinogen” is a tautology and would rate its satisfiability lower. An alternative viewpoint could predict that, on the contrary, if a person is unfamiliar with the definition, they cannot grasp the meaning of the formal explanation and therefore perceive it as unsatisfactory. However, none of this occurred. According to our data, if an explanation relies on an appeal to category membership, it will be perceived as more satisfying than an explicit tautology – even if the individual possesses the necessary knowledge to notice the tautological nature or even if the person is unaware of or misunderstands the definition of the categorical label. Taking this into account, along with the fact that these findings hold true for two different populations (Russian and Chilean), and that the disciplinary domains  did not contribute to the effect, we interpret our results as showing a universal psychological phenomenon, which might be linked to the formal-logical structure of the explanation itself rather than its content.One might assume that a person who knows the definition of the word “carcinogen” would have a greater chance of understanding that “Alcohol promotes the formation of cancerous tumors in the body because it is a According to Prasada’s theory , the satAlternatively, it is possible that our method has limitations in its capacity to assess knowledge about the label. For instance, if a participant believed that a “polyglot” is “a person trained as a linguist,” the characteristic of “speaking many languages” may still be considered principled by such a respondent. Since we used multiple-choice questions for knowledge assessment, we cannot rule out this possibility, nor confirm it. Future research could employ an alternative approach by testing the knowledge of definitions using open-ended questions or controlling distractors in used multiple-choice questions to ensure they do not contain the same principled features as the correct response. This would allow for a more comprehensive examination of participants’ understanding and provide insights into the robustness and generalizability of the observed effects. Given these limitations, we must still note that our data does not support Prasada’s theory.Other theories suggest that formal explanations can indicate potential knowledge that can be used to explain a feature. This knowledge can be held either among members of a social community  or withiThus, tautological formal explanations are not explanations in the full sense of the word . Yet, participants in both experiments do not consider as unsatisfactory as explicit tautologies, regardless of their knowledge of label meaning. Therefore, either tautological formal explanations are not tautologies from a cognitive perspective , or participants apply a heuristic when assessing the satisfactoriness of such explanations. The latter would imply that in certain cases, formal explanations indeed possess the ability to reduce the sense of uncertainty by adding new information. Let us examine a formal  explanation: “Why does that [pointing at a bird] fly?” – “That flies because it is a bird” . DespiteDespite the fact that the effect has been demonstrated on two culturally and linguistically different samples and across four different domains, some limitations need to be acknowledged. Our study was focused on students, and it is important to ascertain whether the effect can manifest in other social groups. Additionally, considering that explanation evaluation is influenced by both individual differences  and learhttps://osf.io/zjsf2/.The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found at: The studies involving humans were approved by Comité de Ética de la Investigación en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.IA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. EG: Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.


A substantial body of theory exists on the concept of everyday life, including the sociology of everyday life, but it has barely featured in the mainstream of the sociological study of leisure or leisure studies more broadly. This paper explores this theoretical work and considers the place of leisure in it, and how it might inform the further development of the study of leisure. It is argued that the time is right to broaden the scope of leisure research to incorporate consideration of the way in which all forms of everyday time-use interact. The concept of everyday life as a whole has, nevertheless, not featured prominently or explicitly in the study of leisure. Much leisure research activity is focussed on the rare and exceptional rather than the typical, thereby ignoring the bulk of leisure experience.The exploration described in this article began with the observation that a number of prominent strands of leisure theory are focussed on elevated or ‘special’ forms of leisure. These include: ‘serious leisure’ . Nevertheless, it provided a valuable starting point, with one source leading to another, in a ‘snowball’ type of process, while existing overviews . While this comes close to the ‘false consciousness’ argument, the circuit was ‘not completely closed’ because people still retained certain ‘irreducible’ levels of agency. The only way to stop the circuit from closing completely, however, was to ‘conquer the quotidian, attack it and transform it’. Intellectuals might have been expected to play this role but their limited specialist perspectives had obscured the everyday as a distinct and significant phenomenon. While Lefebvre continued to believe in the potential to act politically to bring about change (p.68), the focus for change/revolution had shifted: everyday life had ‘taken the place of economics’ and should be the focus of ‘a cultural revolution with economic and political implications’ . This line of reasoning resulted in a political agenda, albeit one developed along the lines he had originally been critical of, namely a prescription arising from an élite intellectual source. He declared: ‘The theoretical revolution which constitutes the first step towards a cultural revolution is based on philosophical experience’  contributed significantly to the theory of everyday life, initially in Hungary in the 1970s  and later in Australia and the USA Heller, . Like Leobjectivation in itself sphere is everyday life, which involves rules, norms and practices related to meanings, language and interactions with fellow humans and the material world, to which the individual is exposed from birth and takes largely for granted.The objectivation for itself sphere involves philosophy, religion etc., where meaning is provided.The objectivation for and in itself sphere comprises one or more socio-economic-political institutions, the growth of which characterises modernity , ‘the human condition vanishes’ (p.313). This corresponded to Habermas’s ‘colonization of everyday life’ by the forces of ‘instrumental reason’ (discussed below), which she acknowledged.Heller saw the third sphere becoming so powerful that the everyday The Everyday World as Problematic (1987), that the discipline of sociology had created a discourse which ignored the unpaid and paid work of women. She posited that a feminist sociology should begin by examining the experience of everyday life, particularly that of women. While initially drawing on the micro-level work of Schutz, she saw the need for a macro-level dimension to the analysis. She declared: ‘an inquiry confining itself to the everyday world of direct experience is not adequate to explicate its social organization’ (p.89), since the everyday world was continually impacted by forces beyond it. While she clearly accepted a Marxist perspective on the workings of those macro-level forces (p.95), Doran , Doran  argues tblematic , that thWhile the commitment to a Marxist perspective was generally abandoned by subsequent theorists, it remained theoretically influential, partly because it demonstrated that the micro-level concept of everyday life could be studied in the context of critical macro-level social theory.paramount reality, after Berger and Luckman . These were: ‘free areas, escape routes and identity sites’ (p.112) which took the form of: activity enclaves ; new landscapes ; mindscaping ; and joining alternative communities. However, these ‘escapes’ did not necessarily operate as expected because they could be merely a means of adapting to, rather than changing, paramount reality. They were themselves often commodified and therefore part of the paramount reality itself, rendering it tolerable rather than acting as an escape from it (p.154).British sociologists Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor , arguing that bringing about a transformation of consciousness sufficient to fundamentally transform the everyday life of the masses was unlikely (p.233). They found ‘more consoling’ the idea of individual action in pursuing escape strategies to achieve social change: ‘I escape therefore I am’ (p.236). However, they admitted that this could be seen as ‘bourgeois individualism’ and ‘limited as an ideology’. So the result was uncertain in that neither the traditional revolution scenario or aggregate individual periodic escape activity offered a realistic approach to a changed society. The cul-de-sac did not, however, end there. A second edition of the book included the original text unchanged but with the addition of a lengthy new introduction  and cultural capital  (pp.128–129). Each class fraction had a distinctive habitus reflected in a lifestyle which comprised: ‘all the properties … with which individuals and groups surround themselves – houses, furniture, paintings, books, cars, spirits, cigarettes, perfume, clothes – and the practices in which they manifest their distinction – sports, games, entertainments’ (p.173). This list clearly encompassed everyday accoutrements and activities. It omitted paid and unpaid work activity and did not refer explicitly to family activity, but they were seen as part of a society-wide ‘system of classified and classifying practices’, so it can be said that the social structure was inextricably entwined with the everyday. The context for social change lay not in an economic struggle between just two classes but in a competitive process among class fractions in which each ‘strives to maintain or change its position in the social structure’ (p.157) comprising cultural – and everyday – phenomena. However, the result, even if all groups improved their absolute conditions, was invariably the reproduction of the structure and its relativities (p.165). The only chance of this pattern being disrupted was some sort of economic crisis (p.168).Pierre Bourdieu’s /1984 anahabitus and the related culture/consumption-structured social system have been subject to some criticism. First, it has been found empirically that, while the location of class fractions in the spaces of social position and lifestyle is based on a sort of centroid for each of the various lifestyle/consumption variables, often only a minority of members of the class fraction are located at or even near the centroid . The Habermas thesis implies that the colonization process suppresses these communicative functions as features of the lifeworld/everyday. The extent to which this process disrupts the communicative characteristics of the private sphere is at least partly an empirical question, but it has been argued that Habermas ‘failed to develop a sustained empirical program at the level of the everyday’  as the key ‘being-together’ characteristic of the masses – a secular equivalent of the convivial quality of religion (p.58). The existence of puissance could give rise to particular groupings – or neo-tribes – extending from a small local group to a whole nation and beyond. Any one individual might identify with a number of groupings/tribes. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, Maffesoli saw a decline in individualism and an increase in mass identities: ‘The conformism of youth, the passion for likeness within groups or ‘tribes’, the phenomena of fashion, standardized culture, up to and including the unisexualization of appearance, permit us to claim that what we are witnessing is the loss of the idea of the individual in favour of a much less distinct mass’ . Bennett ; the user/consumer’s related behaviour ; and ‘what the cultural consumer “makes” or “does” during this time and with these images’ (p.xii). The main focus of the research was on this third component which was seen not as passive consumption, but as something more active, namely, a form of production (p.xiv). Individuals had agency in the form of evasive actions (‘procedures of everyday creativity’) or tactics deployed in everyday life (p.xiv), which was characterised by ‘its ruses, its fragmentation (the result of circumstances), its poaching, its clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short, by its quasi-invisibility’ (p.31).Michel de Certeau’s work, in day Life , was empresistant characteristic explicit. The case studies in Highmore’s , presented a seminal neo-Marxist macro-theoretical perspective on leisure (pp.40–41), set in the context of a British society which reflected the ‘social divisions and systematic inequalities inherent in the organisation of contemporary capitalism’ (p.178). The supposed freedoms offered by the market of leisure goods and services were presented as illusory, being the means by which the forces of capitalism bound people to the system as workers and consumers. Although not a major feature of the book, considerable space was devoted to discussing everyday life, in the form of ‘family life’ and the holiday (pp.164–170), which offered individuals relief from ‘two of the constraints of everyday life’, namely time and place (p.171). Despite these constraints, there was no significant level of political dissatisfaction among the population since:In most people’s lives are not motivated by political abstractions but by the concerns which secure and mark out a more intimate framework of home and family, friends and relatives. Impenetrable to the public influences of economic and political change, our private lives inform our sense of who we are. , which was faced with a challenge since, to most people, ‘basic socialist ideas remain abstract, with no apparent connection to everyday life’ (p.233). Nevertheless, one way to make such a connection was via leisure, so the British political left was urged into political battle with leisure as a potent part of the ‘agenda of contemporary socialism’ (p.240).Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young, introduced the concept of necessary symbolic work, which everyone engaged in on an everyday basis. This comprised the use of: language in communication; the active body as a ‘practice and symbolic resource’; drama, in the sense of ‘communicative interaction with others’ (cf. Goffman); and a combination of all of the above to engage in symbolic creativity or the ‘production of new meanings intrinsically attached to feeling, to energy, to excitement and psychic movement’ (p.285). This symbolic work had three outputs: individual identities; the placing of individual identities in larger wholes, such as race, class, gender, age or regional groups ; and development and affirmation of individuals’ own sense of vital capacities and ‘how they might be applied to the cultural world’ (p.285). This took place in all modes of everyday activity, including paid and unpaid work, family and leisure, with the ‘main cultural materials and resources’ used in leisure being ‘cultural commodities’ (p.286). While some of these resources came from the market, consumption, for the young people Willis studied, was to be understood as ‘an active, not a passive, process’ (p.287). The pessimism of much postmodernist commentary on consumer society was rejected as simplistic, since the sheer quantity and variety of consumer products and the creativity of consumers had released ‘a profane explosion of everyday symbolic life and activity’. The ‘genie of common culture’ was ‘out of the bottle – let out by commercial carelessness’ (p.291).Paul Willis’s  study ofJohn Fiske  was veryhabituses, noting the ‘contradictory forces that make it difficult for some people to “settle” comfortably and make one habituated position their home’ (p.163). The process by which this results in social change is, however, not explored.In regard to substantive theory, Fiske  begins wCultural Change and Everyday Life . The task is further exacerbated by culture being subject to a process of fragmentation as cultural forms proliferate and the boundaries between producers and consumers dissolve.David Chaney, in day Life , observeReading the everyday, Joe Moran  was presented as part of his analysis of modernity. He drew initially on Lefebvre, but only for definitional purposes. He then referred to de Certeau and Fiske whose work he found unsatisfactory because their micro-level of analysis ignored such issues as class, gender, race and history. He was more approving of Cohen and Taylor’s approach, as discussed above, but argued that their equivocal conclusions implied that ‘the meaning of contemporary everyday life and leisure remains frustratingly elusive’ (p.108).Chris Rojek’s  Decentriume pp.10–108 was Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity, examines the ‘mundane and the spectacular of the leisure life-world’ of ‘the lads’, a group of British working class young men. This is a rare example of a leisure studies research project which not only deals with the everyday, but references relevant theory, notably Maffesoli, de Certeau and the Situationist Debord. The ‘lads’ are presented as an example of Maffesoli’s concept of a ‘neo-tribe’, with their ‘leisure life-world’ based on a shared life history and mutuality. It is full of everyday rituals, such as frequent socializing and drinking in the same suburban pub, but with the routine punctuated by occasional highlights in the form of more extended nights of drinking, dancing and sexual pursuits in city-centre nightclubs. All this is intensely meaningful to ‘the lads’. However, as a study of everyday life, the account, while rich in detail, is somewhat one-dimensional in focusing on leisure life-worlds of the ‘lads’, largely ignoring relationships with other aspects of everyday life.Tony Blackshaw , in LeisBlackshaw notes the gap between critical social theory and the conception of the everyday lives of the masses which had motivated the pioneers of the sociology of everyday life, observing: ‘the everyday leisure worlds of men and women – their inner and exterior lives and how these are individually experienced and shared with others – is one thing. Critical sociological discourse is quite another’ , p.86. ITime Bind, the lead on this issue has been taken by non-leisure specialists  linking of holidays with the idea of escape from the everyday. Paralleling the tendency for leisure scholars to concentrate on the ‘higher forms’ of leisure, tourism scholars have tended to focus on the exotic, as exemplified by Urry’s  popular With increasing global mobility and cosmopolitanism, Franklin and Crang , p.8 ref6Pons  is also The most relevant embodied practices through which we become tourists are everyday, ordinary, and often non-representational, practices. It is, therefore, insufficient in tourist studies to focus only on extraordinary practices, like sightseeing … Grasping only what is exceptional underplays both the continued relevance of the routines and habits in the configuration of tourist experience and the fact that the distinction between the everyday and the holiday is becoming increasingly fuzzy. Pons, , p.52Urry responded to a number of his critics in the second edition of his book  project was established in Britain in the 1930s, continued into the 1950s and was revived in the 1980s Hubble, . With thThe ‘leisure1-4’ taxonomy of time use seeks to widen the scope of the study of leisure from the simple work-leisure binary to encompass eleven categories of time-use (Veal Leisure research has not entirely neglected the everyday, but it has been peripheral. In fact, as noted at the start of this paper, the theoretical emphasis has often been on the non-everyday, concentrating on relatively elevated and even élitist, concepts of leisure. Embracing the concept of everyday life can be seen as an antidote to this tendency. Roberts  has statwork-life balance. While the topic has been a focus of attention by a few leisure researchers (e.g., Roberts The first possibility arises from the proposition that a key role of social research is to address pressing issues of the time. As leisure was emerging as a field of study in the 1960 and 1970 s, the growth of leisure was itself an issue of the time Roberts, . The corA second possibility is prompted by suggestions that research on leisure should ‘decentre’ leisure Rojek,  or treatIf the study of leisure is to be relevant to the real world it should ideally reflect that world, which is one in which most leisure is everyday leisure.


Contextual Connection Model of Health Musicking for People Living with Dementia and Their Family Care Partners. The study found fifteen themes that describe dyads’ supported experiences of sharing music in their homes. These were organised into three global themes: (1) experiences were shaped by complex influences; (2) a connected musical ecosystem; and (3) music was a resource for wellbeing. This study highlighted the important role of personalised facilitation and the therapeutic relationship as dyads learned to use music as a resource through a process of trial and error. The implications for skill-sharing, indirect music therapy and direct music therapy practice are discussed.An increasing number of people with dementia receive informal care from family members to help them remain living in the community. Music therapy is particularly beneficial for supporting the wellbeing of people living with dementia. However, little is known about how music therapy might support people with dementia and their family care partners as dyads. This study explored the experiences of six dyads participating in a 12-week home-based skill-sharing music intervention facilitated by a music therapist. We examined their experiences during the intervention period and in the 3–6 months following. This study was conducted within a larger randomised control trial, HOMESIDE. Data was collected through video-recorded music-based interviews, participant diaries, and a semi-structured interview. Data was analysed using an abductive and relational-centred research approach in consideration of the  This context was continually shifting as dyads experienced changes to their health and life circumstances. Over the course of the HOMESIDE program, dyads’ experiences were further shaped by changes in how they thought about and used music (theme 3). These changes to their relationship with music were fostered through the personalised, collaborative and structured facilitation they received through HOMESIDE (theme 4). These complex and interacting factors influenced how dyads For instance, dyads responded differently to musicking based on their personalities and relationship dynamics (theme 1). This was highlighted by Ray’s wife, Lynn, who reflected on how they responded differently during a live music concert:“So while Ray has never been the one to get up and dance, he was jiggin’ in his seat and singing the whole time, I was up dancing.”Professional identities and cultural backgrounds also influenced dyads’ expectations of musicking. Myrtle associated musicking with relaxed social gatherings due to her Irish background, while Susan’s Chinese background informed her view of singing and dancing as activities reserved for children or professionals.Dyads’ ever-changing contexts also influenced their experiences (theme 2). Several dyads reflected on the influence of Covid-19, describing musicking as a “replacement” for other activities during Covid-19 restrictions. In the context of dementia as a progressive condition, some dyads needed to adjust their musical activities as their needs changed. For example, as Vicki’s dementia progressed, her husband Geoff increasingly used music to help her feel connected, centred, and calm in the moment.thought about music as they recognised and appreciated its affordances. RH’s wife, LM, reflected on this in their interview, stating “I’ve enjoyed the whole process as far as understanding about music more and the impacts that music can make on a life.” Dyads also changed how they used music. Overall, dyads used music more intentionally and more frequently, and many dyads integrated musicking into their daily lives. This was shown by Myrtle’s daughter, Kath, who incorporated music into their daily tasks: “Come dinner time, (music) was really helpful for me with preparing food … It certainly helped mum engage in the kitchen.”Across the 12-week music intervention, dyads’ relationship to music changed, further influencing how they experienced musicking (theme 3). Firstly, dyads changed how they All dyads reflected on the helpful role of facilitation in supporting positive musicking experiences (theme 4). In particular, dyads valued the personalised, collaborative and structured nature of the facilitation. The therapeutic relationship and structure of the program were key to maintaining motivation, highlighting the centrality of the scheduled sessions and follow-up phone calls. As reflected by Ray’s wife, Lynn, “I think it would be very easy, if you were not contacting us, it would be very easy just to fall off the wagon.” The personalised and collaborative aspects of facilitation enabled dyads to find solutions to challenges they encountered at home, and helped them identify which activities were most helpful and/or suitable. Richard’s wife, Meg, reflected on this in their interview:“The  that you came up with were so pertinent to us. I think you listened, and you knew something about us and knew what we were capable of. So you came up with the idea (of songwriting) … Your coaching us was really, really beneficial.”3.2.moments (theme 5). Within these moments, dyads experienced the revival and strengthening of their existing connections to self, memories and each other (theme 6). Some dyads also developed new connections through songwriting, learning new songs, and making new social connections beyond the home (theme 7). Additionally, sharing music provided opportunities for dyads to experience each other relationally, inhabiting familiar and new roles, and understanding themselves within an ecological context as they witnessed others and were witnessed themselves (theme 8).Dyads experienced multiple levels of connection through musicking as they connected to themselves, each other, friends, family members, and sometimes the broader community. Dyads’ experiences of connection were experienced temporally as ability to remember. These reconnections were meaningful to dyads in the context of lost connections due to symptoms of dementia.Vicki’s experiences of sharing music with her husband, Geoff, highlight the temporal and meaningful nature of moments (theme 5). While Vicki experienced difficulties with focus and verbal communication, she often became more engaged and animated during musicking. For Vicki, this was meaningful and enjoyable in the moment, as she appeared to connect with Geoff through smiling, increased eye contact, and physical affection. For Geoff, while these moments were “very much few and far between,” he valued the “rekindling” of their connection, reflecting that “anything is a blessing.” This rekindling or reviving aspect of connection was a common experience across dyads (theme 6). Through sharing music, dyads revived and strengthened existing connections to music, memories, each other, the self, memories and the Musicking supported people with dementia to reconnect to a sense of self, and re-identify with their musical identities. For instance, Susan reflected that she enjoyed singing, reflecting on her role as “lead singer” in her middle and high school classrooms. Others, such as RH, viewed music as “just part of my life.” All dyads experienced reconnections to memories through musicking, and reminiscing became a rich source of conversation for many. This supported reconnections to each other as dyads, particularly for spousal couples, who revisited positive shared memories through music.new connections for dyads. This included connecting to music in new ways through various HOMESIDE activities, and creating new neural connections through songwriting, learning songs, building social connections and creating memories. The creation of new memories was particularly meaningful for family care partners as they recognised the ongoing value of these. Myrtle’s daughter, Kath, reflected on the significance of new memories, as Myrtle passed away before their final interview. Kath reflected:Musicking also supported “There is one image that always (comes back), Mum and I just sitting on the couch and laughing and she just put her hand out, and we’d hold hands just quite naturally. And that’s something that she did a lot when the music was playing … My mum just hold(ing) my hand is such a simple gesture, but … it’s invaluable to me. It’s a beautiful memory to have.”Sharing music also allowed dyads to experience each other relationally as they witnessed each other playing, singing and remembering (theme 8). Family care partners experienced pleasure at seeing their loved ones’ strengths through music, frequently commenting on their ability to remember songs and lyrics. Being witnessed was an equally powerful experience as participants with dementia were seen through their strengths (theme 8). The dynamic of witnessing and being witnessed through music also highlighted dyads’ relational knowing of each other, with each able to comment on the preferences of the other. This provided opportunities to recapture original relationship roles as demonstrated by Richard and his wife Meg:Meg: The dancing. I love dancing. I loooooooove dancing.Richard: Oh you sure do.It is important to note that witnessing and being witnessed was not always a positive experience. Musicking also reflected changes to people with dementia’s abilities as their condition progressed, and this was sometimes challenging for dyads. For example, as Vicki became less responsive to music over time, her husband Geoff reflected that this lack of response was “fairly representative of where she’s at the moment.” This made witnessing challenging for Geoff as he expressed grief around changes to Vicki’s abilities.3.3.always helpful, at times it was experienced as “instant,” “amazing,” “incredible” and “fantastic” (theme 15).As dyads changed how they thought about music (theme 3) they gained an appreciation of its affordances (theme 9), drawing on these more intentionally over time (theme 10). While it sometimes took effort to find what “worked” (theme 11), musicking was broadly experienced as enjoyable (theme 12) and helpful (theme 13). As musicking empowered people with dementia to express and build on their strengths, they became more confident in their abilities (theme 14). Family care partners also gained confidence in their caregiving role (theme 14). While musicking was not While the affordances of musicking varied due to dyads’ individual contexts, music was broadly identified as flexible, accessible and adaptable. This afforded opportunities for social connection, positive mood, reduced distress and improved cognitive abilities . Several people with dementia commented on music’s capacity to support their memory, linking this to improved self-esteem and confidence. Ray commented on this in his interview:“It’s good having an ability where I can (remember songs) … (I’ve) still got to go back into the (memory) files, they are not always there, I do not pull the right one up all the time, but the list is still there.”The soothing capacity of music was also valued, with several family care partners reflecting on using music to soothe their loved ones and themselves. Dyads’ intentional use of music increased as their participation in the HOMESIDE trial progressed (theme 10), and this was reflected in their interviews and diaries. Dyads used music intentionally to interact and bond with each other, to soothe, to “use the brain” (Richard), and to manage mood and stress. As dyads became more comfortable with using music as a resource for wellbeing, they were able to use it more flexibly as needed, with some integrating musicking into their daily lives.Importantly, using music for wellbeing did not always ‘work’ for dyads, and it sometimes required effort to discover what was helpful (theme 11). Definitions of what ‘working’ meant varied across dyads, and this was often influenced by their expectations of music for dementia. For example, two family care partners referred to videos they had seen on social media of people with dementia’s dramatic responses to music. At times, family care partners used these videos as a comparison point for their loved ones’ less dramatic responses, which resulted in some disappointment. Susan’s daughter Jenny reflected on this more moderate impact of musicking for her mother: “So music has eased its way in to give a little bit of pleasure. It’s not a magic pill.” For other dyads, it took a process of trial and error to find which musical activities were most helpful. Dyads valued supportive facilitation within this process to help with problem-solving and motivation.Despite these challenges, musicking was broadly experienced as enjoyable in the moment (theme 12). This was discussed within diary entries and interviews and observed during music-based interviews. In the longer term, sharing music was experienced as helpful for dyads’ mood (theme 13). Most people with dementia also experienced music as helpful for their memory, and some family care partners felt better able to cope with the challenges of caregiving (theme 13). Myrtle’s daughter, Kath, reflected on several helpful aspects in her interview:“Being able to diffuse a stressful situation early on in the piece with music had undoubted benefits for me. But also the happiness part of it, that’s good for you as well. When we got into the study, we both had a bounce in our steps.”Knowing how to use music as a caregiving tool boosted the confidence of some family care partners. At the same time, musicking supported people with dementia’s confidence as it reinforced their strengths such as memory and musical abilities. This was shown by Ray, who reflected that remembering is “a bit of an achievement sometimes.” This increased confidence supported musical flourishing for two participants with dementia as they embraced musicking as a creative expression of self. With newfound confidence, their self-expression expanded into performing for other family members and in community spaces.While musicking did not always ‘work’, at times it was notably impactful and affecting (theme 15). These moments were highly valued by dyads, providing a welcome contrast to experiences of loss and decline. These peak moments captured what is possible for dyads through musicking while serving as a reminder of people with dementia’s continuing strengths. For people living with dementia, these are moments of pride, joy and hope. For family care partners, these experiences are furthered through the creation of cherished memories. One of these moments was captured through author 1’s observational notes from Richard and his wife Meg’s music-based interviews:“In this moment, Richard appears to be completely in the moment with the music. There is no hesitation in his movement, just playfulness and confidence. He is confident in his abilities, and in expressing himself. Meanwhile, Meg also seems to be connecting to the music as she joins in and sings, laughing intermittently. These laughs appear to be joyous, and as she later emails me, she gets joy from watching Richard in his confident self-expression.”4.Contextual Connection Model of Health Musicking for People With Dementia and Their Family Care Partners . While it is possible that dyads may develop greater understandings of musical affordances through participation in other settings , we argue that the development of the conscious use of music requires more focused support.The findings of this study shed new light on the Partners , indicatPartners  concept  context , 44. To oped see . The chausicking  to musicusicking  reflectsramework , highlig4.1.The results of this study present new insights into dyads’ experiences of connection through musicking across settings, plus nuanced understandings of dyads’ experiences of connection within home-based settings. Based on these findings, we conceptualised connection through musicking for dyads as: (1) influenced by context; (2) ecological; (3) temporal; (4) embodied; (5) of varying quality and characteristics; (6) supported by the affordances of music; (7) supportive for dyads’ individual and collective wellbeing; and (8) not a magic pill.learning to use music as a resource for wellbeing presented in the Revised Contextual Connection Model of Musicking for People Living with Dementia and Their Family Care Partners  changes to how they think about music, (2) appreciating the affordances of music, (3) learning to use music intentionally, (4) trial and error, (5) adjusting expectations, and (6) the importance of personalised, collaborative and structured facilitation.The findings of this research highlighted the numerous affordances of musicking for dyads. Musicking may afford opportunities for soothing, connecting, lifting mood and abilities, and offers multiple entry points for increased accessibility. However as argued by Ansdell , making technology of the self. For healthy individuals, appropriating music is largely sub-conscious, but in the context of illness, the use of music to support health may require a more conscious approach  for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.KMcM led the design, implementation, analysis, writing and editing of this study, and drawing on the HOMESIDE music intervention protocol . FB and This work was supported by the University of Melbourne, National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1169867) and the EU Joint Programme—Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND/04/2019).The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.