On Miranda Fricker’s influential account, the central case of testimonial injustice occurs if and only if the speaker receives a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice of the hearer. Her critics have taken issue with her view, arguing that cases in which speakers are given more credibility than they deserve, may also amount to testimonial injustice. Furthermore, they argue, these cases cannot be captured by Fricker’s account of objectification as the primary epistemic harm of testimonial injustice; rather, it is an (...) account of othering that best captures a wide range of epistemic injustices. In this paper, I join Fricker’s critics in advancing a novel case of testimonial injustice through identity-prejudicial credibility excess – the adultification of black girls in testimony-giving settings. When testifying, black girls are likely to receive a credibility excess with respect to adult topics such as sex and consent because they are perceived as older, more self-reliable, and mature than they actually are by the hearers. Nevertheless, when examining the girls’ intersecting social identities defined by age, race and gender, it becomes clear that this constitutes an unjustly and prejudicially inflated estimation of their credibility. These cases also involve hermeneutical injustice since the identity-prejudicial credibility excess denies the victims a meaningful opportunity to make sense of their traumatic experiences of sexual assault. I conceptualize this compounded injustice as testimonial obfuscation, where an identity-prejudicial credibility evaluation (either in excess or deficit) causes an experience to remain unintelligible to the hermeneutically marginalized speaker. (shrink)

In light of recent social psychological literature, I expand Miranda Fricker’s important notion of testimonial injustice. A fair portion of Fricker’s account rests on an older paradigm of stereotype and prejudice. Given recent empirical work, I argue for what I dub prescriptive credibility deficits in which a backlash effect leads to the assignment of a diminished level of credibility to persons who act in counter-stereotypic manners, thereby flouting prescriptive stereotypes. The notion of a prescriptive credibility deficit is not merely (...) an interesting conceptual addendum that can be appended to Fricker’s theory without need for further emendation. I develop the wider implications of prescriptive credibility deficits and argue that they pose a challenge to Fricker’s conception of the function of credibility assignments in conversational exchange and how a virtuous listener should respond to the potential threat of a prejudicial stereotype affecting her credibility assignments. (shrink)

Fricker‘s Epistemic Injustice discusses the idea of testimonial injustice, specifically, being harmed in one‘s capacity as a knower. Fricker‘s own theory of testimonial injustice emphasizes the role of prejudice. She argues that prejudice is necessary for testimonial injustice and that when hearers use a prejudice to give a deficit to the credibility of speakers hearers intrinsically harm speakers in their capacity as a knower. This paper rethinks the connections between prejudice and testimonial injustice. I argue that many cases of (...) class='Hi'>prejudicial credibility deficits do not intrinsically harm speakers. Further, I suggest that prejudice is not necessary for harming speakers. I provide my own proposal on which testimonial injustice occurs when speaker‘s capacity as a giver of knowledge is interfered with in important ways. My proposal does not give prejudice any essential role. (shrink)

Testimonial injustice, in its most pernicious form, subjects a speaker to identity-prejudicial deficits in the credibility that is rightly due their testimony. This paper compares two prominent accounts of testimonial injustice to determine which achieves the best understanding of the phenomenon and how it can be combatted. Where Fricker’s focus is limited to strictly epistemic wrongs, Medina’s analysis extends to the pertinent non-epistemic elements central to the injustice. Thus, Medina’s methodology is better-suited to the task of phenomenological analysis, (...) and positions us to achieve a more complete understanding of what injustice has been perpetrated, and of how to resist it. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker maintains that testimonial injustice is a matter of credibility deficit, not excess. In this article, I argue that this restricted characterization of testimonial injustice is too narrow. I introduce a type of identity-prejudicial credibility excess that harms its targets qua knowers and transmitters of knowledge. I show how positive stereotyping and prejudicially inflated credibility assessments contribute to the continued epistemic oppression of marginalized knowers. In particular, I examine harms such as typecasting, compulsory representation, and epistemic exploitation and (...) consider what hearers are obligated to do in response to these injustices. I argue that because epistemic harms to marginalized knowers also arise from prejudicially inflated assessments of their credibility, the virtue of testimonial justice must be revised to remedy them. (shrink)

Open Access: This paper will connect literature on epistemic injustice with literature on victims and perpetrators, to argue that in addition to considering the credibility deficit suffered by many victims, we should also consider the credibility excess accorded to many perpetrators. Epistemic injustice, as discussed by Miranda Fricker, considers ways in which someone might be wronged in their capacity as a knower. Testimonial injustice occurs when there is a credibility deficit as a result of identity-prejudicial stereotypes. However, criticisms of (...) Fricker have pointed out that credibility is part of a more complex system that includes both deficits and excesses. I will use these points to argue that we should look closer at sources of credibility excess in cases of sexual assault. This means that in addition to considering sources of victim blaming by looking at ways in which “ideal” victims are constructed, we also need to consider ways in which “ideal” perpetrators are constructed. (shrink)

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt herself about her anger. In this paper, I analyze the case of anger gaslighting, using it as a paradigm case to argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (not only an epistemic one). Drawing on Marilyn Frye, I introduce the concept of “uptake” as a tool for identifying anger gaslighting behavior (persistent, pervasive uptake refusal for apt anger). But I also demonstrate the larger significance of uptake in the study (...) of affective injustice: just as the concept of credibility names the epistemic behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an epistemic being, the concept of uptake names the uniquely affective cooperative behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an affective being. I answer Miranda Fricker’s epistemic notion of a prejudicial credibility economy with the affective notion of prejudicial uptake economies: uptake, like credibility, can be produced in a deficit for one social group relative to a surplus for another. Deviating from the parallels with Fricker, for whom the injustice of epistemic injustice is due to prejudice in the motives or character of individuals, as well as from accounts that ground it in aptness or affective goods, I suggest that the injustice of anger gaslighting behavior can be located at the structural scale of power relationships between social groups, in the tradition of Iris Marion Young. Anger gaslighting behavior counts as unjust wherever it (re)produces prejudicial uptake economies. Adapting sociological concepts of feeling rules and the emotion work they demand, I introduce the concepts of “uptake rules” and “uptake work” to further enable analysis of uptake economies as affective social structures, and to suggest a site for resistant or reparative affective agency. (shrink)

Recent works by feminist and social epistemologists have carefully mapped the contours of epistemic injustice, including gaslighting and prejudicial credibility deficits, prejudicial credibility excesses, willful hermeneutical ignorance, discursive injustices, contributory injustice, and epistemic exploitation. As we look at this burgeoning literature, attention has been concentrated mainly in four areas in descending order of emphasis: phenomena of epistemic injustice themselves, including the nature of wrongdoings involved, attendant consequences and repercussions, individual and structural changes for prevention or mitigation, and (...) restorative, restitutive, or retributive responses. This project urges greater attention to the last of these, and to that end offers a relational approach to epistemic justice drawing upon Margaret Walker’s work on moral repair and reparative justice. In developing and enacting better epistemic practices, how can such practices be made meaningfully restorative: not only recognizing the prospects for epistemic improvement, but responding to the perpetration and experience of epistemic injustice with effective epistemic amelioration? (shrink)

A theme running through Katherine Hawley’s recent works on trust and trustworthiness is that thinking about the relations between these and Miranda Fricker’s notion of testimonial injustice offers a perspective from which we can see several limitations of Fricker’s own account of testimonial injustice. This paper clarifies the aspects of Fricker’s account that Hawley’s criticisms target, focusing on her objections to Fricker’s proposal that its primary harm involves a kind of epistemic objectification and her characterization of testimonial injustice in terms (...) of prejudicial credibility deficits. I also offer an assessment of the potency of Hawley’s objections, concluding that they do point to genuine limitations of Fricker’s account, but that we can appreciate Hawley’s points without adopting her trust-centric approach to testimonial injustice, or her specific commitment-based accounts of trust and trustworthiness. However, in the last section I examine the positive picture of testimonial injustice that emerges from Hawley’s discussion of unequally distributed obstacles to both being trustworthy and maintaining a reputation for trustworthy testimony in her recent book How To Be Trustworthy, considering how this picture contrasts with Fricker’s account and where it might have important affinities with other accounts in the literature. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss an objection to human cloning which appeals to the welfare of the child. This objection varies according to the sort of harm it is expected the clone will suffer. The three formulations of it that we will consider are: 1. Clones will be harmed by the fearful or prejudicial attitudes people may have about or towards them (H1); 2. Clones will be harmed by the demands and expectations of parents or genotype donors (H2); 3. (...) Clones will be harmed by their own awareness of their origins, for example the knowledge that the genetic donor is a stranger (H3). We will show why these three versions of the child welfare objection do not necessarily supply compelling reasons to ban human reproductive cloning. The claim that we will develop and defend in the course of our discussion is that even if it is the case that a cloned child will suffer harms of the type H1-H3, it is none the less permissible to conceive by cloning so long as these cloning-induced welfare deficits are not such as to blight the existence of the resultant child, whoever this may be. (shrink)

In Epistemic Injustice Miranda Fricker argues that there is a distinctively epistemic type of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in his or her capacity as a knower. Fricker's examples of identity-prejudicial credibility deficit primarily involve gender, race, and class, in which individuals are given less credibility due to prejudicial stereotypes. We argue that children, as a class, are also subject to testimonial injustice and receive less epistemic credibility than they deserve. To illustrate the prevalence of testimonial (...) injustice against children we document examples of negative prejudicial treatment in forensic contexts where children frequently act as testifiers. These examples, along with research on the child's competence and reliability as a testifier, reveal widespread epistemic prejudice against children. Given that subjection to prejudice can have a detrimental impact on children we discuss ways to ameliorate this form of testimonial injustice. We argue that, both in formal and natural contexts, the child's testimony should be evaluated alongside the relationships that support her development as a testifier. The adult can play a central role in creating successful testimonial interactions with children by acting as a. (shrink)

In this paper I examine unjust deficits of criticism, or what I call cases of “critical injustice.” In paradigm cases of testimonial injustice, prejudice leads one person to give insufficient credibility to another. In paradigm cases critical injustice, prejudice leads one person to offer insufficient criticism of another. Here I articulate the concept of critical injustice and give an explanation of why it is a species of injustice. I also describe a non-prejudicial species of critical injustice and discuss (...) a possible tension between the goal of preventing testimonial injustice and the goal of preventing critical injustice. (shrink)

A culturally cultivated ignorance with regard to the care and presentation of tightly-curled hair pervades American society. This ignorance masquerades as a discourse of manageability, which supports institutional prohibitions of historically Black American hairstyles. In other words, rather than acknowledging our knowledge deficits, we attribute the medical and aesthetic consequences of our ignorance to the hair itself. The insidious implication is that the display of tightly curled hair is not a matter of taste but indicative of a lack of (...) self-care. I conclude that this trend is racially prejudicial and that laws and education are possible mechanisms of redress. (shrink)

This article examines the operation of “reasonable steps” as a statutory standard for analysis of the availability of the defence of belief in consent in sexual assault cases and concludes that application of section 273.2(b) of the Criminal Code, as presently worded, often undermines the legal validity and correctness of decisions about whether the accused acted with mens rea, a guilty, blameworthy state of mind. When the conduct of an accused who is alleged to have made a mistake about whether (...) a complainant communicated consent is assessed by the hybrid subjective-objective reasonableness standard prescribed by s. 273.2, many decision-makers rely on extra-legal criteria and assumptions grounded on their personal experience and opinion about what is reasonable. In the midst of debate over what the accused knew and what steps were “reasonable” given what the accused knew, the legal definition of consent in section 273.1 is easily over-looked and decision-makers focus on facts that are legally irrelevant and prejudice rational deliberation. -/- That is precisely what we see here; the result is often failure to enforce the law. The author proposes: -/- (a) that section 273.2 be amended to reflect the significant developments achieved in sexual consent jurisprudence since enactment of the provision in 1992; and -/- (b) that, in the interim, the judiciary act with resolve to make full and proper use of the statutory and common law tools that are presently available to determine whether the accused acted with mens rea in relation to the absence of sexual consent. (shrink)

This paper examines two influential theoretical frameworks, set forth by Russell Barkley (1997) and Thomas Brown (2005), and argues that important headway in understanding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be made if we acknowledge the way in which human cognition and action are essentially embodied and enactive. The way in which we actively make sense of the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and our sensorimotor engagement with our surroundings. These bodily dynamics are linked to an individual's concerns and (...) felt needs, so that what she attends to in perception, decision-making, and action is partially constituted by her cares and concerns. What I call ?affective framing? engages the whole living body, and ordinarily contributes to attentional focusing, working memory, goal-formulation, and action-monitoring. However, due to affective framing deficits, subjects with ADHD find it difficult to focus their attention, kindle their motivation, and systematically simplify cognitive procedures according to considerations of relevance, salience, and context. Thus, what is impaired in ADHD is not simply a set of executive brain functions, but rather a range of bodily dynamics through which subjects engage with their world. For this reason, intensive behavioral intervention that engages the whole living body may be the most effective, lasting treatment for ADHD. (shrink)

Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking provides comprehensive critiques and anti-deficit thinking alternatives to this oppressive theory by framing the ...

We disagree with Dixon et al. by maintaining that prejudice is primarily rooted in aversive reactions toward out-group members. However, these reactions are not indicative of negative attributes, such as trait bigotry, but rather normative homophily for peers with similar perceived attributes. Cognitive biases such as stereotype threat perpetuate perceptions of inequipotential and subsequent discrimination, irrespective of individuals' personality characteristics.

The influence of emotion on episodic and autobiographical memory in schizophrenia was investigated. Using an experiential approach, the states of awareness accompanying recollection of pictures from the IAPS and of associated autobiographical memories was recorded. Results show that schizophrenia impairs episodic and autobiographical memories in their critical feature: autonoetic awareness, i.e., the type of awareness experienced when mentally reliving events from one’s past. Schizophrenia was also associated with a reduction of specific autobiographical memories. The impact of stimulus valence on memory (...) performance was moderated by clinical status. Patients with schizophrenia recognized more positive than negative pictures, and recalled more positive than negative autobiographical memories while controls displayed the opposite pattern. A hypothesis in terms of a fundamental executive deficit underlying these impairments is proposed. (shrink)

Introduction: Previous findings that inattention and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms predict later peer problems have been mixed. Utilizing two culturally diverse samples with shared methodologies, we assessed the predictive power of dimensionally measured childhood IA and HI symptoms regarding adolescent peer relationships.Methods: A US-based, clinical sample of 228 girls with and without childhood diagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was assessed and followed 5 years later. A Norwegian, population-based sample of 3,467 children was assessed and followed approximately 4 years later. Both investigations used parent and (...) teacher reports of ADHD symptoms and peer relations. Multivariate regression analyses examined the independent contributions of IA and HI symptoms to later peer problems, adjusting for baseline childhood peer problems. We also examined childhood sex as a potential moderator within the Norwegian sample.Results: Higher levels of childhood HI symptoms, but not IA symptoms, independently predicted adolescent peer problems in the all-female clinical sample. Conversely, higher levels of IA symptoms, but not HI symptoms, independently predicted preadolescent peer problems in the mixed-sex population sample. Results did not differ between informants. Associations between ADHD symptom dimensions and peer problems within the Norwegian sample were not moderated by child sex.Discussion: Differential associations between childhood hyperactive/impulsive and inattention symptoms and adolescent peer problems were found across two diverse samples using a shared methodology. Potential explanations for different findings in the clinical vs. population samples include symptom severity as well as age, sex, and cultural factors. We discuss implications for future research, including the importance of dimensional measures of ADHD-related symptoms and the need for shared methodologies across clinical and normative samples. (shrink)

This study explores the ways in which trust deficit undermines anti-corruption initiatives in a context with systemic corruption. Anti-corruption measures as panacea to systemic corruption are not new, but their effectiveness is debatable. Whilst understanding the causal relationship between corruption and trust remains germane to fighting corruption, a growing number of recent studies advocate better context sensitivity in developing anti-corruption initiatives. Consistent with this, we unpack the perceptions of a significant section of the population in which corruption is rampant to (...) identify factors that could enhance trust in the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures. Using commentaries from Nigerian Netizens on two critical corruption incidents that are significant to corporations, we uncover poignant narratives of perception of incompetence, dishonesty and confusion that undermine the anti-corruption measures in the context. We argue that donors, international organisations and businesses must encourage and support beneficiaries’ governments to secure and sustain trust in the anti-corruption initiatives as a condition for better results. (shrink)

This article examines the regulation of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, with particular focus on products approved for marketing in the United Kingdom, while denied marketing approval in the United States on safety grounds, and then subsequently withdrawn from the UK market on those grounds. Using international comparison of regulatory data never before accessed outside government and companies, together with interviews with relevant industry scientists and regulators, the article demonstrates the importance of regulatory expectations, deficits and paradigms. It is argued both (...) that these sociological concepts can be enriched by their application to detailed comparative case study of regulatory science, and that they provide an important policy-relevant framework with which to understand discrepant drug regulatory processes in a sociohistorical context. It is found that regulatory expectations and paradigms may be regarded as mediating factors between political culture and structural interests, on the one hand, and the outcomes of regulatory science, on the other. (shrink)

Three groups of claims frame this article. First, the Nigerian State is largely enmeshed in environmental deficit, given the substantial oil pollution in the Niger-delta area, the problem of erosion in the Southeast, the filthy status of the Southwest, and the incessantly worrying perturbation of the ecological stability in the Northern part of Nigeria. Second, the political leadership in Nigeria for years has not really given genuine policy priority to, and, on this model, developed a credible framework that the citizenry (...) could buy into to sustainably address the causes and the consequences of the environmental deficit. Third, given the foregoing, this work suggests a re-thinking/re-discussion of approach to the environmental deficit. Drawing on and integrating some relevant ideas, values, and virtues in African metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, the article develops a framework, prescribing how the democratic leadership and the citizenry ought to act in sustainably addressing the environmental deficit. Beyond the philosophic foundations, the framework is also teleologically political: (i) it emphasizes that the moral legitimacy of democratic leadership in Nigeria partly derives from its commitment to the good of the built and the natural environment, and (ii) it also stresses that the citizenry could only be good moral agents, as eco-citizens, if they develop the virtues of environmental responsibility and responsiveness, by theoretically and practically supporting the good of the built and the natural environment. The research methods of critical analysis of empirical data and reflective argumentation are adopted to pursue the goals of the work. (shrink)

This study examines the relation of language use to a person’s ability to perform categorization tasks and to assess their own abilities in those categorization tasks. A silent rhyming task was used to confirm that a group of people with post-stroke aphasia (PWA) had corresponding covert language production (or “inner speech”) impairments. The performance of the PWA was then compared to that of age- and education-matched healthy controls on three kinds of categorization tasks and on metacognitive self-assessments of their performance (...) on those tasks. The PWA showed no deficits in their ability to categorize objects for any of the three trial types (visual, thematic, and categorial). However, on the categorial trials, their metacognitive assessments of whether they had categorized correctly were less reliable than those of the control group. The categorial trials were distinguished from the others by the fact that the categorization could not be based on some immediately perceptible feature or on the objects’ being found together in a type of scenario or setting. This result offers preliminary evidence for a link between covert language use and a specific form of metacognition. (shrink)

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been linked to higher engagement in sexual risk-taking behavior (SRTB). The current study aims to establish the link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population and to examine whether an exaggerated perceived benefit of the positive outcomes of SRTB explains that link. A scale for measuring the frequency, likelihood, perceived benefit, and perceived risk of SRTB was developed. Young adult sexually active participants who did not have a stable partnership completed the above scale, (...) as well as a scale of ADHD symptoms. Level of ADHD symptoms positively correlated with the frequency and likelihood of SRTB, even when the overall level of sexual behavior was controlled for. ADHD symptoms also correlated with the perceived benefit of SRTB, but not with the perceived risk of SRTB. Mediation analysis confirmed an indirect pathway: ADHD symptoms predicted perceived benefit of SRTB, which in turn predicted increased likelihood to engage in SRTB. These findings suggest a positive link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population, which is accounted for by an exaggerated perceived benefit of SRTB. (shrink)

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been linked to higher engagement in sexual risk-taking behavior (SRTB). The current study aims to establish the link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population and to examine whether an exaggerated perceived benefit of the positive outcomes of SRTB explains that link. A scale for measuring the frequency, likelihood, perceived benefit, and perceived risk of SRTB was developed. Young adult sexually active participants who did not have a stable partnership completed the above scale, (...) as well as a scale of ADHD symptoms. Level of ADHD symptoms positively correlated with the frequency and likelihood of SRTB, even when the overall level of sexual behavior was controlled for. ADHD symptoms also correlated with the perceived benefit of SRTB, but not with the perceived risk of SRTB. Mediation analysis confirmed an indirect pathway: ADHD symptoms predicted perceived benefit of SRTB, which in turn predicted increased likelihood to engage in SRTB. These findings suggest a positive link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population, which is accounted for by an exaggerated perceived benefit of SRTB. (shrink)

Environmental releases of gene edited (GEdOs) and gene drive organisms (GDOs) will likely occur under conditions of high uncertainty and in complex socioecological systems. Therefore, public deliberation is especially important to account for diverse interpretations of safety, risks, and benefits; to draw on experiential and public wisdom in areas of proposed release; to ameliorate dangers of technological optimism; and to increase the public legitimacy of decisions. Yet there is a “democratic deficit” in the United States' oversight system for GEdOs and (...) GDOs, as unconflicted experts, publics, and skeptical stakeholders are most often excluded from decision‐making and unavailable to critically examine potential risks and benefits or raise broader concerns about socioeconomic or cultural impacts. This article argues for the need to open up decision‐making for GEdOs and GDOs, discusses the challenges for doing so within the current oversight framework, and finally, proposes institutional, policy, and attitudinal changes that are likely important for overcoming barriers to public deliberation. (shrink)

This paper investigates what it is to understand human differences in terms of deficits and examines criticisms of this approach. In the past few decades, across many fields of inquiry and outside the academy there has been a surge of interest in critiquing "the deficit view" of all manner of group differences and deviations from the norm. But what exactly is meant by "deficit view" and related terms when they figure in accounts of human differences? Do critics of the (...) deficit view claim that they are never appropriate or that particular applications of the approach are inappropriate? The aim of this paper is twofold: to identify and articulate some of the conceptual issues at the heart of debates about deficit approaches and to examine how these issues matter. Autism is my focus case. As we will see, many critiques of the deficit view of autism tend to characterize what is problematic about taking a deficit view in terms of the personal and social harm that deficit views can or do effect. One important upshot of my discussion, I argue, is that there is another kind of drawback to deficit thinking that is independent of the deficit view's potential negative personal and social consequences, a drawback that deserves serious consideration and sustained critical attention: in some instances, at least, deficit views impede scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the phenomena themselves. Thus, articulating and assessing deficit approaches is of practical and theoretical importance. (shrink)

Humphreys and Forde fail to account for the ontology of the “features” that they claim are constitutive of concepts. This failure is common to decompositional theories of conceptual representation. Category-specific deficits can be better explained by a theory that takes inferential relations among atomic concepts to be the key characteristic of conceptual representation and processing.

ABSTRACT The claim that social class differences in educational success are related to language and language use of a cognitively relevant kind is discussed and criticised. Various aspects of the relationship between rationality and language are examined and it is argued that the contention that deficiencies in rationality are related to language is an ambiguous one which involves different kinds of claims. When the claims of verbal deficit theorists have been clarified, it has been found that the weakest of these (...) claims have not been proven, while the strongest are empirically possible but extremely unlikely. (shrink)

Sagvolden, Johansen, Aase, and Russell (Sagvolden et al.) examine attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at levels of analysis ranging from neurotransmitters to behavior. At the behavioral level they attribute aspects of ADHD to anomalies of delay-of-reinforcement gradients. With a normal gradient, responses followed after a long delay by a reinforcer may share in the effects of that reinforcer; with a diminished or steepened gradient they may fail to do so. Steepened gradients differentially select rapidly emitted responses (hyperactivity), and they limit the effectiveness (...) with which extended stimuli become conditioned reinforcers, so that observing behavior is less well maintained (attention deficit). Impulsiveness also follows from steepened gradients, which increase the effectiveness of smaller, more immediate consequences relative to larger, more delayed ones. Individuals who vary in the degree to which their delay gradients are steepened will show different balances between hyperactivity and attention deficit. Given the range of ADHD phenomena addressed, it may be unnecessary to appeal to additional behavioral processes such as extinction deficit. Extinction deficit is more likely a derivative of attention deficit, in that failure to attend to stimuli differentially correlated with extinction should slow its progress. The account suggests how relatively small differences in delay gradients early in development might engender behavioral interactions leading to very large differences later on. The steepened gradients presumably originate in properties of neurotransmitter function, but behavioral interventions that use consistently short delays of reinforcement to build higher-order behavioral units as a scaffolding to support complex cognitive and social skills may nonetheless be feasible. Key Words: ADHD; attention deficit; delay gradient; exponential decay; extinction deficit; hyperactivity; impulsiveness; intervention; observing responses; self-control. Footnotes1000 Jeffrey Gray was the BBS Editor for this treatment. When he accepted Sagvolden et al. for publication, he invited Catania, who was one of the reviewers of the original submission, to prepare a precommentary. Com-mentators were then invited to respond to the Sagvolden et al. article, to the Catania precommentary, or to both. (shrink)

The systematic examination of the relationship between brain and behavior is generally considered to have begun in 1861 with Broca's description of a patient with a specific language deficit associated with a circumscribed lesion of the left frontal cortex. This observation was taken to show that there was a specific region in the brain concerned with language which was relatively independent of other regions concerned with other abilities. In the next decade a number of other patients were described with various (...) circumscribed deficits. Wernicke described aphasic patients who, in contrast to Broca's patients, were better at speech production than they were in understanding speech. Harlow described the case of Phineas Gage, who showed little sign of loss in his intellectual abilities but suffered a disastrous change in personality after bilateral damage to his frontal cortex. The aim of many of these early neuropsychologists was to associate particular psychological functions with specific brain regions by detailed study of neurological cases. (shrink)

Three groups of claims frame this article. First, the Nigerian State is largely enmeshed in environmental deficit, given the substantial oil pollution in the Niger-delta area, the problem of erosion in the Southeast, the filthy status of the Southwest, and the incessantly worrying perturbation of the ecological stability in the Northern part of Nigeria. Second, the political leadership in Nigeria for years has not really given genuine policy priority to, and, on this model, developed a credible framework that the citizenry (...) could buy into to sustainably address the causes and the consequences of the environmental deficit. Third, given the foregoing, this work suggests a re-thinking/re-discussion of approach to the environmental deficit. Drawing on and integrating some relevant ideas, values, and virtues in African metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, the article develops a framework, prescribing how the democratic leadership and the citizenry ought to act in sustainably addressing the environmental deficit. Beyond the philosophic foundations, the framework is also teleologically political: it emphasizes that the moral legitimacy of democratic leadership in Nigeria partly derives from its commitment to the good of the built and the natural environment, and it also stresses that the citizenry could only be good moral agents, as eco-citizens, if they develop the virtues of environmental responsibility and responsiveness, by theoretically and practically supporting the good of the built and the natural environment. The research methods of critical analysis of empirical data and reflective argumentation are adopted to pursue the goals of the work. (shrink)

The notion of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may have its origins in 1763, when Scottish physician Sir Arthur Crichton observed people who could be easily distracted to a degree approaching the nature of delirium. Since then, the notion of ADHD matured and aroused controversy concerning whether it is a real illness and the motives behind particular methods of its treatments. Despite the controversy, ADHD is well established as a research subject and a frequently diagnosed disorder. Thus, the aim of (...) this paper is not to deal with controversies but rather to show the evolution of methods used for the detection of this disorder. Literature analysis revealed that those methods varied from classical psychological tests/questionnaires to analyses of: eye-motion, micro-motion, brain activity, and behavioral patterns in virtual reality. The main conclusion is that the above methods tend to be heavily computer-aided and that the future belongs to mobile solutions incorporated into complex e-health systems. (shrink)

This paper provides a realist analysis of the EU's legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams' theory of legitimacy, which we term critical responsiveness. For Williams, 'Basic Legitimation Demand + Modernity = Liberalism'. Drawing on that model, we make three claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to popular sovereignty; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a 'legitimation story': a non-moralised normative account of how to shore up belief in (...) legitimacy while steering clear of both raw domination and ideological distortions. (iii) The EU's current legitimation story draws on a tradition of popular sovereignty that sits badly with the supranational delegation and pooling of sovereign powers. We conclude by suggesting that the EU's legitimation deficit may be best addressed demoicratically, by recovering the value of popular sovereignty at the expense of a degree of state sovereignty. (shrink)

Patient or public involvement in health research is increasingly expected as a matter of policy. In theory, PPI can contribute both to the epistemic aims intrinsic to research, and to extrinsically valued features of research such as social inclusion and transparency. In practice, the aims of PPI have not always been clear, although there has been a tendency to encourage the involvement of so-called ordinary people who are regarded as representative of an assumed patient perspective. In this paper we focus (...) on the epistemic potential of PPI, using theoretical work in epistemology to develop a nuanced account of patients’ experiential knowledge and how this might contribute directly to conceptual development, hypothesis generation and data interpretation. We also consider how some features of health research pose barriers to this kind of epistemic contribution. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s idea of testimonial injustice, we explore how disciplinary indicators of credibility in clinical and academic health research contexts might be wrongly applied to those involved in PPI, undermining their potential to contribute. Finally we argue for a range of strategies to maximize opportunities for patients to engage with research teams and make epistemologically significant contributions to research. (shrink)

BackgroundAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders among school-age children and is characterized by varying degrees of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Diagnosis, which currently relies on the DSM-V criteria, is complex. This research proposes an integrated procedure for ADHD diagnosis in children, improving the diagnostic process and scientific research on etiopathology.Materials and methodsWe conducted a clinical report on ADHD diagnosis in children between the ages of 8 and 13, based on the results of the application (...) of different scales to parents of school-age children in Chile. The children were divided into two groups, those with an ADHD diagnosis and those without.ResultsThe results revealed statistically significant differences between groups for scales EDAH y SDQ-Cas, Conners Comprehensive Behavior Scale, Conners Parent Scale and the criteria according to the DSM-V and its dimensions, with the exception of inattention.ConclusionThe findings indicate the importance of appropriate criteria and procedures to establish a diagnosis and implement effective interventions in ADHD. (shrink)

The debate over moral bioenhancement has incrementally intensified since 2008, when Persson and Savulescu, and Douglas wrote two separate articles on the reasons why enhancing human moral capabilities and sensitivity through technological means was ethically desirable. In this article, we offer a critique of how Persson and Savulescu theorize about the possibility of moral bioenhancement, including the problem of weakness of will, which they see as a motivational challenge. First, we offer a working definition of moral bioenhancement and underscore some (...) of the challenges in determining whether moral bioenhancement, as conceptualized by Persson and Savulescu, falls into the category of enhancement or constitutes a type of therapeutic intervention. Second, we provide a critical analysis of the way Persson and Savulescu pathologize human behavior in relation to what they see as the main threat to the survival of the human species: weak moral motivation. Next, we critique the claim that the use of genetic manipulation and drug treatment will increase moral motivation. We argue that Persson and Savulescu mischaracterize the nature of human moral psychology because moral motivation includes affective and cognitive dimensions. The type of interventions they envision focus almost exclusively on the former. In the final two sections, we outline three main criticisms of moral bioenhancement and offer a more robust account of moral psychology and moral development than what Persson and Savulescu recommend, through the lens of Aristotle’s work on virtue ethics. Ultimately, we argue that what Persson and Savulescu, and Douglas consider as moral bioenhancement is a misnomer because they do not fully account for the complexity of moral agency. (shrink)