The paper examines the ethics of electronic monitoring for advertising purposes and the implications for Internet user privacy using as a backdrop DoubleClick Incs recent controversy over matching previously anonymous user profiles with personally identifiable information. It explores various ethical theories that are applicable to understand privacy issues in electronic monitoring. It is argued that, despite the fact that electronic monitoring always constitutes an invasion of privacy, it can still be ethically justified on both (...) Utilitarian and Kantian grounds. From a Utilitarian perspective the emphasis must be on minimizing potential harms. From a Kantian perspective the emphasis must be on giving users complete information so that they can make informed decisions as to whether they are willing to be monitored. Considering the Internet advertising industrys current actions, computer users and government regulators would be well advised, both practically and ethically, to move to a user control model in electronic monitoring. (shrink)

Many office workers use computers and the Internet not only to get their daily jobs done but also to deal with their personal businesses. Therefore employers nowadays monitor their employees electronically to prevent the misuse of the company resources. The use of electronic monitoring in organizations causes issues of trust and privacy. This study is dedicated to developing a conceptual model on the two issues under electronic monitoring. Control, considered as the essence of the definition (...) of privacy as well as the foundation of the control model in the theory of procedural justice, plays an important role to people’s privacy concerns and trust. People’s perceived‐self, as essential in the group‐value model in the theory of procedural justice and in the cultural studies, also plays an important role to people’s privacy concerns and trust. This study presents research hypotheses on trust and privacy under electronic surveillance based on the two models of the theory of procedural justice, social identity theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Maintaining adequate performance in dynamic and uncertain settings has been a perennial stumbling block for intelligent systems. Nevertheless, any system intended for real-world deployment must be able to accommodate unexpected change—that is, it must be perturbation tolerant. We have found that metacognitive monitoring and control—the ability of a system to self-monitor its own decision-making processes and ongoing performance, and to make targeted changes to its beliefs and action-determining components—can play an important role in helping intelligent systems cope with (...) the perturbations that are the inevitable result of real-world deployment. In this article we present the results of several experiments demonstrating the efficacy of metacognition in improving the perturbation tolerance of reinforcement learners, and discuss a general theory of metacognitive monitoring and control, in a form we call the metacognitive loop. (shrink)

There is general agreement that the “principle of balance” should guide controlled substance policy and regulation in the United States. Although the diversion of controlled substances from medical to nonmedical purposes is a significant public health problem, overly aggressive controlled substance regulation has been shown to have an unintended deterrent effect on appropriate controlled substance use, including pain management with opioid analgesics. The promotion of effective pain management and the reduction of substance abuse are equally important regulatory objectives. Neither regulatory (...) objective need be sacrificed to achieve the other. Rather, the two objectives must be balanced with each other to assure that necessary pain management is encouraged while drug abuse is curtailed.Approximately 75 million people in the United States suffer from severe pain. Fifty million of these suffer chronic pain, and 25 million suffer acute pain from trauma or surgery. Pain is not merely an uncomfortable symptom. (shrink)

There is general agreement that the “principle of balance” should guide controlled substance policy and regulation in the United States. Although the diversion of controlled substances from medical to nonmedical purposes is a significant public health problem, overly aggressive controlled substance regulation has been shown to have an unintended deterrent effect on appropriate controlled substance use, including pain management with opioid analgesics. The promotion of effective pain management and the reduction of substance abuse are equally important regulatory objectives. Neither regulatory (...) objective need be sacrificed to achieve the other. Rather, the two objectives must be balanced with each other to assure that necessary pain management is encouraged while drug abuse is curtailed.Approximately 75 million people in the United States suffer from severe pain. Fifty million of these suffer chronic pain, and 25 million suffer acute pain from trauma or surgery. Pain is not merely an uncomfortable symptom. (shrink)

Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and on his lecture on the Punitive Societies as well as on affect theories, this text tries to analyze a surprising return to shame as a paradigm for punishment. In this context, shame and guilt are both seen not so much as real emotions occurring within the soul of a subject, but as dispositives or affective arrangements that seek different ways to regulate and modulate the feelings of justice and injustice within a society. Excessive (...) shaming, which does not fit well in Foucault’s narrative of a development towards more subtle forms of punishment, will be understood as a form of resistance against the subtleties of control. The text discusses this using the example of Electronic Monitoring and its history as a form of making shame invisible, hiding it as micro-political shame in an economy of guilt. Against this economy, excessive shame as punishment forms an aneconomic force that sets out to reset the rules of community and identity. (shrink)

This paper considers electronic monitoring (EM) a promising alternative to imprisonment as a criminal sanction for a series of criminal offenses. However, little has been said about EM from an ethical perspective. To evaluate EM from an ethical perspective, six initial ethical challenges are addressed and discussed. It is argued that since EM is developing as a technology and a punitive means, it is urgent to discuss its ethical implications and incorporate moral values into its design and development.

Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in (...) the lorazepam than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity (the extent to which volunteering of answers is affected by the confidence judgments). While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired (calibration scores), both the discriminative aspect (the ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect answers) and the response criterion setting (the confidence threshold set for volunteering a report) were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in (...) the lorazepam than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity . While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired , both the discriminative aspect and the response criterion setting were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

In this reply, we provide an analysis of Alter et al. response to our earlier paper. In that paper, we reported difficulty in replicating Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, and Eyre’s main finding, namely that a sense of disfluency produced by making stimuli difficult to perceive, increased accuracy on a variety of reasoning tasks. Alter, Oppenheimer, and Epley argue that we misunderstood the meaning of accuracy on these tasks, a claim that we reject. We argue and provide evidence that the tasks were (...) not too difficult for our populations and point out that in many cases performance on our tasks was well above chance or on a par with Alter et al.’s participants. Finally, we reiterate our claim that the distinction between answer fluency and perceptual fluency is genuine, and argue that Thompson et al. provided evidence that these are distinct factors that have different downstream effects on cognitive processes. (shrink)

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been the subject of intense interest as a locus of cognitive control. Several computational models have been proposed to account for a range of effects, including error detection, conflict monitoring, error likelihood prediction, and numerous other effects observed with single-unit neurophysiology, fMRI, and lesion studies. Here, we review the state of computational models of cognitive control and offer a new theoretical synthesis of the mPFC as signaling response–outcome predictions. This new synthesis (...) has two interacting components. The first component learns to predict the various possible outcomes of a planned action, and the second component detects discrepancies between the actual and intended responses; the detected discrepancies in turn update the outcome predictions. This single construct is consistent with a wide array of performance monitoring effects in mPFC and suggests a unifying account of the cognitive role of medial PFC in performance monitoring. (shrink)

Foucault’s disciplinary society and his notion of panopticism are often invoked in discussions regarding electronic surveillance. Against this use of Foucault, I argue that contemporary trends in surveillance technology abstract human bodies from their territorial settings, separating them into a series of discrete flows through what Deleuze will term, the surveillant assemblage. The surveillant assemblage and its product, the socially sorted body, aim less at molding, punishing and controlling the body and more at triggering events of in- and ex-clusion (...) from life opportunities. The meaning of the body as monitored by latest generation vision technologies formed from machine only surveillance has been transformed. Such a body is no longer disciplinary in the Foucauldian sense. It is a virtual/flesh interface broken into discrete data flows whose comparison and breakage generate bodies as both legible and eligible (or illegible). (shrink)

A vigorous debate has developed surrounding electronic surveillance in the workplace. This controversial practice is one element of the more general issues of employee dignity and management control, revolving around the use of polygraph and drug testing, integrity exams, and the like. Managers, under pressure from competitors, are making greater use of technologically advanced employee monitoring methods because they are available, and hold the promise of productivity improvement. In this paper, the context of electronic surveillance is (...) described and analyzed from the perspectives of ethics, public policy, and managerial behavior. (shrink)

One hypothesis concerning the human dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is that it functions, in part, to signal the occurrence of conflicts in information processing, thereby triggering compensatory adjustments in cognitive control. Since this idea was first proposed, a great deal of relevant empirical evidence has accrued. This evidence has largely corroborated the conflict-monitoring hypothesis, and some very recent work has provided striking new support for the theory. At the same time, other findings have posed specific challenges, especially (...) concerning the way the theory addresses the processing of errors. Recent research has also begun to shed light on the larger function of the ACC, suggesting some new possibilities concerning how conflict monitoring might fit into the cingulate's overall role in cognition and action. (shrink)

In the present study, we use a training design in two experiments to examine whether bilingual language switching facilitates two components of cognitive control, namely monitoring and inhibitory control. The results of Experiment 1 showed that training in language switching reduced mixing costs and the anti-saccade effect among bilinguals. In Experiment 2, the findings revealed a greater decrease of mixing costs and a smaller decrease of the anti-saccade effect from pre- to post-training for the language switching training (...) group compared to the L2 training group. Overall, the results suggest that extensive exercise in monitoring and inhibitory control among languages in an experimental setting may enhance the corresponding components of cognitive control. We discuss these findings in the context of the relationship between bilingual language control and executive control. (shrink)

The incidence of elder abuse has led to a growing trend of states taking various methods to regulate the use of electronic monitoring in institutional settings through programs, guidelines, regulations, and laws. This article attempts evaluate how the regulation of electronic monitoring has evolved and may be advanced in the future with the anticipated increase of elder abuse.

Even a small percentage of missing data can cause serious problems with analysis, reducing the statistical power of a study and leading to wrong conclusions being drawn. In the case of monitoring a woman’s monthly cycle, missing entries can appear even in a woman experienced in fertility awareness methods. Due to the fact that in a system of controlling a woman’s fertility, it is the most important to predict the day of ovulation and, ultimately, to determine the fertile window (...) as much precisely as possible, much attention should be paid to the quality of the used data. This paper presents the results of handling missing observations as far as predicting the time during the cycle when a woman can become pregnant is concerned. Data taken from a multinational European study of daily fecundability was used to learn the quantitative part of the variety of a higher-order dynamic Bayesian network modeling a woman’s monthly cycle. The main goal of this paper is to examine whether omitting observations has an influence on the model’s reliability. The accuracy of comparison was examined based on two measures: the average percentage length of the infertile time during the monthly cycle and average percentage of days inside the fertile window classified as infertile. (shrink)

The rise of digital and interconnected technology within the workplace, including programs that facilitate monitoring and surveillance of employees is unstoppable. The COVID-19-induced lockdowns and the resulting increase in home office adoption even increased this trend. Apart from major benefits that may come along with such information and communication technologies (e.g., productivity increases, better resource planning, and increased worker safety), they also enable comprehensive Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM) which may also have negative effects (e.g., increased stress and (...) a reduction in job satisfaction). This conceptual article investigates EPM to better understand the development, adoption, and impact of EPM systems in organizations. The EPM literature published since the 1980s constitutes the basis for this conceptual article. We present a framework which is intended to serve as foundation for future studies. Moreover, we reviewed more than three decades of empirical EPM research and identified six major outcomes that are influenced by the use of an EPM system, as well as a large number of moderator variables. Based on our conceptual analyses and the resulting insights, which also include privacy, ethical, and cultural considerations, we discuss future research opportunities where we also refer to design implications for EPM systems. (shrink)

A recent advent has been seen in the usage of Internet of things (IoT) for autonomous devices for exchange of data. A large number of transformers are required to distribute the power over a wide area. To ensure the normal operation of transformer, live detection and fault diagnosis methods of power transformers are studied. This article presents an IoT-based approach for condition monitoring and controlling a large number of distribution transformers utilized in a power distribution network. In this article, (...) the vibration analysis method is used to carry out the research. The results show that the accuracy of the improved diagnosis algorithm is 99.01, 100, and 100% for normal, aging, and fault transformers. The system designed in this article can effectively monitor the healthy operation of power transformers in remote and real-time. The safety, stability, and reliability of transformer operation are improved. (shrink)

This essay considers the impact of digital networks in organizations on worker autonomy. Worker autonomy, the control that workers have over their own work situation, is claimed in this essay to be a key determinant for the quality of work, as well as an important moral goal. Digital networks pose significant threats to worker autonomy as well as opportunities for its enhancement. In this essay, the notion of worker autonomy is analyzed and evaluated for its importance and moral relevance. (...) It is then considered how digital networks both threaten worker autonomy and offer opportunities for its enhancement. Three major opportunities (enhanced communicative powers, increased informedness, teleworking) and threats (electronic monitoring, task prestructuring, and dependency creation) are discussed and analyzed. Finally, the dynamics that determine the impact on worker autonomy of the introduction of a digital network in organizations are investigated. A particular model for analyzing these dynamics and their impacts, Bryan Pfaffenberger's model of a technological drama. It will be illustrated how this model illuminates these dynamics by analyzing them as a dialectic of strategies of technological regularization by design constituencies and technological adjustment by impact constituencies. It will also be assessed what role network design has in this process. (shrink)

Based on prior studies which show that firms headquartered in high religiosity counties exhibit high level of business ethics, this study examines whether these firms are associated with low audit risk, and therefore low audit fees. In investigating this relationship, we draw a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity of auditees. Using a sample of 25,872 U.S. observations from 2003 to 2012, we find that intrinsic religiosity of the auditees is associated with low audit fees after controlling for auditee extrinsic (...) religiosity, social capital, firm-specific characteristics, and county-specific characteristics. Furthermore, we find that external monitoring weakens the negative relationship between auditee intrinsic religiosity and audit fees. Finally, we conclude that the effect of auditor religiosity on audit fees is a regional effect that may affect the relationship between audit fees and auditee intrinsic religiosity. (shrink)

Researchers have begun to explore animals' capacities for uncertainty monitoring and metacognition. This exploration could extend the study of animal self-awareness and establish the relationship of self-awareness to other-awareness. It could sharpen descriptions of metacognition in the human literature and suggest the earliest roots of metacognition in human development. We summarize research on uncertainty monitoring by humans, monkeys, and a dolphin within perceptual and metamemory tasks. We extend phylogenetically the search for metacognitive capacities by considering studies that have (...) tested less cognitively sophisticated species. By using the same uncertainty-monitoring paradigms across species, it should be possible to map the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition and illuminate the emergence of mind. We provide a unifying formal description of animals' performances and examine the optimality of their decisional strategies. Finally, we interpret animals' and humans' nearly identical performances psychologically. Low-level, stimulus-based accounts cannot explain the phenomena. The results suggest granting animals a higher-level decision-making process that involves criterion setting using controlled cognitive processes. This conclusion raises the difficult question of animal consciousness. The results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human conscious cognition. Remaining questions are whether animals also have the phenomenal features that are the feeling/knowing states of human conscious cognition, and whether the present paradigms can be extended to demonstrate that they do. Thus, the comparative study of metacognition potentially grounds the systematic study of animal consciousness. Key Words: cognition; comparative cognition; consciousness; memory monitoring; metacognition; metamemory; self-awareness; uncertainty; uncertainty monitoring. (shrink)

Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. Recent events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how the risks and consequences of this are no longer acceptable. Two papers, addressing the treatment of COVID-19, have been published in two of the most prestigious medical journals; the authors declared to have analysed electronic health records from a private corporation, which apparently collected data of tens of thousands of patients, coming from hundreds of hospitals. Both papers have (...) been retracted a few weeks later. When such events happen, the confidence of the population in scientific research is likely to be weakened. This paper highlights how the current system endangers the reliability of scientific research, and the very foundations of the trust system on which modern healthcare is based. Having shed light on the dangers of a system without appropriate monitoring, the proposed analysis suggests to strengthen the existing journal policies and improve the research process using new technologies supporting control activities by public authorities. Among these solutions, we mention the promising aspects of the blockchain technology which seems a promising solution to avoid the repetition of the mistakes linked to the recent and past history of research. (shrink)

The Alice Books, full of illogical thoughts, words, and contradictions, were unrivaled entertainment until the publication of the medical literature promoting electronic fetal monitoring for every pregnancy. The modern-day EFM advocates acknowledge EFM’s decades long failure but simultaneously recommend EFM use for lawsuit protection and because the profession has used EFM for every pregnancy for fifty years, therefore, it must be efficacious. These self-indulgent, illogical rationalizations ignore the half century of evidence-based scientific research proving that EFM is a (...) complete failure as well as ignoring the fact that continued EFM use violates the fundamental principles of modern bioethics. This blind advocacy perpetuates four pernicious EFM harms occurring to mothers, babies, and the medical profession itself. This article sets out these four EFM harms with the goal of abolishing the misguided, illogical, contradictory, arguments used by the twenty-first century EFM Lewis Carroll mimics. (shrink)

Conscious awareness of intentionality is considered to be a product of specialized monitoring processes which distinguish intentional, goal-directed actions from unintentional, passive/ reactive actions. When goals are not met or unfavourable conditions arise, this ability to distinguish intentional and unintentional enables us to direct adaptive efforts towards either changing plans and goals or towards altering the environment. The formulation is discussed in relation to monitoring theories of consciousness and the concept of 'locus of control', and is developed (...) to explain several common psychological disorders in terms of dysfunctional monitoring of intentions. It is suggested that it could provide a theoretical basis for psychological treatment methods. (shrink)

Extensive and growing use of electronic performance monitoring in organizations has resulted in considerable debate. Advocates of electronic monitoring approach the debate in teleological terms arguing that monitoring benefits organizations, customers, and society. Its critics approach the issue in deontological terms countering that monitoring is dehumanizing, invades worker privacy, increases stress and worsens health, and decreases work-life quality. In contrast to this win-lose approach, this paper argues that an approach which emphasizes communication in the (...) design and implementation of monitoring systems offers a win-win solution that should satisfy both deontological and teleological ethicists. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether overindebted and non-overindebted consumers differ in their attitude toward money and how this attitude impacts three different financial behavior categories: record keeping, adjusting balance, and monitoring balance. Overindebted consumers were recruited via an NGO for consumer defense and were categorized into two subgroups: consumers who became overindebted due to internal causes and consumers who became overindebted due to external causes. Non-overindebted consumers were a convenience sample. Non-overindebted consumers showed more positive attitudes toward money than both (...) groups of overindebted consumers and overindebted due to external causes showed more positive attitudes than overindebted consumers due to internal causes. All groups share similar financial management behaviors except for monitoring balance, which was more frequent among non-overindebted consumers. Furthermore, a regression analysis indicates that money attitudes helped explain financial behavior differences between consumers above and beyond their indebtedness status. Consumers’ attitude predicted financial behaviors, even when controlling for relevant socioeconomic variables. Further analyses comparing money attitudes and financial behavior for the three subgroups showed no differences. (shrink)

A half century ago electronic fetal monitoring was rushed into clinical use with the promise that the secrets of fetal heart rate decelerations had been discovered and that the newly discovered knowledge would prevent cerebral palsy with just in time cesarean sections preventing babies from experiencing asphyxia, which was thought to be the primary cause of cerebral palsy. In the years since electronic fetal monitoring’s debut, it has been discovered that asphyxia is a rare cause of (...) cerebral palsy. At the same time electronic fetal monitoring use increased to 85% of all labors, the C-section rate increased to 33% without an attributable decrease in the rate of cerebral palsy. What went wrong with electronic fetal monitoring? The answer lies in a new analysis of the physiologic theories concerning fetal heart rate decelerations, demonstrating that the earlier electronic fetal monitoring theories were wrong. This revelation is only the latest evidence that electronic fetal monitoring use today... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe quartz clock, the first to replace the pendulum as the time standard and later a ubiquitous and highly influential technology, originated in research on means for determining frequency for the needs of telecommunication and the interests of its users. This article shows that a few groups in the US, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands developed technologies that enabled the construction of the new clock in 1927–28. To coordinate complex and large communication networks, the monopolistic American Telephone and Telegraph Company, (...) and national laboratories needed to determine and maintain a common ‘standard’ frequency measurement unit. Exploiting novel piezoelectric quartz methods and valve electronics techniques, researchers in these organizations constructed a new crystal-based frequency standard. To ensure its accuracy they compared it to an accepted absolute standard - an astronomical clock, constructing thereby the first quartz clock. Other groups, however, had different, though connected, technological aims, which originated from the diverse interests of the industrial, governmental and academic institutes to which they belonged, and for which they needed to measure, control and manipulate with frequencies of electric oscillations. The present article suggests a comparative examination of the research and development paths of these groups on their incentives, the technological and scientific resources they utilized, and the kind of research carried out in the various institutional settings. (shrink)