© 2016 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved. Background Conceptual frameworks are important to ensure a clear underpinning research philosophy. Further, the use of conceptual frameworks can support structured research processes. Aim To present a partnership model for a reflective narrative for researcher and participant. Discussion This paper positions the underpinning philosophical framework of the model in social constructionism and narrative enquiry. The model has five stages - study design, invitation to share a research space and partnership, a metaphorical research space, (...) building a community story, and reading the community story to others. Core principles of the partnership model are continual reflection by the researcher, potential reflections by participants, reciprocal sharing, and partnership in research. Conclusion A 'trajectory of self' for both participants and researchers can be enhanced within reflective partnerships. Implications for practice This model can be applied to studies that use narrative enquiry and are seeking a humanistic approach with participant engagement. (shrink)

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea, demonstrates extensive antigenic heterogeneity in its surface components. The organism has the capacity to switch on and off the synthesis of different versions of components such as pili, outer membrane proteins, and lipopolysaccharide. Recent studies have shown that the gonococcus uses novel and complex mechanisms, of types not described previously, to store different versions of genetic information for surface proteins, and to regulate expression of those genes.

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

The idea that immoral conduct ought to be criminalized is already often rejected, But not for precisely the right reasons. Victim-Less crimes ought to be decriminalized not (as h l a hart and j s mill argue) because it is immoral to make crimes of them, But because it is contrary to the nature of the criminal law itself. Acts of private immorality do not violate the rights of the participants; thus they cannot be crimes because there is no crime (...) where there is no deprivation of rights. (staff). (shrink)

We agree with Jones & Love (J&L) that much of Bayesian modeling has taken a fundamentalist approach to cognition; but we do not believe in the potential of Bayesianism to provide insights into psychological processes. We discuss the advantages of associative explanations over Bayesian approaches to causal induction, and argue that Bayesian models have added little to our understanding of human causal reasoning.

H. L. A. Hart, in his classic book Law, Liberty, and Morality, is unsuccessful in arguing that James Fitzjames Stephen’s observations about the role of vice in criminal sentencing have no relevance to a more general defense of legal moralism. He does, however, have a very important insight about the special significance of sexual liberty.

Woods et al. (2015) claim that secular Simple Reaction Time (SRT) slowing (Woodley et al. 2013), disappears once modern studies are corrected for software and hardware lag, and once Galton’s data are corrected for fastest-response selection. Here, this is challenged with a reanalysis of the secular slowing of SRT in the UK amongst large (N>500), population-representative age-matched (≊18-30 years) studies. Starting with Galton’s sample, this is assigned the simulated value estimated by Dodonova and Dodonov (2013, who like Woods et al. (...) were critical of secular SRT slowing, owing to measurement issues) on the basis that he collected the fastest of three trials (207.5ms). The two sexes in Galton’s study are combined (as in Woods et al.), raising the weighted sample mean to 208.5ms. Next is the Wilkinson and Alison (1989) study, which attempted to replicate Galton’s study one century later, collecting SRTs as part of an exhibit in the London Science Museum. An electronic chronoscope recorded SRTs on magnetic tape, and sampled over eight trials with micro-processor-determined variable foreperiods. The mean SRT value for the 1,189 participants aged between 20 and 29 is 245ms. The presence of long and variable foreperiods necessitates a penalty of 10ms (Dodonova & Dodonov, 2013). Another 10ms should be deducted based on key-pressing time (Dodonova & Dodonov, 2013), reducing the mean to 225ms. The studies of Deary and Der (2005) and Der and Deary (2006) are also included. The first utilized the highly representative Scottish Twenty-07 cohort. Dodonova and Dodonov (2013) identified a 53ms lag stemming from liquid crystal stimulus onset delay. This is subtracted from the weighted average of the two sexes (300.8ms), along with another 10ms for key-pressing time. The resultant mean is 237.8ms.Dodonova and Dodonov (2013) cleaned the male data in the Der and Deary (2006) study, collected from the representative UK Health and Lifestyle Survey, by removing cases for which SRT standard deviations exceeded those for choice RT. This reduced the N from 834 to 661, and also reduced the mean from 300ms to 284ms. The estimate was also penalized for LCD onset delay and key-pressing time, reducing the mean to 221ms. When the SRT value for the female sample is penalized equivalently the resulting value is 239ms. In order to simulate the female N for the purposes of taking a weighted average of both sexes, the actual female N is reduced in proportion to the male N (79.3%=881), yielding a weighted mean of 230.9ms for a combined sample-size of 1,472. Table 1 presents the data used in the analysis.Table 1 SRT means, sample sizes and sampling years for four large, age-matched UK samples[Table 1 here]Consistent with Dodonova and Dodonov (2013), N-weighted regression is employed, as the only data on sample variability is sample size. Figure 1 illustrating the secular trend in UK SRT over 100 years.[Figure 1 here] Figure 1. Secular SRT slowing across four large, representative studies from the UK spanning a century. Bubble-size is proportional to sample size. Combined N=6,622. The secular slowing between UK studies is statistically significant (β=0.97; 95% CI=0.969 to 0.971, N=6,622), at –22.8ms a century. Additional evidence for generational SRT slowing comes from Verhaeghen (2014), who suggested that the ratio of longitudinal to cross-sectional age-related slowing might tentatively infer generational changes in processing speed. Verhaeghen reports ratios for two SRT studies (0.91 and 1.15), implying both secular losses and gains. For the study of Deary and Der (2005), the SRT ratios are “censored because they were excessively large” (p. 256). In this study, the ratio of the cross-sectional slowing trend (taking the weighted average of all paired between-cohort differences rescaled in terms of change per decade for males and females), to the weighted average decadal longitudinal slowing trend for both the males and females is 0.73, for an N of 1,926 (cf. Woodley et al., 2014b, for a detailed reanalysis of this dataset). The weighted average of the three SRT ‘Verhaeghen ratios’ is 0.9 (N=4,078) – tentatively consistent with generational declines (i.e. a ratio of <1). In conclusion Woods et al. (2015) have undoubtedly made an important contribution to the debate concerning the role of software and hardware lag in the inflation of contemporary estimates of SRT, however the evidence for generational SRT slowing remains quite compelling. ReferencesDeary, I.J., & Der, G. (2005). Reaction time, age, and cognitive ability: Longitudinal findings from age 16 to 63 years in representative population samples. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 12, 187–213.Der, G., & Deary, I.J. (2006). Age and sex differences in reaction time in adulthood: Results from the United Kingdom Health Lifestyle Survey. Psychology and Aging, 21, 62–73.Dodonova, Y.A., & Dodonov, Y.S. (2013). Is there any evidence of historical slowing of reaction time? No, unless we compare apples and oranges. Intelligence, 41, 674–687.Galton, F. (1890). Exhibition of instruments (1) for testing the perception of differences of tint, and (2) for determining reaction-time. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 19, 27–29.Verhaeghen, P. (2014). The elements of cognitive aging: Meta-analyses of age-related differences in processing speed and their consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Wilkinson, R.T., & Allison, S. (1989). Age and simple reaction time: Decade differences for 5,324 subjects. Journal of Gerontology, 44, 29–35.Woodley, M.A., Madison, G., & Charlton, B.G. (2014b). Possible dysgenic trends insimple visual reaction time performance in the Scottish Twenty-07 cohort: Areanalysis of Deary & Der (2005). Mankind Quarterly, 55, 110-124.Woodley, M.A., te Nijenhuis, J., & Murphy, R. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence, 41, 843–850.Woods, D.L., Wyma, J.M., Yund, E.W., Herron, T.J., & Reed, B. (2015). Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9:131. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 29-31 [Access article in PDF] On the Border:Reflections on the Meaning of Self-Injury in Borderline Personality Disorder Robert L. Woolfolk Keywords borderline personality disorder, values, psychotherapy, diagnosis IT IS A PLEASURE to comment on Nancy Potter's elegantly written, provocative paper. Professor Potter raises important and intriguing issues that have not only clinical implications for practitioners, but also are of theoretical significance for those (...) who ponder the conceptual status of mental illnesses and their manifestations.Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is the mental health professional's bête noire. In the diagnostic context, borderline is an adjective that is evocative, albeit imprecise. Persons with BPD tend to the worst of multiple pathological worlds, to fall through the diagnostic cracks, to occupy the boundaries of decorum and safety. Even such intrepid and astute folk as Marsha Linnehan and Otto Kernberg, who have devoted careers to understanding and treating those with BPD, have acknowledged the limited state of current knowledge. Justice Stewart's theory of natural concepts seems to apply to patients to whom we give the label borderline personality disorder: we cannot define the disorder readily, but we know one when we see one. And when we see such a patient it is costly in time and stress and corrosive of one's sense of professional efficacy. So with these patients, any assistance in conceptualizing the problem or in modification of therapeutics is welcome.Professor Potter's phenomenological formulation of self-injury is cogent and helpful in a number of ways. Self-injurious behavior is, when conventionally interpreted, a prototype for irrationality and affliction. It is also dramatic, graphic, and often repugnant. Professor Potter's analysis brings us face to face with what most of us know but sometimes forget or fail to apply: Psychotherapy is a value-laden endeavor. Early on, both Max Weber and Carl Jung were eloquent on this point and we have been reminded often enough of it in the last four decades (Rieff 1966; Woolfolk 1998; Woolfolk and Murphy, in press). Usually it is the moral values residing in the underlying ideologies of treatment and diagnosis that are brought to our attention. The axiological underpinnings of psychotherapy, however, are aesthetic as well as ethical. Professor Potter successfully argues that, as therapists, we may be in the thrall of a parochial aesthetic that produces [End Page 29] a kind of tunnel vision inimical to therapeutic effectiveness and to the ethical treatment of the human beings who are our patients. She has impeccable advice for therapists on this topic: Although none of us can step outside of culture altogether, we can evaluate our attitudes, beliefs, and values from a second-order level (Taylor 1989; Frankfurt 1971). Complete objectivity is an unlikely ideal. But clinicians can, and should, think critically about ways in which prevailing norms and values may be influencing their understanding of the world and their ways of being in it. (Potter 2003, 11) Professor Potter also quite effectively persuades that a comprehensive understanding of disorders that occur mostly in women (e.g., somatization disorder) must effectively comprehend feminist scholarship and the sociocultural realities of gender. The concept of the commodification of the female body has been informative in both the epidemiology and treatment of yet another woman's disorder, anorexia nervosa. And although the linkages of somatic commodification to self-injurious behavior may not appear to be so straightforward, the paper points the way to deeper and possibly richer explanations of phenomena that seem at first glance to be inexplicable.The introduction of the concept of uptake into clinical contexts is also a valuable contribution. Those of us familiar with the traditions of psychotherapy recognize a concept both familiar and central. Uptake has family resemblance to the empathic attitude so extensively discussed by both Rogers and Kohut. Those with hermeneutic leanings will recognize affinities with Verstehen and the Gadamerian anticipation of completeness (Vorgriff der Vollkommenheit). Any truly humanistic approach to treatment or diagnosis must encompass the lived experience of the patient. This is not to... (shrink)

This paper describes a presentation on ethics for accounting and business students. In 2001 and 2002, major corporate failures such as Enron and Worldcom, combined with questionable accounting practices, made ethics a paramount concern to persons working in business and accounting. While financial statement analysis and regulatory requirements are important technical topics, the issue of ethics provides faculty a unique and very appropriate setting to discuss deeper truths about doing business and living life well. This paper briefly describes the development (...) and assessment of one approach to presenting ethics built around a computerized slide show (PowerPoint). The goal of the presentation is to increase students’ understanding of the essential role of ethics to accounting and business. Following the presentation, students indicated a heightened recognition of the importance of ethics. Educators should do all that they can to encourage students to do the “right” thing, even in difficult circumstances. This encouragement may serve them well in school and later in their careers. (shrink)

Literary criticism at the present moment seems ready to open its doors once again to the outside world, even if that world is only a series of other academic disciplines, each cloistered in its own way. For the reader of black African literature in French, the opening comes none too soon. The program for reading Camara Laye, Ahmadou Kourouma, and Yambo Ouologuem should never have been the program prescribed for Rousseau, Wordsworth, or Blanchot. If one is willing to read a (...) literature that might not be a rewriting of Hegel , and if the negative knowledge of recent theoretical criticism is questioned in the universality of its applications, then what is really open to a Western reader of non-Western literature? Claiming a break with his/her own culture and critical upbringing, can he/she the Other, the African, as if from an authentically African point of view, interpreting Africa in African terms, perceiving rather than projecting?The goal of breaking through the nets of Western criticism, of reading African literature in a nonethnocentric, nonprojective fashion, will remain both indisputably desirable and ultimately unattainable. No matter how many languages I learn or ethnologies I study, I cannot make myself into an African. The Western scholar’s claim to mastery of things African, albeit motivated by xenophilia rather than xenophobia, risks subjugation of the object to a new set of Western models. J. P. Makouta-M’Boukou rightly scolds Western critics who refuse to take into account the distance between themselves and African culture, and who read African literature only in function of their own cultural context.1 Wole Soyinka, more forbiddingly, complains: “We black Africans have been blandly invited to submit ourselves to a second epoch of colonisation—this time by a universal-humanoid abstraction defined and conducted by individuals whose theories and prescriptions are derived from the apprehension of their world and their history, their social neuroses and their value systems.”2 1. See J. P. Makouta-M’Boukou, Introduction à l’étude du roman négro-africain de langue française , p. 9.2. Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature, and the African World , p. x. Christopher L. Miller, Charles B. G. Murphy Assistant Professor of French and of African and Afro-American Studies at Yale University, is author of Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French . He is working at present on a study of francophone black African literature, for which he will have a Fulbright Africa Research grant. (shrink)

Accounting educators are being called on to provide a greater emphasis on ethics education. This paper examines three important issues concerning ethics education in accounting. First, the question of whether ethics can indeed be taught is examined. Next, several innovative approaches are presented which have been used by accounting educators to integrate ethics into the classroom. Finally, results of a survey of students concerning their perspectives of ethical issues in accounting education, the accounting profession, and society at large are presented (...) and discussed. Survey results reveal that students consider a lack of ethics damaging to the accounting profession and society. Results also indicate that accounting students are seeking ethical and moral direction. (shrink)

A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney U (...) test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

The humanitarian thought did not encounter such challenges that we face today. Biotechnologies outline the perspectives of “posthuman” personology, while digitalization and robotization of almost all spheres of social practice bring to the fore the idea of homodicy – justifying the need for human existence. The article analyzes four blocks of challenges to humanitarian knowledge: (1) achievements in medicine, prosthetics, transplantology and genetic engineering, which outlined the separation of a sentient subject from traditional anthropomorphism (“posthuman” personology); (2) studies of the (...) brain neurophysiology, which advanced new arguments against free will; (3) costs of ill-considered propaganda of human rights; (4) digitization of almost all socio-cultural practices – from economics and military affairs to the formation and functioning of authority. Digitalization permeates all these “problematization fields,” setting their common conceptual and technological platform. In this regard, the question arises of the humanitarian expertise of modern technologies and the projects of education, communication and management, which implemented with their help. That expertise deals with not only the consequences, progress or even the possibility of implementing such projects, but also with their necessity. The focus and criteria of such expertise are important. Obviously, it cannot be directed only at the preservation of the biological species of homo sapiens and the conditions of its survival. Paradoxical choice arises in a situation where freedom and free will are questioned: which is more important – homo or sapiens? It is time for a clear distinction between the concepts of humanism and humanitarianism, including in the latter the posthuman personology. If humanitarianism is a personology of free spirit, then humanism seems to have a place next to economism and nationalism as forms of confined humanitarianism. This wide range of problems requires comprehension not only of their content but also of the methodology of the humanities and of the prospects of the humanities in modern society. (shrink)

In CQ n.s. 26 . 62–84 I argued that the defeat of Sparta in 371 B.C. was not due to the pursuit of unwise policies towards the other Greek states. Unwise policies there had been. Sparta being by no means superior to Athens in the formulation of foreign policy, but these did not affect the position on the eve of Leuctra when, with Thebes politically isolated, and with some of the Boeotians disaffected, Cieombrotus at the head of a numerically superior (...) Spartan and allied army was poised for the, destruction of Theban power; a triumph of policy it must have seemed. Sparta failed for military reasons. Her army was unequal to the military genius of Epaminondas. (shrink)