Firms and industries increasingly subscribe to voluntary codes of conduct. These self-regulatory governance systems can be effective in establishing a more sustainable and inclusive global economy. However, these codes can also be largely symbolic, reactive measures to quell public criticism. Cross-sector alliances (between for-profit and nonprofit actors) present a learning platform for infusing participants with greater incentives to be socially responsible. They can provide multinationals new capabilities that allow them to more closely ally social responsibility with economic performance. This paper (...) examines learning facilitators in cross-sector alliances that enrich corporate understanding of stakeholder concerns. It suggests that these organizational learning experiments can translate into globally responsible practices and processes that improve the content and effectiveness of voluntary corporate codes. (shrink)

ObjectiveAre people with a characteristically large physiological sway rendered particularly unstable when standing on a moving surface? Is postural sway in standing individuals idiosyncratic? In this study, we examine postural sway in individuals standing normally, and when subtle continuous sinusoidal disturbances are applied to their support platform. We calculate consistency between conditions to verify if sway can be considered characteristic of each individual. We also correlate two different aspects of participants’ responses to disturbance; their sway velocity and their regulation of (...) body orientation.MethodsNineteen healthy adults (age 29.2 ± 3.2 years) stood freely on footplates coaxially aligned with their ankles and attached to a motorized platform. They had their eyes closed, and hips and knees locked with a light wooden board attached to their body. Participants either stood quietly on a fixed platform or on a slowly tilting platform (0.1 Hz sinusoid; 0.2 and 0.4 deg). Postural sway size was separated into two entities: (1) the spontaneous sway velocity component (natural random relatively rapid postural adjustments, RMS body angular velocity) and (2) the evoked tilt gain component (much slower 0.1 Hz synchronous tilt induced by the movement of the platform, measured as peak-to-peak (p-p) gain, ratio of body angle to applied footplate rotation).ResultsThere was no correlation between the velocity of an individual’s sway and their evoked tilt gain (r= 0.34,p= 0.15 andr= 0.30,p= 0.22). However, when considered separately, each of the two measurements showed fair to good absolute agreement within conditions. Spontaneous sway velocity consistently increased as participants were subjected to increasing disturbance. Participants who swayed more (or less) did so across all conditions [ICC(3,k)= 0.95]. Evoked tilt gain also showed consistency between conditions [ICC(3,k)= 0.79], but decreased from least to most disturbed conditions.ConclusionThe two measurements remain consistent between conditions. Consistency between conditions of two very distinct unrelated measurements reflects the idiosyncratic nature of postural sway. However, sway velocity and tilt gain are not related, which supports the idea that the short-term regulation of stability and the longer-term regulation of orientation are controlled by different processes. (shrink)

Online platforms like Instagram cover potentially distressing imagery with a sensitive-content screen (blurred imagery plus a content warning). Previous research suggests people typically choose to “uncover” and view screened content. In three studies, we investigated whether the presence of screens mitigates the negative emotional impact of viewing content. In Study 1, participants viewed positive and neutral images, and screens (with an option to view the negative images beneath) for a 5-minute period. In Study 2, half the participants saw a (...) grey mask in place of the typical sensitive-content screen. In addition, each image appeared for a fixed period (5 s) and participants had no option to uncover it. Study 3 was like Study 2 except half the participants saw negative images preceded by a sensitive-content screen and half saw negative images without screens. Overall, participants reported a significant increase in state anxiety and negative affect from pre-to post task when they were exposed to sensitive-content screens, whether or not they were also exposed to the negative imagery beneath. Our data suggest sensitive-content screens cause negative responses – state anxiety and negative affect – that do not translate to an emotional benefit when people view negative content. (shrink)

This Article examines the regulatory state through the lens of evolving political economy, arguing that a significant reconstruction is now underway. The ongoing shift from an industrial mode of development to an informational one has created existential challenges for regulatory models and constructs developed in the context of the industrial economy. Contemporary contests over the substance of regulatory mandates and the shape of regulatory institutions are most usefully understood as moves within a larger struggle to chart a new direction for (...) the regulatory state in the era of informational capitalism. A regulatory state optimized for the information economy must develop rubrics for responding to three problems that have confounded existing regulatory regimes: platform power — the power to link facially separate markets and/or to constrain participation in markets by using technical protocols; infoglut — unmanageably voluminous, mediated information flows that create information overload; and systemic threat — nascent, probabilistically-defined harm to be realized at some point in the future. Additionally, it must develop institutions capable of exercising effective oversight of informationera activities. The information-era regulatory models that have begun to emerge are procedurally informal, mediated by networks of professional and technical expertise that define relevant standards, and financialized. Such models, however, also have tended to be both opaque to external observation and highly prone to capture. New institutional forms that might ensure their legal and political accountability have been slow to develop. (shrink)

Firms and industries increasingly subscribe to voluntary codes of conduct. These self-regulatory governance systems can be effective in establishing a more sustainable and inclusive global economy. However, these codes can also be largely symbolic, reactive measures to quell public criticism. Cross-sector alliances (between for-profit and nonprofit actors) present a learning platform for infusing participants with greater incentives to be socially responsible. They can provide multinationals new capabilities that allow them to more closely ally social responsibility with economic performance. This paper (...) examines learning facilitators in cross-sector alliances that enrich corporate understanding of stakeholder concerns. It suggests that these organizational learning experiments can translate into globally responsible practices and processes that improve the content and effectiveness of voluntary corporate codes. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter to (...) market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter to (...) market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

BackgroundKinarm Standard Tests is a suite of upper limb tasks to assess sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, which produces granular performance data that reflect spatial and temporal aspects of behavior. We have previously used principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of multivariate data using the Kinarm End-Point Lab. Here, we performed PCA using data from the Kinarm Exoskeleton Lab, and determined agreement of PCA results across EP and EXO platforms in healthy participants. We additionally examined whether further dimensionality (...) reduction was possible by using PCA across behavioral tasks.MethodsHealthy participants were assessed using the Kinarm EXO and EP. Four behavioral tasks were performed that quantified arm sensory and motor function, including position sense [Arm Position Matching ] and three motor tasks [Visually Guided Reaching, Object Hit, and Object Hit and Avoid ]. The number of components to include per task was determined from scree plots and parallel analysis, and rotation type was decided on a per-task basis. To assess agreement, we compared principal components across platforms using distance correlation. We additionally considered inter-task interactions in EXO data by performing PCA across all six behavioral assessments.ResultsBy applying PCA on a per task basis to data collected using the EXO, the number of behavioral parameters were substantially reduced by 58–75% while accounting for 76–87% of the variance. These results compared well to the EP analysis, and we found good-to-excellent agreement values between PCs from the EXO and those from the EP. Finally, we were able to reduce the dimensionality of the EXO data across tasks down to 16 components out of a total of 76 behavioral parameters, which represents a reduction of 79% while accounting for 73% of the total variance.ConclusionPCA of Kinarm robotic assessment appears to capture similar relationships between kinematic features in healthy individuals and is agnostic to the robotic platform used for collection. Further work is needed to investigate the use of PCA-based data reduction for the characterization of neurological deficits in clinical populations. (shrink)

Self-reported data are regarded by medical researchers as invalid and less reliable than data produced by experts in clinical settings, yet individuals can increasingly contribute personal information to medical research through a variety of online platforms. In this article we examine this ‘participatory turn’ in healthcare research, which claims to challenge conventional delineations of what is valid and reliable for medical practice, by using aggregated self-reported experiences from patients and ‘pre-patients’ via the internet. We focus on 23andMe, a genetic (...) testing company that collects genetic material and self-reported information about disease from its customers. Integral to this research method are relations of trust embedded in the information exchange: trust in customers’ data; trust between researchers/company and research subjects; trust in genetics; trust in the machine. We examine the performative dimension of these trust relations, drawing on Shapin and Schaffer’s discussion of how material, literary and social technologies are used in research in order to establish trust. Our scepticism of the company’s motives for building trust with the self-reporting consumer forces us to consider our own motives. How does the use of customer data for research purposes by 23andMe differ from the research practices of social scientists, especially those who also study digital traces? By interrogating the use of self-reported data in the genetic testing context, we examine our ethical responsibilities in studying the digital selves of others using internet methods. How researchers trust data, how participants trust researchers, and how technologies are trusted are all important considerations in studying the social life of digital data. (shrink)

The AAR-SBL Women’s Caucus session on ‘Beyond Down and Dirty: From Good to Great Sex’ revisited the Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions project and book with the participation of two of its co-editors, Mary E. Hunt and Patricia Beattie Jung, and co-author and collaborator, Wanda Defeilt. Scholar colleagues, Brandy Daniels, Fitri Junoes, and Alicia Besa Panganiban, presented intriguing papers on feminist religious and ethical reflections on what constitutes great sex as they examined the issues discussed by (...) feminist scholars and activist authors of Good Sex. Moreover, the session was an exhilarating dialogue of international, interreligious, and intergenerational perspectives on what women think is great sex. It was an exciting starting ground for intergenerational discussion with senior scholars, associated with the Good Sex book, providing generous, constructive, and well-considered responses to the presentations of their colleagues. The diverse international audience of masters, doctoral and senior scholars – male and female – was included in the complex, fun, and challenging discussion of sex. Amidst various issues raised, there was a consensus that discussions on great sex must address issues of safety, justice, and pleasure. Overall the session was a success as the platform for the presentations modelled a feminist method that was intentionally designed to give more time for discussion, not only among panelists but also with the audience. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 1, Page 24-38, January 2022. Are social science, cross-border research projects, where recruitment and data collection are carried out remotely, required to follow similar ethical and data-sharing procedures as ‘on-the-ground’ studies that use traditional means of recruitment and participant engagement? This article reflects on our experience of dealing with this question when we had to switch to online data collection due to the restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the inability to travel or (...) work in person with local communities and collaborators. Using social media platforms and online data collection when conducting research brings many advantages, such as being able to communicate remotely but directly with gatekeepers and collaborators, and in reaching potential participants on a global scale. However, neither the guidelines and advice for conducting ethically sound internet-based research, nor the academic literature focussed on building equitable research partnerships between the Global North and the Global South, offer much information regarding the ethical concerns, or address the grey areas, posed by this type of digital and distanced transnational research. In our experience, conducting research remotely made negotiations of access very challenging due to the politics of positionality between Global North and South researchers, lack of clarity on ethical processes and perceptions of gatekeepers who we could not meet in person. We hope the reflections on, and discussion of, our experience encourage deliberation on the present ethical challenges posed by online and social-media-disseminated data collection, particularly in cross-border circumstances. (shrink)

Social media particularly Facebook has become a popular platform amongst medical professionals for both social and professional interactions. However, given the nature of such platforms, their use raises ethical concerns including violation of patient privacy and blurring of classical professional and patient-physician relationship boundaries. In order to investigate the pattern of Facebook usage among medical professionals in Pakistan, a mixed method study was conducted at five medical institutions in three different cities including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. 806 participants, including (...) 87 faculty members, 239 trainees and 350 medical students, responded to the quantitative survey. Results were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. For the qualitative arm, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted among [End Page 272] different groups, and analysed to draw out common themes. Results show that 44% of respondents found professional utility for Facebook. 36% of respondents had never changed their privacy settings and 44% indicated lack of confidence in current privacy settings of the medium. Respondents had posted identifiable patient content and non-identifiable patient content, with students and trainees posting such content more frequently than faculty. (shrink)

In early 2020, in-person data collection dramatically slowed or was completely halted across the world as many labs were forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Developmental researchers who assess looking time were forced to re-think their methods of data collection. While a variety of remote or online platforms are available for gathering behavioral data outside of the typical lab setting, few are specifically designed for collecting and processing looking time data in infants and young children. To address (...) these challenges, our lab developed several novel approaches for continuing data collection and coding for a remotely administered audiovisual looking time protocol. First, we detail a comprehensive approach for successfully administering the Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol, developed by our lab to assess multisensory attention skills. The MAAP is administered from a distance by using Zoom, Gorilla Experiment Builder, an internet connection, and a home computer. This new data collection approach has the advantage that participants can be tested in their homes. We discuss challenges and successes in implementing our approach for remote testing and data collection during an ongoing longitudinal project. Second, we detail an approach for estimating gaze direction and duration collected remotely from webcam recordings using a post processing toolkit and demonstrate its effectiveness and precision. However, because OpenFace derives gaze estimates without translating them to an external frame of reference, we developed a machine learning approach to overcome this limitation. Thus, third, we trained a ML algorithm [] to classify gaze estimates from OpenFace with respect to areas of interest on the participant's screen. We then demonstrate reliability between this approach and traditional coding approaches. The combination of OpenFace and ML will provide a method to automate the coding of looking time for data collected remotely. Finally, we outline a series of best practices for developmental researchers conducting remote data collection for looking time studies. (shrink)

The present study aimed to quantify the magnitude of sex differences in humans' ability to accurately recognise non-verbal emotional displays. Studies of relevance were those that required explicit labelling of discrete emotions presented in the visual and/or auditory modality. A final set of 551 effect sizes from 215 samples was included in a multilevel meta-analysis. The results showed a small overall advantage in favour of females on emotion recognition tasks (d = 0.19). However, the magnitude of that sex difference was (...) moderated by several factors, namely specific emotion, emotion type (negative, positive), sex of the actor, sensory modality (visual, audio, audio-visual) and age of the participants. Method of presentation (computer, slides, print, etc.), type of measurement (response time, accuracy) and year of publication did not significantly contribute to variance in effect sizes. These findings are discussed in the context of social and biological explanations of sex differences in emotion recognition. (shrink)

In July 2020, the H3Africa Ethics and Community Engagement (E&CE) Working Group organised a webinar with ethics committee members and biomedical researchers from various African institutions throughout the Continent to discuss the issue of whether and how biological samples for scientific research may be accessed by commercial entities when broad consents obtained for the samples are silent. 128 people including Research Ethics Committee members (10), H3Africa researchers (46) including members of the E&CE working group, biomedical researchers not associated with H3Africa (...) (27), representatives from the National Institutes of Health (16) and 10 other participants attended the webinar and shared their views. Several major themes emerged during the webinar, with the topics of broad versus explicit informed consent, defining commercial use, legacy samples and benefit sharing prevailing in the discussion. This report describes the consensus concerns and recommendations raised during the meeting and will be informative for future research on ethical considerations for genomic research in the African research context. (shrink)

The Divine source and end of the Imago Dei -- The image of God and its perfection -- The grace of the Holy Spirit -- The incarnation and participation in the Divine nature -- Charity in the Summa theologiae -- Wisdom, charity, and Christ -- Deification in the Summa theologiae.

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

Using payment to recruit research subjects is a common practice, but it raises ethical concerns that coercion or undue inducement could potentially compromise participants’ informed consent. This is the first national study to explore the attitudes of IRB members and other human subjects protection professionals concerning whether payment of research participants constitutes coercion or undue influence, and if so, why. The majority of respondents expressed concern that payment of any amount might influence a participant’s decisions or behaviors regarding research (...) class='Hi'>participation. Respondents expressed greater acceptance of payment as reimbursement or compensation than as an incentive to participate in research, and most agreed that subjects are coerced if the offer of payment makes them participate when they otherwise would not or when the offer of payment causes them to feel that they have no reasonable alternative but to participate . Views about undue influence were similar. We conclude that human subjects protection professionals hold expansive and inconsistent views about coercion and undue influence that may interfere with the recruitment of research participants and impede valuable research. (shrink)

Citizen science is growing quickly, given its potential to enhance knowledge coproduction by diverse participants, generating large and global data sets. However, uneven participation in CS is still an important concern. This work aims to understand participation dynamics in CS and how they are shaped by participation barriers and drivers. We do so by examining participation in CONECT-e, a CS project that uses a wiki-like platform to document traditional ecological knowledge. More precisely, we analyze quantitative data (...) on participants’ profile and activity patterns and qualitative data on barriers and drivers of participation. Our findings suggest that overcoming the education, age, and residence participation barriers is challenging even in cocreated CS projects. This is potentially due to issues of perceived self-illegitimacy and low access to information and communication technologies. Our results also point out that participants’ alliance with the project’s objectives and trust relationships with the project team are important drivers of participation in CS projects. Finally, we also highlight the need to think beyond participation as single actions and rather consider participation diversity in CS as functional diversity in ecosystems, with participants performing a diverse set of interconnected tasks or functions. (shrink)

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may (...) act as a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development. (shrink)

Objects are central in visual, auditory, and tactual perception. But what counts as a perceptual object? I address this question via a structural unity schema, which specifies how a collection of parts must be arranged to compose an object for perception. On the theory I propose, perceptual objects are composed of parts that participate in causally sustained regularities. I argue that this theory falls out of a compelling account of the function of object perception, and illustrate its applications to multisensory (...) perception. I also argue that the account avoids problems faced by standard views of visual and auditory objects. (shrink)

Insight experiences are sudden, persuasive, and can accompany valuable new ideas in science and art. In this preregistered experiment, we aim to validate a novel visceral and continuous measure of insight problem solving and to test whether real-time and embodied feelings of insight can predict correct solutions. We report several findings. Consistent with recent work, we find a strong positive relationship between Aha moments and accuracy for problems that demand implicit processing. We also found that the intensity of the insight (...) experience further predicted the accuracy of solutions and participants naturally embodied the intensity of their insight experiences by squeezing the dynamometer more tightly. Intriguingly, this unintentional embodiment further predicted the accuracy of solutions. We suggest that the dynamometer complements previous measures by (1) simultaneously capturing both process and feeling in real-time, (2) highlights the value of measuring Aha moments on a continuum of intensity, and (3) firmly establishes that the impulsive feeling of Aha can carry information about the veracity of an idea. We discuss the findings in light of a recent theoretical account of how feelings of insight may act as a heuristic to select ideas from the stream of consciousness. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of literature on training in the responsible conduct of research, few studies have examined the effectiveness of delivery formats used in ethics courses. The present effort sought to address this gap in the literature through a meta-analytic review of 66 empirical studies, representing 106 ethics courses and 10,069 participants. The frequency and effectiveness of 67 instructional and process-based content areas were also assessed for each delivery format. Process-based contents were best delivered face-to-face, whereas contents delivered online (...) were most effective when restricted to compliance-based instructional contents. Overall, hybrid courses were found to be most effective, suggesting that ethics courses are best delivered using a blend of formats and content areas. Implications and recommendations for future development of ethics education courses in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

In this brief paper, offered as a policy viewpoint, I introduce what I believe to be a novel concept for supporting individual citizen interaction with the U.S. Federal government, termed the individual social account. I explore whether and how the concept might be implemented so as to strengthen the U.S. social safety net and further citizen trust and responsibility in e-government interactions. I illustrate and develop the concept as a platform for reform and suggest and discuss design criteria, surfacing various (...) issues. I conclude with additional thoughts with which to stimulate further research and discussion of the concept and its practicalities. (shrink)

Given the primary mandate for institutional review boards (IRBs) to protect potential participants from harm, the egregious history of research abuses, and the fact that there is no mention of incl...

Biomedical research has brought to the fore the issue of which rights and duties we have to each other and society. Several scholars have advocated reframing the notion of participation, arguing that we have a moral duty to participate in research from which we all benefit. However, less attention has been paid to how we justify and defend the concept of self-determination and what the implications are in a biomedical setting. The author discusses the value and importance of self-determination (...) on the basis of the framework of the liberal-communitarian debate. Biobank research is used as an example of a project wherein, through our participation, we confirm our sense of belonging to society and acknowledge our mutual dependence on each other. We need a richer concept of self-determination that encompasses both liberal and communitarian insights in order to make sense of the value we attach to self-determination. (shrink)

This study investigated the roles of the executive functions of inhibition and switching, and of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities, in insight and non-insight tasks. A total of 18 insight tasks, 10 non-insight tasks, and measures of individual differences in working memory capacities, switching, and inhibition were administered to 120 participants. Performance on insight problems was not linked with executive functions of inhibition or switching but was linked positively to measures of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities. Non-insight task (...) performance was positively linked to the executive function of switching (but not to inhibition) and to verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities. These patterns regarding executive functions were maintained when the insight and non-insight composites were split into verbal and spatial insight and non-insight composite scores. The results are discussed in relation to dual processing accounts of thinking. (shrink)

Theorizing about religious ritual systems from a cognitive viewpoint involves (1) modeling cognitive processes and their products and (2) demonstrating their influence on religious behavior. Particularly important for such an approach to the study of religious ritual is the modeling of participants' representations of ritual form. In pursuit of that goal, we presented in Rethinking Religion a theory of religious ritual form that involved two commitments. The theory’s first commitment is that the cognitive apparatus for the representation of action in (...) general is the same system deployed for the representation of religious ritual form. The differences between everyday action and religious ritual action turn out to be fairly minor from the standpoint of their cognitive representation. This system for the representation of action includes representations of agents. Whether we focus on an everyday action such as closing a door or a ritual action such as initiating a person into a religious group, our understanding of these forms of behavior as actions at all turns critically on recognizing agents. The theory's second crucial commitment (1990, p. 61) is that the roles of culturally postulated superhuman agents (CPS-agents hereafter) in participants' representations of religious rituals will prove pivotal in accounting for a wide variety of those rituals' properties. On our view religious ritual systems typically involve presumptions about CPS-agents. This theoretical commitment is orthogonal to the pervasive assumption throughout the study of religion that only meanings matter. By contrast, we hold that other things matter too (specifically, cognitive representations of religious ritual form). Large conflicts lurk behind the previous sentences but we cannot adequately address them here. For now we will only identify two of the most fundamental and comment on them briefly. First, amazingly (by our lights anyway), our claim that (conceptual) commitments to the existence of CPS-agents is the most important recurrent feature of religion across cultures is quite controversial.. (shrink)

Researchers have evaluated how broad categories of emotion influence judgments of learning relative to neutral items. Specifically, JOLs are typically higher for emotional relative to neutral items. The novel goal of the present research was to evaluate JOLs for fine-grained categories of emotion. Participants studied faces with afraid, angry, sad, or neutral expressions and with afraid, angry, or sad expressions. Participants identified the expressed emotion, made a JOL for each, and completed a recognition test. JOLs were higher for the emotional (...) relative to neutral expressions. However, JOLs were insensitive to the categories of negative emotion. Using a survey design in Experiment 3, participants demonstrated idiosyncratic beliefs about emotion. Some people believed the fine-grained emotions were equally memorable, whereas others believed a specific emotion was most memorable. Thus, beliefs about emotion are nuanced, which has important implications for JOL theory. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is a requirement for all research. It is not, however, clear how much information is sufficient to make an informed decision about participation in research. Information on an online questionnaire about childhood development was provided through an unfolding electronic participant sheet in three levels of information. Methods 552 participants, who completed the web-based survey, accessed and spent time reading the participant information sheet (PIS) between July 2008 and November 2009. The information behaviour of the participants was (...) investigated. The first level contained less information than might be found on a standard PIS, the second level corresponded to a standard PIS, and the third contained more information than on a standard PIS. The actual time spent on reading the information provided in three incremental levels and the participants' evaluation of the information were calculated. Results 77% of the participants chose to access the first level of information, whereas 12% accessed the first two levels, 6% accessed all three levels of information and 23% participated without accessing information. The most accessed levels of information were those that corresponded to the average reading times. Conclusion The brief information provided in the first level was sufficient for participants to make informed decisions, while a sizeable minority of the participants chose not to access any information at all. This study adds to the debate about how much information is required to make a decision about participation in research and the results may help inform the future development of information sheets by providing data on participants' actual needs when deciding about questionnaire surveys. (shrink)

This research focuses on how research ethics committee and integrity board members discuss and decide on solutions to case scenarios that involve a dimension of research ethics or integrity in collaborative settings. The cases involved issues around authorship, conflict of interest, disregard of good scientific practice and ethics review, and research with vulnerable populations (children and neonates). The cases were set in a university, a hospital, or a research institute. In the research, we used a deductive qualitative approach with thematic (...) analysis. Twenty-seven research ethics committee and research integrity board members from 16 European countries and one country outside Europe participated. Participants represented natural and life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. They worked on cases involving ethical/integrity issues in six different constellations. Results show that experts apply key elements of ethical decision making, namely identification of ethical issues, stakeholders, guidelines, solutions, and own positionality, in dealing collaboratively with ethics/ integrity problems, and the nature of the application depends on the complexity of the case. Understanding how individuals knowledgeable in research ethics and integrity, in this case, individuals serving on research ethics committees and integrity boards, approach ethical/ moral issues can help to identify strategies that may be useful in the development of research ethics and integrity training for junior researchers who may benefit from learning professional strategies. (shrink)

E-Z Reader 7 is a processing model of eye-movement control. One constraint imposed on the model is that high-level cognitive processes do not influence eye movements unless normal reading processes are disturbed. I suggest that this constraint is unnecessary, and that the model provides a sensible architecture for explaining how both low- and high-level processes influence eye movements.

We analyse the system of ethical review of human research in the Baltic States by introducing the principle of equivalent stringency of ethical review, that is, research projects imposing equal risks and inconveniences on research participants should be subjected to equally stringent review procedures. We examine several examples of non-equivalence or asymmetry in the system of ethical review of human research: (1) the asymmetry between rather strict regulations of clinical drug trials and relatively weaker regulations of other types of clinical (...) biomedical research and (2) gaps in ethical review in the area of non-biomedical human research where some sensitive research projects are not reviewed by research ethics committees at all. We conclude that non-equivalent stringency of ethical review is at least partly linked to the differences in scope and binding character of various international legal instruments that have been shaping the system of ethical review in the Baltic States. Therefore, the Baltic example could also serve as an object lesson to other European countries which might be experiencing similar problems. (shrink)

The Stroop effect is composed of interference and facilitation effects. The facilitation is less stable and thus many times is referred to as a “fragile effect”. Here we suggest the facilitation effect is highly vulnerable to individual differences in control over the task conflict . We replicated previous findings of a significant correlation between stop-signal reaction time and Stroop interference, and also found a significant correlation between SSRT and the Stroop facilitation effect—participants with low inhibitory control had no facilitation effect (...) or even a reversed one. These results shed new light on the “fragile” facilitation effect and highlight the necessity of awareness of task conflict, especially in the Stroop task. (shrink)

Internet recruitment methods for research are rapidly evolving as technology and participant preferences do as well. This brings data security concerns, balanced with respect to persons for research participants. Internet recruitment research strategies are still important given the importance of creating private and accessible pathways for potentially marginalized populations or people experiencing stigmatized mental health conditions to participate in research. This manuscript describes the case of social media recruitment for a mental health and racism study in Fall 2022 that was (...) infiltrated by bots. We contextualize it in the context of data quality literature, with considerations for future directions including strategies for study design and management, and further research questions. (shrink)

The Kiki-Bouba effect comprises a relation between two abstract figures and two non-words: the star-shaped figure is called 'Kiki' and the rounded figure 'Bouba'. The effect is explained by a sound-vision synaesthesia: certain sounds are associated with certain shapes in a non-arbitrary manner.When we asked the participants to decide which of the two figures, the star-shaped or the rounded one, to call yin and which yang, some 85% choose the star-shaped figure as yin. There are previous cases of synaesthesia where (...) personality is attributed to numbers or letters. In our results, the word Kiki is overall happy, clever, small, thin, young, unpleasant, and nervous. The starshaped figure is overall clever, tall, small, slim, nervous, unpleasant, and upper-class. That is, the correspondence above all concerns the qualifying adjectives clever, unpleasant, and nervous, as well as the physical appearance small and thin. This brings us to the fat-thin effect. Cinema, literature, comics, and children's programmes are full of contrasting figures: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Laurel and Hardy , Asterix and Obelix, Tintin and Captain Haddock, Bert and Ernie , or the Spanish comic about very naughty twin boys called Zipi and Zape . Our main conclusion is that first names and last names are not entirely arbitrary. There is a correspondence between names and physical characteristics and concepts . The Kiki-Bouba effect is a semantic one. (shrink)

Bidirectional deep brain stimulation (DBS) platforms have enabled a surge in hours of recordings in naturalistic environments, allowing further insight into neurological and psychiatric disease states. However, high amplitude, high frequency stimulation generates artifacts that contaminate neural signals and hinder our ability to interpret the data. This is especially true in psychiatric disorders, for which high amplitude stimulation is commonly applied to deep brain structures where the native neural activity is miniscule in comparison. Here, we characterized artifact sources in (...) recordings from a bidirectional DBS platform, the Medtronic Summit RC + S, with the goal of optimizing recording configurations to improve signal to noise ratio (SNR). Data were collected from three subjects in a clinical trial of DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Stimulation was provided bilaterally to the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) using two independent implantable neurostimulators. We first manipulated DBS amplitude within safe limits (2–5.3 mA) to characterize the impact of stimulation artifacts on neural recordings. We found that high amplitude stimulation produces slew overflow, defined as exceeding the rate of change that the analog to digital converter can accurately measure. Overflow led to expanded spectral distortion of the stimulation artifact, with a six fold increase in the bandwidth of the 150.6 Hz stimulation artifact from 147–153 to 140–180 Hz. By increasing sense blank values during high amplitude stimulation, we reduced overflow by as much as 30% and improved artifact distortion, reducing the bandwidth from 140–180 Hz artifact to 147–153 Hz. We also identified artifacts that shifted in frequency through modulation of telemetry parameters. We found that telemetry ratio changes led to predictable shifts in the center-frequencies of the associated artifacts, allowing us to proactively shift the artifacts outside of our frequency range of interest. Overall, the artifact characterization methods and results described here enable increased data interpretability and unconstrained biomarker exploration using data collected from bidirectional DBS devices. (shrink)

A recent surge of research has begun to examine music participation and well-being; however, a particular challenge with this work concerns theorizing around the associated well-being benefits of musical participation. Thus, the current research used Self-Determination Theory to consider the potential associations between basic psychological needs (competence, relatedness, and autonomy), self-determined autonomous motivation, and the perceived benefits to well-being controlling for demographic variables and the musical activity parameters. A sample of 192 Australian residents (17-85, Mage = 36.95), who (...) were currently participating in a musical activity at the time, completed an online questionnaire. Results indicated that females were more likely to perceive benefits to their well-being; and that how important an individual considers music in their life was positively related to perceived well-being. Importantly, the analyses also revealed that the basic needs of competency and relatedness were related to overall perceived well-being as well as specifically social, cognitive, and esteem dimensions of well-being. Autonomous motivation demonstrated significant associations with both an overall well-being score as well as four of five specific well-being subscales measured. Collectively, the findings indicate that Self-Determination Theory offers a useful theoretical framework to understanding the relationship between musical participation and well-being. Further, the pattern of findings reiterates the positive associations between musical participation and one’s psychosocial well-being, with broad implications for people involved in the facilitation of musical activity. (shrink)

Human clinical research trials, by which corporations, universities, and research scientists bring new drugs, devices, and procedures into the practice and marketplace of medicine, have become a huge business. The National Institutes of Health doubled its spending over the past five years, while in the private sector the top twenty pharmaceutical companies have more than doubled their investment in research and development over a roughly comparable period. To date, some twenty million Americans have participated in clinical research trials that now (...) are as common in the private practice setting as in academia.For many years human clinical trials received relatively little public attention. In the wake of several well-publicized research abuses, Congress created in 1974 the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to formulate recommendations to protect human research subjects. The Commission’s 1979 Belmont Report helped to guide the Institutional Review Boards that review the ethics of federally funded research. (shrink)

Human clinical research trials, by which corporations, universities, and research scientists bring new drugs, devices, and procedures into the practice and marketplace of medicine, have become a huge business. The National Institutes of Health doubled its spending over the past five years, while in the private sector the top twenty pharmaceutical companies have more than doubled their investment in research and development over a roughly comparable period. To date, some twenty million Americans have participated in clinical research trials that now (...) are as common in the private practice setting as in academia.For many years human clinical trials received relatively little public attention. In the wake of several well-publicized research abuses, Congress created in 1974 the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to formulate recommendations to protect human research subjects. The Commission’s 1979 Belmont Report helped to guide the Institutional Review Boards that review the ethics of federally funded research. (shrink)

Our sense of self includes awareness of our thoughts and movements, and our control over them. This feeling can be altered or lost in neuropsychiatric disorders as well as in phenomena such as “automatic writing” whereby writing is attributed to an external source. Here, we employed suggestion in highly hypnotically suggestible participants to model various experiences of automatic writing during a sentence completion task. Results showed that the induction of hypnosis, without additional suggestion, was associated with a small but significant (...) reduction of control, ownership, and awareness for writing. Targeted suggestions produced a double dissociation between thought and movement components of writing, for both feelings of control and ownership, and additionally, reduced awareness of writing. Overall, suggestion produced selective alterations in the control, ownership, and awareness of thought and motor components of writing, thus enabling key aspects of automatic writing, observed across different clinical and cultural settings, to be modelled. (shrink)