In the context of a global pandemic that started in 2020, the Chilean higher education institution Universidad Andrés Bello faced the challenge of giving continuity to its already established blended program for English courses while also starting the implementation of a high-stakes certification assessment for its students using the Test of English for International Communication Bridge. This study sought to evaluate how much of a mediating factor online teaching presence could be in the context of test preparation within a language (...) course in aspects related to autonomous learning and perceived learning outcomes. A mixed-methods approach was used. It included a survey applied to 1,642 eligible students of the English program. These quantitative data were complemented with students’ comments and teacher interviews. After triangulating quantitative and qualitative data, teaching presence was clearly perceived to be a relevant aspect of the online experience in the studied courses. However, both students’ and teachers’ voices evidenced pervasive challenges and tensions that hinder the potentially transformative benefits that online learning is expected to bring about. (shrink)

Background: Nurses and nursing students appear vulnerable to moral distress when faced with ethical dilemmas or decision-making in clinical practice. As a result, they may experience professional dissatisfaction and their relationships with patients, families, and colleagues may be compromised. The impact of moral distress may manifest as anger, feelings of guilt and frustration, a desire to give up the profession, loss of self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Objectives: The purpose of this review was to describe how dilemmas and environmental, relational, and (...) organizational factors contribute to moral distress in undergraduate student nurses during their clinical experience and professional education. Research design: The research design was a systematic literature review. Method: The search produced a total of 157 articles published between 2004 and 2014. These were screened with the assessment sheet designed by Hawker and colleagues. Four articles matched the search criteria (one quantitative study and three qualitative), and these were separately read and analyzed by the researchers. The process of review and analysis of the data was supervised by a colleague experienced in moral distress who provided an independent quality check. Ethical consideration: Since this was a systematic review, no ethical approval was required. Findings: From the analysis, it emerged that inequalities and healthcare disparities, the relationship with the mentor, and students’ individual characteristics can all impact negatively on the decisions taken and the nursing care provided, generating moral distress. All these factors condition both the clinical experience and learning process, in addition to the professional development and the possible care choices of future nurses. Conclusion: Few studies dealt with moral distress in the setting of nurse education, and there is a knowledge gap related to this phenomenon. The results of this review underline the need for further research regarding interventions that can minimize moral distress in undergraduate nursing students. (shrink)

Testing assumptions proposed by Frenzel’s reciprocal model of teacher emotions (e.g., Frenzel, 2014 ), this study explored relations between teachers’ appraisals concerning the attainment and importance of their teaching goals, and their emotions. Specifically, we addressed teachers’ goals of high student performance, motivation, discipline, and high-quality teacher–student relationship and three key discrete emotions, namely, enjoyment, anger, and anxiety, during teaching. We had 244 secondary school teachers (70.1% female) self-report their goal attainment and importance appraisals and emotional experiences with (...) respect to up to three different classes they currently taught. Results from single- and two-level multivariate multiple regression analyses largely supported the relevance of the goal attainment appraisals for teachers’ emotions both on the between-person and the within-person level. Goal importance appraisals proved to be of secondary relevance. On the between-person level, those teachers who positively appraised the attainment of motivation, discipline, and teacher–student relationship quality proved to report more enjoyment and less anxiety and anger. On the within-person level, teachers reported enjoying teaching those classes more, which they perceived as better performing, more motivated and disciplined, and with whom they had a better relationship. Anger and anxiety were negatively linked to appraisals pertaining to the attainment of discipline and teacher–student relationship quality. Across both analysis perspectives, teacher–student relationship quality attainment showed particularly strong links with all three emotions. Because teachers’ subjective evaluations regarding student behaviors were shown to be highly relevant for their emotions, we conclude that teachers could be supported in modifying their emotional experiences through cognitive reappraisal. Interventions targeting teachers’ relationships with students, and their cognitive judgments thereof, seem particularly promising. (shrink)

The self- vs. external-regulation behavior theory, SR-ER Theory model has postulated the Self-Regulation /Non or De-Regulation/Dys-regulation continuum in the person and in their context. The model also generates a behavioral heuristic that allows us to predict and explain the variability of other dependent behavioral variables in a range of scenarios. Consequently, the objective of this study was to validate the different scales prepared on the basis of the theory presented. A total of 469 students voluntarily completed at different times the (...) five questionnaires presented, to give a total of 1,385 completed questionnaires. Using an ex post facto design, descriptive, correlational, confirmatory factorial analysis, reliability, and concurrent validity analyses were carried out. The scales were analyzed individually and as a whole. The results showed the acceptable structure of scale and consistent levels of reliability. The five levels generated by the SR-NR-DR combinatory heuristic that arises from the theoretical model determined significant differences in the levels of the variables analyzed for each psychological context. We discuss the theoretical implications and the implications for the assessment and improvement of the behaviors analyzed in function of the personal and contextual regulation levels evaluated. (shrink)

For much of 2021, allocating the scarce supply of Covid‐19 vaccines was the world's most pressing bioethical challenge, and similar challenges may recur for novel therapies and future vaccines. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) identified three fundamental ethical principles to guide the process: maximize benefits, promote justice, and mitigate health inequities. We argue that critical components of the recommended protocol were internally inconsistent with these principles. Specifically, the ACIP (...) violated its principles by recommending overly broad health care worker priority in phase 1a, using being at least seventy‐five years of age as the only criterion to identify individuals at high risk of death from Covid‐19 during phase 1b, failing to recommend place‐based vaccine distribution, and implicitly endorsing first‐come, first‐served allocation. More rigorous empirical work and the development of a complete ethical framework that recognizes trade‐offs between principles may have prevented these mistakes and saved lives. (shrink)

Against the background of the current debate in Germany, the paper explains and discusses ethical aspects of alternative consent systems for post-mortem organ donation. The focus is on opt-out and prompted choice solutions. The authors explain why libertarian paternalism might favour a prompted choice.

Knowledge brokers are among the main channels of communication between scientists and the public and a key element to establishing a relation of trust between the two. But translating knowledge from the scientific community to a wider audience presents several difficulties, which can be accentuated in times of crisis. In this paper we study some of the problems that knowledge brokers face when communicating in times of crisis. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we collected interviews with Italian (...) experts that played a major role as knowledge brokers in the local media. We asked them questions about five main topics: the features and role of science communicators; the use of language in communicating science; the importance of the relation of trust with the public; the peculiarity of communicating in a context of emergency; the problem of disagreement among experts, and its public perception and communication. The goal of this paper is to understand, through the words of knowledge brokers themselves, what they consider as best practices (and obstacles) to create trust between scientists and the public. Our empirical work can inform normative accounts of what knowledge brokering should be about. (shrink)

While several recent evaluation studies have shown the efficacy of parent training programs for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, manual-based training in German is still scarce. To address this gap, we developed a specific modularized training program for parents of children from preschool to pre-adolescent age with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The overarching purpose of the FETASS intervention is to enhance social communication behavior and quality of life of the child by coaching parents. As a proximal target, the FETASS training aims to (...) provide families with behavior management and communication strategies. The development of the training was influenced by published behavioral parent trainings and autism-specific interventions. The training comprises eight weekly sessions and targets families whose children have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder without intellectual and language impairments. As a preliminary pilot study, the purpose was to evaluate the acceptability of the training. Furthermore, the study aimed at initially evaluating social communication behavior, quality of life of the child, parental stress level, and parenting after training in comparison to a treatment as usual group. Exploratively, long-term effects were investigated after 6 months of training as well. In total, 57 families participated. Questionnaires about social communication behavior and quality of life of the child, parental stress, and parenting were administered at three time points. Primary outcome measures were the social communication behavior of the child and the parent’s proxy report on quality of life of the child. Secondary outcome measures were changes in parental stress and parenting behavior. Acceptability of the training was very high and we had almost no dropouts during training. Results for the primary outcome measure of social communication behavior, overall quality of life of the child, and long-term effects on social communication behavior were not significant. While long-term findings for parent stress reduction and for the quality of life of the child are promising, further research has to be done in a future randomized controlled trial. (shrink)

This article examines the construction of parenthood, drawing on Brazilian cisgender, heterosexual, and homosexual couples' experiences in using assisted reproduction technologies (ART), particularly the surrogacy. For that purpose, we interviewed: 1) a lesbian woman who had her daughter through her partner's pregnancy, using ART with anonymous donor semen; 2) a gay man who, together with his partner, used a surrogacy service under contract via a specialised offshore agency; 3) a woman who was a surrogate, in Brazil, for her sister-in-law and (...) brother who lived abroad and, from abroad, sent an embryo fertilised for surrogacy; 4) a woman who resorted to her sister-in-law in order to be a mother by surrogacy, with ovules from the woman herself fertilised with semen from her husband; and 5) the sister-in-law mentioned in 4), who acted as surrogate for her brother and his wife. These interviews made it possible to think about the discursive construction of the legitimacy of such parenthoods, as it is produced by access to, and manipulation and circulation of, reproductive technologies and persons. This biomedical management of bodies sets up a material and discursive circuit that, in turn, produces a complex web of personal, normative, legal, professional and market relationships, particularly with a view to construction of a parenthood anchored in a notion of biologically-constituted origin. In this respect, biological, affective and social bonds merge to produce a precise placement of who is the father and/or who is the mother, as well as who are the important others and how they are linked to the child in a broader web of parenthood. (shrink)

Key messages The research environment has changed since clinical equipoise was first proposed 30 years ago New trial designs—such as umbrella and basket trials, adaptive platform trials, and cluster randomised trials—raise new ethical challenges for evaluating the state of scientific uncertainty and communicating about risks with patients and participants Clinical equipoise needs to evolve We propose the design of specific guidelines to provide ethics committees and trialists with instructions for how to evaluate equipoise in the context of new designs and (...) biomarkers and how to optimise communication with participants. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to address the paradox of citizenship cost by hypothesizing an indirect rather than a direct effect of altruistic citizenship behavior (ACB) on employee work–family conflict (WFC) through coworker support (CWS). Data were gathered in a three-wave longitudinal survey of employees from private commercial banks (N= 318). A multiple linear autoregressive longitudinal mediation model was analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that rather than directly, ACB affects indirectly employee WFC (...) through CWS. This indirect effect is negative, which reflects that the costs of citizenship behavior are paradoxical. The present study contributes to the ongoing debate on the positive and negative outcomes of employee citizenship behavior by providing empirical evidence on the beneficial rather than harmful effect of performing such behavior. For organizational managers, promoting a culture of CWS by encouraging altruistic behaviors can be a most viable strategy to reduce WFC among their employees. The study discusses its limitations and provides future research directions. (shrink)

California has focused on health equity in the state’s COVID-19 reopening plan. The Blueprint for a Safer Economy assigns each of California’s 58 counties into 1 of 4 tiers based on 2 metrics: test positivity rate and adjusted case rate. To advance to the next less-restrictive tier, counties must meet that tier’s test positivity and adjusted case rate thresholds. In addition, counties must have a plan for targeted investments within disadvantaged communities, and counties with more than 106 000 residents must (...) meet an equity metric. California's explicit incorporation of health equity into its reopening plan underscores the interrelated fate of its residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and creates incentives for action. This article evaluates the benefits and challenges of this novel health equity focus, and outlines recommendations for other US states to address disparities in their reopening plans. (shrink)

The present study examined the role of morality, competence, and attractiveness as perceived from faces in predicting hiring decisions for men and women. Results showed that for both female and male applicants, facial competence significantly predicted the hiring decision directly and indirectly, through the mediation of the overall impression. Decisions concerning female applicants were, however, significantly predicted by multiple dimensions—that is, facial morality, facial competence, and attractiveness—with the mediation of the overall impression. Facial competence was the only significant predictor of (...) impression and, in turn, hiring decision about men. These findings resonate the mottoVirtutem forma decorat, “Beauty adorns virtue,” painted by Leonardo da Vinci on the reverse side of the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, and suggest that women’s chances of getting a job are less than those of men whenever they do not show a moralandcompetentandattractive face. (shrink)

The way Leibniz applied his philosophy to mathematics has been the subject of longstanding debates. A key piece of evidence is his letter to Masson on bodies. We offer an interpretation of this often misunderstood text, dealing with the status of infinite divisibility innature, rather than inmathematics. In line with this distinction, we offer a reading of the fictionality of infinitesimals. The letter has been claimed to support a reading of infinitesimals according to which they are logical fictions, contradictory in (...) their definition, and thus absolutely impossible. The advocates of such a reading have lumped infinitesimals with infinite wholes, which are rejected by Leibniz as contradicting the part–whole principle. Far from supporting this reading, the letter is arguably consistent with the view that infinitesimals, as inassignable quantities, arementis fictiones, i.e., (well-founded) fictions usable in mathematics, but possibly contrary to the Leibnizian principle of the harmony of things and not necessarily idealizing anything inrerum natura. Unlike infinite wholes, infinitesimals—as well as imaginary roots and other well-founded fictions—may involve accidental (as opposed to absolute) impossibilities, in accordance with the Leibnizian theories of knowledge and modality. (shrink)

RESUMOO presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar os meandros da composição e suas intertextualidades na polêmica do samba entre Noel Rosa e Wilson Batista, observando o dialogismo na interação verbal e musical entre os autores e os diversos textos da década de 1930. Ao apurar os ouvidos sobre a "polêmica do samba" observa-se que as composições revelam tensões inexoráveis entre um mundo festivo do "malandro" e os limites da realidade da época. Desse modo, com suporte em estudos que tratam deste (...) tema, busca-se trazer à tona um insight sobre este "duelo" musical que está, certamente, muito mais disseminado na sociedade que restrito a questões puramente estéticas.ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the meanders of composition and their intertextuality in the samba controversy between Noel Rosa and Wilson Batista. We observe dialogism in the verbal and musical interaction between the samba writers and several texts of the 1930s. When ears are in tune with the "samba controversy," one observes that the compositions reveal inexorable tensions between the festive world of the "malandro" and the limits of the reality of the time. Accordingly, based on studies that address this theme, we aim to present an insight into this musical "duel," which is not restricted to purely aesthetics issues, but certainly disseminated in society. (shrink)

Despite journalism’s commitment to ethical principles such as accuracy, humanity and diversity, compliance with the gender perspective in content is still minimal in approximately one hundred countries. This inequality reinforces misperceptions, imbalances, and perceived differences between men and women. To address this situation, from 2010 to 2021, eight Spanish media companies appointed a new editorial position responsible for self-regulating gender equality. This qualitative study focused on 10 journalists who currently exercise or have exercised that job, to detect, describe and propose (...) the implementation of this new professional role. This study suggests that gender editing has advanced equality in parity of sourcing and the presence of women in the opinion sections, but implementation of equality in overall content is more difficult. Gender editors’ daily work is hampered by a lack of management support and an absence of independence in editorial decisions. (shrink)

Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) are right. Philosophers should pay greater attention to bioethics and bioethicists should pay greater attention to insights from philosophy. This commentary extends t...

This is an essay based on a story with observations, about present and sparkling moments from everyday life coexisting with a mother living with dementia. The story is used to begin philosophical underpinnings reflecting on ‘how it could be otherwise’. Dementia deploys brutal existential experiences such as cognitive deterioration, decline in mental functioning and often hurtful social judgements. The person living with dementia goes through transformation and changes of self. Cognitive decline progressively disrupts the foundations upon which social connectedness is (...) built, often creating a profound sense of insecurity. The challenge for carers and healthcare professionals is therefore to find ways of clarifying a concept of agency. It will be worthwhile developing the ability of attuning into ‘what is there’ arising from every corner of the care situation. Understanding and practicing this can strengthen existence and the experience of connectedness and meaning, empowering the person with dementia. It is important to find ways, relational moves, in which carers and healthcare professionals can embed the creativity appearing in mundane everyday situations filled with surplus of meaning, sharing mental landscapes (and embodied relational understanding) with the person living with dementia – seizing and sharing aesthetic moments (verbal and nonverbal) being present together. We argue that carers and healthcare professionals may find this understanding of care useful. This implies looking into a phenomenological‐hermeneutic perspective developing competences as well as practical wisdom understanding and being aware of the creative and innovative possibilities (often preverbal and unnoticed small things) in everyday life of what we, inspired by psychoanalyst Daniel Stern, call sparkling moments of meeting, creating experience with the other that is personally undergone and lived through in the present. (shrink)

Examines traditional sites of binary thinking in ancient Greek texts and culture to demonstrate surprising ambiguity, especially with regard to sexual difference.

BackgroundMediation analysis is important to test the theoretical framework underpinning an intervention. We therefore aimed to investigate if the healthy body image intervention’s effect on eating disorder symptomatology and use of muscle building supplements was mediated by the change in risk and protective factors for ED development and muscle building supplement use.MethodsThis study used data from the HBI intervention: a cluster randomized controlled universal intervention aiming to promote positive body image and embodiment and reduce the risk for ED development including (...) 30 schools in Norway. A total of 1,713 participants were included in the analyses. Conditional latent growth curve analyses were performed to test for indirect effects on ED symptomatology and weekly frequency of protein and creatine supplement use measured at the 12-month follow-up via change in the proposed mediators.ResultsIn girls, the reduction in ED symptomatology was mediated by positive changes in protective factors and reductions in risk factor scores. Comparable changes in protective and risk factors among boys played no mediating role.ConclusionInterventions aiming to reduce the risk of ED development in girls may benefit from aiming to enhance self-esteem and body image flexibility and reduce perceived media pressure and thin appearance internalization. Future studies should investigate the casual relationship between muscle building supplement use and risk and protective factors for ED development in both girls and boys. (shrink)

Spatial memory relies on encoding, storing, and retrieval of knowledge about objects’ positions in their surrounding environment. Blind people have to rely on sensory modalities other than vision to memorize items that are spatially displaced, however, to date, very little is known about the influence of early visual deprivation on a person’s ability to remember and process sound locations. To fill this gap, we tested sighted and congenitally blind adults and adolescents in an audio-spatial memory task inspired by the classical (...) card game “Memory.” In this research, subjects had to find pairs among sounds displaced on an audio-tactile device composed of loudspeakers covered by tactile sensors. To accomplish this task, participants had to remember the spatialized sounds’ position and develop a proper mental spatial representation of their locations. The test was divided into two experimental conditions of increasing difficulty dependent on the number of sounds to be remembered. Results showed that sighted participants outperformed blind participants in both conditions. Findings were discussed considering the crucial role of visual experience in properly manipulating auditory spatial representations, particularly in relation to the ability to explore complex acoustic configurations. (shrink)

O presente trabalho é decorrente do Projeto de Pesquisa Intervenção “Phenix – a ousadia do renascimento do indivíduo-sujeito – fase IV”, vinculado a Universidade Estadual de Maringá. As teorizações aqui realizadas partiram de encontros realizados entre graduandos e pós-graduandos de psicologia com adolescentes pauperizados de uma escola pública localizada na periferia de Maringá-PR, cujo foco foi propiciar uma reflexão crítica acerca do cotidiano desses adolescentes a partir de Psicanálise e de pressupostos da Teoria Crítica de Adorno. A princípio serão apresentadas (...) nesse trabalho algumas considerações sobre os processos de identificação, adesão e reprodução de discursos totalizantes relacionados a ideias meritocráticas e patriarcalistas que foram discutidas com os adolescentes, com o intuito de desmistificar alguns modelos pré-formatados de família, de homem e de mulher impostos na sociedade contemporânea. Na sequência, serão realizadas breves considerações sobre as especificidades do adolescer dentro de um contexto pauperizado e significativamente marcado pelos imperativos do consumo, via indústria cultural. (shrink)

This perspective paper aims at discussing theoretical principles that could explain how emotion regulation and physical diseases mutually influence each other in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Furthermore, this paper discusses the clinical implications of the functional relationships between emotion regulation, BPD and medical conditions considering dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) as a well-validated therapeutic intervention, which encompasses these issues. The inflexible use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., suppression, experiential avoidance, and rumination) might directly increase the probability of (...) developing physical diseases through a physiological pathway, or indirectly through a behavioral pathway. Some metabolic and chronic medical conditions could significantly impact emotional functioning through biological alterations involved in emotion regulation. Several empirical studies have shown high co-occurrence rates between BPD and several chronic physical diseases, especially ones linked to emotion-based maladaptive behaviors. DBT addresses physical diseases reported by individuals with BPD reducing problematic behaviors functionally associated to emotion dysregulation and identifying physical health as a goal forBuilding a Life Worth Living. (shrink)

We show that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, syntactic traits, modeled here within the generative biolinguistic framework, provide insights into deep-time language history. To support this claim, we have encoded the diversity of nominal structures using 94 universally definable binary parameters, set in 69 languages spanning across up to 13 traditionally irreducible Eurasian families. We found a phylogenetic signal that distinguishes all such families and matches the family-internal tree topologies that are safely established through classical etymological methods and datasets. We have (...) retrieved “near-perfect” phylogenies, which are essentially immune to homoplastic disruption and only moderately influenced by horizontal convergence, two factors that instead severely affect more externalized linguistic features, like sound inventories. This result allows us to draw some preliminary inferences about plausible/implausible cross-family classifications; it also provides a new source of evidence for testing the representation of diversity in syntactic theories. (shrink)

An investigation of ways in which man violates the animal world and examination of role played by various societies throughout the world in protection of animals.

Orphan drug policy often gives ‘special treatment’ to rare diseases, by giving additional priority or making exceptions to specific drugs, based on the rarity of the conditions they aim to treat. This essay argues that the goal of orphan drug policy should be to make prevalence irrelevant to funding decisions. It aims to demonstrate that it is severity, not prevalence, which drives our judgments that important claims are being overlooked when treatments for severe rare diseases are not funded. It shows (...) that prioritising severity avoids problems caused by prioritising rarity, and that it is compatible with a range of normative frameworks. The implications of a severity-based view for drug development are then derived. The severity-based view also accounts for what is wrong with how the current system of drug development unfairly neglects common diseases that burden the developing world. Lastly, the implications of a severity-based view for current orphan drug policies are discussed. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This paper is about syllogistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning from such pairs of premises as, All the chefs are musicians; some of the musicians are painters. We present a computer model that implements the latest account of syllogisms, which is based on the theory of mental models. We also report four experiments that were designed to test this account. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the strategies revealed by the participants' use of paper and pencil as aids to reasoning. Experiment 3 used (...) a new technique to externalize thinking. The participants had to refute, if possible, putative conclusions by constructing external models that were examples of the premises but counterexamples of the conclusions. Experiment 4 used the same techniques to examine the participants' strategies as they drew their own conclusions from syllogistic premises. The results of the experiments showed that individuals not trained in logic can construct counterexamples, that they use similar operations to those implemented in the computer model, but that they rely on a much greater variety of interpretations of premises and of search strategies than the computer model does. We re‐evaluates current theories of syllogistic reasoning in the light of these results. (shrink)

El objetivo de este estudio es mostrar el sentir de los estudiantes de licenciatura durante la contingencia sanitaria. Se realizó un estudio cualitativo a través de la narrativa de 35 estudiantes. Los principales resultados muestran que éstos se enfrentaron a diversos sentimientos y retos en su aprendizaje a lo largo de casi dos años de confinamiento.

This work examines thoughtlessness and seeks to illuminate the necessity and extent that reflection is involved in becoming practically wise within an Aristotelian virtue ethical framework. Derived from an Arendtian reading of Kantian aesthetic judgment, an account of thinking and judging is offered to supplement traditional accounts of practical wisdom.

Blockchain is an open digital ledger technology that has the capability of significantly altering the way that people operations operate in organizations. This research takes a first step in proposing several ways in which the blockchain technology can be used to improve current organizational practices, while also considering the ethical implications. Specifically, the paper examines the role that blockchain technology plays in three primary areas of people operations: entry to the organization, intraorganizational processes, and exit. In each section, the paper (...) reviews the ethical implications from the lenses of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology and contractarianism. The paper concludes that in whole the implementation of blockchain technology in people operations processes can create a more ethical work environment. However, careful implementation is necessary and requires extensive examination of ethical implications in advance. (shrink)

Understanding what it means toconsent is of considerable importance sincesignificant moral issues depend on how this actis defined. For instance, determining whetherconsent has occurred is the deciding factor insexual assault cases; its proper occurrence isa necessary condition for federally fundedhuman subject research. Even though mosttheorists recognize the legal and moralimportance of consent, there is still littleagreement concerning how consent should bedefined, or whether different domains involvingconsent demand context-specific definitions.Understanding what it means to consent isfurther complicated by the fact that currentlegal (...) conceptions are not necessarily groundedin argument; they typically depend on appealsto authority and precedent. The purpose ofthis paper is to use speech act theory toprovide a theoretically grounded conception ofconsent; such a conception can aid in the justresolution of legal and moral disputes thathinge on whether an act of consent occurred. (shrink)

This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of “rich pictures” made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories: one that personifies Spotify and another one that envisions it as a (...) system full of resources. Whereas the first theory emphasizes local conceptions of social relations to make sense of algorithms, the second one stresses the role of algorithms in providing a global experience of music and technology. We analyze why people espouse either one of these theories and how these theories provide users with resources to enact different modalities of power and resistance in relation to recommendation algorithms. We argue that folk theories thus offer a productive way to broaden understanding of what agency means in relation to algorithms. (shrink)