Background:An ethical, informed consent process requires that potential participants understand the study, their rights, and the risks and benefits. Yet, despite strategies to improve communication, many participants still lack understanding of potential risks and benefits. Investigating attitudes and practices of research nurses can identify ways to improve the informed consent process.Research question:What are the attitudes, practices, and preparedness of nurses involved in the informed consent process regarding communication of risks and benefits?Research design:A survey was developed and administered online to a (...) national purposive sample of 107 research nurses with experience obtaining informed consent for clinical trials. Survey responses stratified by selected work-related characteristics were analyzed.Ethical considerations:Participants were instructed they need not answer each question and could stop at any time. They consented by clicking “accept” on the email which linked to the survey. The study was approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board, Boston, Massachusetts.Findings:Most research nurses used a teach-back method to assess participant comprehension, while 72% relied on their intuition. About one-third did not feel prepared to communicate related statistics. About 20% did not feel prepared to tailor information, and half did not feel competent using supplemental materials to enhance risks and benefits comprehension. Only 70% had received training in the informed consent process which included in-person training, case studies, online courses, feedback during practice sessions, and simulation, such as role playing and viewing videos. Perceived preparedness was significantly associated with greater informed consent experience and training.Conclusion:Research nurses may have inadequate training to encourage, support, and reinforce communication of risks and benefits during the informed consent process. Relevant purposeful education and training should help to improve and standardize the ethical informed consent process. (shrink)

Although sensorimotor contingencies may explain visual perception, it is difficult to extend this concept to speech perception. However, the basic concept of perception as active hypothesis testing using attention does extend well to speech perception. We propose that the concept of sensorimotor contingencies can be broadened to sensory-attentional contingencies, thereby accounting for speech perception as well as vision.

It is hoped that this commentary may draw attention to the issues raised by the enthusiastic naming of large clinical trials. Although the article is tongue in cheek, the underlying concern is that the names of studies may not, in fact, correspond to the actual results they yield.

Clinical trials in medicine often derive their financial support from the manufacturer of a device or pharmaceutical, but one must view with caution trial designs that allow an interested sponsor to terminate data collection.

People across the world seek out beautiful sounds in nature, such as a babbling brook or a nightingale song, for positive human experiences. However, it is unclear whether this positive aesthetic response is driven by a preference for the perceptual features typical of nature sounds versus a higher‐order association of nature with beauty. To test these hypotheses, participants provided aesthetic judgments for nature and urban soundscapes that varied on ease of recognition. Results demonstrated that the aesthetic preference for nature soundscapes (...) was eliminated for the sounds hardest to recognize, and moreover the relationship between aesthetic ratings and several measured acoustic features significantly changed as a function of recognition. In a follow‐up experiment, requiring participants to classify these difficult‐to‐identify sounds into nature or urban categories resulted in a robust preference for nature sounds and a relationship between aesthetic ratings and our measured acoustic features that was more typical of easy‐to‐identify sounds. This pattern of results was replicated with computer‐generated artificial noises, which acoustically shared properties with the nature and urban soundscapes but by definition did not come from these environments. Taken together, these results support the conclusion that the recognition of a sound as either natural or urban dynamically organizes the relationship between aesthetic preference and perceptual features and that these preferences are not inherent to the acoustic features. Implications for nature's role in cognitive and affective restoration are discussed. (shrink)

The present study examines the extent to which sociohistorical and political contexts influence the language attitudes of Israeli-Druze students to Hebrew as L2 and to Modern Standard Arabic in Arabic-speaking schools. It is a pioneer explorative research study that compares students’ attitudes toward diglossia and L2. Using the Foreign Languages Attitudes and Goals Survey, the attitudes of second, fifth, and ninth graders in two different Druze schools were assessed. The results indicate a positive attitude towards L2 Hebrew, not only for (...) instrumental purposes but also for integration into Israel’s multicultural society. The positive attitude to L2 Hebrew is greater in older students, while the attitude to MSA becomes more negative among older students. Their low motivation to learn cultural heritage MSA may contribute to an understanding of how to teach it better or differently, as well as how to encourage future generations to learn it. (shrink)

Having good moral character often involves shifting one’s focus of attention from the self to others and the world. Across three studies (N = 605 adults), we found converging evidence that self-transcendent experiences, specifically awe and flow, enabled the expression of wisdom, as captured by wise reasoning and epistemic humility measures. Study 1 found that dispositionally awe- and flow-prone people have stronger wise reasoning and epistemic humility abilities, over and above dispositional happiness. Consistent with Study 1, Study 2 found that, (...) across diverse recalled experiences, individuals who experienced more awe showed greater wise reasoning, and those who experienced more flow showed greater epistemic humility. In Study 3, using situated interventions, we induced awe (watching a video involving vast nature scenes) and flow (composing a song using an online music maker) and compared them with neutral and amusement experiences. Compared to these control conditions, eliciting awe and flow facilitated one’s (1) ability to address interpersonal conflicts with wise reasoning, (2) ability to acknowledge one’s epistemic gaps, and (3) willingness to improve those aspects and one’s general moral character. Altogether, these findings reveal the promising role of self-transcendent experiences in motivating people to appreciate others’ perspectives beyond one’s own. (shrink)

Universal Grammar promotes the study of an idealization of language behavior and language learning. In examining the diversity of actual behavioral strategies used to achieve linguistic goals, Evans & Levinson (E&L) move towards studying language as a behavior. This approach can benefit from studying communicative and cognitive capacities more broadly – across species. We exhort like-minded linguists to cast off the remaining intellectual shackles of linguistic speciesism.

ABSTRACT What leads people to contribute to public life, to strengthen social cohesion, and work to better society? We investigated how co-curricular aspects of college life relate to social cognitive processes foundational for civic virtues and contribute to their development. We examined one widespread type of co-curricular college experience—studying abroad. When studying abroad, students encounter different social norms and cultures and often interact with others using a non-native language. How does immersion in an unfamiliar society affect psychological capacities, such as (...) epistemic humility and regard for others, that may be central to civic virtues? We compared measures of civic virtues across students who studied abroad, students interested in studying abroad who had not yet had that experience, and students with no interest in studying abroad to understand how differences in civic engagement and civility relate to aspects of students’ psychology such as epistemic humility, empathy, and need for cognition. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) mechanistic account of dialogue assumes that linguistic alignment between interlocutors takes place automatically, without using cognitive resources. However, even the most basic processes of speech perception depend on resource use. The lack of invariant mapping between input patterns and interpretations in dialogue, as in speech perception, may require controlled, rather than automatic, processing.

In two studies, we explored the frequency and phenomenology of musical imagery. Study 1 used retrospective reports of musical imagery to assess the contribution of individual differences to imagery characteristics. Study 2 used an experience sampling design to assess the phenomenology of musical imagery over the course of one week in a sample of musicians and non-musicians. Both studies found episodes of musical imagery to be common and positive: people rarely wanted such experiences to end and often heard music that (...) was personally meaningful. Several variables predicted musical imagery, including personality, musical preferences, and positive mood. Musicians tended to hear musical imagery more often, but they reported less frequent episodes of deliberately-generated imagery. Taken together, the present research provides new insights into individual differences in musical imagery, and it supports the emerging view that such experiences are common, positive, and more voluntary than previously recognized. (shrink)

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.Are the smartest people also the wisest? Not necessarily. While traditional intellectual reasoning and procedural knowledge have helped build the communities we live in, there is a growing scientific understanding that we need emotionally balanced and better-fitting prosocial frameworks for coping with the uncertainties and complexities of life and addressing new challenges of the modern world. We are now poised on the edge of a new science of wisdom.The concept of wisdom, long (...) considered the “pinnacle of insight into the human condition”, has been that of an intangible, subjective, culturally specific entity—an unscientific... (shrink)

Contributed articles on the representation of death in different religion, with reference to Indic and European philosophy; includes articles on the representation of death in literature.

The idea that intelligence is embedded not only in a single brain network, but instead in a complex, well-optimized system of complementary networks, has led to the development of whole brain network analysis. Using graph theory to analyze resting-state functional MRI data, we investigated the brain graph networks (or brain networks) of high intelligence quotient (HIQ) children. To this end, we computed the “hub disruption index κ”, an index sensitive to graph network modifications. We found significant topological differences in the (...) integration and segregation properties of brain networks in HIQ compared to standard IQ children, not only for the whole brain graph, but also for each hemispheric graph, and for the homotopic connectivity. Moreover, two profiles of HIQ children, homogenous and heterogeneous, based on the differences between the two main IQ subscales (verbal comprehension index (VCI) and perceptual reasoning index (PRI)), were compared. Brain networks changes were more pronounced in the heterogeneous HIQ than in the homogeneous HIQ subgroups. Finally, we found significant correlations between the graph networks’ changes and the full-scale IQ (FSIQ), as well as the subscales VCI and PRI. Specifically, the higher the FSIQ the greater was the brain organization modification in the whole brain, the left hemisphere, and the homotopic connectivity. These results shed new light on the relation between functional connectivity topology and high intelligence, as well as on different intelligence profiles. (shrink)

On fundamentals of Nyaya philosophy with Nūtanāloka autocommentary and Ālokaprakāśa commentary by disciples.

Treatise on ethics and conduct of life by Śaṅkarācārya.

On the fundamentals of Dvaita Vedanta philosophy.