Jeffery Aubin ,Marie Chantal ,Dianne Cole ,Julio Chaves ,Cathelyne Duchesne ,Christel Freu ,Steve Johnston ,Brice Jones ,Amaury Levillayer ,Stéphanie Machabée ,Paul-Hubert Poirier ,Philippe Therrien ,Jonathan von Kodar ,Martin Voyer ,Jennifer Wees ,Eric Crégheur.

In Norman, Price, and Jones , we argued that the ability to apply two sets of grammar rules flexibly from trial to trial on a “mixed-block” AGL classification task indicated strategic control over knowledge that was less than fully explicit. Jiménez suggested that our results do not in themselves prove that participants learned – and strategically controlled – complex properties of the structures of the grammars, but that they may be accounted for by learning of simple letter frequencies. We (...) first explain why our main conclusions regarding strategic control and conscious awareness are a separable issue to this criticism. We then report additional data which show that our participants’ ability to discriminate between the two grammars was not attributable to differences in simple letter frequencies. (shrink)

Being a healthcare professional in both paediatric and adult hospitals will mean being exposed to human tragedies and stressful events involving conflict, misunderstanding, and moral distress. There are a number of different structured approaches to reflection and discussion designed to support healthcare professionals process and make sense of their feelings and experiences and to mitigate against direct and vicarious trauma. In this paper, we draw from our experience in a large children’s hospital and more broadly from the literature to identify (...) and analyse four established approaches to facilitated reflective discussions. Each of the four approaches seeks to acknowledge the stressful nature of health professional work and to support clinicians from all healthcare professions to develop sustainable skills so they continue to grow and thrive as health professionals. Each approach also has the potential to open up feelings of uncertainty, frustration, sorrow, anguish, and moral distress for participants. We argue, therefore, that in order to avoid unintentionally causing harm, a facilitator should have specific skills required to safely lead the discussion and be able to explain the nature, scope, safe application, and limits of each approach. With reference to a hypothetical but realistic clinical case scenario, we discuss the application and key features of each approach, including the goals, underpinning theory, and methods of facilitation. (shrink)

The validity of assessment programs is increasingly important in higher education. Existing approaches to assessment are problematic because they eitherfail to provide timely feedback or have suspect measurement issues. We propose a feed-forward assessment model to help overcome these two limitations oftraditional assessment approaches.

In response to concerns with existing procedures for measuring strategic control over implicit knowledge in artificial grammar learning , we introduce a more stringent measurement procedure. After two separate training blocks which each consisted of letter strings derived from a different grammar, participants either judged the grammaticality of novel letter strings with respect to only one of these two grammars , or had the target grammar varying randomly from trial to trial which required a higher degree of conscious flexible control. (...) Random variation in the colour and font of letters was introduced to disguise the nature of the rule and reduce explicit learning. Strategic control was observed both in the pure-block and mixed-block conditions, and even among participants who did not realise the rule was based on letter identity. This indicated detailed strategic control in the absence of explicit learning. (shrink)

This essay considers biotrophic cyst and root‐knot nematodes in relation to their biology, host–parasite interactions and molecular genetics. These nematodes have to face the biological consequences of the physical constraints imposed by the soil environment in which they live while their hosts inhabit both above and below ground environments. The two groups of nematodes appear to have adopted radically different solutions to these problems with the result that one group is a host specialist and reproduces sexually while the other has (...) an enormous host range and reproduces by mitotic parthenogenesis. We consider what is known about the modes of parasitism used by these nematodes and how it relates to their host range, including the surprising finding that parasitism genes in both nematode groups have been recruited from bacteria. The nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of these two nematode groups are very different and we consider how these findings relate to the biology of the organisms. BioEssays 30:249–259, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Recognising and responding appropriately to emotions is critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Psychopathic traits (e.g. callous, manipulative, impulsive, antisocial) are related to differences in recognition and response when emotion is conveyed through facial expressions and language. Use of emotional music stimuli represents a promising approach to improve our understanding of the specific emotion processing difficulties underlying psychopathic traits because it decouples recognition of emotion from cues directly conveyed by other people (e.g. facial signals). In Experiment 1, participants listened to clips (...) of emotional music and identified the emotional content (Sample 1, N = 196) or reported on their feelings elicited by the music (Sample 2, N = 197). Participants accurately recognised (t(195) = 32.78, p <.001, d = 4.69) and reported feelings consistent with (t(196) = 7.84, p <.001, d = 1.12) the emotion conveyed in the music. However, psychopathic traits were associated with reduced emotion recognition accuracy (F(1, 191) = 19.39, p <.001) and reduced likelihood of feeling the emotion (F(1, 193) = 35.45, p <.001), particularly for fearful music. In Experiment 2, we replicated findings for broad difficulties with emotion recognition (Sample 3, N = 179) and emotional resonance (Sample 4, N = 199) associated with psychopathic traits. Results offer new insight into emotion recognition and response difficulties that are associated with psychopathic traits. (shrink)

Abstract: According to certain dispositional accounts of meaning, an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an idealized version of this agent has in optimal conditions. We argue that such attempts cannot properly fix meaning. For even if there is a way to determine which features of an agent should be idealized without appealing to what the agent means, there is no non-circular way to determine how those features should be idealized. We sketch an alternative dispositional account that avoids (...) this problem, according to which an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an abstract version of this agent has in optimal conditions. (shrink)

This paper examines the role which organizational context factors play in individual ethical decision making. Two general propositions are set forth, examining the linkage between ethical work climate and decision making. An agenda for research and the potential implications of the study and practice of managerial ethics are then discussed.

In this commentary we suggest that Fincher & Thornhill's (F&T's) parasite-stress theory of social behaviors and attitudes can be extended to mating behaviors and preferences. We discuss evidence from prior correlational and experimental studies that support this claim. We also reanalyze data from two of those studies using F&T's new parasite stress measures.

The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

"This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition..., offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship"--Front flap of dust jacket, volume 1.

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Crito is a dialogue by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It depicts a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito regarding justice, injustice, and the appropriate response to injustice. Socrates thinks that injustice may not be answered with injustice, and refuses Crito's offer to finance his escape from prison. The dialogue contains an ancient statement of the social contract theory of government.

The legal requirements and justifications for collecting patient-identifiable data without patient consent were examined. The impetus for this arose from legal and ethical issues raised during the development of a population-based disease register. Numerous commentaries and case studies have been discussing the impact of the Data Protection Act 1998 and Caldicott principles of good practice on the uses of personal data. But uncertainty still remains about the legal requirements for processing patient-identifiable data without patient consent for research purposes. This is (...) largely owing to ignorance, or misunderstandings of the implications of the common law duty of confidentiality and section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001. The common law duty of confidentiality states that patient-identifiable data should not be provided to third parties, regardless of compliance with the DPA1998. It is an obligation derived from case law, and is open to interpretation. Compliance with section 60 ensures that collection of patient-identifiable data without patient consent is lawful despite the duty of confidentiality. Fears regarding the duty of confidentiality have resulted in a common misconception that section 60 must be complied with. Although this is not the case, section 60 support does provide the most secure basis in law for collecting such data. Using our own experience in developing a disease register as a backdrop, this article will clarify the procedures, risks and potential costs of applying for section 60 support. (shrink)

Objectives: To develop and pilot a questionnaire based assessment of the importance patients place on medical confidentiality, whether they support disclosure of confidential information to protect third parties, and whether they consider that this would impair full disclosure in medical consultations.Design: Questionnaire administered to 30 consecutive patients attending a GP surgery.Results: Overall patients valued confidentiality, felt that other patients might be deterred from seeking treatment if it were not guaranteed, but did not think that they would withhold information for this (...) reason themselves.Conclusions: When presented with brief details of five clinical situations in which a breach of confidentiality might be considered, a clear majority of subjects believed that doctors should disclose information in two of the situations, but subjects were not confident that doctors would do so. In three situations, about half felt that disclosure was justified—these included the only scenario in which disclosure was clearly mandated by statute. There was little change in patients’ general attitude to confidentiality after considering the scenarios. However, the views expressed were often inconsistent with responses to the clinical scenarios, suggesting that complex opinions were not accurately reflected in the responses. The format of the questionnaire has been amended, and the study will be repeated with other groups of patients. (shrink)

The prominence of Bayesian modeling of cognition has increased recently largely because of mathematical advances in specifying and deriving predictions from complex probabilistic models. Much of this research aims to demonstrate that cognitive behavior can be explained from rational principles alone, without recourse to psychological or neurological processes and representations. We note commonalities between this rational approach and other movements in psychology – namely, Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology – that set aside mechanistic explanations or make use of optimality assumptions. Through (...) these comparisons, we identify a number of challenges that limit the rational program's potential contribution to psychological theory. Specifically, rational Bayesian models are significantly unconstrained, both because they are uninformed by a wide range of process-level data and because their assumptions about the environment are generally not grounded in empirical measurement. The psychological implications of most Bayesian models are also unclear. Bayesian inference itself is conceptually trivial, but strong assumptions are often embedded in the hypothesis sets and the approximation algorithms used to derive model predictions, without a clear delineation between psychological commitments and implementational details. Comparing multiple Bayesian models of the same task is rare, as is the realization that many Bayesian models recapitulate existing (mechanistic level) theories. Despite the expressive power of current Bayesian models, we argue they must be developed in conjunction with mechanistic considerations to offer substantive explanations of cognition. We lay out several means for such an integration, which take into account the representations on which Bayesian inference operates, as well as the algorithms and heuristics that carry it out. We argue this unification will better facilitate lasting contributions to psychological theory, avoiding the pitfalls that have plagued previous theoretical movements. (shrink)

The territorial contraction and speaker-reduction undergone by the Welsh language during the past few centuries has resulted in its categorization by many linguists as an obsolescent language. This study illustrates that, although it is undeniably showing some signs of decline, Welsh stands in marked contrast to many previously documented cases of language death. Against this backdrop of contraction a steady revitalization is taking place. Based upon extensive fieldwork in two sociolinguistically contrasting communities, this book is the first to examine the (...) position and nature of contemporary Welsh with reference to both obsolescence-related developments and changes under way in the dialects. Jones focuses on immersion education, long heralded as the saviour of the language and, by examining the variety of Welsh being produced by immersion pupils, seeks to determine whether this claim is justified, or whether such pupils are in fact 'speaking immersion'. As well as discussing the recent linguistic change shown by contemporary Welsh within the language death framework, the author examines the ways in which the language has been standardized and their repercussions for language maintenance. By way of comparison these tensions and implications are also explored with reference to the other varieties of P-Celtic, namely Breton and Cornish. Series Information: Oxford Studies in Language Contact Series Editor: Professor Suzanne Romaine, Merton College, Oxford Series ISBN: 0-19-961466-0 Series Description: Most of the world's speech communities are multilingual, and contact between languages is thus an important force in the everyday lives of most people. Studies of language contact should therefore form an integral part of work in theoretical, social, and historical linguistics. This series makes available a collection of research monographs which present case studies of language contact around the world. As well as providing an indispensable source of data for the serious researcher, it contributes significantly to theoretical developments in the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT For several generations before the First World War, the idea that the British constitution contained a ‘right of asylum' for foreign nationals was commonplace. Though this belief had profound consequences for Britain's treatment of political and religious exiles, its relations with foreign states, and the drafting of its extradition and immigration laws, there has been little enquiry into its origins. This article delineates the emergence of the idea of a constitutional ‘right of asylum', locating it in a series of (...) political clashes over the ‘Alien Act' that took place during the decade after the Napoleonic Wars. This legislation, which established controls over foreigners during the French Revolution and the quarter-century of war that followed, was increasingly challenged by the Whig and radical oppositions after Waterloo, both for its specific arbitrary provisions and as a more fundamental violation of the rights of aliens guaranteed by key constitutional documents like Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus Act. By the mid-1820s these objections cohered into a conviction that asylum itself could be claimed as a right. This conviction and the arguments that spawned it were repeated for many subsequent decades, forming the basis of the widespread Victorian belief in the ‘right of asylum’. (shrink)