As Bruner so eloquently points out, and Gauvain echoes, human beings are unique in their “locality.” Individual groups of humans develop their own unique ways of symbolizing and doing things – and these can be very different from the ways of other groups, even those living quite nearby. Our attempt in the target article was to propose a theory of the social-cognitive and social-motivational bases of humans' ability and propensity to live in this local, that is, this cultural, way – (...) which no other species does – focusing on such things as the ability to collaborate and to create shared material and symbolic artifacts. (shrink)

Adults’ intentionality judgments regarding an action are influenced by their moral evaluation of this action. This is clearly indicated in the so-called side-effect effect: when told about an action (e.g. implementing a business plan) with an intended primary effect (e.g. raise profits) and a foreseen side effect (e.g. harming/helping the environment), subjects tend to interpret the bringing about of the side effect more often as intentional when it is negative (harming the environment) than when it is positive (helping the environment). (...) From a cognitive point of view, it is unclear whether the side-effect effect is driven by the moral status of the side effects specifically, or rather more generally by its normative status. And from a developmental point of view, little is known about the ontogenetic origins of the effect. The present study therefore explored the cognitive foundations and the ontogenetic origins of the side-effect effect by testing 4-to 5-year-old children with scenarios in which a side effect was in accordance with/violated a norm. Crucially, the status of the norm was varied to be conventional or moral. Children rated the bringing about of side-effects as more intentional when it broke a norm than when it accorded with a norm irrespective of the type of norm. The side-effect effect is thus an early-developing, more general and pervasive phenomenon, not restricted to morally relevant side effects. (shrink)

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and (...) evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention. Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Key Words: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results (...) demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed. (shrink)

Offers an interdisciplinary feminist framework for conceptualizing time and temporal justice as a form of reparation.

What is maturity? This book argues that lack of maturity in society is not merely a problem of individual personalities; it is equally a political and philosophical problem that requires revolutionary rethinking and redefinition.

For ages, natural disasters, war and disease have been part of life, sharing themes of not only adversity, fear and death, but also hope. The year 2020 brought a new threat in the form of coronavirus disease 2019, which challenged what humankind understood of all they knew and believed. The significant difference today is the role of the media in sharing news and opinions on this disease that threatens not only lives, but also spiritual well-being. In this study, we focus (...) on people’s religious views on the origin and meaning of this invisible threat to establish how this pandemic impacts on people’s belief systems. The 20th century was marked by a shift whereby actions and events are intellectualised to rationalise cause and effect, and the philosophical theodicies are regarded to limit our critical reasoning. This study, however, shows that COVID-19 reactivates this debate in that it surpasses logic and rational thinking. Data are collected by means of comments, discussions and opinions shared on numerous social media platforms. During times of adversity, the same rhetorical ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions are asked and in this regard, theodicy as a philosophical framework informs this study. Applying a narrative inquiry, data are interpreted and three themes are identified, namely COVID-19 is an act God, COVID-19 has nothing to do with God and God remains in control amidst a devastating pandemic. The sample for this study is random and the medium used allows for representativity in terms of age group, gender, race, religious affiliation of South Africa, but not limited to this country.Contribution: This article provides insight into renewed debates on religious views on pandemics and suffering in the context of COVID-19. It contributes to an understanding of different perceptions on the origin of this disease, how people make sense and find meaning in being part of a global discourse. (shrink)

Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading (...) linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities. (shrink)

A series of high-profile ethical lapses by senior military professionals has generated calls from levels as high as the commander in chief for a renewed emphasis on military ethics. Leaders engaged in professional military education (PME) across the joint force have worked to ensure their programs support this call. This paper explores and assesses the ethics education programs at the service senior leader colleges (war colleges). There are three fundamental questions facing those charged with teaching ethics to senior military officers. (...) What are the desired outcomes of ethics education? How should the curriculum be structured to achieve those outcomes? And, finally, what is the correct faculty composition to develop and employ that curriculum? Using the answers to those questions to produce a rough framework for a model war college ethics education program, this paper then compares the current war college programs to this model form in order to determine areas of strength and weakness. This analysis reveals that the existing ethics education programs at the war colleges compare favorably to the model program structure. However, leaders at these institutions could further strengthen their programs by creating and empowering an "ethics team" that includes trained ethicists and military practitioners and by conducting more robust faculty development programs for nonethicists."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study reports the findings on how Child life specialists implemented an innovative approach to providing therapeutic support to pediatric patients.MethodsPart of a larger study that uncovered themes about CLSs’ experiences while working with MEDi®, this study reports the reflections that CLSs have about the process of implementation. Seven CLSs participated in semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was conducted on interview data and three themes were generated.ResultsThe first was in regards to the adoption process whereby CLS challenges, successes, and surprises were (...) revealed. Second, CLSs explained how using MEDi® aligned with the roles and responsibilities of their profession. The third area of understanding was in CLS explanation of the friendly emotional impact MEDi® seems to have on the hospital environment.ConclusionChild life specialists are encouraged to use the MEDi® robot to support children at the bedside. (shrink)

This study compares 20 subjects, in each of three different settings, with serious psychotic disorder who hear voices, and compares their voice-hearing experience. We find that while there is much that is similar, there are notable differences in the kinds of voices that people seem to experience. In a California sample, people were more likely to describe their voices as intrusive unreal thoughts; in the South Indian sample, they were more likely to describe them as providing useful guidance; and in (...) our West African sample, they were more likely to describe them as morally good and causally powerful. What we think we may be observing is that people who fall ill with serious psychotic disorder pay selective attention to a constant stream of many different auditory and quasi-auditory events because of different “cultural invitations”—variations in ways of thinking about minds, persons, spirits and so forth. Such a process is consistent with processes described in the cognitive psychology and psychiatric anthropology literature, but not yet described or understood with respect to cultural variations in auditory hallucinations. We call this process “social kindling.”. (shrink)

This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent to different types of study designs, fieldwork, and collaborations because our collective experience in conducting research in multiple cultural contexts (...) has taught us that there can be no single “best practice”. Here we identify the challenges that are unique to cross-cultural research as well as present a series of recommendations and guidelines. We also bring to the forefront ethical considerations which are rarely encountered in the laboratory context, but which researchers face daily while conducting research in a cultural context which one is not a member. As each research context requires unique solutions to these recurring challenges, we urge researchers to use this set of questions as a starting point, and to expand and tailor the questions and potential solutions with community members to support their own research design or cultural context. This will allow us to move the field towards more inclusive and ethical research practices. (shrink)

We examine the opportunities children have for interacting with others and the extent to which they are the focus of others’ visual attention in five societies where extended family communities are the norm. We compiled six video-recorded datasets collected by a team of anthropologists and psychologists conducting long-term research in each society. The six datasets include video observations of children among the Yasawas, Tanna, Tsimane, Huatasani, and Aka. Each dataset consists of a series of videos of children ranging in age (...) from 2 months to 12 years in their everyday contexts. We coded 998 videos and identified with whom children had opportunities to interact as well as the number of individuals and the proportion of observed time that children spent with these individuals. We also examined the proportion of time children received direct visual gaze. Our results indicate that children less than 5 years old spend the majority of their observed time in the presence of one female adult. This is the case across the five societies. In the three societies from which we have older children, we find a clear shift around 5 years of age, with children spending the majority of their time with other children. We also coded the presence or absence of a primary caregiver and found that caregivers remained within 2 ft of target children until 7 years of age. When they were in the company of a primary caregiver, children older than seven spent the majority of their time more than 2 ft from the caregiver. We found a consistent trend across societies with decreasing focal attention on the child with increasing child age. These findings show remarkable consistency across these societies in children’s interaction opportunities and that a developmental approach is needed to fully understand human development because the social context is dynamic across the lifespan. These data can serve as a springboard for future research examining social development in everyday contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores the benefits of video feedback for teaching philosophy. Our analysis, based on results from a self-report student survey along with our own experience, indicates that video feedback possesses a number of advantages over traditional written comments. In particular we argue that video feedback is conducive to providing high-quality formative feedback, increases detail and clarity, and promotes student engagement. In addition, we argue that the advantages of video feedback make the method an especially apt tool for addressing challenges (...) germane to teaching philosophy. Video feedback allows markers to more easily explain and illustrate philosophical goals and methods. It allows markers to model the doing of philosophy and thereby helps students to see philosophy’s value. Video feedback is a promising tool for addressing both cognitive and affective barriers to learning philosophy. Such advantages are especially valuable in the context of a student-centered, intentional learning framework. In light of these advantages, we find that video feedback is underappreciated and underutilized. (shrink)

Resumo Neste artigo, defender-se-á uma interpretação do filme A Time to Kill, como sendo uma narrativa cinematográfica falível, mesmo sem a presença de um narrador. Neste texto, assume-se, que uma narrativa falível resulta de um defeito estético e ético do filme. Deste modo, a estrutura estética do filme representa a intenção do realizador em contar a sua versão da história, influenciando assim o seu significado e efeito empático. Com o evoluir da narrativa cinematográfica, as regras de inferência tornam-se cada vez (...) mais complexas. Ainda assim, a convenção cinematográfica estabelece um contexto e define limites identificadores para a sua interpretação. Uma história mal contada inibe a reconstrução imaginativa do espectador, no que diz respeito às motivações das personagens e da causalidade narrativa. Portanto, a qualidade narrativa é essencial para o raciocínio narrativo e empatia estética. Se a narrativa oferece uma compreensão do mundo e de outras pessoas, que de outra forma seriam inacessíveis, e se a forma ou o estilo da narrativa determinam a sua eficácia, então, as formas assumidas pelas nossas histórias têm consequências epistemológicas. Palavras-chave : estética, ética, identificação, narrativa falível, narrativa, raçaIn this paper, I argue for an interpretation of A Time to Kill as an unreliable, yet narrator-less, cinematic narrative. In my view, unreliable narration is an aesthetic and ethical flaw of the film rather than of the narrator. Thus, the film’s aesthetic structure represents the director’s storytelling intentions, and influences its meaning and empathic affect. As cinematic narrative evolves, rules of inference become increasingly complex. Still, filmic convention establishes a context and sets identifiable boundaries for interpretation. A poorly told story inhibits the viewer’s imaginative reconstruction of narrative causation and characters’ motives. Thus, narrative quality is essential to narrative reasoning and aesthetic empathy. If narrative provides an understanding of the world and other people that is otherwise inaccessible, and if the form or style of narrative determines its effectiveness, then the forms our stories take have epistemological consequences. Keywords : aesthetics, ethics, identification, narrative, race, unreliable narrative. (shrink)

Care left undone, interchangeably referred to as missed care, unfinished nursing care and task incompletion, is pervasive in contemporary healthcare systems. Care left undone can result in adverse outcomes for the patient, nurse and organization. The rhetoric that surrounds care left undone infers it is a contemporary nursing phenomenon; however, a seventeenth‐century Spanish nursing treatise, Instruccion de Enfermeros (Instructions for Nurses), challenges this assumption. Instruccion de Enfermeros was an instructional guide that was written for members of the Congregation of Bernardino (...) de Obregon who worked as nurses at the Madrid General Hospital. The treatise provides a historical commentary on the daily roles, responsibilities and working conditions of the Obregonian nurses. Its content and context suggest the Obregonian nursing resource was consistently time poor due to a confluence of internal and external stressors. Consequently, the Obregonians were under considerable role strain resulting in inferior patient care. This article explores the antecedents of care left undone through a historical lens using exemplars from the 1625 edition of Instruccion de Enfermeros. Factors contributing to care left undone in Obregonian nursing will then be examined to offer insights into the similarities between what a nurse suffered 400 years ago and what exists in contemporary nursing practice. (shrink)

An essential overview of the science behind stereotypes: from why our brains form them to how recognizing them can help us be less biased.From the time we're babies, our brains constantly sort and label the world around us --- a skill that's crucial for our survival. But, as adolescents are all too aware, there's a tremendous downside: when we do this to groups of people it can cause great harm. Here's a comprehensive introduction to the science behind stereotypes that will (...) help young people make sense of why we classify people, and how we can change our thinking. It covers the history of identifying stereotypes, secret biases in our brains, and how stereotypes affect our sense of self. Most importantly, it covers current research into how science can help us overcome our biases, offering hope for a future where stereotypes are less prevalent and the world is more fair for everyone.Written by award-winning author Tanya Lloyd Kyi, this timely and hopeful book addresses the issues of discrimination, racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia and offers concrete suggestions on how to make change. It uses scientific inquiry and loads of relatable and interesting examples to explore these uncomfortable topics in age-appropriate and engaging ways. Chapters, sidebars and colorful illustrations break the text into manageable chunks. Besides the many ways this book could be used to inspire frank and in-depth discussions on the importance of addressing stereotypes and bias, it also links to many science and social studies curriculum topics. Backmatter includes an extensive list of sources, suggestions for further reading and an index. (shrink)

In the framework of the minimalist program, the assumption that wh-in-situ move covertly to be assigned wide scope is infeasible. Rather, it is assumed that they must be interpretable in situ, and that syntactic conditions like ‘superiority’ are effects of economy, which restricts overt rather than covert movement of a wh-element. The remaining syntactic problem for this line of reasoning is the putative ECP effects of adverbial wh-adjuncts, which were the strongest evidence for covert movement. A serious semantic problem is (...) that the interpretative procedures which have been proposed for wh-in-situ – unselective binding or absorption – fail to capture correctly their interpretation. I will argue first that both problems are solved if the interpretation in situ employs choice functions, and it is the function variable, rather than an individual variable, which is long-distance bound by the question existential operator. Adverbial adjuncts, which cannot be interpreted via choice functions, cannot, therefore, be interpreted in situ. However, the concept of economy underlying the account of overt superiority effects requires both theoretical and empirical clarification (as it leaves some empirical problems unaddressed). I argue, following a proposal by Golan (1993), that in this case the economy considerations apply at the interface (‘interface economy’) and that they consider not only different derivations out of the same numeration, but also their semantic representation. (shrink)

Sometimes, it seems as if scientists know everything about the world. They've recorded the songs of humpback whales, dug up the bones of dinosaurs, and tracked the storms of Jupiter. But the child scientist in What Will I Discover? knows there is so much more to explore. Do different trees speak different languages to one another through their tangled rainforest roots? Do faraway suns have planets like ours, with air and oceans and land? How do ideas pop into our heads, (...) and where do our questions come from? (shrink)

The genomes of vertebrates, flies, and nematodes contain highly conserved noncoding elements (CNEs). CNEs cluster around genes that regulate development, and where tested, they can act as transcriptional enhancers. Within an animal group CNEs are the most conserved sequences but between groups they are normally diverged beyond recognition. Alternative CNEs are, however, associated with an overlapping set of genes that control development in all animals. Here, we discuss the evidence that CNEs are part of the core gene regulatory networks (GRNs) (...) that specify alternative animal body plans. The major animal groups arose >550 million years ago. We propose that the cis‐regulatory inputs identified by CNEs arose during the “re‐wiring” of regulatory interactions that occurred during early animal evolution. Consequently, different animal groups, with different core GRNs, contain alternative sets of CNEs. Due to the subsequent stability of animal body plans, these core regulatory sequences have been evolving in parallel under strong purifying selection in different animal groups. (shrink)

Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms - corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations - extend a lama's trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth, aging and death. The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better understanding of how (...) Tibetan culture navigates its own understanding of reincarnation, the veneration of relics, and different social roles of different types of practitioners. It analyses both the minutiae of everyday interrelations between lamas and their devotees, specifically noted in ritual performances and the enactment of lived tradition, as well as the sacred hagiographical conventions that underpin local knowledge. A phenomenology of Tibetan Buddhist life, the book provides an ethnography and insight of the embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism in everyday life. This unusual approach offers a valuable and a genuine new perspective on Tibetan Buddhist culture, and is of interest to researchers in the fields of social/cultural anthropology, religious, Buddhist and Tibetan studies. (shrink)

Since Darwin, there has been a long and arduous struggle to understand the source and maintenance of natural genetic variation and its relationship to phenotype. The reason that this task is so difficult is that it requires integration of detailed, and as yet incomplete, knowledge from several biological disciplines, including evolutionary, population, and developmental genetics. In this ‘post‐genomic’ era, it is relatively easy to identify differences in the DNA sequence between individuals. However, the task remains to delineate how this abundant (...) genetic diversity actually contributes to phenotypic diversity. This necessitates tackling the problem of hidden genetic variation. Genetic polymorphisms can be conditionally cryptic, but have the potential to contribute to phenotypic variation in particular genetic backgrounds or under specific environmental conditions. A recent paper by Lauter and Doebley highlights the contribution of hidden genetic variation to traits characterizing the morphological evolution of modern maize from its wild grass‐like progenitor teosinte.1 This work is the first to demonstrate hidden variance for selected (agronomically ‘adaptive’) traits in a well‐characterized model for morphological evolution. BioEssays 24:685–689, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Previous research on the representation of nurses in literature has tended to rely on a ‘quasi‐scientific’ method that ultimately produces catalogues of static images. This paper argues that literary representations of nurses must be analysed in terms of situational context. In order to accomplish this die narratological concepts of the chronotope and the donor are used, resulting in a dynamic and powerful reading of nurses in narrative tales.

Theodore Roszak's compelling parable, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, provides an (eco)-feminist view of the “Night of the Living Dead Model” and suggests that only the equal union of “masculine” and “feminine” energies will help us resolve the current eco-crisis. This article further explores the consequences of the highly masculinized post-Enlightenment rationalism as demonstrated in Roszak's novel. Although this article agrees that there is a dangerous imbalance between natural/spiritual and scientific/rational viewpoints, it also stresses that the extreme genderification of these (...) energies is potentially problematic. (shrink)