Food choices are a key determinant of dietary intake, with brain regions, such as the mesolimbic and prefrontal cortex maturing at differential rates into adulthood. More needs to be understood about developmental changes in healthy and unhealthy food perceptions and preference. We investigated how food perceptions and preference vary as a function of age and how food attributes impact age-related changes. One hundred thirty-nine participants completed computerized tasks to rate high-calorie and low-calorie food cues for taste, health, and liking, followed (...) by 100 binary food choices based on each participant’s ratings. Dietary self-control was considered successful when the healthier food was chosen. Self-control success ratio was the proportion of success trials over total number of choices. Beta-weights for health and taste were calculated as each attribute’s influence on food preference. Adiposity measurements included BMI z-score and waist-to-height ratio. High-calorie foods were rated more tasty and less healthy with increasing age. Older participants liked high-calorie foods more, and β-taste was associated with age. Significant age-by-WHtR interactions were observed for health and taste ratings of high-calorie foods, β-taste, and marginally for preference of high-calorie foods. Stratifying by WHtR, we found age-related increases in taste and preference ratings of high-calorie foods in the high WHtR group alone. In contrast, age-related decreases in health ratings of high-calorie foods were significant in the low WHtR group alone. Age and β-taste were significantly associated in the high WHtR group and only marginally significant with low WHtR. Although participants rated low-calorie foods as less tasty and less healthy with increasing age, there was no association between age and preference for low-calorie foods. Participants made faster food choices with increasing age regardless of WHtR, with a significant age-by-WHtR interaction on reaction time. There were no age-related effects in self-control success ratio and β-health. These results suggest that individual differences in age and central adiposity play an important role in preference for high-calorie foods, and a higher importance of food tastiness in food choice may contribute to greater preference for high-calorie foods with increasing age. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to argue that expressivism [the thesis that moral judgements function to express desires, emotions, or pro/con attitudes] neither implies, nor is implied by, [motivational internalism].

Colin Radford must weary of defending his thesis that the emotional reactions we have towards fictional characters, events, and states of affairs are irrational.1 Yet, for all the discussion, the issue has not, to my mind, been properly settled—or at least not settled in the manner I should prefer—and so this paper attempts once more to debunk Radford’s defiance of common sense. For some, the question of whether our emotional responses to fiction are rational does not arise, for they are (...) inclined to doubt that we have them at all.2 Emotions, on this view, are fundamentally linked to belief states, as in the following thesis concerning the emotion of fear: 1) We fear for ourselves only if we believe ourselves to be in danger; we fear for others only if we believe they actually exist and are in danger. When we typically engage with fiction we do not ‘suspend our disbelief’, in the sense of coming to believe that the fiction is non-fiction. No matter how engrossed I become in a Dracula movie, I do not begin to believe that I am seeing actual vampires. 2) When we watch a horror movie, we do not believe ourselves, or anyone actual, to be in danger. And so these theorists, endorsing (1) and (2), are obliged to deny the intuitive (3): 3) We are sometimes frightened when watching a horror movie. These three propositions are a version of what is sometimes called ‘The Paradox of Fiction’. For my money, since the denial of (2) is foolish, and the denial of (3) deeply counterintuitive, it is (1)—being a substantive philosophical thesis—that is most likely the culprit. Radford agrees, yet maintains that there is some intimate connection between belief and emotion. For him, the dependence is not the existential one stated in (1), but a normative one: we do not rationally feel fear unless we believe ourselves (or someone actual) to be in danger.3 This revision of the connection allows the construction of a quite different inconsistent triad: 4) We are not rationally frightened unless we believe someone actual to be in danger.. (shrink)

This article presents a selective review of recent design PhDs that identify and analyse the methodological innovation that is occurring in the field, in order to inform future provision of research training. Six recently completed design PhDs are used to highlight possible philosophical and practical models that can be adopted by future PhD students in design. Four characteristics were found in design PhD methodology: innovations in the format and structure of the thesis, a pick-and-mix approach to research design, situating practice (...) in the inquiry, and the validation of visual analysis. The article concludes by offering suggestions on how research training can be improved. By being aware of recent methodological innovations in the field, design educators will be better informed when developing resources for future design doctoral candidates and assisting supervision teams in developing a more informed and flexible approach to practice-based research. (shrink)

In this article we present symmetric diffusion networks, a family of networks that instantiate the principles of continuous, stochastic, adaptive and interactive propagation of information. Using methods of Markovion diffusion theory, we formalize the activation dynamics of these networks and then show that they can be trained to reproduce entire multivariate probability distributions on their outputs using the contrastive Hebbion learning rule (CHL). We show that CHL performs gradient descent on an error function that captures differences between desired and obtained (...) continuous multivariate probability distributions. This allows the learning algorithm to go beyond expected values of output units and to approximate complete probability distributions on continuous multivariate activation spaces. We argue that learning continuous distributions is an important task underlying a variety of real‐life situations that were beyond the scope of previous connectionist networks. Deterministic networks, like back propagation, cannot learn this task because they are limited to learning average values of independent output units. Previous stochastic connectionist networks could learn probability distributions but they were limited to discrete variables. Simulations show that symmetric diffusion networks can be trained with the CHL rule to approximate discrete and continuous probability distributions of various types. (shrink)

In this article, we scrutinize views that justify exclusionary policies regarding transgender athletes based primarily on physiological criteria. We introduce and examine some elements that deserve...

The probabilistic analysis of functional questions is maturing into a rigorous and coherent research paradigm that may unify the cognitive sciences, from the study of single neurons in the brain to the study of high level cognitive processes and distributed cognition. Endless debates about undecidable structural issues (modularity vs. interactivity, serial vs. parallel processing, iconic vs. propositional representations, symbolic vs. connectionist models) may be put aside in favor of a rigorous understanding of the problems solved by organisms in their natural (...) environments. [Shepard; Tenenbaum & Griffiths]. (shrink)

The Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association is a bedrock of the profession. The contextual factors of society affect the Ethics Code of the APA, resulting in an ever-changing document. The context of the reorganization of the APA after World War II created an initial impetus toward a formalized code. A key contextual feature of the Code's development was the use of the Critical Incident Technique, which was based in the empirical aspirations of the psychological field. This article explores (...) the historical context around the APA's decision to draft an ethics code, reviews its development, and discusses its role for psychologists today. (shrink)

The main public health advantages of examining gene by environment interactions in externalizing behavior lie in the realm of personalized interventions. Nevertheless, the incorporation of genetic data in randomized controlled trials is fraught with difficulties and raises ethical questions. This paper has been written from the perspective of developmental psychologists who, as researchers, see themselves confronted with important and in part new kinds of ethical questions arising from G × E research in social sciences. The aim is to explicate and (...) discuss ethical questions, based on the conviction that what is ethically salient in a research setting will also be relevant in that area of public healthcare incorporating research findings. The ethical questions discussed include: whether it is ethically responsible to withhold an effective treatment; to what extent genetic results should be disclosed; whether researchers should be allowed to collect genetic data of both child and parent; and what are costs and benefits of personalized interventions based on screening. We made an attempt to address these questions, but it is up to researchers to determine whether the solutions are suitable for their G × E research in social sciences. (shrink)

Organized youth sport has become a prominent activity in Western societies, one around which myriad families structure their daily lives. Despite its popularity, or rather because of it, youth sport is besotted with complex problems. One distinctive set of problems pertains to children’s opportunities to benefit from engagement in sport. Such problems require a reflection on the conditions of justice. The goal of this paper is to explore ethical guidelines to make youth sport more just. The paper begins by characterizing (...) childhood, youth, and youth sport. Then, it articulates considerations of justice in youth sport. Together, these sections provide a basis to formulate the general features of a just youth sport. What emerges is a vision of youth sport that the adults involved in it should emphasize and implement if their young charges, and youth sport, are to flourish, as well as a novel approach to formulating and justifying normative criteria to make youth sport more just. (shrink)

In his conceivability argument, Chalmers assumes that all properties have their causal powers contingently and causal laws are also contingent. We argue that this claim conflicts with how conceivability itself must work for the conceivability argument to be successful. If conceivability is to be an effective mechanism to determine possibility, it must work as a matter of necessity, since contingent conceivability renders conceivability fallible for an ideal reasoner and the fallible conceivability of zombies would not entail their possibility. But necessary (...) conceivability must either be governed by necessitating causal processes or by a necessitating non-causal mechanism. We argue that the latter option is untenable or mysterious; whereas, if Chalmers chooses the former and applies it only to conceivability, his solution is ad hoc, but if he accepts necessary causal powers or processes generally, the conceivability argument fails. We conclude that, as it stands, the Conceivability Argument does not establish that physicalism is false. (shrink)

The primary impediment to formulating a general theory for adaptive evolution has been the unknown distribution of fitness effects for new beneficial mutations. By applying extreme value theory, Gillespie circumvented this issue in his mutational landscape model for the adaptation of DNA sequences, and Orr recently extended Gillespie's model, generating testable predictions regarding the course of adaptive evolution. Here we provide the first empirical examination of this model, using a single-stranded DNA bacteriophage related to phiX174, and find that our data (...) are consistent with Orr's predictions, provided that the model is adjusted to incorporate mutation bias. Orr's work suggests that there may be generalities in adaptive molecular evolution that transcend the biological details of a system, but we show that for the model to be useful as a predictive or inferential tool, some adjustments for the biology of the system will be necessary. (shrink)

One of the most pressing and debated issues in contemporary sport is the inclusion of transgender athletes in competition. This is especially the case of transgender women who seek to compete in th...

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we provide a normative analysis of the Women’s Tennis Association revised policy on maternity leave, which is regulated by its special ranking rule. To do so, we first explore how the revised policy functions when probed in relation to the nature of competitive sport. Then, we examine the revised policy through the lens of the literature on maternity discrimination. We argue that, when compared to its previous formulation, the revised special ranking rule is morally defensible because it (...) better protects female players’ interest in being able to combine their professional careers and their personal lives. However, we also identify several pronounced vulnerabilities and criticisms to the revised policy. (shrink)

The ethics of using genetic engineering to enhance athletic performance has been a recurring topic in the sport philosophy and bioethics literature. In this article, we analyze the ethics of cloning horses for polo competition. In doing so, we critically examine the arguments most commonly advanced to justify this practice. In the process, we raise concerns about cloning horses for polo competition, centering on normative aspects pertaining to sport ethics usually neglected by defenders of cloning. In particular, we focus on (...) how this practice could have a detrimental impact on the central skills of polo, and how it unjustly creates an uneven playing field. We suggest that the polo community would benefit from critically considering the ethical quandaries posed by the practice of cloning horses for polo competition. (shrink)

The ethics of using genetic engineering to enhance athletic performance has been a recurring topic in the sport philosophy and bioethics literature. In this article, we analyze the ethics of cloning horses for polo competition. In doing so, we critically examine the arguments most commonly advanced to justify this practice. In the process, we raise concerns about cloning horses for polo competition, centering on normative aspects pertaining to sport ethics usually neglected by defenders of cloning. In particular, we focus on (...) how this practice could have a detrimental impact on the central skills of polo, and how it unjustly creates an uneven playing field. We suggest that the polo community would benefit from critically considering the ethical quandaries posed by the practice of cloning horses for polo competition. (shrink)

Internet counseling is an area of rapid expansion in the field of applied psychology. Internet counseling or psychotherapy involves a variety of activities such as psychoeducation, individual therapy, and automated self-help interventions delivered via the Internet. Although other professional societies such as the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, and the National Board of Certified Counselors have tackled the issues of Internet counseling ethics head on, the American Psychological Association has been conspicuously absent from this debate. Yet (...) online therapy clinics are operating, and intervention efficacy is being studied. This discussion provides an overview of online counseling modalities, details the ethical concerns associated with each, and offers suggestions for the ethical practice of online counseling. (shrink)