Background: People with a personality disorder suffer from enduring inflexible patterns in cognitions and emotions, leading to significant subjective distress, affecting both self and interpersonal functioning. In clinical practice, Dance Movement Therapy is provided to clients with a PD, and although research continuously confirms the value of DMT for many populations, to date, there is very limited information available on DMT and PD. For this study, a systematic literature review on DMT and PD was conducted to identify the content of (...) the described DMT interventions and the main treatment themes to focus upon in DMT for PD.Methods: A systematic search was conducted across the following databases: EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed, WEB OF SCIENCE, PsycINFO/OVID, and SCOPUS following the PRISMA guidelines. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme for qualitative studies was used to rank the quality of the articles. The Oxford Center for Evidence-based Medicine standards were applied to determine the hierarchical level of best evidence. Quantitative content analysis was used to identify the intervention components: intended therapeutic goals, therapeutic activities leading to these goals, and suggested therapeutic effects following from these activities. A thematic synthesis approach was applied to analyze and formulate overarching themes.Results: Among 421 extracted articles, four expert opinions met the inclusion criteria. Six overarching themes were found for DMT interventions for PD: self-regulation, interpersonal relationships, integration of self, processing experiences, cognition, and expression and symbolization in movement/dance. No systematic descriptions of DMT interventions for PD were identified. A full series of intervention components could be synthesized for the themes of self-regulation, interpersonal relationships, and cognition. The use of body-oriented approaches and cognitive strategies was in favor of dance-informed approaches.Conclusions: Dance movement therapists working with PD clients focus in their interventions on body-related experiences, non-verbal interpersonal relationships, and to a lesser extent, cognitive functioning. A methodological line for all intervention components was synthesized for the themes of self-regulation, interpersonal relationships, and cognition, of importance for developing systematic intervention descriptions. Future research could focus on practitioners' expertise in applying DMT interventions for PD to develop systematic intervention descriptions and explore the suitability of the identified themes for clinical application. Clients' experiences could offer essential insights on how DMT interventions could address PD pathology and specific PD categories. (shrink)

In the debate surrounding the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing in prenatal screening programmes, the concept of routinisation is often used to refer to concerns and potential negative consequences of the test. A literature analysis shows that routinisation has many different meanings, which can be distinguished in three major versions of the concept. Each of these versions comprises several inter-related fears and concerns regarding prenatal screening and particularly regarding NIPT in three areas: informed choice, freedom to choose and consequences for (...) people with a disability. Three of the strongest arguments raised under the flag of routinisation are assessed for their validity: the threat that NIPT poses to informed choice, the potential increase in uptake of first-trimester prenatal screening and its consequences for social pressure to participate in screening or terminate affected pregnancies, and the negative consequences for disabled people. These routinisation arguments lack empirical or normative ground. However, the results of this analysis do not imply that no attention should be paid to possible problems surrounding the introduction of NIPT. At least two problems remain and should be addressed: there should be an ongoing debate about the requirements of informed choice, particularly related to an expanded scope of prenatal screening. Also, reproductive autonomy can only be achieved when expecting parents’ options are variegated, real and valuable, so that they can continue to choose whether or not to screen or to terminate a pregnancy. (shrink)

Informed consent is a key condition for prenatal screening programmes to reach their aim of promoting reproductive autonomy. Reaching this aim is currently being challenged with the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in first-trimester prenatal screening programmes: amongst others its procedural ease—it only requires a blood draw and reaches high levels of reliability—might hinder women’s understanding that they should make a personal, informed decision about screening. We offer arguments for a renewed recognition and use of informed consent compared to (...) informed choice, and for a focus on value-consistent choices and personalized informational preferences. We argue for a three-step counselling model in which three decision moments are distinguished and differently addressed: (1) professionals explore women’s values concerning whether and why they wish to know whether their baby has a genetic disorder; (2) women receive layered medical-technical information and are asked to make a decision about screening; (3) during post-test counselling, women are supported in decision-making about the continuation or termination of their pregnancy. This model might also be applicable in other fields of genetic (pre-test) counselling, where techniques for expanding genome analysis and burdensome test-outcomes challenge counselling of patients. (shrink)

Informed consent is a key condition for prenatal screening programmes to reach their aim of promoting reproductive autonomy. Reaching this aim is currently being challenged with the introduction of non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in first‐trimester prenatal screening programmes: amongst others its procedural ease—it only requires a blood draw and reaches high levels of reliability—might hinder women’s understanding that they should make a personal, informed decision about screening. We offer arguments for a renewed recognition and use of informed consent compared to (...) informed choice, and for a focus on value‐consistent choices and personalized informational preferences. We argue for a three‐step counselling model in which three decision moments are distinguished and differently addressed: (1) professionals explore women’s values concerning whether and why they wish to know whether their baby has a genetic disorder; (2) women receive layered medical‐technical information and are asked to make a decision about screening; (3) during post‐test counselling, women are supported in decision‐making about the continuation or termination of their pregnancy. This model might also be applicable in other fields of genetic (pre‐test) counselling, where techniques for expanding genome analysis and burdensome test‐outcomes challenge counselling of patients. (shrink)

The introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing in healthcare systems around the world offers an opportunity to reconsider funding policies for prenatal screening. In some countries with universal access healthcare systems, pregnant women and their partners are asked to pay for NIPT. In this paper, we discuss two important rationales for charging women for NIPT: to prevent increased uptake of NIPT and to promote informed choice. First, given the aim of prenatal screening, high or low uptake rates are not intrinsically desirable (...) or undesirable. Using funding policies to negatively affect uptake, however, is at odds with the aim of screening. Furthermore, copayment disproportionally affects those of lower socioeconomic status, which conflicts with justice requirements and impedes equal access to prenatal screening. Second, we argue that although payment models may influence pregnant women’s choice behaviours and perceptions of the relevance of NIPT, the copayment requirement does not necessarily lead to better-informed choices. On the contrary, external influences on women’s personal choices for or against prenatal screening should ideally be avoided. To improve informed decision-making, healthcare systems should instead invest in adequate non-directive, value-focused pretest counselling. This paper concludes that requiring copayments for NIPT in universal access healthcare systems fails to promote reproductive autonomy and is unfair. (shrink)

Although Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has increased our ability to test and diagnose, its results are often not clear-cut and require a complex interpretation and negotiation process by both healthcare professionals and patients involved. In this paper, we explore how diagnoses identified through NGS are socially shaped under influence of the broader social context. Using an analytical framework stemming from the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies, with a focus on the construction of diagnosis and the (...) role of uncertainty in medicine, we analyze the existing corpus of literature on NGS diagnostic practices. We show how in this early implementation phase of NGS, in which standardization efforts are not yet solidified, the boundary struggles around diagnoses obtained through NGS are particularly visible. We discuss the different steps in the diagnosis shaping process and what it subsequently entails to give and a receive a diagnosis using NGS. (shrink)

Ecologists are challenged by the need to bridge and synthesize different approaches and theories to obtain a coherent understanding of ecosystems in a changing world. Both food web theory and regime shift theory shine light on mechanisms that confer stability to ecosystems, but from different angles. Empirical food web models are developed to analyze how equilibria in real multi-trophic ecosystems are shaped by species interactions, and often include linear functional response terms for simple estimation of interaction strengths from observations. Models (...) of regime shifts focus on qualitative changes of equilibrium points in a slowly changing environment, and typically include non-linear functional response terms. Currently, it is unclear how the stability of an empirical food web model, expressed as the rate of system recovery after a small perturbation, relates to the vulnerability of the ecosystem to collapse. Here, we conduct structural sensitivity analyses of classical consumer-resource models in equilibrium along an environmental gradient. Specifically, we change non-proportional interaction terms into proportional ones, while maintaining the equilibrium biomass densities and material flux rates, to analyze how alternative model formulations shape the stability properties of the equilibria. The results reveal no consistent relationship between the stability of the original models and the proportionalized versions, even though they describe the same biomass values and material flows. We use these findings to critically discuss whether stability analysis of observed equilibria by empirical food web models can provide insight into regime shift dynamics, and highlight the challenge of bridging alternative modelling approaches in ecology and beyond. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Alcohol use disorder is a burden to society creating social and health problems. Detection of AUD and its effects on the brain are difficult to assess. This problem is enhanced by the comorbid use of other substances such as nicotine that has been present in previous studies. Recent machine learning algorithms have raised the attention of researchers as a useful tool in studying and detecting AUD. This work uses AUD and controls samples free of any other substance use to assess (...) the performance of a set of commonly used machine learning classifiers detecting AUD from resting state functional network connectivity derived from independent component analysis. The cohort used included 51 alcohol dependent subjects and 51 control subjects. Despite alcohol, none of the 102 subjects reported use of nicotine, cannabis or any other dependence or habit formation substance. Classification features consisted of whole brain rsFNC estimates undergoing a feature selection process using a random forest approach. Features were then fed to 10 different machine learning classifiers to be evaluated based on their classification performance. A neural network classifier showed the highest performance with an area under the curve of 0.79. Other good performers with similar AUC scores were logistic regression, nearest neighbor, and support vector machine classifiers. The worst results were obtained with Gaussian process and quadratic discriminant analysis. The feature selection outcome pointed to functional connections between visual, sensorimotor, executive control, reward, and salience networks as the most relevant for classification. We conclude that AUD can be identified using machine learning classifiers in the absence of nicotine comorbidity. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol (...) on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli. (shrink)

Out of the Margin is the first book to consider feminist concerns across the whole domain of economics. In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in interest on the relation between gender and economics. Feminists have found much of concern in the way the economics has written women out of its history, built its theories around masculinist values, failed to take proper account of women and their work when measuring the economy and ignored most of the policy issues (...) that press most heavily upon women. This book is a firm rejection of this marginalized position. Including contributions from leading feminist economists from the US and Europe, the book offers a richness of new insights in addressing the absence of women, both as subject and object, in the history of economic thought. Out of the Margin also explores the philosophical roots of rational economic man, power relations and conflicts within the family, the limitations of relying on secondary data, the need for new data and research, the policy implications of neo-classical economic models and the need for fundamental research in policy making. With its range and depth of coverage, this is not only an excellent introduction to the field but also indispensible for anyone looking for an in-depth analysis of gender and economics. (shrink)

Two experiments report on the construction of the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (SOARS), a new measure for quantifying alterations to agency. In Experiment 1, 370 participants completed a preliminary version of the scale following hypnosis. Factor analysis revealed two underlying factors: Involuntariness and Effortlessness. In Experiment 2, this two factor structure was confirmed in a sample of 113 low, medium and high hypnotisable participants. The two factors, Involuntariness and Effortlessness, correlated significantly with hypnotisability and pass rates for ideomotor, challenge (...) and cognitive items. Twelve week test-retest correlations showed that Involuntariness was highly stable, but Effortlessness only moderately stable. Analysis of the combined datasets from Experiments 1 and 2 showed both SOARS scores were significantly related to the derived factors of Woody, Barnier, and McConkey's (2005) 4-factor model of hypnotisability. This scale clarifies conceptual confusion around agentive action and provides empirical support for a multifactorial account of sense of agency. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

The huge amounts spent on store security and crime prevention worldwide, not only costs international businesses, but also amounts to a hidden tax on those law-binding consumers who bear higher prices. Most previous research has focused on shoplifting and ignored many other ways in which consumers cheat businesses. Using a hybrid of both qualitative research and survey approaches in four countries, an index of 37 activities was developed to examine consumers’ unethical activities across UK, US, France, and Austria. The findings (...) indicate that around three quarters of consumers in all four countries can be classified as heavy offenders for these minor cheats. The paper argues that government agencies, marketers, and retailers should adopt more pro-active preventative approaches, rather than reactive loss limitation measures to combat unethical behavior. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between the ethical behavior and customer orientation of insurance sales agents engaged in the selling of complex services, e.g. health, life, auto, and property insurance. The effect of ethical and customer-oriented behavior, measured by the SOCO scale (Saxe and Weitz, 1982), on the annual premiums generated by the agents is also investigated. Customeroriented sales agents are found to engage in less unethical behavior than their sales-oriented counterparts. Further, sales-oriented agents are found to perceive greater levels (...) of unethical behavior among their significant others. Alarmingly, higher levels of sales premiums are found among those agents who engage in unethical behavior. (shrink)

Legal scholars attribute a great deal of importance to the linguistic dimension behind recodification. According to them, language contributes greatly to the improvement of both the accessibility and clarity of the law. Nevertheless, little research on the linguistic aspects of codification exists within both linguistics and legal theory. Consequently, it seems worthwhile to study this linguistic dimension more in depth. To this aim, the recent legislative proposals to recodify various economic, civil and criminal codes in Belgium serve as a useful (...) case study to improve our understanding of the linguistic challenges of recodification. In this article we will look at the linguistic comments made by the Belgian Council of State, a state organ which offers technical advice to the legislator, on the relevant proposals and consider the type of linguistic comments made, and, their implementation by the legislator. On the one hand, such an analysis allows us to single out the linguistic problems accompanying the Belgian recodification and, on the other, to elaborate on them with the help of the insights provided by legal theory. In doing so, we hope for our analysis to be a useful point of reference both for research on the Belgian recodification and other legal/linguistic approaches to recodification in general. (shrink)

The Guarded Negation Fragment (GNFO) is a fragment of first-order logic that contains all positive existential formulas, can express the first-order translations of basic modal logic and of many description logics, along with many sentences that arise in databases. It has been shown that the syntax of GNFO is restrictive enough so that computational problems such as validity and satisfiability are still decidable. This suggests that, in spite of its expressive power, GNFO formulas are amenable to novel optimizations. In this (...) article we study the model theory of GNFO formulas. Our results include effective preservation theorems for GNFO, effective Craig Interpolation and Beth Definability results, and the ability to express the certain answers of queries with respect to a large class of GNFO sentences within very restricted logics. (shrink)

Respect for an individual’s autonomy determines that doctors should inform patients if their illness is terminal. This becomes complicated when the terminal diagnosis is recent and death is imminent. The authors examine the admission to paediatric intensive care of an adolescent with terminal respiratory failure. While fully ventilated, the patient was kept sedated and comfortable but when breathing spontaneously he was capable of non-verbal communication and understanding. Once resedated and reintubated, intense debate ensued over whether to wake the patient to (...) tell him he was going to die. The authors discuss the ethical arguments that surrounded their decision. (shrink)

Much attention has been paid recently to the role of anomalous experiences in the aetiology of certain types of psychopathology, e.g. in the formation of delusions. We examine, instead, the top-down influence of pre-existing beliefs and affective factors in shaping an individual’s characterisation of anomalous sensory experiences. Specifically we investigated the effects of paranormal beliefs and alexithymia in determining the intensity and quality of an altered state of consciousness . Fifty five participants took part in a sweat lodge ceremony, a (...) traditional shamanic ritual which was unfamiliar to them. Participants reported significant alterations in their state of consciousness, quantified using the ‘APZ’ questionnaire, a standardized measure of ASC experience. Participants endorsing paranormal beliefs compatible with shamanic mythology, and those showing difficulty identifying feelings scored higher on positive dimensions of ASC experience. Our findings demonstrate that variation in an individual’s characterisation of anomalous experiences is nuanced by pre-existing beliefs and affective factors. (shrink)

In his lifetime, Ralph Waldo Emerson became the most widely known man of letters in America, establishing himself as a prolific poet, essayist, popular lecturer, and an advocate of social reforms who was nevertheless suspicious of reform and reformers. Emerson achieved some reputation with his verse, corresponded with many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures of his day, and during an off and on again career as a Unitarian minister, delivered and later published a number of controversial sermons. Emerson’s (...) enduring reputation, however, is as a philosopher, an aphoristic writer (like Friedrich Nietzsche) and a quintessentially American thinker whose championing of the American Transcendental movement and influence on Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, William James, and others would alone secure him a prominent place in American cultural history. (shrink)

In the final decades of the 20th century, issues such as identity, Otherness and the role of social and cultural boundaries have been prominent in social theory, sociology and cultural studies. In this context, an analysis of Bauman's work is important because it raises pertinent questions pertaining to the nature of social and cultural boundaries and the nature of boundary construction under modernity. The metaphors of inside and outside and the idea of the boundary are significant in Bauman's critique of (...) modernity's search for a meta-order and in his examination of strangerhood. The article illustrates how this ordering process manifests itself at the individual and societal levels of modernity. Bauman's contention is that modernity's search for a meta-order leads to the construction of boundaries and to exclusionary practices. It is the presence of the Third, for Bauman, which threatens the certainty of order. Different images of the stranger in Bauman's work are identified and the ways in which Bauman's conception of freedom and `community' is intrinsically linked to his work on the ambivalent stranger are demonstrated. (shrink)

We investigate the extension of monadic second-order logic of order with cardinality quantifiers "there exists uncountably many sets such that... " and "there exists continuum many sets such that... ". We prove that over the class of countable linear orders the two quantifiers are equivalent and can be effectively and uniformly eliminated. Weaker or partial elimination results are obtained for certain wider classes of chains. In particular, we show that over the class of ordinals the uncountability quantifier can be effectively (...) and uniformly eliminated. Our argument makes use of Shelah's composition method and Ramsey-like theorem for dense linear orders. (shrink)

We study the preservation of certain properties under products of classes of finite structures. In particular, we examine indivisibility, definable self-similarity, the amalgamation property, and the disjoint n-amalgamation property. We explore how each of these properties interacts with the lexicographic product, full product, and free superposition of classes of structures. Additionally, we consider the classes of theories which admit configurations indexed by these products. In particular, we show that, under mild assumptions, the products considered in this article do not yield (...) new classes of theories. (shrink)

In an effort to ensure access to justice, Australian courts have fashioned a unique hybrid opt in-opt out process known as “closed classes.” The rationale that underlies closed classes is to prevent free-riding that may undercut the position of funders and class action law firms reliant upon entering into agreements with a critical mass of class members. However, multiple closed classes also pose problems for respondents seeking the comfort of finality. To secure settlement and thus ultimately benefit participating class members, (...) Australian courts have formulated a procedure whereby the closed class is opened and nonparticipating class members are invited to either register their claims or opt out so that thereafter those who do not register and those who opt out are effectively precluded by res judicata from making further related claims. We argue that Australian courts’ support of closed classes, while driven by pragmatism, has produced unintended consequences. Many relate to the ethical dilemmas faced by class action law firms and litigation funders seeking to advance the interests of participating class members over and above those of nonparticipating class members. The Full Federal Court has recently approved an alternative common fund approach. However, questions remain as to whether Australian courts are appropriately equipped to measure and compare the alternative transaction costs associated with the current and proposed approach, and whether they are appropriately equipped to determine the commercial rectitude and fairness of litigation funding agreements. (shrink)

This paper takes as its starting point a decision to accept a particular commission for a piece of educational research which is subject to contractual restrictions. In the light of recent debate on the contentious politics and ethics of contractual research, it then addresses the problem of what might constitute an ethical defence, or critique, of such research and such contracts.

This paper takes as its starting point a decision to accept a particular commission for a piece of educational research which is subject to contractual restrictions. In the light of recent debate on the contentious politics and ethics of contractual research, it then addresses the problem of what might constitute an ethical defence, or critique, of such research and such contracts.

The idea of experience has been taken at face value in scholarly accounts of the migration experience, consequently very little attention has been given to how this idea has acquired its meaning and how it relates to the category of the ‘migration experience’. This article provides an analytical investigation into the nature of the phenomenon known as the ‘migrant experience’; firstly, by examining mediated and non-mediated conceptions of experience as well as an alternative account of experience associated with strangeness/disruption. Through (...) this conceptual lens, I then critically consider how the migration experience, as an analytical construct, has been constituted through a spatial–temporal framework, a critical migration perspective, and within the phenomenological and existential accounts. In conclusion, these approaches, as I will demonstrate, are not necessarily mutually exclusive, rather they complement and, at times, are in tension with each other. Such an examination will provide some conceptual clarity that is currently lacking in empirical work on an ‘experience’ categorized as migration. (shrink)