Objective: The present study examines the validity of 11 new Holtzman Inkblot Technique indices. These were chosen from Exner’s Comprehensive System indices using two criteria: first, they had to be valid according to meta-analysis, and second, they must be computed using the HIT standard scoring system.Methods: Both techniques were administrated with a retest interval from 1 to 7days to a sample of 139 subjects from the general population. The validity of the new indices was studied through Pearson correlation with the (...) corresponding RCS indices.Results: Nine of the 11 new indices showed significant correlations with Rorschach scales, confirming our hypotheses. The correlation ranged from a minimum of 0.144 to a maximum of 0.414.Conclusions: The results provide support for the validity of the new HIT indices and have important implications for both clinical and research fields. (shrink)

We reconsider the consequences of the observed violations of Bell's inequalities. Two common responses to these violations are (i) the rejection of realism and the retention of locality and (ii) the rejection of locality and the retention of realism. Here we critique response (i). We argue that locality contains an implicit form of realism, since in a worldview that embraces locality, spacetime, with its usual, fixed topology, has properties independent of measurement. Hence we argue that response (i) is incomplete, in (...) that its rejection of realism is only partial. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been the topic of considerable discussion in research bioethics, largely because of dissatisfaction with early constructions of the concept that were based on subpopulations of research subjects. These subpopulations have attributes likely to undermine their capacity to provide autonomous informed consent: persons who are relatively or absolutely incapable of protecting their own interests through negotiations for informed consent. Several subpopulations were seen as requiring special protections, including children, pregnant women, prisoners, racial minorities, the economically disadvantaged, (...) the very sick, and the institutionalized. Recent years have witnessed the identification of other subpopulations with attributes that could render them vulnerable, as well. For example, the Council for the International Organization of Medical Societies has named such potentially vulnerable groups as the homeless, nursing home residents, patients with incurable diseases, patients in the emergency department, employees, students, and members of communities who are unfamiliar with modern medicine. (shrink)

This is a good time for determinists. One hundred and fifty years of Darwinian thought have undermined belief in the exceptional status of human beings. Biological reductionism is in the ascendant. One of its most recent manifestations—evolutionary psychology, which has been widely influential both within and beyond academe—argues that individual behaviour and even social institutions are expressions of genes, the vast majority of which are common to humans and the higher primates. The implicit, largely unconscious, principles that inform gene-determined human (...) behaviour are rooted in their survival value; and the entity whose survival is served is not the conscious organism but the genome itself. Since the actual reasons for our actions are beyond our ken, they are not truly voluntary. Yet more radical attacks on the notion of human freedom have come from neuroscience: ever more sophisticated and seemingly complete accounts of the human mind in terms of the functioning of our brains, appear to embed even higher level awareness in the material world. (shrink)

Peltokorpi and Hood provide a systematic review of theory and research examining the ways communication and conversations help dyads, groups, and teams form and maintain transactive memory systems (TMS; Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991) through overlapping encoding, storage, and retrieval processes. Peltokorpi and Hood organized their systematic review of 34 articles published in psychology, communication and organization research and management into four main themes: i) communication frequency and quality; ii) communication medium and group development, iii) communication styles, and iv) (...) communication networks. (shrink)

This book details the results of the authors' research using laboratory animals to investigate individual choice theory in economics-consumer-demand and labour supply behaviour and choice under uncertainty. The use of laboratory animals provides the opportunity to conduct controlled experiments involving precise and demanding tests of economic theory with rewards and punishments of real consequence. Economic models are compared to psychological and biological choice models along with the results of experiments testing between these competing explanations. Results of animal experiments are used (...) to address questions of social policy importance. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

The language we use over the course of conversation changes as we establish common ground and learn what our partner finds meaningful. Here we draw upon recent advances in natural language processing to provide a finer‐grained characterization of the dynamics of this learning process. We release an open corpus (>15,000 utterances) of extended dyadic interactions in a classic repeated reference game task where pairs of participants had to coordinate on how to refer to initially difficult‐to‐describe tangram stimuli. We find that (...) different pairs discover a wide variety of idiosyncratic but efficient and stable solutions to the problem of reference. Furthermore, these conventions are shaped by the communicative context: words that are more discriminative in the initial context (i.e., that are used for one target more than others) are more likely to persist through the final repetition. Finally, we find systematic structure in how a speaker's referring expressions become more efficient over time: Syntactic units drop out in clusters following positive feedback from the listener, eventually leaving short labels containing open‐class parts of speech. These findings provide a higher resolution look at the quantitative dynamics of ad hoc convention formation and support further development of computational models of learning in communication. (shrink)

Many critics seem to consider it inappropriate or unnecessary to ask what Montaigne means by the faculty of judgment. Laumonier speaks of "Ie bon sens, qu'il oppose si souvent a la memoire et qu'il appelle encore 'jugement' et 'entendement', c'est-a-dire la faculte de penser et de reflechir juste. " 1 Our appreciation of what is implied by judgment, that is by Montaigne's notion of judgment, has been delayed perhaps by a too facile acceptance of a so-called synonymity of meaning among (...) the psychological terms used by Montaigne. In a discussion of key concepts in Montaigne, Donald M. Frame has accurately summarized the present situation with regard to our knowledge of Montaigne's notion of judgment and other key concepts: "We all have our hunches, but we need more than that. " 2 For the expression of his interest and concern for the intellectual and moral activities and capabilities of the mind, Montaigne draws upon a broad and elementary semantic field. These primary psychological terms are jugement, entendement, sens, raison, discours, and conscience. Al­ though these words may be used synonymously, Montaigne does seem to maintain certain basic distinctions among them; frequent substi­ tutions of terms must be the result of semantic and ideational differ­ ences. Moreover, the association of several psychological words within a single sentence implies gradations, however slight they may be. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Objective: To identify perceived barriers to capacity building for local research ethics oversight in El Salvador, and to set an agenda for international collaborative capacity building. Methods: Focus groups were formed in El Salvador which included 17 local clinical investigators and members of newly formed research ethics committees. Information about the proposed research was presented to participants during an international bioethics colloquium sponsored and organized by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in collaboration with the National Ethics Committee of (...) El Salvador and the University of El Salvador. Interviews with the focus group participants were qualitatively analyzed. Results: Participants expressed the need to tailor the informed consent process and documentation to the local culture; for example, allowing family members to participate in decision‐making, and employing shorter consent forms. Participants indicated that economic barriers often impede efforts in local capacity building. Participants valued international collaboration for mutual capacity building in research ethics oversight. Conclusions: Research ethics committees in El Salvador possess a basic knowledge of locally relevant ethical principles, though they need more training to optimize the application of bioethical principles and models to their particular contexts. Challenges increase the value of collaborative exchanges with ethics committee members in the United States. Further research on facilitating communication between host country and sponsor country ethics committees can maximize local research ethics expertise, and thus raise the standard of protecting human participants involved in international research. (shrink)

Most Americans today view mines as little more than ugly scars on the landscape, places with no connection to an American way of life. This creative new work will force many to rethink that impression: after an introduction to the history of mining in America, the authors present eight visual and historical essays about diverse sites across the nation, each of which reveals mines not simply as physical degradations but as evolving cultural artifacts of the American landscape.

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: PART I: OVERVIEW OF KEY INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY DEBATES * PART II: THE ROLE OF POLICY IN SOCIAL JUSTICE DEBATES * PART III: POLICY DEBATES IN INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION * PART IV: EDUCATION POLICY DEBATES WITH LASTING CONSEQUENCES.

Ethical guidance for genomic research is increasingly sought and perceived to be necessary. Although there are pressing ethical issues in genomic research – concerning for example the recruitment of patients/participants; the process of taking consent; data sharing; and returning results to patients/participants – there is still limited useful guidance available for researchers/clinicians or for the research ethics committees who review such projects. This report outlines the ethical principles and guidance for genomic research co-produced with stakeholders during two workshops which took (...) place in the UK between November 2016 and May 2017. The stakeholders involved in these workshops included: healthcare professionals, genomic research teams, academics, patients, biobank managers, and representatives from the Health Research Authority, NHS Research Ethics Committees, patient support groups, pharmaceutical industry, and health policy think tanks. The co-produced principles and guidance are specifical... (shrink)