Given the importance of cross-disciplinary research, facilitating CDR effectiveness is a priority for many institutions and funding agencies. There are a number of CDR types, however, and the effectiveness of facilitation efforts will require sensitivity to that diversity. This article presents a method characterizing a spectrum of CDR designed to inform facilitation efforts that relies on bibliometric techniques and citation data. We illustrate its use by the Toolbox Project, an ongoing effort to enhance cross-disciplinary communication in CDR teams through structured, (...) philosophical dialogue about research assumptions in a workshop setting. Toolbox Project workshops have been conducted with more than 85 research teams, but the project's extensibility to an objectively characterized range of CDR collaborations has not been examined. To guide wider application of the Toolbox Project, we have developed a method that uses multivariate statistical analyses of transformed citation proportions from published manuscripts to identify candidate areas of CDR, and then overlays information from previous Toolbox participant groups on these areas to determine candidate areas for future application. The approach supplies 3 results of general interest: A way to employ small data sets and familiar statistical techniques to characterize CDR spectra as a guide to scholarship on CDR patterns and trends. A model for using bibliometric techniques to guide broadly applicable interventions similar to the Toolbox. A method for identifying the location of collaborative CDR teams on a map of scientific activity, of use to research administrators, research teams, and other efforts to enhance CDR projects. (shrink)

While each Form is what it is to be F, some Forms also instantiate F (or “self-instantiate”). Here I consider whether the explanation for a Form’s instantiating F should be the Form’s participating in itself. First, I motivate the need for an explanation of self-instantiation. Second, I consider the advantages and disadvantages of self-participation alongside an alternative explanation—that the Form’s being what it is to be F is a sufficient explanation of its instantiation of F. The result is not a (...) conclusive case for self-participation, but only some initial considerations in favor of it. (shrink)

This study examined the influence of 7 high school esports developmental programs on student self-regulation, growth mindset, positive youth development, perceived general health and physical activity, and sport behaviour. A total of 188 students originally participated, with 58 participants completing both pre- and post-program information. At baseline, no significant differences were found between youth e-athletes and their aged-matched controls. The analysis for the observation period showed a significant interaction effect for the PYD confidence scale, with post-hoc comparisons showing a (...) significant decrease in the control group from pre- to post assessment whereas the esports group remained the same. Time main effects showed a decrease in the self-regulation motivation factor, PYD connection factor and PA for all participants. Overall, this study showed that students enrolled in their respective school esports program did not differ from those who did not in self-regulation, growth mindset, PYD, perceived health and PA, and sport behaviour. It was likely that all participants showed a decrease in motivation, connection, and PA due to COVID19 lockdown during the study period. This study is the first to investigate the longitudinal impact of student involvement in high school esports and showed that esports participation did not have a negative impact on any health or psychological factors. (shrink)

How one structures an organization is not only important from the perspective of productivity and efficiency, but primarily how it affects the moral formation of those who are employed in that organization. Organizational structures whether in the manufacturing, service or non-profit sector have moral dimensions that cannot be escaped. Papal social tradition has been concerned about the moral formation of all workers within the organization. This tradition has maintained that an essential component to a humane organizational structure is participation of (...) those involved in the organization, and consequently that participation must be understood primarily in terms of the formation of employees. This article explores the papal social tradition''s understanding of participation and examines its significance in today''s organizational environment, particularly in reference to work-teams. (shrink)

Incapacitated adults with a legally appointed guardian or conservator may be recruited for or involved with medical, behavioral, or social science research. Much of the research in which such persons participate is aimed at evaluating medical interventions for them, or contributing to general knowledge about disorders from which they may suffer. In this paper we will consider how the appointment of guardians for patients with disorders of consciousness —severe brain injuries that affect a patient’s level of arousal and ability to (...) interact —impacts such patients’ access to research.Such persons may be under guardianship because they have lost decisional capacity (i.e., those in a coma or... (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 71-73.

Human infection challenge studies provide illuminating case studies for several ongoing debates in research ethics, including those related to research risks and payment of participants. Grimwade et al 1 add to previous public engagement, qualitative evidence and philosophical literature on these topics.1–8 The authors advocate revision of research payment policy and practice based on their main finding that members of the public endorse ex ante payment of participants proportional to research-related risk exposure, in addition to post hoc compensation (...) for any lasting harms that occur.1 Although ‘payment for risk’ would diverge from most current research ethics guidelines, it is noteworthy that the difference in payment to participants that their framework would allow might only be small, at least in the case of currently accepted studies. The absolute difference would likely be small because the risk of currently accepted HCS participation is usually very low.9 10 On a ‘value of statistical life’ approach, mirroring actuarial accounting for fatal risks, a 1 in 100 000 risk of death might attract an extra payment of only US$96.1 Most HCS do not involve fatality risks this high, although, on pessimistic estimates, the risk of COVID-19 HCS in young healthy adults might involve similar levels of risk.11 Such risks might arguably be justified by large expected public health benefits,12,9 11 13 but it remains controversial whether higher levels of payment could …. (shrink)

Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief (...) in free will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

This study examined the role of key causal analysis strategies in forecasting and ethical decision-making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to identify and analyze the causes, forecast potential outcomes, and make a decision about each problem. Time pressure and analytic mindset were manipulated while participants worked through these problems. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical causes (...) of the problem was associated with both higher quality forecasts and higher ethicality of decisions. Neither time pressure nor analytic mindset impacted forecasts or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundCommunity engagement is increasingly promoted as a marker of good, ethical practice in the context of international collaborative research in low-income countries. There is, however, no widely agreed definition of community engagement or of approaches adopted. Justifications given for its use also vary. Community engagement is, for example, variously seen to be of value in: the development of more effective and appropriate consent processes; improved understanding of the aims and forms of research; higher recruitment rates; the identification of important ethical (...) issues; the building of better relationships between the community and researchers; the obtaining of community permission to approach potential research participants; and, the provision of better health care. Despite these diverse and potentially competing claims made for the importance of community engagement, there is very little published evidence on effective models of engagement or their evaluation.MethodsIn this paper, drawing upon interviews with the members of a Community Advisory Board on the Thai-Myanmar border, we describe and critically reflect upon an approach to community engagement which was developed in the context of international collaborative research in the border region.Results and conclusionsDrawing on our analysis, we identify a number of considerations relevant to the development of an approach to evaluating community engagement in this complex research setting. The paper also identifies a range of important ways in which the Community Advisory Board is in practice understood by its members to have morally significant roles and responsibilities beyond those usually associated with the successful and appropriate conduct of research. (shrink)

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by (...) drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science. (shrink)

Much of children's early syntactic development can be seen as the acquisition of sentence-level constructions that correspond to relatively complex events and states of affairs. The current study was an attempt to determine the relative concreteness (verb-specificity) or abstractness (verb-generality) of such constructions for children just beginning to produce large numbers of multi-word utterances. Sixteen children at 2.0 years of age and sixteen children at 2,5 years of age participated (all English speaking). Each child was taught two novel verbs for (...) a highly transitive action: one in a transitive construction (Ernie is tamming the car) and one in an intransitive construction (with patient äs subject: The ball is meeking). They were then given opportunities to use their newly learned verbs, in many cases in discourse situations that encouraged use of the "opposite" construction (i.e., agent and patient-focused questions). Results showed that 2.0-year-old children almost never produced an utterance using a novel verb in anything other than the construction in which it had been modeled. Children at 2.5 years of age were somewhat more productive, but still the large majority of these children avoided using the experimental verbs in nonmodeled constructions. These results suggest that when English-speaking children produce simple transitive and intransitive utterances in their spontaneous speech, they are doing so on a verb-specific basis (verb Island constructions), schematizing more abstract constructions only later äs they discover patterns that apply across many such lexically specific constructions. (shrink)

Institutional review board delays may hinder the successful completion of federally funded research in the U.S. military. When this happens, time-sensitive, mission-relevant questions go unanswered. Research participants face unnecessary burdens and risks if delays squeeze recruitment timelines, resulting in inadequate sample sizes for definitive analyses. More broadly, military members are exposed to untested or undertested interventions, implemented by well-intentioned leaders who bypass the research process altogether. To illustrate, we offer two case examples. We posit that IRB delays often appear (...) in the service of managing institutional risk, rather than protecting research participants. Regulators may see more risk associated with moving quickly than risk related to delay, choosing to err on the side of bureaucracy. The authors of this article, all of whom are military-funded researchers, government stakeholders, and/or human subject protection experts, offer feasible recommendations to improv... (shrink)

Mirrored-self misidentification is the delusional belief that one's own reflection in the mirror is a stranger. In two experiments, we tested the ability of hypnotic suggestion to model this condition. In Experiment 1, we compared two suggestions based on either the delusion's surface features (seeing a stranger in the mirror) or underlying processes (impaired face processing). Fifty-two high hypnotisable participants received one of these suggestions either with hypnosis or without in a wake control. In Experiment 2, we examined the (...) extent to which social cues and role-playing could account for participants' behaviour by comparing the responses of 14 hypnotised participants to the suggestion for impaired face processing (reals) with those of 14 nonhypnotised participants instructed to fake their responses (simulators). Overall, results from both experiments confirm that we can use hypnotic suggestion to produce a compelling analogue of mirrored-self misidentification that cannot simply be attributed to social cues or role-playing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius by Thomas AquinasMichael J. Rubin, Elizabeth C. Shaw, and Staff*AQUINAS, Thomas. An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius. Translated and edited with an introduction by Michael A. Augros. Merrimack, N.H.: Thomas More College Press, 2021. xxv + 549 pp. Cloth, $65.00The profound influence that Pseudo-Dionysius had on Aquinas’s thought, especially in his (...) metaphysics of participation and his apophatic theology, has been known for some time now, thanks to the excellent work of such scholars as Fran O’Rourke. One would therefore think that Aquinas’s Exposition of the Divine Names (his only commentary on the works of Pseudo-Dionysius) would have been translated a lot sooner. This delay is assuredly due not just to the difficulty of translating this work but also to a certain embarrassment felt by Thomists over Aquinas’s sincere belief that the “Dionysius” who wrote the Divine Names was the Areopagite whose conversion at the teaching of St. Paul is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. That the author calling himself “Dionysius” was in fact a theologian writing in the fifth or sixth centuries has been well established by modern scholarship. Hence, Thomists may have felt tempted to discount or at least pass over the influence of this author on Aquinas since it is discomfiting to think that the Church’s greatest theologian accorded such authority to an imposter.Michael Augros tackles these concerns head-on in the excellent introduction to his new translation of the Divine Names commentary. First, Augros points out that in past centuries a pseudonym was usually not an act of forgery but, rather, a way of concealing the author’s identity, which an early Christian theologian might well decide to do either out of humility or out of a desire “to avoid provoking certain prejudices” in those who disagreed with him in contemporary theological disputes. Moreover, it is likely that the work was never intended for the general public (who could easily mistake the pseudonym as genuine) but, rather, was written for those “already initiated in a particular Neoplatonic school of Christian theology,” who would recognize the author as being “one of their own” but without knowing his precise identity. Finally, in taking the particular name of “Dionysius,” the author of the Divine Names was indicating his intention for the work: Just as the biblical Dionysius was a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity, so the works of Pseudo-Dionysius [End Page 345] are an attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Christian faith.It therefore seems likely, as Augros observes, that Aquinas would still have accorded a great deal of respect to the Divine Names even if he had learned the truth of the author’s identity. The work would not have had the same deuterocanonical authority for him that comes with being written by a direct disciple of St. Paul himself, but “the inherent cogency, coherence, and beauty” of Pseudo-Dionysius’s theology would have been the same. Hence, Pseudo-Dionysius would surely have earned from Aquinas the “docile attitude” appropriate “for a philosopher and theologian of the first order, such as Boethius.”That Aquinas was right to see the author of the Divine Names as a master philosopher and theologian becomes evident when one dives into the text itself, in which Aquinas sees a truly dazzling order, both externally and internally. According to Aquinas, the Divine Names discusses those truths about God of which there are intelligible likenesses in creatures, such as goodness or wisdom, whereas the truths about God of which there are sensible likenesses (for example, “when God is called a lion, or a rock”) are treated by Pseudo-Dionysius in The Symbolic Theology; meanwhile, in the lost or fictional work The Divine Characteristics, Dionysius claims to have treated those truths about God (such as the Trinity) that cannot be known through any likenesses in creatures.Aquinas finds a still more intricate order within the Divine Names itself. Since this work is dedicated to “the divine names by which the processions of God to creatures are manifested,” the plan of the work... (shrink)

Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.

Pseudonymous mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki and his lesser-known counterpart E.S. Pondiczery, devised respectively in France and in Princeton in the mid-1930s, together index a pivotal moment in the history of modern mathematics, marked by international infrastructures and institutions that depended on mathematicians’ willingness to play along with mediated personifications. By pushing these norms and practices of personification to their farcical limits, Bourbaki’s and Pondiczery’s impersonators underscored the consensual social foundations of legitimate participation in a scientific community and the symmetric fictional character (...) of both fraud and integrity in scientific authorship. To understand authorial identity and legitimacy, individual authors’ conduct and practices matter less than the collective interpersonal relations of authorial assertion and authentication that take place within disciplinary institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis module examines ethical debates about the level of care that should be provided to human research participants. Particular attention is placed on the question of what should be considered an ethically acceptable control arm. You will also learn what relevant international and domestic regulatory documents say about standards of care.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug advisory committees provide expert assessments of the safety and efficacy of new therapies considered for approval. A committee hears from a variety of speakers, from six groups, including voting members of the committee, FDA staff members, employees of the pharmaceutical company seeking approval of a therapy, patient and consumer representatives, expert speakers invited by the company, and public participants. The committees convene at the request of the FDA when the risks and harms (...) of novel products are not immediately clear, and their final decisions carry significant weight, as most therapies that receive advisory committee approval are subsequently approved by the FDA. In recent years, across a series of diverse publications, the financial conflicts of interest of each category of participants in the meetings have been investigated. Here, we summarize these findings and their ethical implications, focusing on the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, and we suggest ways to move toward more transparent and impartial advisory committee meetings. (shrink)

Background: In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended three changes to HIV testing methods in US healthcare settings: (1) an opt-out approach, (2) removal of separate signed consent, and (3) optional HIV prevention counseling. These recommendations led to a public debate about their moral acceptability. Methods: We interviewed 25 members from the fields of US HIV advocacy, care, policy, and research about the ethical merits and demerits of the three changes to HIV testing methods. We performed (...) a qualitative analysis of the participant responses in the interviews and summarized the major themes. Results: In general, arguments in favor of the methods were based upon their ultimate contribution to increasing HIV testing and permitting the consequent benefits of identifying those who are HIV infected and linking them to further care. Conclusions: The prevailing theme of ethical concern focused on suspicions that the methods might not be properly implemented, and that further safeguards might be needed. (shrink)

To have a vocation is to be called to a life of ongoing participation in the redemptive work of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Being faithful to the vocation we have received requires adopting a stance of continuing alertness, ready to notice, correctly interpret, and effectively respond to the various forms of communication by which God draws us into closer cooperation with the redemptive missions of the Son and the Spirit. In this paper I focus on a particular vehicle (...) by which the divine call is transmitted to us—namely, the God-given desire to know, which we experience whenever we wonder about something, whenever we try to solve a problem, whenever we learn or explore or plan. (shrink)

Using a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental control group design, a learning environment study was conducted to evaluate the environmental literacy of postsecondary, nonscience majors. Data were collected from 183 students taking an introductory environmental science class—a 41-question Environmental Literacy Instrument (ELI) prompted students for responses across four subscales of environmental literacy: Knowledge, Beliefs, Opinions, and Self-Perceptions. Differences between presurvey and postsurvey scores were compared to determine whether a constructivist-based or traditional learning environment improved students' environmental literacy more. Results showed that the constructivist-based (...) curriculum was not a significant factor of influence, suggesting that regardless of which learning environment they were exposed to, participants experienced similar improvements to their environmental literacy across a 16-week semester. Given that the findings were contrary to expectations, and counterindicated by several other learning environment studies as well, a broader investigation as to why the two learning environments produced similar results is warranted. (shrink)

The present study explored psychological predictors of response to a series of three 25 second inhalations of 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air in 60 nonclinical participants. Multiple regression analyses indicated that only anxiety sensitivity physical concerns predicted self-reported fear, whereas both physical anxiety sensitivity concerns and behavioural inhibition sensitivity independently predicted affective ratings of emotional arousal. In contrast, the psychological concerns anxiety sensitivity dimension predicted ratings of emotional displeasure (valence), and both psychological anxiety sensitivity concerns and behavioural inhibition sensitivity independently (...) predicted emotional dyscontrol. No variables significantly predicted heart rate. These data are in accord with current models of emotional reactivity that highlight the role of cognitive variables in the production of anxious and fearful responding to somatic perturbation, and help further clarify the particular predictors of anxiety-related responding to biological challenge. (shrink)

As understanding of the human microbiome improves, novel therapeutic targets to improve human health with microbial therapeutics will continue to expand. We outline key considerations of balancing risks and benefits, optimising access, returning key results to research participants, and potential conflicts of interest.

The current study examined the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness, identified with a continuous graded cycle ergometry, and aerobic exercise on cognitive functioning and entropy of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in 30 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 14 years. Higher and lower fit participants performed an executive function task after a bout of acute exercise and after rest while watching a film. EEG entropy, using the sample entropy measure, was repeatedly measured during the 1500ms post-stimulus interval to evaluate changes (...) in entropy over time. Analysis of the behavioural data for lower and higher fit groups revealed an interaction between fitness levels and acute physical exercise. Notably, lower fit, but not higher fit, participants had higher error rates for NoGo relative to Go trials in the rest condition, whereas in the acute exercise condition there were no differences in error rates between groups; higher fit participants also had significantly faster reaction times in the exercise condition in comparison with the rest condition. Analysis of EEG data revealed that higher fit participants demonstrated lower entropy post-stimulus than lower fit participants in the left frontal hemisphere, possibly indicating increased efficiency of early stage stimulus processing and more efficient allocation of cognitive resources to the task demands. The results suggest that EEG entropy is sensitive to stimulus processing demands and varies as a function of physical fitness levels, but not acute exercise. Physical fitness, in turn, may enhance cognition in adolescence by facilitating higher functionality of the attentional system in the context of lower levels of frontal EEG entropy. (shrink)

In study 1, the time when aggressive fighting involving 8 and 11 year‐old children took place was examined by means of direct playground observations during lunch‐time recess. There was a tendency, significant in the younger group, for there to have been more fights in the last quarter of recess. In study 2, the causes of fights, the sex of the participants, the proportion of fights that were escalated by other children joining in in a non‐conciliatory way, and the proportion (...) in which children intervened to stop the fights were investigated, again by means of direct playground observations. The most common causes of fights were disputes over some aspect of a rule‐governed game, teasing, retaliations to accidental hurt/injury, and to a lesser extent disputes over space. Most of the fights that were observed involved boys only , and only a minority involved boys and girls or just girls . Most fights were not escalated by other children and most fights did not involve attempts to stop them by other children. In study 3, interview data concerning children's views on fighting are reported. Many children expressed generally negative attitudes towards fighting, and there appeared to be several common ‘barriers’ that deterred children from participating. On the other hand, some children also articulated reasons why they sometimes felt it was necessary to fight. The significance of the results from the three studies for managing children's aggressive behaviour in schools is discussed. (shrink)

If our choices make us who we are, then what does that mean when these choices are made in the human-machine interface? Developing a clear understanding of how human decision making is influenced by automated systems in the environment is critical because, as human-machine interfaces and assistive robotics become even more ubiquitous in everyday life, many daily decisions will be an emergent result of the interactions between the human and the machine – not stemming solely from the human. For example, (...) choices can be influenced by the relative locations and motor costs of the response options, as well as by the timing of the response prompts. In drift diffusion model simulations of response-prompt timing manipulations, we find that it is only relatively equibiased choices that will be successfully influenced by this kind of perturbation. However, with drift diffusion model simulations of motor cost manipulations, we find that even relatively biased choices can still show some influence of the perturbation. We report the results of a two-alternative forced-choice experiment with a computer mouse modified to have a subtle velocity bias in a pre-determined direction for each trial, inducing an increased motor cost to move the cursor away from the pre-designated target direction. With queries that have each been normed in advance to be equibiased in people’s preferences, the participant will often begin their mouse movement before their cognitive choice has been finalized, and the directional bias in the mouse velocity exerts a small but significant influence on their final choice. With queries that are not equibiased, a similar influence is observed. By exploring the synergies that are developed between humans and machines and tracking their temporal dynamics, this work aims to provide insight into our evolving decisions. (shrink)

This study examined three main issues among 364 primary school children: (1) self?reported levels of perceived safety in classroom and playground, and relationship with teacher, (2) associations between perceived safety in the two contexts and peer reported levels of being bullied, and (3) if relationship with teacher moderated the associations between peer reported levels of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground. Data were collected in individual and small group interviews. Overall, while most participants reported positive relationships (...) with their class teacher, and felt safe in their classroom and in the playground, a substantial minority did not. The correlations between level of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground were significant but of modest size. Relationship with teacher did moderate the correlation for perceived safety in the classroom, but did not do so for perceived safety in the playground. No significant age or sex differences were obtained. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed. (shrink)

This article discusses Rousseau’s theory of the genesis and development of a “post-liberal self” and its political implications. In his Emile, or Education, Rousseau explores the distinctive features of the post-liberal self through Emile’s growing capacity to think in terms of his social interdependence with others and yet to maintain his critical autonomy. For Rousseau it is only such individuals with a highly developed moral and civic consciousness who are capable of articulating the general will and of properly participating in (...) a modern republic. I argue that the general will for Rousseau is therefore not a property of the community but of the post-liberal self, for whom the common good is a larger dimension of the individual good. I then discuss the political implications of this theory by relating it to The Social Contract where Rousseau urges us to examine the legitimacy of existing social norms, laws and practices. Rousseau, I conclude, is one of the great radical thinkers of self-transformation as the prerequisite for overcoming the pathologies and limitations of liberal society. (shrink)

BackgroundKinarm Standard Tests is a suite of upper limb tasks to assess sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, which produces granular performance data that reflect spatial and temporal aspects of behavior. We have previously used principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of multivariate data using the Kinarm End-Point Lab. Here, we performed PCA using data from the Kinarm Exoskeleton Lab, and determined agreement of PCA results across EP and EXO platforms in healthy participants. We additionally examined whether further dimensionality (...) reduction was possible by using PCA across behavioral tasks.MethodsHealthy participants were assessed using the Kinarm EXO and EP. Four behavioral tasks were performed that quantified arm sensory and motor function, including position sense [Arm Position Matching ] and three motor tasks [Visually Guided Reaching, Object Hit, and Object Hit and Avoid ]. The number of components to include per task was determined from scree plots and parallel analysis, and rotation type was decided on a per-task basis. To assess agreement, we compared principal components across platforms using distance correlation. We additionally considered inter-task interactions in EXO data by performing PCA across all six behavioral assessments.ResultsBy applying PCA on a per task basis to data collected using the EXO, the number of behavioral parameters were substantially reduced by 58–75% while accounting for 76–87% of the variance. These results compared well to the EP analysis, and we found good-to-excellent agreement values between PCs from the EXO and those from the EP. Finally, we were able to reduce the dimensionality of the EXO data across tasks down to 16 components out of a total of 76 behavioral parameters, which represents a reduction of 79% while accounting for 73% of the total variance.ConclusionPCA of Kinarm robotic assessment appears to capture similar relationships between kinematic features in healthy individuals and is agnostic to the robotic platform used for collection. Further work is needed to investigate the use of PCA-based data reduction for the characterization of neurological deficits in clinical populations. (shrink)

Following the death on April 19, 2015 of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained while unarmed and in police custody, many citizens of Baltimore took to the streets and the National Guard was called into the city. A 2017 article published in the American Journal of Public Health measured the effect of this civil unrest on maternal and child health. I argue that this research does not acknowledge the full range of motivations, behaviors, aims and values that may have been inherent (...) in this unrest. I first describe the article’s characterization of Baltimore’s unrest as community violence. I then provide a negative argument against employing this characterization alone, before providing positive arguments for two alternative characterizations—as protest and apt anger. Finally, I discuss upshots of considering these alternatives. Broadly, while viewing civil unrest as community violence focuses exclusive attention on victims of unrest, these alternatives direct attention to unrest participants, with implications for public health research and practice. While I focus on Baltimore’s 2015 unrest, the proposals raised here apply wherever civil unrest occurs. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;A study of three concepts of liberty, the thesis argues that Isaiah Berlin's text 'Two Concepts of Liberty', seeks to expand the limits of the contemporary Anglo-American debate on the idea of liberty by linguistically shifting the terrain of the debate such that its participants are prompted to view the nineteenth century French Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty. The first section, dealing with Berlin's text and the contemporary Anglo-American (...) debate on the idea of liberty, contends that the misunderstanding of Berlin's text is due to an empiricist epistemology that sees liberties as causally grounded rather than grounded through social norms. In this respect, the intention of Berlin's text is lost. The second section, dealing with the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty, analyses the importance of language in the formation of a new socio-political order and in the conceptualisation of new forms of liberty that are constitutive of that order. The third section deals with Tocqueville's sociological analysis of the profound historical tendency of equality that marks the new socio-political order of Democracy and how that tendency can be linked to the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty conceptualised within the Post-Revolutionary debate. A brief conclusion argues that the very nature of democracy is such that the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty viewed within the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate and by Tocqueville, will furnish humanity with a greater understanding of itself. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that na_ve participants display a high level of agreement when asked to choose or drawschematic representations, or image schemas, of concrete and abstract verbs [Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001, Erlbaum, Mawhah, NJ, p. 873]. For example, participants tended to ascribe a horizontal image schema to push, and a vertical image schema to respect. This consistency in offline data is preliminary evidence that language invokes spatial forms of representation. (...) It also provided norms that were used in the present research to investigate the activation of spatial image schemas during online language comprehension. We predicted that if comprehending a verb activates a spatial representation that is extended along a particular horizontal or vertical axis, it will affect other forms of spatial processing along that axis. Participants listened to short sentences while engaged in a visual discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a picture memory task (Experiment 2). In both cases, reaction times showed an interaction between the horizontal/vertical nature of the verb's image schema, and the horizontal/vertical position of the visual stimuli. We argue that such spatial effects of verb comprehension provide evidence for the perceptual–motor character of linguistic representations. (shrink)

Navigation ability varies widely across humans. Prior studies have reported that being younger and a male has an advantage for navigation ability. However, these studies have generally involved small numbers of participants from a handful of western countries. Here, we review findings from our project Sea Hero Quest, which used a video game for mobile and tablet devices to test 3.9 million people on their navigation ability, sampling across every nation-state and from 18 to 99 years of age. Results (...) revealed that the task has good ecological validity and across all countries sufficiently sampled (N = 63), age is linked to a near-linear decline in navigation ability from the early 20s. All countries showed a male advantage, but this varied considerably and could be partly predicted by gender inequality. We found that those who reported growing up in a city were on average worse at navigating than those who grew up outside cities and that navigation performance helped identify those at greater genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease. We discuss the advantages and challenges of using a mobile app to study cognition and the future avenues for understanding individual differences in navigation ability arising from this research. (shrink)

Human infection challenge studies (HCS) involve intentionally infecting research participants with pathogens (or other micro-organisms). There have been recent calls for more HCS to be conducted in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where many relevant diseases are endemic. HCS in general, and HCS in LMICs in particular, raise numerous ethical issues. This paper summarises the findings of a project that explored ethical and regulatory issues related to LMIC HCS via (i) a review of relevant literature and (ii) 45 qualitative (...) interviews with scientists and ethicists. Among other areas of consensus, we found that there was widespread agreement that LMIC HCS can be ethically acceptable, provided that they have a sound scientific rationale, are accepted by local communities and meet usual research ethics requirements. Unresolved issues include those related to (i) acceptable approaches to trade-offs between the scientific aim to produce generalisable results and the protection of participants, (iii) the sharing of benefits with LMIC populations, (iii) the acceptable limits to risks and burdens for participants, (iv) the potential for third-party risk and whether the degree of acceptable third-party risk is different in endemic settings, (v) the conditions under which (if any) it would be appropriate to recruit children for disease-causing HCS, (v) appropriate levels of payment to participants and (vi) appropriate governance of (LMIC) HCS. This paper provides preliminary analyses of these ethical considerations in order to (i) inform scientists and policymakers involved in the planning, conduct and/or governance of LMIC HCS and (ii) highlight areas warranting future research. Insofar as this article focuses on HCS in (endemic) settings where diseases are present and/or widespread, much of the analysis provided is relevant to HCS (in HICs or LMICs) involving pandemic diseases including COVID19. (shrink)

Controlled human infection challenge studies (CHIs) involve intentionally exposing research participants to, and/or thereby infecting them with, micro‐organisms. There have been increased calls for more CHIs to be conducted in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) where many relevant diseases are endemic. This article is based on a research project that identified and analyzed ethical and regulatory issues related to endemic LMIC CHIs via (a) a review of relevant literature and (b) qualitative interviews involving 45 scientists and ethicists with relevant (...) expertise. In this article we argue that though there is an especially strong case for conducting CHIs in endemic (LMIC) settings, certain ethical issues related to the design and conduct of such studies (in such settings) nonetheless warrant particularly careful attention. We focus on ethical implications of endemic LMIC CHIs regarding (a) potential direct benefits for participants, (b) risks to participants, (c) third‐party risks, (d) informed consent, (e) payment of participants, and (f) community engagement. We conclude that there is a strong ethical rationale to conduct (well‐designed) CHIs in endemic LMICs, that certain ethical issues warrant particularly careful consideration, and that ethical analyses of endemic LMIC CHIs can inform current debates in research ethics more broadly. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) aim to compensate for the loss of a sensory modality, typically vision, by converting information from the lost modality into stimuli in a remaining modality. “The vOICe” is a visual-to-auditory SSD which encodes images taken by a camera worn by the user into “soundscapes” such that experienced users can extract information about their surroundings. Here we investigated how much detail was resolvable during the early induction stages by testing the acuity of blindfolded sighted, naïve vOICe users. (...) Initial performance was well above chance. Participants who took the test twice as a form of minimal training showed a marked improvement on the second test. Acuity was slightly but not significantly impaired when participants wore a camera and judged letter orientations “live”. A positive correlation was found between participants' musical training and their acuity. The relationship between auditory expertise via musical training and the lack of a relationship with visual imagery, suggests that early use of a SSD draws primarily on the mechanisms of the sensory modality being used rather than the one being substituted. If vision is lost, audition represents the sensory channel of highest bandwidth of those remaining. The level of acuity found here, and the fact it was achieved with very little experience in sensory substitution by naïve users is promising. (shrink)

People’s beliefs about their ability to control their emotions predict a range of important psychological outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether these beliefs are playing a causal role, and if so, why this might be. In the current research, we tested whether avoidance-based emotion regulation explains the link between beliefs and psychological outcomes. In Study 1, a perceived lack of control over emotions predicted poorer psychological health outcomes, and avoidance strategies indirectly explained these links between emotion beliefs and psychological (...) health. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated participants’ emotion beliefs by leading participants to believe that they struggled or did not struggle with controlling their emotions. Participants in the low regulatory self-efficacy condition reported increased intentions to engage in avoidance strategies over the next month and were more likely to avoid seeking psychological help. When asked if they would participate in follow-up studies, these participants were also more likely to display avoidance-based emotion regulation. These findings provide initial evidence for the causal role of emotion beliefs in avoidance-based emotion regulation, and document their impact on psychological health-related outcomes. (shrink)

BackgroundObtaining consent has become a standard way of respecting the patient’s rights and autonomy in clinical research. Ethical guidelines recommend that the child’s parent/s or authorised legal guardian provides informed consent for their child’s participation. However, obtaining informed consent in paediatric research is challenging. Parents become vulnerable because of stress related to their child’s illness. Understanding the views held by guardians and researchers about the consent process in Malawi, where there are limitations in health care access and research literacy will (...) assist in developing appropriate consent guidelines.MethodsWe conducted 20 in-depth interviews with guardians of children and research staff who had participated in paediatric clinical trial and observational studies in acute and non-acute settings in the Southern Region of Malawi. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed. Interviews were compared across studies and settings to identify differences and similarities in participants’ views about informed consent processes. Data analysis was facilitated by NVIVO 11 software.ResultsAll participants across study types and settings reported that they associated participating in research with therapeutic benefits. Substantial differences were noted in the decision-making process across study settings. Guardians from acute studies felt that the role of their spouses was neglected during consenting, while staff reported that they had problems obtaining consent from guardians when their partners were not present. Across all study types and settings, research staff reported that they emphasised the benefits more than the risks of the study to participants, due to pressure to recruit. Participants from non-acute settings were more likely to recall information shared during the consent process than participants in the acute setting.ConclusionThe health care context, culture and research process influenced participants’ understanding of study information across study types and settings. We advise research managers or principal investigators to define minimum requirements that would not compromise the consent process and conduct study specific training for staff. The use of one size fits all consent process may not be ideal. More guidance is needed on how these differences can be incorporated during the consent process to improve understanding and delivery of consent.Trial registration Not applicable. (shrink)

A significant body of research has emerged in order to better understand unethical behavior at work and how gender plays a role in the process. In this study, we look to add to this literature by exploring how perpetrator gender influences reactions to distinct types of unethicality. Rather than viewing unethical behavior as a unitary construct, where all forms of lying, cheating, and stealing are the same, we integrate theories and concepts from the criminal justice and moral psychology literatures to (...) categorize certain unethical behaviors as either impulsive or premeditated. Given the agentic nature of premeditated unethical behavior, we draw from role congruity theory to predict that women will be punished more severely than men for their role incongruous actions. Impulsive unethical behavior, on the other hand, will be less likely to elicit perceptions of congruity or incongruity, leading to less of a gender effect. Results from three studies sampling both undergraduates and working adults in the United States, Singapore, and South Korea showed that participants were more likely to associate premeditated unethical behavior with a male perpetrator because it was seen as less feminine, and female perpetrators who engaged in premeditated unethical behavior received more severe punishment than male perpetrators due to the perceived role incongruity of their actions. Implications are discussed as well as possible limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

In light of the World Anti Doping Agency’s 2013 Code Revision process, we critically explore the applicability of two of three criteria used to determine whether a method or substance should be considered for their Prohibited List, namely its (potential) performance enhancing effects and its (potential) risk to the health of the athlete. To do so, we compare two communities of human guinea pigs: (i) individuals who make a living out of serial participation in Phase 1 pharmacology trials; and (ii) (...) elite athletes who engage in what is effectively ‘unregulated clinical research’ by using untested prohibited or non-prohibited performance enhancing substances and methods, alone or in combination. Our comparison sheds light on norms of research ethics that these practices exacerbate with respect to the concepts of multiplicity, visibility, and consistency. We argue for the need to establish a proper governance framework to increase the accountability of these unregulated research practices in order to protect the human guinea pigs in elite sports contexts, and to establish reasonable grounds for the performance enhancing effects, and the risks to the health of the athlete, of the methods and substances that might justify their inclusion on the Prohibited List. (shrink)

The public debate on recombinant DNA research has ended even though significant issues of public interest remain undecided or untouched. The reason for the termination of other than muted public discussion is not simply the removal of an initial fear of catastrophic biohazards. With the cessation of public debate over such hazards came also the dissolution of most public forums. The ends to which recombinant DNA research and development ought to be directed are not matters of public debate. With the (...) transfer of basic research knowledge to the private sector, that sector's proprietary interests and ownership prerogatives effectively deny any continued public participation in charting the future of genesplicing technology and its application. (shrink)

Research on meditation and mindfulness practice has flourished in recent years. While much of this research has focused on well-being outcomes associated with mindfulness practice, less research has focused on how perception of self may change as a result of mindfulness practice, or whether these changes in self-perception may be mechanisms of mindfulness in action. This is somewhat surprising given that mindfulness derives from traditions often described as guiding people to realise and experience the non-separation of self from the world (...) or its ‘oneness’ with the whole of reality. The current study used a collective intelligence methodology, Interactive Management (IM), to explore the nature of oneness experiences. Five IM sessions were conducted with five separate groups of experienced meditators. Participants generated, clarified, and selected oneness self-perceptions they believed most characterised their experience both during meditation and in their everyday experience in the world. Each group also developed structural models describing how highly ranked aspects of oneness self-perceptions are interrelated in a system. Consistent themes and categories of oneness experience appeared across the five IM sessions, with changes in the sense of space (unboundedness), time, identity, wholeness and flow highlighted as most influential. Results are discussed in light of emerging theory and research on oneness self-perception and non-dual awareness. (shrink)

The European Biomedical Ethics Practitioner Education Project (EBEPE), funded by the BIOMED programme of the European Commission, is a five-nation partnership to produce open learning materials for healthcare ethics education. Papers and case studies from a series of twelve conferences throughout the European Union, reflecting the ‘burning issues’ in the participants' healthcare systems, have been collected by a team based at Imperial College, London, where they are now being edited into a series of seven activity-based workbooks for individual or (...) group study. These draft workbooks are now being read by a network of critical readers across Europe, whose comments will be incorporated into the final versions of the workbooks. The result will be the first European-wide and Europe-centred resource for teaching students, practitioners, and members of ethics committees. Topics covered include: • Resource allocation and rationing • The rights of children and young people • Long-term care of the elderly • Mental health and mental illness • Autonomy and patient choice • Decisions at the end of life • A study guide to using the workbooks The collaborative nature of the project has highlighted differentiated national approaches in medical ethics. Against the British and Dutch rights-orientated approach have emerged two other alternative models: the Nordic preference for administrative resolution of entitlement disputes, and the southern European emphasis on deontological codes. A genuinely European reconstruction of autonomy and rights, using hermeneutic, feminist and narrative approaches to counterbalance individualistic models, is emerging across the workbooks. The programme has also uncovered national differences in how ethics should be taught, with the workbooks' style being an experiential approach. Thus the EBEPE project is developing new models in both substantive and pedagogic senses, about both what should be taught and how it should be presented. (shrink)

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All (...) stimuli were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)