This paper spells out and discusses four assumptions of the deficit model type of thinking. The assumptions are: First, the public is ignorant of science. Second, the public has negative attitudes towards (specific instances of) science and technology. Third, ignorance is at the root of these negative attitudes. Fourth, the public’s knowledge deficit can be remedied by one-way science communication from scientists to citizens. It is argued that there is nothing wrong with ignorance-based explanations per se. Ignorance (...) accounts at least partially for many cases of opposition to specific instances of science and technology. Furthermore, more attention needs to be paid to the issue of relevance. In regard to the evaluation of a scientific experiment, a technology, or a product, the question is not only who knows best?, but also what knowledge is relevant and to what extent?. Examples are drawn primarily from the debate on genetic engineering in agriculture. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit (...) model in more detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

Argument“Deficit model” designates an outlook on the public understanding and communication of science that emphasizes scientific illiteracy and the need to educate the public. Though criticized, it is still widespread, especially among scientists. Its persistence is due not only to factors ranging from scientists’ training to policy design, but also to the continuance of realism as an aesthetic criterion. This article examines the link between realism and the deficit model through discussions of neurology and psychiatry in (...) fiction film, as well as through debates about historical movies and the cinematic adaptation of literature. It shows that different values and criteria tend to dominate the realist stance in different domains:accuracyfor movies concerning neurology and psychiatry,authenticityfor the historical film, andfidelityfor adaptations of literature. Finally, contrary to the deficit model, it argues that the cinema is better characterized by a surplus of meaning than by informational shortcomings. (shrink)

Dominant theoretical models of autism and resultant research enquiries have long centered upon an assumed autism-specific empathy deficit. Associated empirical research has largely relied upon cognitive tests that lack ecological validity and associate empathic skill with heuristic-based judgments from limited snapshots of social information. This artificial separation of thought and feeling fails to replicate the complexity of real-world empathy, and places socially tentative individuals at a relative disadvantage. The present study aimed to qualitatively explore how serious literary fiction, through (...) its ability to simulate real-world empathic response, could therefore enable more ecologically valid insights into the comparative empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Eight autistic and seven non-autistic participants read Of Mice and Men for six days while completing a semi-structured reflective diary. On finishing the book, participants were asked to engage in three creative writing tasks that encouraged reflective thinking across the novel. Thematic and literary analysis of the diary reflections and writing tasks revealed three main themes Distance from the Novel; Mobility of Response; Re-Creating Literature. Findings demonstrated the usefulness of serious literature as a research tool for comparing the empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Specifically, autistic individuals often showed enhanced socio-empathic understandings of the literature with no empathy deficits when compared to non-autistic participants. (shrink)

When in Africa we speak and dream of and work for, a rebirth of that continent as a full participant in the affairs of the world in the next century, we are deeply conscious of how dependent that is on the mobilisation and strengthening of the continent's resources of learning. Nelson Mandela Address at Harvard University, September, 1998 quoted in East African, September 1-7, 2003 A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that (...) are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions p. 37 Africa suffers from a pessimism of description as well as a pessimism of prescription it has suffered for over 500 years from a condescending and often violent gaze from diagnosis to destiny. The usual Eurocentric style in reflecting about Africa has always had an underlying tone of reproach and even moral condemnation. There is a need to protest and resist against this negative projection. We need to start to converse about Africa's problems and challenges with the inclusion of hope as an ontological need for change. Withoug hope, there will be no possibility to struggle on. Hope is an important variable in the way we wish to think, talk, reason, debate and mount intellectual reflection about Africa Re-thinking African development through innovation, social-invention, systems mental images and the logocentric imagination of the productive Africa-nation, and not through market exchange, Smithian or Ricardian comparative advantage can generate a hopeful departure from received approaches to theorising about Africa. The making of African productive power, building the capital of the mind, organising institutions within the progressive imagination of the Africa-nation is a critical launching pad for a new intellectual and research orientation hihgly needed when Africans want to make their history with the revival of the Pan-African ideal and the African renaissance. The article proposes that the national system of innovation provides the metaphor of hope, the heuristics of what is significant data to investigate, and the criticism of conventional and pessimistic theorising and finally the emancipatory knowledge resources for a post-pessimist turn to bring about the cognitive praxis of a post-colonial liberation of Africa as a whole. (shrink)

As many as two million people in the United Kingdom repeatedly see people, animals, and objects that have no objective reality. Hallucinations on the border of sleep, dementing illnesses, delirium, eye disease, and schizophrenia account for 90% of these. The remainder have rarer disorders. We review existing models of recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) in the awake person, including cortical irritation, cortical hyperexcitability and cortical release, top-down activation, misperception, dream intrusion, and interactive models. We provide evidence that these can neither (...) fully account for the phenomenology of RCVH, nor for variations in the frequency of RCVH in different disorders. We propose a novel Perception and Attention Deficit (PAD) model for RCVH. A combination of impaired attentional binding and poor sensory activation of a correct proto-object, in conjunction with a relatively intact scene representation, bias perception to allow the intrusion of a hallucinatory proto-object into a scene perception. Incorporation of this image into a context-specific hallucinatory scene representation accounts for repetitive hallucinations. We suggest that these impairments are underpinned by disturbances in a lateral frontal cortex–ventral visual stream system. We show how the frequency of RCVH in different diseases is related to the coexistence of attentional and visual perceptual impairments; how attentional and perceptual processes can account for their phenomenology; and that diseases and other states with high rates of RCVH have cholinergic dysfunction in both frontal cortex and the ventral visual stream. Several tests of the model are indicated, together with a number of treatment options that it generates. Key Words: Blindness; Charles Bonnet; cholinergic; cortical release; delirium; dementia; dream intrusion; hallucination; Perception and Attention Deficit (PAD) model; schizophrenia. (shrink)

The impact of our desires and preferences upon our ordinary, everyday beliefs is well-documented [Gilovich, T. . How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.]. The influence of such motivational factors on delusions, which are instances of pathological misbelief, has tended however to be neglected by certain prevailing models of delusion formation and maintenance. This paper explores a distinction between two general classes of theoretical explanation for delusions; the motivational (...) and the deficit. Motivational approaches view delusions as extreme instances of self-deception; as defensive attempts to relieve pain and distress. Deficit approaches, in contrast, view delusions as the consequence of defects in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms, underpinned by neuroanatomical or neurophysiological abnormalities. It is argued that although there are good reasons to be sceptical of motivational theories , recent experiments confirm that motives are important causal forces where delusions are concerned. It is therefore concluded that the most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unification of both motivational and deficit approaches. (shrink)

Emerging action perspectives on psychopathology depict individuals as actively shaping those environmental conditions that then impact on their risk for psychopathology, resilience in the face of it, and successful recovery from it. This view, although having important implications for research and clinical practice, has yet to be articulated in terms of its underlying philosophical framework. To begin to address this challenge, we situate action theory in the context of the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, who, in their seemingly anti-psychiatric series (...) entitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, argue for the central role of human agency as a fundamentally active force in determining subjective life. Within this context, they propose an alternative approach to the current deficit focus of much psychopathology research, replacing the notion of deficit with a fundamentally productive notion of desire (what they call “desiring-production”). After our exposition of this philosophical perspective on human agency, implications of this approach for action-informed research and clinical practice are discussed. (shrink)

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder affects children, adolescents, and adults. Research suggests ADHD has a heritable component. The present article presents and assesses several genetic animal models of ADHD. The paper reviews the literature involving the following genetic animal models of ADHD: the spontaneously hypertensive rat ; the Wistar–Kyoto hyperactive rat; the coloboma mouse; the fast kindling rat; the acallosal mouse; the whirler mouse; and the genetically hypertensive rat. Research investigating animal models of ADHD has concentrated on hyperactivity, but impulsiveness, (...) learning, and attention are also being examined. The use of animal models allows for the control of possibly confounding variables and has proven very useful in the screening of new therapies. These models have not been shown to be the equivalent of the human disorder, and no model encompasses all of the symptoms of the human disorder, but they are useful nevertheless. (shrink)

Glover's planning–control model accommodates a substantial number of findings from subjects who have motor deficits as a consequence of brain lesions. A number of consistently observed and robust findings are not, however, explained by Glover's theory; additionally, the claim that the IPL supports planning whereas the SPL supports control is not consistently supported in the literature.

In this paper, we present an expansion of one of the well-known classical inventory management models, which is the static model of inventory management without a deficit and for a single substance, based on the neutrosophic logic, where we provide through this study a basis for dealing with all data, whether specific or undefined in the field of inventory management, as it provides safe environment to manage inventory without running into deficit , and give us an approximate (...) ideal volume of inventory. Since the ideal size is affected by the rate of demand for inventory, we present in this paper a study of the rate of demand for inventory when it is not precisely refined, and we find that the indeterminate values of the demand rate cannot be ignored, because they actually affect determining the ideal size of inventory and calculating its costs, thus affecting on the efficiency of the facility and achieve great profits for it. (shrink)

Preston & de Waal are understandably cautious in applying their model to autism. They emphasise multiple cognitive impairments in autism, including prefrontal-executive, cerebellar-attention, and amygdala-emotion recognition deficits. Further empirical examination of imitation ability in autism may reveal deficits in the neural and cognitive basis of perception-action mapping that have a specific relation to the empathic deficit.

Although Humphreys & Forde's HIT provides a comprehensive account of category-specific deficits, standard models of categorization and identification may also be able to explain many aspects of such deficits. The assumptions of an exemplar-based account of category- specific deficits are presented, and it is argued that exemplar models may be able to explain key findings on impaired object identification and categorization.

Humans can recollect past events in details and/or know that an object, person, or place has been encountered before. During the last two decades, there has been intense debate about how recollection and familiarity are organized in the brain. Here, we propose an integrative memory model which describes the distributed and interactive neurocognitive architecture of representations and operations underlying recollection and familiarity. In this architecture, the subjective experience of recollection and familiarity arises from the interaction between core systems and (...) an attribution system. By integrating principles from current theoretical views about memory functioning, we provide a testable framework to refine the prediction of deficient versus preserved mechanisms in memory-impaired populations. The case of Alzheimer's disease is considered as an example because it entails progressive lesions starting with limited damage to core systems before invading step-by-step most parts of the model-related network. We suggest a chronological scheme of cognitive impairments along the course of AD, where the inaugurating deficit would relate early neurodegeneration of the perirhinal/anterolateral entorhinal cortex to impaired familiarity for items that need to be discriminated as viewpoint-invariant conjunctive entities. The integrative memory model can guide future neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies aiming to understand how such a network allows humans to remember past events, to project into the future, and possibly also to share experiences. (shrink)

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been linked to higher engagement in sexual risk-taking behavior (SRTB). The current study aims to establish the link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population and to examine whether an exaggerated perceived benefit of the positive outcomes of SRTB explains that link. A scale for measuring the frequency, likelihood, perceived benefit, and perceived risk of SRTB was developed. Young adult sexually active participants who did not have a stable partnership completed the above (...) scale, as well as a scale of ADHD symptoms. Level of ADHD symptoms positively correlated with the frequency and likelihood of SRTB, even when the overall level of sexual behavior was controlled for. ADHD symptoms also correlated with the perceived benefit of SRTB, but not with the perceived risk of SRTB. Mediation analysis confirmed an indirect pathway: ADHD symptoms predicted perceived benefit of SRTB, which in turn predicted increased likelihood to engage in SRTB. These findings suggest a positive link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population, which is accounted for by an exaggerated perceived benefit of SRTB. (shrink)

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been linked to higher engagement in sexual risk-taking behavior (SRTB). The current study aims to establish the link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population and to examine whether an exaggerated perceived benefit of the positive outcomes of SRTB explains that link. A scale for measuring the frequency, likelihood, perceived benefit, and perceived risk of SRTB was developed. Young adult sexually active participants who did not have a stable partnership completed the above (...) scale, as well as a scale of ADHD symptoms. Level of ADHD symptoms positively correlated with the frequency and likelihood of SRTB, even when the overall level of sexual behavior was controlled for. ADHD symptoms also correlated with the perceived benefit of SRTB, but not with the perceived risk of SRTB. Mediation analysis confirmed an indirect pathway: ADHD symptoms predicted perceived benefit of SRTB, which in turn predicted increased likelihood to engage in SRTB. These findings suggest a positive link between ADHD symptoms and SRTB in the general population, which is accounted for by an exaggerated perceived benefit of SRTB. (shrink)

The dual-deficit model of visual hallucinations (Collerton et al. target article) is compared with the dual-deficit model of auditory hallucinations (Waters et al., in press). Differences in cognitive mechanisms described may be superficial. Similarities between these models may provide the basis for a general model of complex hallucinations extended across disorders and modalities, involving shared (overlapping) cognitive processes.

The purpose of the commentary is not to contradict HIT but rather to question whether its increase in predictive power outweighs the decrease in parsimony. For the refutable aspects of HIT, a simpler model for naming appears to achieve as much. Both models better fit the facts concerning naming performance than describe category-specificity.

Notwithstanding the many strengths of the dynamic developmental theory, there remain challenges to be overcome before it can be incorporated into a true causal model of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These include the development of reliable measures of reinforcement delay gradients, the validation of shortened reinforcement delay as an endophenotype, and the integration of this pathway with other potential pathways.

A “multifactorial” model should accommodate a psychological perspective, aiming to relate the phenomenology of complex visual hallucinations not only to neurobiological findings but also an understanding of the patient's psychological problems and situation in life. Greater attention needs to be paid to the role of the “lack of insight” patients may have into their hallucinations and its relationship to cognitive impairment.

Wegner and colleagues have offered an explanation of the sense of agency over one’s bodily actions. If the orthodox view is correct and there is a sense of agency deficit associated with delusions of alien control, then Wegner and colleagues’ model ought to extend to an explanation of this deficit. Data from intentional binding studies opens up the possibility that an abnormality in representing the timing of mental events leads to a violation of the principle of priority (...) in those suffering from delusions of alien control. However, the model ultimately fails as it is unable to accommodate action monitoring deficits associated with delusions of alien control, in particular the theory of mind deficiencies predicted by such accounts have not materialised. There are theory of mind problems associated with schizophrenia but they are not associated with delusions of alien control. Such accounts thereby fail to adequately explain delusions of alien control. (shrink)

This paper argues that Gareth Matthews’ writing on developmental psychology is both a central part of his philosophical legacy and a contribution of enduring interest. Although he engages with figures, such as Piaget and Kohlberg, who are no longer as influential as they once were, his critique of the ‘deficit conception of childhood’ retains its relevance today. While the deficit model holds that any capacity, aptitude, virtue, or skill that a child possesses is a deficient version of (...) the same capacity, aptitude, virtue, or skill, as possessed by adults, Matthews contends that there are some things adults do badly which children do well, and that children's curiosity, wonder, and imaginative insight is something we should respect—indeed envy—and try to learn from. The paper concludes by raising a number of questions and criticisms of Matthews’ approach that his contemporary followers might fruitfully seek to address. (shrink)

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge (...) about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory, we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of lesions at different levels of processing and different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object. Key Words: category-specific deficits; functional imaging; hierarchical models; interactive activation models; neuropsychology; object recognition; perceptual and functional knowledge. (shrink)

Beginning farmer initiatives like the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, farm incubators, and small-scale marketing innovations offer new entrant farmers agricultural training, marketing and business assistance, and farmland loans. These programs align with alternative food movement goals to revitalize the anemic U.S. small farm sector and repopulate landscapes with socially and environmentally diversified farms. Yet even as these initiatives seek to support prospective farmers with tools for success through a knowledge dissemination model, they remain mostly individualistic and (...) entrepreneurial measures that overlook structural barriers to productive and economic success within U.S. agriculture. Analysis of the BFRDP’s funding history and discourse reveals a “knowledge deficit” based program focused on the technical rather than the structural aspects of beginning farming. This is contrasted with qualitative analysis of beginning farmer experiences in California’s Central Coast region. The discrepancies between the farmer experiences and national structure of the BFRDP program ultimately reveal a policy mismatch between the needs of some beginning farmers and the programs intended to support them. (shrink)

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS) present as distinct conditions clinically; however, comorbidity and inhibitory control deficits have been proposed for both. Whilst such deficits have been studied widely within clinical populations, findings are mixed—partly due to comorbidity and/or medication effects—and studies have rarely distinguished between subtypes of the disorders. Studies in the general population are sparse. Using a continuity approach, the present study examined (i) the relationships between inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive aspects of ADHD and TS-like behaviors (...) in the general population, and (ii) their unique associations with automatic and executive inhibitory control, as well as (iii) yawning (a proposed behavioral model of TS). One hundred and thirty-eight participants completed self-report measures for ADHD and TS-like behaviors as well as yawning, and a conditioned inhibition task to assess automatic inhibition. A sub-sample of fifty-four participants completed three executive inhibition tasks. An exploratory factor analysis of the TS behavior checklist supported a distinction between phonic and motor like pure TS behaviors. Whilst hyperactive/impulsive aspects of ADHD were associated with increased pure and compulsive TS-like behaviors, inattention in isolation was related to reduced obsessive-compulsive TS-like behaviors. TS-like behaviors were associated with yawning during situations of inactivity, and specifically motor TS was related to yawning during stress. Phonic TS and inattention aspects of ADHD were associated with yawning during concentration/activity. Whilst executive interference control deficits were linked to hyperactive/impulsive ADHD-like behaviors, this was not the case for inattentive ADHD or TS-like behaviors, which instead related to increased performance on some measures. No associations were observed for automatic conditioned inhibition. (shrink)

I outline the current debate over the European Union democratic deficit in terms of differing methodological approaches towards the realization of freedom and basic rights to political participation. Federalists opt for a model of freedom as noninterference and autonomous self-determination by proposing to tie basic rights in the EU to a univocal form of European-wide popular sovereignty. Although skeptics argue that the EU lacks the fundamental basis for such European-wide democratic self-determination, they ultimately defend a similar view of (...) freedom as noninterference with their appeal to the collective will of the member states. Democratic revisionists instead point to the novel democratic potential of institutions in the EU such as the Open Method of Coordination for mediating overlapping sovereignties. I conclude using the example of basic rights to effective participation for immigrants and minorities to illustrate the strengths of the revisionist view over views that appeal to the principle of subsidiarity. (shrink)

Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky's (D&M-S's) model of affiliation meets the criteria advanced for the definition of behavior systems and endophenotypes. We argue that its application in psychiatry could be useful for identifying a biological pathophysiology common to a variety of conditions that are currently classified in very different categories of psychiatric nosography, including autism, schizoid personality, primary psychopathy, and dismissing attachment.

The Phillips & Silverstein model of NMDA-mediated coordination deficits provides a useful heuristic for the study of schizophrenic cognition. However, the model does not specifically account for the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. The P&S model is compared to Meehl's seminal model of schizotaxia, schizotypy, and schizophrenia, as well as the model of schizophrenic cognitive dysfunction posited by McCarley and colleagues.

Three groups of claims frame this article. First, the Nigerian State is largely enmeshed in environmental deficit, given the substantial oil pollution in the Niger-delta area, the problem of erosion in the Southeast, the filthy status of the Southwest, and the incessantly worrying perturbation of the ecological stability in the Northern part of Nigeria. Second, the political leadership in Nigeria for years has not really given genuine policy priority to, and, on this model, developed a credible framework that (...) the citizenry could buy into to sustainably address the causes and the consequences of the environmental deficit. Third, given the foregoing, this work suggests a re-thinking/re-discussion of approach to the environmental deficit. Drawing on and integrating some relevant ideas, values, and virtues in African metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, the article develops a framework, prescribing how the democratic leadership and the citizenry ought to act in sustainably addressing the environmental deficit. Beyond the philosophic foundations, the framework is also teleologically political: (i) it emphasizes that the moral legitimacy of democratic leadership in Nigeria partly derives from its commitment to the good of the built and the natural environment, and (ii) it also stresses that the citizenry could only be good moral agents, as eco-citizens, if they develop the virtues of environmental responsibility and responsiveness, by theoretically and practically supporting the good of the built and the natural environment. The research methods of critical analysis of empirical data and reflective argumentation are adopted to pursue the goals of the work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper aims to show that Rahel Jaeggi's objections to Walzer's model of internal critique are in many respects inconsistent, and above all that these objections are a sign of a political deficit in the neo-Hegelian methodology adopted by Jaeggi to develop her model of immanent critique. The same deficit concerns Jaeggi's use of Marx's model of the critique of ideology, which can be fruitfully reworked by Walzer's reinterpretation of Gramsci's theory of the struggle (...) for hegemony. (shrink)

Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computational steps might be used, however, in simulation-style emotion (...) detection? Four alternative models are explored: a generate-and-test model, a reverse simulation model, a variant of the reverse simulation model that employs an “as if” loop, and an unmediated resonance model. (shrink)

Past studies have reported emotional intelligence as a relevant factor in development and maintenance of eating disorders, as well as in increasing self-esteem and reducing anxiety. Similarly, research has showed that anxiety and self-esteem are positively and negatively associated to ED criteria, respectively. However, no prior studies have yet tested the multiple intervening roles of both self-esteem and anxiety as potential mediators of the association between EI and ED symptomatology. The present study aims to bridge these gaps by testing a (...) sequential path model. Specifically, we examine the potential sequential mediation effects of self-esteem-anxiety on the link between EI and ED. A sample composed of 516 Spanish undergraduate students and community adults completed measures of EI, self-esteem, anxiety, and ED symptomatology. The results show that high levels of EI were positively associated with self-esteem and negatively associated with anxiety and ED symptoms. Anxiety was positively associated to ED symptoms, while self-esteem levels were negatively linked to ED symptoms. Moreover, path analyses showed that self-esteem and anxiety fully mediated the relationship between EI and ED symptoms in sequence. These findings suggest that EI plays a key role in reducing symptomatology of ED through increased self-esteem and reduced anxiety symptoms, providing novel evidence regarding psychological mechanisms through which EI contributes to a reduction of ED symptomatology. Implications for assessing and improving these psychological resources in ED preventive programs are discussed. (shrink)

This paper provides a realist analysis of the EU's legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams' theory of legitimacy, which we term critical responsiveness. For Williams, 'Basic Legitimation Demand + Modernity = Liberalism'. Drawing on that model, we make three claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to popular sovereignty; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a 'legitimation story': a non-moralised normative account of how to shore up belief (...) in legitimacy while steering clear of both raw domination and ideological distortions. (iii) The EU's current legitimation story draws on a tradition of popular sovereignty that sits badly with the supranational delegation and pooling of sovereign powers. We conclude by suggesting that the EU's legitimation deficit may be best addressed demoicratically, by recovering the value of popular sovereignty at the expense of a degree of state sovereignty. (shrink)

We delineate a developmental model of number representations. Notably, developmental dyscalculia (DD) is rarely associated with an all-or-none deficit in numerosity processing as would be expected if assuming abstract number representations. Finally, we suggest that the view might be a plausible explanatory framework for our model of how number representations develop.

Economic globalization has resulted in the transfer of national power to supranational actors and their supranational procedures and institutions. Concomitant with this trend is the ascendancy of the discourses of democracy and human rights that have given rise to the idea of cosmopolitan justice. These trends, in turn, have weakened statehood [ Entstaatlichung ], requiring theoretical envisioning and practical institutionalization of a supranational model of political association. Among the competing theories, in this article I will defend the Kantian project (...) of constitutionalization of international law. In doing so, I take the doctrine of constitutional patriotism as an appropriate model of supranational political association in the European Union and defend it against the republican critique that rejects the idea as deficient. I argue that the European project of constitution-making can overcome the charges of democratic deficit and the lack of European demos by establishing the terms and conditions for democratic negotiation and institutionalizing shared practices of law-making. Key Words: constitutional patriotism • democratic deficit • the European Union • nation-state • supranational political community. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze results from 114 face-to-face qualitative interviews of people who had evacuated from the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, interviews that were completed within weeks of the 2005 storm in most cases. Our goal was to understand the role information and knowledge played in people's decisions to leave the area. Contrary to the conventional wisdom underlying many disaster communication studies, we found that our interviewees almost always had extensive storm-related information from a (...) variety of sources, including media reports and other background knowledge gleaned from experiences with previous storms, often from interpersonal sources. However, consistent with a theme in communication research that has been identifiable since at least the 1940s, interpersonal communication networks were most often what ultimately caused these individuals to act on this information, and therefore those with “weak ties” to the broader “mainstream” community may have been disadvantaged, slower to leave, and thus more vulnerable to the storm's main effects. From our evidence, the end result was less a function of discrimination as it was one of differential activation of a relevant social network. These results argue for the rejection of a “deficit model” that assumes varied reactions to natural disaster result from some kind of an information deficiency, and remind us that behavior under such circumstances is the result of a process of collective behavior, not only individual cognition. (shrink)

Theories of sentence production that involve a convergence of activation from conceptual‐semantic and syntactic‐sequential units inspired a connectionist model that was trained to produce simple sentences. The model used a learning algorithm that resulted in a sharing of responsibility (or “division of labor”) between syntactic and semantic inputs for lexical activation according to their predictive power. Semantically rich, or “heavy”, verbs in the model came to rely on semantic cues more than on syntactic cues, whereas semantically impoverished, (...) or “light”, verbs relied more on syntactic cues. When the syntactic and semantic inputs were lesioned, the model exhibited patterns of production characteristic of agrammatic and anomic aphasic patients, respectively. Anomic models tended to lose the ability to retrieve heavy verbs, whereas agrammatic models were more impaired in retrieving light verbs. These results obtained in both sentence production and single‐word naming simulations. Moreover, simulated agrammatic lexical retrieval was more impaired overall in sentences than in single‐word tasks, in agreement with the literature. The results provide a demonstration of the division‐of‐labor principle, as well as general support for the claim that connectionist learning principles can contribute to the understanding of non‐transparent neuropsychological dissociations. (shrink)

Resumo O artigo trata da análise crítica de Jürgen Habermas a respeito das consequências do modelo neoliberal de integração global via mercado, em especial o desequilíbrio entre política e mercado, o fim do compromisso com o Estado social e o déficit democrático no nível transnacional. Para o filósofo alemão, a concepção neoliberal de sociedade desestatizada do capitalismo global atinge o nexo entre Estado nacional, democracia e justiça social, marginalizando o Estado e a política, em favor da privatização dos serviços públicos (...) e sendo insensível às questões de justiça social, aos custos sociais do crescente aumento da pobreza, desigualdade e exclusão social, mesmo em países abastados da Europa e América do Norte. Ao deslocar o fiador da integração social para além das fronteiras nacionais, o capitalismo global foge ao controle estatal e esvazia o poder dos Estados nacionais, em termos de substância democrática e de política social, e gera um déficit de legitimação, ao transferir competências nacionais para agências ou organismos transnacionais, cuja legitimação não deriva da sociedade civil ou de uma esfera pública politicamente constituída. Em contrapartida, Habermas defende um poder democrático capaz de domesticar politicamente o mercado globalizado, reconstruir a democracia estatal-social num nível transnacional, em vista de uma ordem socialmente mais equilibrada, e compensar o déficit social e de legitimação democrática, no âmbito transnacional. Depois de recapitular alguns problemas que se solucionaram nas formas de Estado nacional, o artigo descreve como a globalização econômica afeta a soberania cultural, econômica, administrativa e jurídica, política, social e trabalhista dos Estados nacionais, e quais as possibilidades de reenquadrar politicamente os mercados, estendendo a democracia estatal para além das fronteiras nacionais. Com isso, quer-se mostrar que a obra de Habermas não é cega para a relação democracia-capitalismo, para os efeitos colaterais da “colonização da política pela economia”, para a influência corrosiva da economia capitalista na despolitização da esfera pública e da política.The article presents Jürgen Habermas critical analysis of the consequences of the neoliberal model of global market integration, in particular the imbalance between politics and market, the end of the commitment to the welfare state and the democratic deficit at the transnational level. For the German philosopher, the neoliberal conception of the privatized society of global capitalism undermine the nexus between national state, democracy and social justice, marginalizing the state and politics in favour of privatization of public services and being insensitive to questions of social justice, the costs increasing poverty, inequality and social exclusion, even in wealthy countries in Europe and North America. Moving the guarantor of social integration across national borders, global capitalism is beyond the state control and exhaust the power of national states in terms of democratic substance and social policy and creates a legitimacy deficit by transferring national powers to agencies or transnational corporations whose legitimacy does not derive from civil society or from a politically constituted public sphere. In contrast, Habermas advocates a democratic power able to politically neutralize the global market, rebuild the welfare-state democracy in a transnational level in view of a more socially balanced order, and compensate the social deficit and democratic legitimacy in the transnational order. After reviewing some problems that have been solved in national state forms, the article describes how economic globalization affects the cultural, economic, administrative, juridical, political, social and labor sovereignty of the national states, and what are the possibilities of politically reframing markets, extending welfare-estate democracy beyond national borders. In this way, we want to show that Habermas’ work is not blind to the relation between democracy and capitalism, to the collateral effects of the “colonization of politics by the economy”, to the corrosive influence of the capitalist economy on the depoliticization of the public sphere and politics. (shrink)

Individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia experience difficulty when processing reversible non-canonical sentences. Different accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. The Trace Deletion account attributes this deficit to an impairment in syntactic representations, whereas others propose that the underlying structural representations are unimpaired, but sentence comprehension is affected by processing deficits, such as slow lexical activation, reduction in memory resources, slowed processing and/or intermittent deficiency, among others. We test the claims of two processing accounts, slowed processing and intermittent (...) deficiency, and two versions of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis, in a computational framework for sentence processing implemented in ACT-R. The assumption of slowed processing is operationalized as slow procedural memory, so that each processing action is performed slower than normal, and intermittent deficiency as extra noise in the procedural memory, so that the parsing steps are more noisy than normal. We operationalize the TDH as an absence of trace information in the parse tree. To test the predictions of the models implementing these theories, we use the data from a German sentence—picture matching study reported in Hanne, Sekerina, Vasishth, Burchert, and De Bleser. The data consist of offline and online measures. From among the models considered, the model assuming that both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency are present emerges as the best model of sentence processing difficulty in aphasia. The modeling of individual differences suggests that, if we assume that patients have both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, they have them in differing degrees. (shrink)

BackgroundSexual minority (SM) older adults experience mental health disparities. Psychiatric disorders and neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) are risk factors for cognitive decline. Although older people in same-sex (SSR) compared to mixed-sex relationships (MSR) perform more poorly on cognitive screening tests, prior studies found no differences in rates of dementia diagnosis or neuropsychological profiles. We sought to explore the role of NPS on neurocognitive outcomes for SM populations. We compared cognitive performance and structural brain parameters of older adults in SSR and MSR.MethodsData (...) were originally collected at Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers (ADRCs). Inclusion criteria were: age of 55+ years, a study partner identified as a spouse/partner, and availability of T1-MRI brain volumes/thickness. Participants were labeled as either SSR or MSR based on their/their co-participant's reported sex. We identified 1,073 participants (1,037 MSR−555 cognitively unimpaired [CU]; 36 SSR−23 CU) with structural MRI data, Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), and Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q) scores. A subset of the overall sample completed comprehensive neuropsychological assessment (n = 939; 908 MSR−494 CU; 31 SSR−22 CU). Covariates included in statistical models were age, sex, education, total intracranial volume, and apolipoprotein E genotype.ResultsMultivariate general linear models showed significant diagnosis-by-relationship interaction effects on the left parahippocampal gyrus volume. After stratification by relationship group, only cognitively impaired (CI) MSR had significantly smaller left parahippocampal volumes than MSR-CU. The SSR group showed better episodic memory performance. Severity of neuropsychiatric symptoms was negatively associated with volume/thickness of bilateral fronto-temporal areas and with MMSE scores, predominantly in the MSR group.ConclusionIn our study, MSR participants presented with a more compromised cognitive profile than SSR participants. MSR-CI participants showed significantly smaller left medio-temporal volumes, a neural signature of AD. Neuropsychiatric symptoms predicted smaller fronto-temporal volumes in the MSR more consistently than in the SSR group. These findings may be due to unexplored protective factors against cognitive decline in SM elders. Indeed, social support has been proposed as a protective factor warranting future investigation. (shrink)

O artigo procura argumentar contra a ideia de que a filosofia da história de Kant contaria com dois modelos de fundamentação: um modelo oficial, de natureza hipotético-teleológica, e outro hermenêutico-explicativo, que, porém, acabaria por implodir o sistema. Trata-se de mostrar que há um único modelo, de natureza hermenêutica-explicativa, que não obstante faz uso de princípios hipotético-teleológicos. Mais ainda, que tal modelo está presente ao longo de diversos momentos do sistema, como na Doutrina do Direito, ou na Religião nos limites da (...) simples razão. The article argues against the idea that Kant's philosophy of history would have included two types of foundation: an official model, hypothetical and teleological in nature, and other hermeneutic-explanatory, the last one that eventually would implode the system. The aim is to show that there is a single model, of hermeneutics-explanatory nature, which nevertheless makes use of hypothetical and teleological principles, and that such a model is present at various moments throughout the system, as in the Doctrine of Right, or in the Religion within the limits of pure reason. (shrink)

Source: Author: Ahamed Lebbe Mohamed Aslam, S.M. Ahamed Lebbe There is a relationship between the fiscal deficit and inflation, which was confirmed empirically in several studies conducted in many countries. Sri Lanka has been encountering the problem of inflation for the recent years. But in Sri Lanka, this proposition has not yet been studied scientifically. Therefore, this study was going to fill this gap. The objective of this study was to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation (...) in Sri Lanka. For this study, the annual time series data were used during the period of 1959 to 2013. The fiscal deficit, exchange rate, government expenditures and import outflow were used as independent variables while the Colombo consumer price index was considered as dependent variable. In addition, the multiple regressions model was used to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation. Based on the regression results, the fiscal deficit preserved the positive relationship with inflation in Sri Lanka at one percent significant level. Therefore, this study confirmed that the fiscal deficit accelerates the inflation in Sri Lanka. ]]>. (shrink)