PurposeThis study investigated whether the ability to utilize statistical regularities from fluent speech and map potential words to meaning at 18-months predicts vocabulary at 18- and again at 24-months.MethodEighteen-month-olds were exposed to an artificial language with statistical regularities within the speech stream, then participated in an object-label learning task. Learning was measured using a modified looking-while-listening eye-tracking design. Parents completed vocabulary questionnaires when their child was 18-and 24-months old.ResultsAbility to learn the object-label pairing for words after exposure to the artificial (...) language predicted productive vocabulary at 24-months and amount of vocabulary change from 18- to 24 months, independent of non-verbal cognitive ability, socio-economic status and/or object-label association performance.ConclusionEighteen-month-olds’ ability to use statistical information derived from fluent speech to identify words within the stream of speech and then to map the “words” to meaning directly predicts vocabulary size at 24-months and vocabulary change from 18 to 24 months. The findings support the hypothesis that statistical word segmentation is one of the important aspects of word learning and vocabulary acquisition in toddlers. (shrink)

PurposeAdolescents develop their decision-making ability as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Participation in their medical care should be encouraged through obtaining assent, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In this research, we aim to define the current knowledge of AAP recommendations and surgeon practices regarding assent for elective reconstructive procedures.MethodsAn anonymous electronic survey was distributed to North American paediatric surgeons and fellows through the American Pediatric Surgical Association (n=1353).ResultsIn total, 220 surgeons and trainees responded (16.3%). Fifty (...) per cent of the surgeons who are familiar with the concept of assent had received formal training; 12% of the respondents had not heard of assent before the survey. Forty-seven per cent were aware of the 2016 AAP policy statement regarding assent in paediatric patients. Eighty-nine per cent always include adolescents as part of the consent discussion. Seventy-seven per cent solicit an expression of willingness to accept the proposed care from the patient. The majority (74%) of the surgeons perceived patient cooperation/understanding as the biggest barrier to obtaining assent. Over half of the respondents would consider proceeding with elective surgery despite the adolescent patient’s refusal. Reasons cited for proceeding with elective surgery include surgeons’ perception of medical necessity, perceptions of disease urgency, and lack of patient maturity.ConclusionPaediatric surgeons largely acknowledge the importance of assent, but variably practice the principles of obtaining assent from adolescent patients undergoing elective reconstructive procedures. Fewer surgeons are explicitly aware of formal policy statements or received formal training. Additional surgeon education and institutional policies are warranted to maximise inclusion of adolescents in their medical care. (shrink)

Sacred Harp singers the world over gather weekly to sing out ofThe Sacred Harp, a collection of shape-note songs first published in 1844. Their tradition is highly ritualized, and it plays an important role in the lives of many participants. Following the implementation of lockdown protocols to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, groups of Sacred Harp singers quickly and independently devised a variety of means by which to sing together online using Zoom, Jamulus, and Facebook Live. The rapidity and creativity with (...) which Sacred Harp singers developed ways to sustain their activities attests to the strength and significance of this community of practice, and in this article I describe each modality and provide an account of how it came to be developed and widely used. As a participant-observer, I completed extensive fieldwork across these digital sites and conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 other singers. I found that online singing practices have reshaped the Sacred Harp community. Many singers who did not previously have the opportunity to participate now have access, while others have lost access due to technological barriers or lack of interest in online activities. At the same time, geographical barriers have disintegrated, and singing organizers must make an effort to maintain local identity. A stable community of singers has emerged in the digital realm, but it is by no means identical to the community that predated the pandemic. I also identify the ways in which online singing has proven meaningful to participants by providing continuity in their personal and communal practice. Specifically, online singing allows participants to access and celebrate their collective memories of the Sacred Harp community, carry out significant rituals, and continue to grow as singers. While no single modality replicates the complete Sacred Harp singing experience, together they function “like pieces in a puzzle”, allowing individual participants to access many of the elements of Sacred Harp singing that are most meaningful to them. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a transdisciplinary project about sustainable forest management under climate change. Our project is a partnership with members of the Menominee Nation, a Tribal Nation located in northern Wisconsin, United States. We use immersive virtual experiences, translated from ecosystem model outcomes, to elicit human values about future forest conditions under alternative scenarios. Our project combines expertise across the sciences and humanities as well as across cultures and knowledge systems. Our management structure, governance, and leadership behaviors have (...) both fostered and constrained our work and must be continuously responsive to changing group dynamics. Our project presents opportunities for substantial contributions to society, including insights and knowledge about complementary ways of knowing, skills training, and professional development, and opportunities for reflexive learning about effective transdisciplinary, translational, and transformative scientific processes. (shrink)

We begin, in section 2, with a brief sketch of a cluster of assumptions about human desires, beliefs, actions, and motivation that are widely shared by historical and contemporary authors on both sides in the debate. With this as background, we’ll be able to offer a more sharply focused account of the debate. In section 3, our focus will be on links between evolutionary theory and the egoism/altruism debate. There is a substantial literature employing evolutionary theory on each side of (...) the issue. However, it is our contention that neither camp has offered a convincing case. We are much more sanguine about recent research on altruism in social psychology, which will be our topic in section 4. Though we don’t think this work has resolved the debate, we will argue that it has made illuminating progress – progress that philosophers interested in the question cannot afford to ignore. (shrink)

James questions the validity of the very tentative statement made in the final sentence of our paper. Our claim concerned the proportion of twins in Britain in the 1990s that might have arisen through subfertility treatment and was linked to the suggestion that the natural twinning rate might still be in decline. If this were true, we, like James, would regard that prospect with concern.

INTRODUCTION TO ASPECTS OF FACE PROCESSING: TEN QUESTIONS IN NEED OF ANSWERS. HD Ellis 1. INTRODUCTION These proceedings of the first international ...

BackgroundClinical ethics consultations can be complex interventions, involving multiple methods, stakeholders, and competing ethical values. Despite longstanding calls for rigorous evaluation in the field, progress has been limited. The Medical Research Council proposed guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of complex interventions. The evaluation of CEC may benefit from application of the MRC framework to advance the transparency and methodological rigor of this field. A first step is to understand the outcomes measured in evaluations of CEC in healthcare settings. ObjectiveThe primary (...) objective of this review was to identify and map the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC. The secondary objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of CEC structures, processes, and roles to enhance understanding and to inform standardization.MethodsWe searched electronic databases to identify primary studies of CEC involving patients, substitute decision-makers and/or family members, clinicians, healthcare staff and leaders. Outcomes were mapped across five conceptual domains as identified a priori based on our clinical ethics experience and preliminary literature searches and revised based on our emerging interpretation of the data. These domains included personal factors, process factors, clinical factors, quality, and resource factors. ResultsForty-eight studies were included in the review. Studies were highly heterogeneous and varied considerably regarding format and process of ethical intervention, credentials of interventionist, population of study, outcomes reported, and measures employed. In addition, few studies used validated measurement tools. The top three outcome domains that studies reported on were quality, process factors, and clinical factors. The majority of studies examined multiple outcome domains. All five outcome domains were multidimensional and included a variety of subthemes.ConclusionsThis scoping review represents the initial phase of mapping the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC and identifying gaps in the evidence. The confirmed lack of standardization represents a hindrance to the provision of high quality intervention and CEC scientific progress. Insights gained can inform the development of a core outcome set to standardize outcome measures in CEC evaluation research and enable scientifically rigorous efficacy trials of CEC. (shrink)

In two experiments, participants solved anagram problems while their eye movements were monitored. Each problem consisted of a circular array of five letters: a scrambled four-letter solution word containing three consonants and one vowel, and an additional randomly-placed distractor consonant. Viewing times on the distractor consonant compared to the solution consonants provided an online measure of knowledge of the solution. Viewing times on the distractor consonant and the solution consonants were indistinguishable early in the trial. In contrast, several seconds prior (...) to the response, viewing times on the distractor consonant decreased in a gradual manner compared to viewing times on the solution consonants. Importantly, this pattern was obtained across both trials in which participants reported the subjective experience of insight and trials in which they did not. These findings are consistent with the availability of partial knowledge of the solution prior to such information being accessible to subjective phenomenal awareness. (shrink)

Zuidema et al. illustrate how empirical AGL studies can benefit from computational models and techniques. Computational models can help clarifying theories, and thus in delineating research questions, but also in facilitating experimental design, stimulus generation, and data analysis. The authors show, with a series of examples, how computational modeling can be integrated with empirical AGL approaches, and how model selection techniques can indicate the most likely model to explain experimental outcomes.

Problems in peer review, the backbone of maintaining high standards in scientific publishing, have led to wide spread discontent within the scientific community. Training in the peer review process and a simpler format to assist in decision making are possible courses to improve and expedite the process of peer review and scientific publishing. The authors discuss problems in the peer review process focusing on challenges related to major revisions and reviewer's wish list of experiments; this leads to the loss of (...) time and money. Major revisions rarely lead to significant improvements, while simultaneously delay the dissemination of knowledge. The authors propose simple solutions including training peer reviewers to improve the peer review system. (shrink)

In describing the foundations of our pedagogical approaches to service-learning, we seek to go beyond the navel-gazing—at times, paralyzing—paradoxes of neoliberal forces, which can do “good” for students and their communities, yet which also call students into further calculative frameworks for understanding the “value” of pre-health humanities education and social engagement. We discuss methods to create quiet forms of subversion that call for a moral imagination in extending an ethics of care to students as well as to the communities with (...) which they engage. While we recognize the partiality and limitations of our attempts, framing mentored service-learning in unexpected ways can help students and practitioners to understand their role within broader social, historical, cultural, and emotional contexts and encourage them to act intentionally toward the communities they seek to serve in response to this new self-knowledge. To that end, we outline an academically rigorous service-learning intervention at one of our universities. (shrink)

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

Anosognosia for hemiplegia is a lack of awareness about paralysis following stroke. Recent explanations use a ‘forward model’ of movement to suggest that AHP patients fail to register discrepancies between internally- and externally-generated sensory information. We predicted that this failure would impair the ability to recall from memory whether information is internally- or externally-generated . Two experiments examined this prediction. Experiment 1 demonstrated that AHP patients exhibit a reality monitoring deficit for non-motor information , whilst hemiplegic controls without anosognosia perform (...) like age-matched healthy volunteers . Experiment 2 explored if this deficit occurs when AHP patients discriminate performed, imagined, or observed movement. Results showed impaired reality monitoring for movements in AHP and nonAHP patients relative to HVs. Findings suggest that reality monitoring processes not directly related to movement, together with a failure to reality monitor movements, contribute to the pathogenesis of AHP. (shrink)

Unethical behavior coordinated and concealed by teams continues to represent a troubling and all-too-frequent occurrence in organizations. Unfortunately, those who are most knowledgeable about this behavior and thereby best suited to report it to authorities—the complicit members themselves—are susceptible to unique pressures that often discourage them from blowing the whistle. Team members rely on their teammates for relational and other beneficial resources, making it more difficult to potentially break those ties by snitching. However, we argue that the pressure to stay (...) silent is alleviated for members who are ostracized by their team members. Drawing on social exchange theory, we theorize that ostracism decreases positive affect and increases negative affect, decreasing individuals’ communion striving motivation and, in turn, increasing the propensity to blow the whistle. In Study 1, we examined the link between ostracism and whistleblowing utilizing a field sample of diverse employees surveyed over time. In Study 2, we built upon Study 1 and conducted a lab study to examine affect and communion striving motivation as serial mediators. Results were generally supportive of our arguments, although we did not find support for the mediating effect of negative affect. (shrink)

The Middle Way is the practical principle of avoiding both positive and negative absolutes, so as to develop provisional beliefs accessible to experience. Although inspired initially by the Buddha’s Middle Way, in Middle Way Philosophy Robert M Ellis has developed it as a critical universalism: a way of separating the helpful from the unhelpful elements of any tradition. In this book, the Middle Way is applied to the Christian tradition in order to argue for a meaningful and positive interpretation (...) of it, without the absolute beliefs that many assume to be essential to Christianity. Faith as an embodied, provisional confidence is distinguished from dogmatic belief. Recent developments in embodied meaning, brain lateralization from neuroscience, Jungian archetypes and the Jungian model of psychological integration are drawn on to support an account of how Christian faith is not only possible without ‘belief’ in God or Christ, but indeed puts us in a better position to access inspiration, moral purpose, responsibility and the basis of peace. (shrink)

The Jungian concept of archetypes is of immense value for critically distinguishing what is potentially of universal practical value in religious and other cultural traditions, and separating this from the dogmatic elements. However, Jung encumbered the concept of archetypes with debatable constructions like the 'collective unconscious' that are unnecessary for understanding their practical function. This book puts forward a far-reaching new theory of archetypes that is functional without being reductive. At the centre of this is the idea that archetypes are (...) adaptations to help us maintain inspiration over time. Humans are such distractable beings that they need constant reminders to maintain integration with their most sustainable intentions: reminders using the profound power of symbol linked to embodied experience. This multi-disciplinary book weaves together religious studies, ethical philosophy, the psychology of bias, the neuroscience of brain lateralisation, the linguistics of embodied meaning, the feedback loops of systems theory, with a lifetime's experience of Buddhist practice and appreciation of symbolism in the arts: all with the aim of producing a fresh understanding of the role of archetypes in religion and beyond, that can also be directly applied in practice. (shrink)

This book is a survey of practical moral issues applying the Middle Way (as developed in 'A Theory of Moral Objectivity') as the basis of 'Buddhist' Ethics. No appeal is made to Buddhist traditions or scriptures, but instead the Middle Way is applied consistently as a universal philosophical and practical principle to suggest the direction of resolutions to moral debates. Practical ethics topics covered include sexual ethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, animals, violence, the arts, scientific issues and political ethics.

An inter-disciplinary philosophical treatise (written as an accredited Ph.D. thesis) that attempts to establish a new approach to moral objectivity. Inspired by the Buddha's Middle Way, but arguing from first premises, it challenges widespread and interlinked assumptions in both analytic and continental philosophy, whilst drawing on both these traditions together with psychological, religious and historical evidence. The first section of the book provides a detailed critique of existing approaches to ethics in the Western tradition. The second half then puts forward (...) positive and practical alternatives, and solutions to long-standing philosophical problems. (shrink)