Self-Efficacy in Action provides a practitioner-friendly overview of the concepts, vocabulary, practices, and contexts related to teacher self-efficacy. This book engages readers in the meaningful discussions of practices and purposes of teacher self-efficacy to advance professionalism.

The blink response to visual threat is a standard bedside method for testing visual processing. In response to a sudden gesture directed toward the eyes, a person with a normal blink response will promptly contract both orbicularis oculi muscles to close the eyelids momentarily. There is no consensus as to whether blinking to visual threat (BVT) is purely reflex1 or a cognitively mediated behavior that heralds consciousness; i.e., is incompatible with the diagnosis of the vegetative state (VS).2,3 Some authors stated (...) that “one should be extremely cautious in making the diagnosis of the VS when there is . . . response to threatening gestures.”4 Others stated that “react(ion) to visual threat” is a “compatible but atypical feature” of VS.5 Similarly, other guidelines stated that the “threat response is usually absent” in VS.6 Finally, BVT was not mentioned in some workgroup criteria on the minimally conscious state.7 The aim of the study was to determine the incidence of BVT in patients whose clinical features are in all other respects typical of the VS, as assessed by means of validated testing.7 We also investigated whether the presence of BVT in patients considered vegetative is predictive of recovery of consciousness. (shrink)

Our view is that fundamental appetitive and defensive motivation systems evolved to mediate a complex array of adaptive behaviors that support the organism’s drive to survive—defending against threat and securing resources. Activation of these motive systems engages processes that facilitate attention allocation, information intake, sympathetic arousal, and, depending on context, will prompt tactical actions that can be directed either toward or away from the strategic goal, whether defensively or appetitively determined. Research from our laboratory that measures autonomic, central, and somatic (...) reactions when processing emotional scenes is described which indicates that motivationally relevant cues, whether appetitive or defensive, capture attention preferentially, prompt enhanced perceptual processing and information gathering, and occasion metabolic arousal that mobilizes the organism for coping actions. (shrink)

Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource." "To many scientists just (...) as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a _made_ thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, _Science_. (shrink)

Using fMRI, we investigated how right temporal lobe gliomas affecting the posterior superior temporal sulcus alter neural processing observed during speech perception and production tasks. Behavioural language testing showed that three pre-operative neurosurgical patients with grade 2, grade 3 or grade 4 tumours had the same pattern of mild language impairment in the domains of object naming and written word comprehension. When matching heard words for semantic relatedness (a speech perception task), these patients showed under-activation in the tumour infiltrated right (...) superior temporal lobe compared to 61 neurotypical participants and 16 patients with tumours that preserved the right postero-superior temporal lobe, with enhanced activation within the (tumour-free) contralateral left superior temporal lobe. In contrast, when correctly naming objects (a speech production task), the patients with right postero-superior temporal lobe tumours showed higher activation than both control groups in the same right postero-superior temporal lobe region that was under-activated during auditory semantic matching. The task dependent pattern of under-activation during the auditory speech task and over-activation during object naming was also observed in eight stroke patients with right hemisphere infarcts that affected the right postero-superior temporal lobe compared to eight stroke patients with right hemisphere infarcts that spared it. These task-specific and site-specific cross-pathology effects highlight the importance of the right temporal lobe for language processing and motivate further study of how right temporal lobe tumours affect language performance and neural reorganisation. These findings may have important implications for surgical management of these patients, as knowledge of the regions showing functional reorganisation may help to avoid their inadvertent damage during neurosurgery. (shrink)

Functional imaging studies of neurologically intact adults have demonstrated that the right posterior cerebellum is activated during verb generation, semantic processing, sentence processing, and verbal fluency. Studies of patients with cerebellar damage converge to show that the cerebellum supports sentence processing and verbal fluency. However, to date there are no patient studies that investigated the specific importance of the right posterior cerebellum in language processing, because: case studies presented patients with lesions affecting the anterior cerebellum, and group studies combined patients (...) with lesions to different cerebellar regions, without specifically reporting the effects of right posterior cerebellar damage. Here we investigated whether damage to the right posterior cerebellum is critical for sentence processing and verbal fluency in four patients with focal stroke damage to different parts of the right posterior cerebellum. We examined detailed lesion location by going beyond common anatomical definitions of cerebellar anatomy, and employed a recently proposed functional parcellation of the cerebellum. All four patients experienced language difficulties that persisted for at least a month after stroke but three performed in the normal range within a year. In contrast, one patient with more damage to lobule IX than the other patients had profound long-lasting impairments in the comprehension and repetition of sentences, and the production of spoken sentences during picture description. Spoken and written word comprehension and visual recognition memory were also impaired, however, verbal fluency was within the normal range, together with object naming, visual perception and verbal short-term memory. This is the first study to show that focal damage to the right posterior cerebellum leads to language difficulties after stroke; and that processing impairments persisted in the case with most damage to lobule IX. We discuss these results in relation to current theories of cerebellar contribution to language processing. Overall, our study highlights the need for longitudinal studies of language function in patients with focal damage to different cerebellar regions, with functional imaging to understand the mechanisms that support recovery. (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.

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

Comparing datasets, that is, sets of numbers in context, is a critical skill in higher order cognition. Although much is known about how people compare single numbers, little is known about how number sets are represented and compared. We investigated how subjects compared datasets that varied in their statistical properties, including ratio of means, coefficient of variation, and number of observations, by measuring eye fixations, accuracy, and confidence when assessing differences between number sets. Results indicated that participants implicitly create and (...) compare approximate summary values that include information about mean and variance, with no evidence of explicit calculation. Accuracy and confidence increased, while the number of fixations decreased as sets became more distinct , demonstrating that the statistical properties of datasets were highly related to comparisons. The discussion includes a model proposing how reasoners summarize and compare datasets within the architecture for approximate number representation. (shrink)

In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox.

On the evening of November 5, 1831, a young Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville met the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Just a little over a year after their meeting, Carroll, age 95, would pass away to much acclaim from the young republic. He would be memorialized as a great man in Israel and as the last of the Romans. That he would be remembered as both a Hebrew prophet and (...) a Republican demigod would not shock the young Frenchman. Indeed, Carroll impressed Tocqueville so much that he lamented that “this race of men is disappearing now after having provided America with her greatest spirits.” With the passing of the revolutionary generation, Tocqueville continued, “the tradition of cultivated manners is lost; the people is becoming enlightened, attainments spread, and a middling ability becomes common. The striking talents, the great characters, are rare. Society,” he thought, “is less brilliant and more prosperous.” Whereas Europe had theorized about such great men in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, America had actually produced a genius generation. Carroll was the last remnant. Carroll reminisced proudly about his days in the American Revolution, his own thoughts on independence, and his respect for the English. Tocqueville, it seems, listened with rapt attention. (shrink)

We investigate the dynamics of sensory integration for perceiving musical performance, a complex natural behavior. Thirty musically trained participants saw, heard, or both saw and heard, performances by two clarinetists. All participants used a sliding potentiometer to make continuous judgments of tension (a measure correlated with emotional response) and continuous judgments of phrasing (a measure correlated with perceived musical structure) as performances were presented. The data analysis sought to reveal relations between the sensory modalities (vision and audition) and to quantify (...) the effect of seeing the performances on participants' overall subjective experience of the music. In addition to traditional statistics, functional data analysis techniques were employed to analyze time-varying aspects of the data. The auditory and visual channels were found to convey similar experiences of phrasing but different experiences of tension through much of the performances. We found that visual information served both to augment and to reduce the experience of tension at different points in the musical piece (as revealed by functional linear modeling and functional significance testing). In addition, the musicians' movements served to extend the sense of phrasing, to cue the beginning of new phrases, to indicate musical interpretation, and to anticipate changes in emotional content. Evidence for an interaction effect suggests that there may exist an emergent quality when musical performances are both seen and heard. The investigation augments knowledge of human communicative processes spanning language and music, and involving multiple modalities of emotion and information transfer. (shrink)

Abstract:Lately, the field of business ethics has begun to take an intense interest in the relationship between religion and business ethics. Various books and articles are being produced at an increasing rate using theoretical and qualitative research methods. However, to date, almost no data exist quantifying relationships between religion and business ethics. This paper begins to provide such data by testing the relationships between religious upbringing, religious practice, Christian beliefs, and attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. Analysis of our sample demonstrates (...) that religious practice and Christian beliefs have a weak relationship to attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Abstract:Lately, the field of business ethics has begun to take an intense interest in the relationship between religion and business ethics. Various books and articles are being produced at an increasing rate using theoretical and qualitative research methods. However, to date, almost no data exist quantifying relationships between religion and business ethics. This paper begins to provide such data by testing the relationships between religious upbringing, religious practice, Christian beliefs, and attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. Analysis of our sample demonstrates (...) that religious practice and Christian beliefs have a weak relationship to attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This introduces the special issue “Literature and Emotion.”.

In the ten dense chapters of his new book, John Finnis examines and sometimes amends what he takes to be the key moral, legal, social and political doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. Finnis correctly stresses that neither ethics nor politics, in the Arstotelian tradition to which Aquinas belonged, are theoretical sciences. They are ‘practical’ or action‐guiding sciences. Since societal order originates in free choice, it is subject to moral norms. The latter are more firmly grounded by Aquinas than Aristotle because the (...) former unlike the latter has an explicit and coherent account of universal or exceptionless moral principles.Finnis natural law ethics derives from a set of self‐evident precepts that focus practical reason on the pursuit and protection of basic human goods. Finnis expanding list of the latter now include marriage. Finnis equates – implausibly, in my view – attaining the ensemble of basic human goods with Aquina's notion of beatitudo imperfecta or this‐worldly happiness.Throughout the book, Finnis' exegesis of Aquinas is slanted towards bolstering Finnis' own Thomist philosophical ethics. Accordingly, Thomistic historical scholarship, which carefully traced Aquinas' biblical and patristic sources and which locate Aquinas' theological ethics within the conditions of his own life and times, has little weight in Finnis' interpretation. Overall, Finnis shows little concern for the internal logic of the Summa theologiae and, consequently, he does not adequately clarify how Aquinas' own ethics, according to its proper principles, can be both integrally theological and rational without thereby becoming a philosophical ethics. (shrink)

This book is a collection of important writings on deflationism, with a detailed introduction and an exhaustive annotated bibliography. Among philosophers concerned with the theory of truth, deflationist positions have quickly gained ground and have become the most popular. Yet heretofore there has been no single book to which the readers can go for a detailed, overall view of the entire phenomenon of deflationism. This is the only available map of the whole terrain of deflationism. -/- Deflationism is a comparatively (...) new approach, though it has its roots in the thinking of some philosophers in the early twentieth century. Deflationism rejects all the traditional theories of truth: the correspondence theory (truth corresponds with facts), the coherence theory (truth is membership of a coherent set of beliefs), the pragmatist theory is provability or verifiability). This book gives complete coverage to all the different varieties of deflationism, and to earlier philosophers who anticipated deflationism. The articles and exerpts include classic works by Frege, Ayer, Ramsey, Tarsk, and Quine, and recent works by the leading deflationist authors of today: Paul Horwich, Hartry Field, Stephen Schiffer, Robert Brandom, and Stephen Leeds. (shrink)

This book presents a thorough reexamination of the role of divine grace in am kara s system and shows that am kara regarded grace as an essential component of the process leading to enlightenment and liberation. am kara s indebtedness to earlier Ved ntins is also shown.