The neural correlates of rapid eye movements (REMs) in sleep are extraordinarily robust; including REM-locked activation in the retrosplenial cortex, the supplementary eye field and areas overlapping cholinergic basal nucleus. The phenomenology of REMs speaks to the notion that perceptual experience in both sleep and wakefulness is a constructive process – in which we generate predictions of sensory inputs and then test those predictions through actively sampling the sensorium with eye movements. On this view, REMs during sleep may index an (...) internalized active sampling or ‘scanning’ of self-generated visual constructs that are not constrained by visual input. If this view is correct, it renders REMs an ideal probe to study consciousness as “an exclusively internal affair” (Metzinger 2009). In other words, REMs offer a probe of active inference – in the sense of predictive coding – when the brain is isolated from the sensorium in virtue of the natural blockade of sensory input during REM sleep. REMs are temporally precise events that enable powerful inferences based on timeseries analyses. As a natural, task-free probe, [REMs] could be used in non-compliant subjects, including infants and animals. In short, REM constitutes a promising probe to study the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of consciousness and perhaps its abnormal development in schizophrenia and autism, which have been considered in terms of aberrant predictive coding. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of largescale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we (...) were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not.. (shrink)

There is a need to rapidly assess the impact of new technology initiatives on the Counter Improvised Explosive Device battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. The immediate challenge is the need for rapid decisions, and a lack of engineering test data to support the assessment. The rapid assessment methodology exploits available information to build a probabilistic model that provides an explicit executable representation of the initiative’s likely impact. The model is used to provide a consistent, explicit, explanation to decision makers on (...) the likely impact of the initiative. Sensitivity analysis on the model provides analytic information to support development of informative test plans. (shrink)

We conducted a rapid review and quantitative summary of meta-analyses that have examined interventions which can be used by individuals during quarantine and social distancing to manage anxiety, depression, stress and subjective well-being. A literature search yielded 34 meta-analyses (total number of studies k = 1,390, n = 145,744) that were summarized. Overall, self-guided interventions showed small to medium effects in comparison to control groups. In particular, self-guided therapeutic approaches (including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and acceptance-based interventions), selected positive psychology interventions, and (...) multi-component and activity-based interventions (music, physical exercise) showed promising evidence for effectiveness. Overall, self-guided interventions on average did not show the same degree of effectiveness as traditional guided individual or group therapies. There was no consistent evidence of dose effects, baseline differences and differential effectiveness of eHealth interventions. More research on the effectiveness of interventions in diverse cultural settings is needed. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the belief bias effect in syllogistic reasoning under both standard presentation and in a condition where participants are required to respond within 10 seconds. As predicted, the requirement for rapid responding increased the amount of belief bias observed on the task and reduced the number of logically correct decisions, both effects being substantial and statistically significant. These findings were predicted by the dual-process account of reasoning, which posits that fast heuristic processes, responsible for belief bias, (...) compete with slower analytic processes that can lead to correct logical decisions. Requiring rapid responding thus differentially inhibits the operation of analytic reasoning processes, leading to the results observed. (shrink)

La restitution des artefacts pillés lors des conquêtes coloniales ou abritées dans les musées « coloniaux » suscite des réactions antagoniques. Faut-il « tuer » le modèle du musée ethnographique, comme le préconise le président du Mali, ou bien purifier les collections témoins de pratiques génocidaires, en les radiographiant ou les cachant dans les réserves muséales, à l’abri des regards critiques? La complicité entre le pouvoir académique et le principe d’inaliénabilité de la propriété muséologique rendent le processus de restitution particulièrement (...) lent. Pour éviter que la restitution soit récupérée, des réponses rapides ont été conçues pour mieux correspondre aux imaginaires et pratiques de la jeunesse africaine: musée numérique, muséologie critique, institutions de culture populaire et restitution « en mode rapide ». Plutôt que de se focaliser sur des objets iconiques, la restitution en mode rapide cherche à revisiter l’ingéniosité traditionnelle précoloniale pour développer de nouvelles techniques, de nouvelles œuvres d’art et de nouveaux objets à finalité sociale et spirituelle. (shrink)

A computational theory is developed that explains how line drawings of polyhedral objects can be interpreted rapidly and in parallel at early levels of human vision. The key idea is that a time-limited process can correctly recover much of the three-dimensional structure of these objects when split into concurrent streams, each concerned with a single aspect of scene structure.

This study investigates the influence of contrastive stress on the on-line interpretation of ambiguous spoken sentences containing the focus operator only. The pattern of phonological stress was manipulated so as to associate different linguistic expressions with the focus operator only and to invoke different interpretations. Sentences with marked and neutral stress were evaluated relative to visually presented scenes, which depicted a situation consistent with alternative interpretations. Using a head-mounted eye-movement recording system, we measured the processing difficulty associated with phonological stress (...) and subjects’ fixation duration on the various objects in the scenes. Not only was response accuracy superior on sentences with marked stress, as compared to ones with neutral stress, the pattern of fixations revealed earlier resolution of ambiguity in the marked stress condition. The findings suggest that the parser computes multiple interpretations of ambiguous sentences on-line, with marked stress assisting in the rapid resolution of semantic ambiguity. (shrink)

Rapid Automatized Naming is considered a universal marker of developmental dyslexia and could also be helpful to identify a reading deficit in minority-language children, in which it may be hard to disentangle whether the reading difficulties are due to a learning disorder or a lower proficiency in the language of instruction. We tested reading and rapid naming skills in monolingual Good Readers, monolingual Poor Readers, and MLC, by using our new version of RAN, the RAN-Shapes, in 127 primary school students. (...) In line with previous research, MLC showed, on average, lower reading performances as compared to mGR. However, the two groups performed similarly to the RAN-Shapes task. On the contrary, the mPR group underperformed both in the reading and the RAN tasks. Our findings suggest that reading difficulties and RAN performance can be dissociated in MLC; consequently, the performance at the RAN-Shapes may contribute to the identification of children at risk of a reading disorder without introducing any linguistic bias, when testing MLC. (shrink)

If rapid growth (rap) mutants of Escherichia coli could be obtained, these might prove a valuable contribution to fields as diverse as growth rate control, biotechnology and the regulation of the bacterial cell cycle. To obtain rap mutants, a dnaQ mutator strain was grown for four and a half days continuously in batch culture. At the end of the selection period, there was no significant change in growth rate. This result means that selecting rap mutants may require an alternative strategy (...) and a number of such alternatives are discussed. (shrink)

Selected aneuploidies can be rapidly diagnosed by the analysis of fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products of chromosome‐specific and highly polymorphic small tandem repeats (STRs). The quantitative STR patterns obtained from samples of normal individuals are markedly different from those seen when patients with aneuploidies involving chromosome X, or trisomies of chromosomes 21 and 18, are tested. For example, while samples from normal subjects – tested with a chromosome 21‐derived STR (D21S11) – show two fluorescent PCR peaks with similar activities (...) in a 1:1 ratio, the analysis of samples from patients with trisomy 21 reveals the presence of either three peaks (ratio 1:1:1), or two peaks with a ratio of 2:1. The use of an internal non‐polymorphic marker allows identification of trisomic samples with three copies of the same allele. This rapid approach (24 hours) is particularly valuable when applied to prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities since it reduces the time of anxiety of the parents waiting for the results of the conventional cytogenetic tests, which require several weeks. (shrink)

A modified visual search task demonstrates that humans are very good at resuming a search after it has been momentarily interrupted. This is shown by exceptionally rapid response time to a display that reappears after a brief interruption, even when an entirely different visual display is seen during the interruption and two different visual searches are performed simultaneously. This rapid resumption depends on the stability of the visual scene and is not due to display or response anticipations. These results are (...) consistent with the existence of an iterative hypothesis-testing mechanism that compares information stored in short-term memory (the perceptual hypothesis) with information about the display (the sensory pattern). In this view, rapid resumption occurs because a hypothesis based on a previous glance of the scene can be tested very rapidly in a subsequent glance, given that the initial hypothesis-generation step has already been performed. (shrink)

In this article we present an engineering approach for the integration of social group dynamics in the behavior modeling of multiagent systems. To this end, a toolbox was created that brings together several theories from the social sciences, each focusing on different aspects of group dynamics. Due to its modular approach, the toolbox can either be used as a central control component of an application or it can be employed temporarily to rapidly test the feasibility of the incorporated theories for (...) a given application domain. This is exemplified by applying the toolbox to different applications. (shrink)

This article examines the home rapid HIV test as a new practice of US biocitizenship. Via an analysis of discourse surrounding self-diagnostics, I conclude that while home HIV tests appear to expand consumer rights, they are in fact the vanguard of a new form of self-testing that carries a moral urgency to protect one’s own body and to manage societal risk. In addition, these tests extend biomedical authority into the private domain, while appearing to do the exact opposite. Furthermore, access (...) to these tests may be stratified, contradicting the intent expressed by the manufacturer to reach populations in need of it most and reinforcing stigma against them. Lastly, diagnostics such as the rapid home HIV test represent new obligations for surveillance of one’s own health and that of others. The new public health effort to test the population at large has given rise to a new ‘risky’ population: the untested bodies. (shrink)

We tested whether analogical training could help children learn a key principle of elementary engineering—namely, the use of a diagonal brace to stabilize a structure. The context for this learning was a construction activity at the Chicago Children's Museum, in which children and their families build a model skyscraper together. The results indicate that even a single brief analogical comparison can confer insight. The results also reveal conditions that support analogical learning.

Humans have been shown capable of performing many cognitive tasks using information of which they are not consciously aware. This raises questions about what role consciousness actually plays in cognition. Here, we explored whether participants can learn cue-target contingencies in an attentional learning task when the cues were presented below the level of conscious awareness, and how this differs from learning about conscious cues. Participants’ manual (Experiment 1) and saccadic (Experiment 2) response speeds were influenced by both conscious and unconscious (...) cues. However, participants were only able to adapt to reversals of the cue-target contingencies (Experiment 1) or changes in the reliability of the cues (Experiment 2) when consciously aware of the cues. Therefore, although visual cues can be processed unconsciously, learning about cues over a few trials requires conscious awareness of them. Finally, we discuss implications for cognitive theories of consciousness. (shrink)

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often effective in the treatment of school refusal (SR). Its usefulness is limited, however, if youth displaying SR also refuse to attend treatment sessions. In these cases parents and school staff may consider using school-based interventions that do not rely on face-to-face assessment and treatment with the young person. The current study examined the effectiveness of a school-based intervention applied in Japan to achieve rapid return to school among adolescents displaying SR. Between 2009 and 2015, (...) the parents of 62 adolescents displaying SR were invited to implement a school-based rapid return approach. Thirty-nine parents agreed to implement the approach and 23 decided to wait until their child spontaneously attended school. Of the 39 cases in which the approach was implemented, 28 adolescents (72%) resumed attendance at their original school, 2 (5%) transferred to another school, and 9 (23%) did not resume attendance. In contrast, all 23 non-intervention cases continued to refuse to attend school for three months or longer, and none of these adolescents returned to regular school attendance within nine months. This study tentatively suggests that the rapid return approach may be an effective form of intervention for adolescents displaying SR and simultaneously refusing to attend individual therapy. Because this approach is ethically complex, involving forced school attendance in adolescence, it should only be employed under specific circumstances. These circumstances are discussed. (shrink)

Understanding stakeholders’ perceptions and motivations is of significant importance in relation to conservation and protected area projects. The importance of stakeholder analysis is widely recognized as a necessary means for gaining insight into the complex systemic interactions between natural processes, management policies, and local people depending on the resource. Today, community and group-based participatory inquiry approaches are widely used for this purpose. Recently, participatory approaches have been critiqued for not considering power relations and conflict internal to the community. In this (...) article, we suggest that the five-step Rapid Stakeholder and Conflict Assessment (RSCA) methodology addresses this critique. The objective of the methodology is to provide a facilitator with a comprehensive foundation on which to plan and conduct subsequent participatory project development. The RSCA integrates elements of soft systems and critical systems thinking. Qualitative research interviews and cognitive mapping of stakeholders’ mental models are used for collection of empirical material and analysis. The RSCA methodology is demonstrated in a case study concerning buffer zone management in the coastal wetlands of southern Vietnam. The case study shows that the RSCA methodology can provide an efficient way of obtaining a holistic and critical understanding of a complex resource management situation, thus potentially enhancing project performance in an instrumental as well as an ethical sense. (shrink)

Kim & Drager (2018) provide new evidence confirming that socially‐indexed phonetic cues affect lexical access. They show that young listeners are faster and more accurate when responding to words associated with young people and spoken by younger talkers, compared with old‐associated words and older talkers. The effect of phonetic detail on lexical access is rapid and obtains even when the listener holds no expectations about the talker's age prior to the onset of the word.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guided Rapid Unconscious Reconfiguration in Poetry and ArtRoger SeamonThe idea that literary works are designed to give pleasure does not get much exercise these days. So I would like to take it out for a walk. We’ll see where it takes us, how much ground it covers, and what friends it makes along the way. Perhaps if we take it off the leash of theory, it will roam far (...) enough afield.... By this time you are bored with my metaphor, and thus have made a judgment about the use of a trope that is often said to be at the heart of poetry. 1 What I want to do is give an account of the principle that led to that judgment, for it is the same principle, I shall argue, that governs judgments about the aesthetic dimension of literary works.I first encountered the idea in F. W. Bateson’s English Poetry: An Introduction, where he labels it the “The Principle of the Semantic Gap.” Poetry, Bateson says, does not consist of the transference of feeling from poet to reader (the Romantic and expressive view which he opposes), but of “the successful collocation of contrasted or conflicting ‘meanings,’” 2 and he traces the theory back to Coleridge’s idea that poetry consists in the “balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities” (Biographia Literaria, chap. xiv). Contrasted meanings defeat normal expectations, so the reader is forced to bridge (apparent) gaps in order to make sense of the words, and it is that collaboration between author and reader that constitutes poetic activity. The theory is, though Bateson does not present it as such, a reworking of the ancient notion that in a successful work of art we perceive unity in variety. This essay is an effort to extend and defend that theory in its modern form, particularly as it relates to literary works.The modern theory came into being because of a change in the [End Page 412] object of aesthetic analysis from the work and what it imitated to the psychology of the audience:Up to the eighteenth century the theory of art in the Western world was dominated by ancient philosophy. It was most of all Plato’s metaphysics which, in a number of variations and even distortions, attributed to the artist the capacity of perceiving the divine ideals of beauty beyond the world of the senses and embodying them in his creations. The rejection of this mystical view of art in the course of the eighteenth century... was bound to make theorists turn to psychology. 3It is within this psychological tradition that the modern version of unity and variety has been developed.Re-castings of the ancient formula for aesthetic value have been done by (at least) five recent theorists. Given that one can probably trace the twentieth-century revival back to Gestalt psychology, it is not surprising that the earliest of the four is Rudolph Arnheim. In an essay on “Order and Complexity in Landscape Design” he defines order as “the degree and kind of lawfulness governing the relations among the parts of an entity,” and complexity as “the multiplicity of the relationships among the parts of an entity.” 4 Arnheim then psychologizes (rather than “cosmologizes”) these concepts by grounding them in the propensity to be perceptually satisfied by a balance between the two: “Complexity without order produces confusion; order without complexity produces boredom” (p. 124). Similarly, in The Act of Reading Wolfgang Iser says:The reader’s enjoyment begins when he himself becomes productive, i.e., when the text allows him to bring his own faculties into play. There are, of course, limits to the reader’s willingness to participate, and these will be exceeded if the text makes things too clear or, on the other hand, too obscure: boredom and overstrain represent the two poles of tolerance, and in either case the reader is likely to opt out of the game. 5In the same vein, Francis Sparshott asserts in The Theory of the Arts that “Beauty occupies the ground between cliché and chaos,” with variety protecting against the former, unity protecting against the latter, 6 and in The Sense of... (shrink)

Since testing for HIV infection became possible in 1985, testing of pregnant women has been conducted primarily on a voluntary, ‘opt-in’ basis. Faden, Geller and Powers, Bayer, Wilfert, and McKenna, among others, have suggested that with the development of more reliable testing and more effective therapy to reduce maternal-fetal transmission, testing should become either routine with ‘opt-out’ provisions or mandatory. We ask, in the light of the new rapid tests for HIV, such as OraQuick, and the development of antiretroviral treatment (...) that can reduce maternal-fetal transmission rates to <2%, whether that time is now. Illustrating our argument with cases from the United States (US), Kenya, Peru, and an undocumented Mexican worker in the US, we show that when testing is accompanied by assured multi-drug therapy for the mother, the argument for opt-out or mandatory testing for HIV in pregnancy is strong, but that it is problematic where testing is accompanied by adverse events such as spousal abuse or by inadequate intrapartum or follow-up treatment. The difference is not a ‘double standard’, but reflects the presence of conflicts between the health interests of the mother and the fetus – conflicts that would be abrogated by the assurance of adequate, continuing multi-drug therapy. In light of these conflicts, where they still occur, careful processes of informed consent are appropriate, rather than opt-out or mandatory testing. (shrink)

In this article I explore the relation between vulnerability to rapid landscape change, on the one hand, and conceptions of land and responsibility for landscape, on the other. I begin by briefly discussing the notion of vulnerability to natural phenomena, and possible ways of addressing it. Next, I introduce some of the ways in which natural phenomena and processes have been perceived, and take note of the sense of responsibility toward landscape often expressed among peoples who are deeply rooted in (...) the land. I continue with a discussion of the basis of the respect that underlies this sense of responsibility and with an account of what respect amounts to in this context. After this I point out how respect for natural phenomena may lead to a lowering of vulnerability. I conclude that it is imperative to develop those ways of conceiving of natural phenomena that will lead to a deep sense of respect and responsibility for the natural world that surrounds us. (shrink)

Applying bioethical principles can be difficult in resource-poor environments, particularly for Western doctors unfamiliar with these limitations. The challenges become even greater when clinicians must make rapid critical decisions. As the following case in Zambia illustrates, the Rapid Ethical Decisionmaking Model, long used in emergency medicine, is a useful tool in such circumstances.

Healthcare providers have been central actors in containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Although potentially very beneficial, the implementation of large-scale rapid serological tests raises ethical dilemmas and affects HCPs’ capacity to work in optimal conditions. In this regard, we call for attention to address specific and urgent ethical issues distinctively affecting HCPs following the availability and possible mandatory use of rapid serological tests for COVID-19.

Dear Editor, -/- It is the responsibility of healthcare professionals to present patients with the available options for managing their conditions, including the potential benefits and anticipated negative consequences of each option. Patients then weigh the potential benefits and drawbacks of each option, and juxtapose them with their wider life goals and preferences. We generally accept that patients might not choose the option that is most health or life preserving because they might value other things more. We accept that forms (...) of cancer treatment that might only minimally extend life are not always a reasonable choice or that a patient might chose not to wish to have CPR performed if they suffer a cardiac arrest. While all people tend to value health to some extent some might value friendship and family life over their health. Of course, having good health helps with having fulfilling relationships with others, but often it is having these relationships is the primary goal of tending to one's health. If you are elderly and might die soon anyway, you might wish to take the risk of meeting others and dying sooner over living longer and potentially not meeting anyone. Not everyone values the same basic goods of life (e.g. as presented by New Natural Law theorists) to the same extent. -/- Governments need to balance how they prioritise these goods, which is very difficult, especially in a liberal and pluralistic society which largely tries to refrain from making judgments on how to prioritise such goods. The authors of the original article have rightly highlighted the potential consequences of the Christmas relaxation of the lockdown measures (which relaxation has now been cancelled). Yet, we should simultaneously not expect governments and citizens to make decisions based on their consequences on the NHS and people's health. Health is a good, but not the only, or even supreme, good. Liberty, friendship and family are other goods. People also need to have hope to live their lives well, and governments need to be trusted if people are to obey them. It is not clear that the general mood in society following the cancellation of the Christmas relaxations will not have graver consequences than the original relaxation would have - this is anyone's guess. But it would not be irrational for the government to allow these relaxations - it would simply not have aimed at maximising the benefit to the NHS and people's health. We would not expect patients to always act to maximise their health, why would we necessarily expect the government to do it - it did not get voted in solely on the basis of their health policies. -/- Why we might wish people and governments to promote health in general, we should not be surprised if they make decisions where they balance different goods and not just maximise health. This might not be generally helpful to us as healthcare professionals, but it is neither irrational nor is it different how we often make decisions in our personal lives. (shrink)