The principles offered by beliefs affect the thinking styles of individuals. Although it has been argued in recent studies that believers and non-believers have different thinking styles, there are few studies examining the relationship between belief and cognitive styles in Muslim groups. In this study, the relationships between intrinsic religious motivation and "critical thinking", which is one of the most desired thinking skills today, and " dichotomous thinking", which can be expressed as black-and-white thinking and primarily associated with negative (...) structures, were examined. The study was carried out with 395 university students, and the data was obtained by a socio-demographic information form, the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale, the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale, and the Dichotomous Thinking Scale. Findings suggested a positive significant relationship between intrinsic religious motivation and critical thinking and dichotomous thinking, and a positive significant relationship between critical thinking and dichotomous thinking. Regarding the relationship between dichotomous thinking and critical thinking, intrinsic religious motivation had a mediating role. The Islamic faith often invites reasoning and thinking and affirms this way of thinking; at the same time, it offers various conceptual tools for dichotomous thinking with discourses such as heaven-hell, good-evil, dark-light, and faith-denial. Although critical thinking and dichotomous thinking are seen as opposite constructs, the findings have been interpreted as the Islamic belief supporting both critical thinking and dichotomous thinking at the same time, thus reducing the rigidity of dichotomous thinking. The findings were discussed in the light of the relevant literature, and suggestions were made for further research. (shrink)

This article examines the historical construction of depression over about a hundred years, employing the social life of methods as an explanatory framework. Specifically, it considers how emerging methodologies in the measurement of psychological constructs contributed to changes in epistemological approaches to mental illness and created the conditions of possibility for major shifts in the construction of depression. While depression was once seen as a feature of psychotic personality, measurement technologies made it possible for it to be reconstructed as changeable (...) and treatable. Different types of scaling techniques (Likert versus dichotomous scales) enabled the separation of depressive personality from reactive depression, paving the way for measuring the severity and intensity of emotions. Techniques to test sensitivity to change provided a means of demonstrating the efficacy of new psychoactive drug treatments. Later, more advanced techniques of precision scaling enabled the management of a new measurement problem, clinician unreliability, associated with the growing number of professionals involved in mental health care. Through statistical management of unreliability, the construct of depression has dramatically reduced over this period from hundreds of questionnaire items to potentially just two. Exploring the history of depression through this lens produces an alternative narrative to those that have emerged as a result of medicalisation and the actions of individuals and pressure groups. (shrink)

En los estudios sobre participación política se observan diferencias tanto conceptuales como metodológicas relativas a su evaluación que afectan la producción del conocimiento en este campo. Tales diferencias configuran un nivel de complejidad mayor cuando refieren a estudios hechos sobre una misma población. Con el fin de evaluar la participación política de la población cordobesa se desarrollaron 7 estudios en un período de 14 años utilizando diferentes innovaciones metodológicas tendientes a mejorar la calidad de los datos y con el propósito (...) de contribuir a la discusión en torno a la evaluación de este constructo de marcada relevancia social y complejidad. Los resultados reportados son consistentes con la tendencia observada en el campo de estudios que sugiere la complejización de la evaluación de este constructo abarcando su intensidad, amplitud y orientación para conocer de modo más preciso su multidimensionalidad. (shrink)

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale , through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings , through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering , in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of (...) the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine which scale best correlates with performance, and whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies. (shrink)

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff . The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness (...) to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales. (shrink)

Since Bruno Latour's discussion of a Sakhalin island map used by La Pérouse as part of a global network of “immutable mobiles,” the commensurability of European and non-European knowledge has become an important issue for historians of science. But recent studies have challenged these dichotomous categories as reductive and inadequate for understanding the fluid nature of identities, their relational origins, and their historically constituted character. Itineraries of knowledge transfer, traced in the wake of objects and individuals, offer a powerful (...) heuristic alternative, bypassing artificial epistemological divides and avoiding the limited scale of national or monolingual frames. Approaches that place undue emphasis either on the omnipotence of the imperial center or the centrality of the colonial periphery see only half the picture. Instead, practices of knowledge collection, codification, elaboration, and dissemination—in European, indigenous, and mixed or hybrid contexts—can be better understood by following their moveable parts, with a keen sensitivity toward non-normative epistemologies and more profound temporal frameworks. -/- . (shrink)

Here, we explore the sensitivity of different awareness scales in revealing conscious reports on visual emotion perception. Participants were exposed to a backward masking task involving fearful faces and asked to rate their conscious awareness in perceiving emotion in facial expression using three different subjective measures: confidence ratings , with the conventional taxonomy of certainty, the perceptual awareness scale , through which participants categorize “raw” visual experience, and post-decision wagering , which involves economic categorization. Our results show that the (...) CR measure was the most exhaustive and the most graded. In contrast, the PAS and PDW measures suggested instead that consciousness of emotional stimuli is dichotomous. Possible explanations of the inconsistency were discussed. Finally, our results also indicate that PDW biases awareness ratings by enhancing first-order accuracy of emotion perception. This effect was possibly a result of higher motivation induced by monetary incentives. (shrink)

Background: Altering components of ecological momentary assessment measures to better suit the purposes of individual studies is a common and oftentimes necessary step. Though the inherent flexibility in EMA has its benefits, no resource exists to provide an overview of the variability in how convergent constructs and symptoms have been assessed in the past. The present study fills that gap by examining EMA measurement design for mood and anxiety symptomatology.Methods: Various search engines were used to identify 234 relevant studies. Items (...) administered, data collection schedules, response scales, data collection platforms, and psychometric properties were extracted.Results: Study designs varied greatly in all aspects across the identified papers. Over 4,600 extracted items were qualitatively analyzed, resulting in the identification of 12 themes. The most EMA items focused on affect, with categories such as “happiness” and “tension” appearing most frequently. We provide all of our data extraction in the format of an open-source database.Limitations: Despite our best attempts to include as much of the relevant literature as possible, this review and the accompanying database are not exhaustive, but can easily be built upon to include other, newer studies.Conclusions: The fact that the affect theme featured both positive and negative emotional constructs highlights the dichotomous focus on valence and affect within the literature surrounding anxious and depressive symptomatology. We hope that our database will act as a helpful design decision-making resource for researchers studying this kind of symptomatology in the future.Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO. (shrink)

Cushman, Young, & Greene (2010) urge the consolidation of moral psychology around a dual-system consensus. On this view, a slow, often-overstretched rational system tends to produce consequentialist intuitions and action-tendencies, while a fast, affective system produces virtuous (or vicious) intuitions and action-tendencies that perform well in their habituated ecological niche but sometimes disastrously outside of it. This perspective suggests a habit-corrected-by-reason picture of moral behavior. Recent research, however, has raised questions about the adequacy of dual-process theories of cognition and behavior, (...) which tend to distinguish categorically between fast, affect-laden, automatic, sometimes-unconscious, nearly-incorrigible mental processes and slow, rational, effortful, conscious, corrigible mental processes. Processes of one alleged type often have properties associated with the contrary type. For instance, rational processes can be emotional, and fast thinking can perform logical operations. In addition, the fast-slow binary transforms a continuous temporal scale into a dichotomous one, losing potentially important information along the way. While these problems are beginning to be addressed in some subfields of psychology, moral psychology has yet to grapple with them. In this theoretical paper, we argue that moral psychology needs a framework that accounts for our knowledge of both temporal and spatial (anatomical) dimensions of the brain basis of moral cognition and virtuous decision-making. We argue that methodologies with very fine-grained temporal granularity, such as electroencephalography (EEG), should be used to complement more frequently used methodologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We outline how this might be accomplished using generosity, gratitude, and integrity as a case study. (shrink)

Environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like ecological disasters usually recognised by the general public, and ‘slow violence’, a type of violence that occurs gradually, out of sight and on a long-term scale. Planetary seas and oceans, loaded with cultural meanings of that which ‘hides’ and ‘allows to forget’, are the spaces where such attritional violence unfolds unseen and ‘out of mind’. Simultaneously, conventional concepts of nature and culture, as dichotomous entities, become obsolete. We all inhabit and (...) embody the world differently, as variously situated people, divided by national, sexual, bodily and economic status, and as very variously situated nonhumans in an increasingly anthropogenic world. This chapter focuses on subtle ‘slow violence’ unfolding through the instances of submerged chemical weapons, so-called dead zones, invasive species and high- and low-trophic mariculture in the Baltic and North Sea regions. It zooms in on the select cases of such ‘environed bodies’, their stories of excruciating slow violence and yet also on unexpected encounters with care and hospitality. The aim is to unfold a low-trophic theory for the naturecultural research on violence and care within environmental humanities, and to engage a coexistential ethics of environmental adaptability informed by feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

In his early writings on logic Collingwood offered a powerful critique of contemporary theories, including subjective idealism and realism to which he continued to be opposed throughout his career. Simultaneously these same early writings present a sustained attack on dichotomous forms of thought, which are also carried through to his later writings. Throughout Collingwood maintains a critical respect for Hegel. Subjectivity and objectivity are not to be severed from each other, nor are identities to be excluded from one another. (...) Continuity is not to be understood apart from discontinuity. Collingwood's early critiques inspire a variety of later doctrines such as the scale of forms, the logic of question and answer, metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions, and his conception of the relation between mind and civilisation. The later theories are to be understood as continuous with the earlier doctrines, but not deducible from, nor reducible to them. (shrink)

Mitigating response distortion in answers to sensitive questions is an important issue for business ethics researchers. Sensitive questions may be asked in surveys related to business ethics, and respondents may intend to avoid exposing sensitive aspects of their character by answering such questions dishonestly, resulting in response distortion. Previous studies have provided evidence that a surveying procedure called the randomized response technique is useful for mitigating such distortion. However, previous studies have mainly applied the RRT to individual dichotomous questions (...) in face-to-face survey settings. In this study, we focus on behavioral research examining the relationships between latent variables, which are unobserved variables measured by multiple items on Likert or bipolar scales. To demonstrate how the RRT can be applied to obtain valid answers from respondents answering a self-administered online questionnaire with Likert and bipolar scales, we build a behavioral model to study the effect of punishment severity on employees’ attitudes toward misuse of information systems resources in the workplace, which in turn influence misuse behavior. The survey findings meet our expectations. The respondents are generally more willing to disclose sensitive data about their attitudes and actual behavior related to misuse when the RRT is implemented. The RRT’s implications for causal modeling and the advantages and challenges of its use in online environments are also discussed. (shrink)

The dichotomy between Nature and Nurture, which has been dismantled within the framework of development, remains embodied in the notions of plasticity and evolvability. We argue that plasticity and evolvability, like development and heredity, are neither dichotomous nor distinct: the very same mechanisms may be involved in both, and the research perspective chosen depends to a large extent on the type of problem being explored and the kinds of questions being asked. Epigenetic inheritance leads to transgenerationally extended plasticity, and (...) developmentally-induced heritable epigenetic variations provide additional foci for selection that can lead to evolutionary change. Moreover, hereditary innovations may result from developmentally induced large-scale genomic repatterning events, which are akin to Goldschmidtian “systemic mutations”. The epigenetic mechanisms involved in repatterning can be activated by both environmental and genomic stress, and lead to phylogenetic as well as ontogenetic changes. Hence, the effects and the mechanisms of plasticity directly contribute to evolvability. (shrink)

Due to the impression that Bruno Latour rejects epistemology, his thought is often considered as part of postmodernism and relativism. This essays will show that this impression is misleading. The target of Latour's critique is the modern paradigm that dichotomizes absolutely between ontology and epistemology, as in subject—object and nature—society. Latour succeeded in showing that modern epistemology is not absolute. To do so, he included a two-dimensional variable in one-dimensional insertions, with the example of a generic scheme created by a (...) variant of the SSK school. The consequence is a priori ontological postponement, with various models of possible scales of values on the schema. For this reason, the principle of symmetry and the use of neutral language that can include (suspend) various ontologies so that epistemic knowledge can be obtained in reality (such as the alignment of humans—non-humans, and actors—actants), becomes important in scientific practice. This essay draws a conclusion with some critical notes and provides a kind of offer as a further consequence of the examination of Bruno Latour’s epistemology Abstrak Kesan bahwa Bruno Latour menolak epistemologi telah membuat pemikirannya kerap dimasukkan ke kategori pascamodernisme dan relativisme. Tulisan ini hendak menunjukkan bahwa kesan tersebut keliru. Sebetulnya sasaran kritik Latour adalah paradigma modern yang mendikotomikan secara absolut antara ontologi dan epistemologi, seperti pada subjek–objek dan alam–masyarakat. Latour memperlihatkan bahwa epistemologi modern itu tidaklah absolut. Caranya, ia memasukkan variabel dua dimensi pada pengutuban satu dimensi, dengan contoh skema generik yang dibuat oleh varian dari mazhab SSK. Konsekuensinya adalah penundaan apriori ontologis, dengan beraneka model kemungkinan skala nilai pada skema. Untuk itu, prinsip simetri dan penggunaan bahasa netral yang dapat mencakupi (penangguhan) pelbagai ontologi agar pengetahuan epistemik dapat diperoleh senyata-nyatanya (seperti kesejajaran manusia—non-manusia, dan aktor—aktan) menjadi penting dalam praktik keilmuan. Di akhir tulisan, penulis memberikan beberapa catatan kritis, serta semacam tawaran sebagai konsekuensi lebih jauh atas pemeriksaan epistemologi Bruno Latour. Kata-kata kunci: epistmeologi, paradigma non-modern, epistemologi moluska, prinsip simetri, meta-modern, aktor-aktan. (shrink)

The aim of the present study, based on data from 20 countries, is to identify the pattern of variables (at country, school and student levels), which are typical of students performing below the low international benchmark compared to students performing at the advanced performance benchmark, in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006. The dependent variable of the analysis is a dichotomous variable, the values of which represent the two different performance groups of students. The independent variables (...) are two sets of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development educational indicators, variables from PIRLS 2006 Reading Curriculum Questionnaire data, variables and indices based on data obtained from questionnaires for teachers, schools, parents and students. The analysis is based on classification and regression trees, which is a full hierarchical non-parametric method suited to detecting and interpreting complex reciprocal influences between a large number of independent variables. The results show that pupils? performance can be predicted by the relationships between country-level variables (the changes in teachers? salaries at the top of the salary scale), school context variables (e.g. percentages of students from economically affluent home) and home educational resources and variables at student level (e.g. students? reading self-concept). (shrink)

The article analyzes the types of "meek" and "proud" female images in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky in connection with the typologies of the images of the writer among the literary critics N.A. Dobrolyubov, V.F. Pereverzev and A.A. Gizetti. The article refers to the classical authors of the early critical understanding of Dostoevsky's works, who divided female images into two opposite types of the "meek" and "proud". At the same time, the article emphasizes the idea that in Dostoevsky's polyphonic world (...) every literary hero has a multidimensional consciousness, which is why the direct dichotomous division into the "proud" and "meek" can only be a rough generalization. The first part of the article examines the typologies of N.A. Dobrolyubov, as well as one of V.F. Pereverzev, who creates the most ambitious and significant typology, considering female images. He sensitively notices the ambiguity and tragedy of Dostoevsky's heroines and introduces the term "the doppelgngerwoman" into the typology of female images, on the basis of which each heroine somehow contains a certain internal conflict, the solution of which in the course of a novel allows her character to develop towards one of the indicated subtypes. The second part of the article analyzes the typology of A.A. Gizetti, who in his research focuses on such type of Dostoevsky's female images as the "proud", highlighting a new, "mysterious" subtype of the Dostoevsky's proud heroine. In the performed comparison of "meek" and "proud" types of female images it is considered to distinguish positive and negative ethical meanings of them. The article formulates conclusions about the various subtypes of "meek" and "proud" characters in the writer's artistic world, and outlines the grounds for further system of understanding of meekness and pride on a scale of correlation with vice and virtue. (shrink)

The design of the bronchial tree has largely been proposed as a model of optimal design from a physical-functional perspective. However, the distributive function of the airway may be more related to a geometrical than a physical problem. The bronchial tree must distribute a three dimensional volume of inspired air on a two dimensional alveolar surface, included in a limited volume. It is thus valid to ask whether an optimal bronchial tree from a physical perspective is also optimum from a (...) geometrical point of view. In this paper we generate a simple geometric model for the branching pattern of the bronchial tree, deducing relationships that permit estimation of the departures from the geometrical optimum of each bifurcation. We also, for comparative purposes, estimate the departures from the physical optimum. From the geometrical assumptions: i) a symmetrical dichotomic fractal design, ii) with minimum volume and iii) maximum dispersion of the terminal points; and several simulations we suggest that the optimality is characterized by a bifurcation angle Θ ∼ 60° and a length reduction scale γ = (1/2)1/3 = 0.7937. We propose distances from the physical and geometrical optimality defined as Euclidean distances from the expected optima. We show how the advanced relationships and the distances can be used to estimate departures from the optimality in bronchographs of four species. We found lower physical and geometrical departures in the distal zone than those of the proximal zones, as well as lower physical than geometrical departures from optimality. (shrink)

Mitigating response distortion in answers to sensitive questions is an important issue for business ethics researchers. Sensitive questions may be asked in surveys related to business ethics, and respondents may intend to avoid exposing sensitive aspects of their character by answering such questions dishonestly, resulting in response distortion. Previous studies have provided evidence that a surveying procedure called the randomized response technique is useful for mitigating such distortion. However, previous studies have mainly applied the RRT to individual dichotomous questions (...) in face-to-face survey settings. In this study, we focus on behavioral research examining the relationships between latent variables, which are unobserved variables measured by multiple items on Likert or bipolar scales. To demonstrate how the RRT can be applied to obtain valid answers from respondents answering a self-administered online questionnaire with Likert and bipolar scales, we build a behavioral model to study the effect of punishment severity on employees’ attitudes toward misuse of information systems resources in the workplace, which in turn influence misuse behavior. The survey findings meet our expectations. The respondents are generally more willing to disclose sensitive data about their attitudes and actual behavior related to misuse when the RRT is implemented. The RRT’s implications for causal modeling and the advantages and challenges of its use in online environments are also discussed. (shrink)

As in other societies, medical professionalism in the Peoples’ Republic of China has been rapidly evolving. One of the major events in this process was the endorsement in 2005 of the document, “Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter,” by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (hereafter, the Charter). More recently, a national survey, the first on such a large scale, was conducted on Chinese physicians’ attitudes toward the fundamental principles and core commitments put forward in the Charter. Based (...) on empirical findings from that study and comparing them to the published results of a similar American survey, the authors offer an in-depth interpretation of significant cross-cultural differences and important transcultural commonalities. The broader historical, socio-economic, and ethical issues relating to salient Chinese cultural practices such as family consent, familism (the custom of deferring decisions to family members), and the withholding of medical information, as well as controversial topics such as not respecting patients’ autonomy, are examined. The Chinese Survey found that Chinese physicians supported the principles of the Charter in general. Here we argue that Chinese culture and traditional medical ethics are broadly compatible with the moral commitments demanded by modern medical professionalism. Methodologically and theoretically—recognizing the problems inherent in the hoary but still popular habit of dichotomizing cultures and in relativism—a transcultural approach is adopted that gives greater (due) weight to the internal moral diversity present within every culture, the common ground shared by different cultures, and the primacy of morality. Genuine crosscultural dialogue, including a constructive Chinese-American dialogue in the area of medical professionalism, is not only possible, but necessary. (shrink)

In First-World-War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for the military faced considerable public opposition. Nevertheless, by late 1916 up to 10,000 members of the female volunteer corps were working for the army, laying the foundation for some 90,000 auxiliaries of the official Women's Services, who filled support positions in the armed forces in the second half of the war. This essay focuses on the public debate in which the volunteers overcame their critics to understand how they obtained sufficient (...) popular consent for their martial work. I explain the process in terms of shifting hegemonic understandings of space. As critics' arguments in the debate indicate, the gender attribution of war participation was organized and represented spatially, assigning men to the warlike “front” as warriors and women to the peaceful “home” as civilians. To redefine the meaning of these gendered wartime spaces, women volunteers deployed rival spatial discourses and practices in their campaign for martial employment. The essay explores the progress of these competing definitions through feminist and spatial theories, including gender performativity, discursively constructed and constructive spaces, and heterotopias. I argue that the upheaval caused by the war in gender and spatial norms undermined absolute conceptualizations of space with dichotomous binary areas on which critics drew for their arguments and reinforced more recent, relative spatialities, including the cultural construction of militarized heterotopic sites in between and paralleling both “home” and “front” for soldiers in training or recovery. The volunteers' efforts to gain access to military employment both contributed to and were supported by this shift. Heterotopic sites offered ideal discursive locations for constructing the new gender role of auxiliary soldiering through the performance of martial training and work, and competing spatial definitions provided arguments through which they could justify their activities to both critics and supporters. (shrink)

Our families are our first and most important ethical training grounds. But what is the family? And what are our ethical commitments to our family members and to the broader moral community? After a brief introductory chapter on basic ethical concepts and theories, the essays in this volume provide readers with ethical analyses of issues ranging from same-sex marriage to a controversial proposal to "license" parents. The chapters cover love, sex, marriage, parents and children, the relationship between the family and (...) the larger moral community, and the influence of emerging technologies on the ethical issues inherent in family life. The volume is intended to open up this exciting territory in applied ethics to those interested in philosophy, family studies, social work, and to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the ethical forces at work in this most basic social institution. (shrink)

Irecently admitted a 93-year-old Spanish-speaking woman with bilateral flank pain. A thorough history revealed her pain was due to constipation and intense straining with each bowel movement, but a language barrier, a mild troponin elevation, and "new atrial fibrillation" on her EKG triggered the Emergency Department physician to admit her for observation. When I went to see her, she mentioned her pain was worse since she was told we would need to monitor her heart overnight. She asked, "Is everything ok (...) with my heart?"To assess that question, I prepared to perform a bedside ultrasound, also known as point-of-care ultrasound. We moved from a hallway in the ED to a room for more privacy, and the patient... (shrink)

Critical discussion of Quine's concepts of purely referential occurrence/position. It is argued from the perspective of a Russellian view of truth that existential generalization and substitutivity of identity are non-equivalent tests for referential occurrence/position, and that the former rather than the latter is the appropriate test.

Critical discussion of Quine's concepts of purely referential occurrence/position. It is argued from the perspective of a Russellian view of truth that existential generalization and substitutivity of identity are non-equivalent tests for referential occurrence/position, and that the former rather than the latter is the appropriate test.

Human–Human and Human–Robot Interaction are known to be influenced by a variety of modalities and parameters. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge to anticipate how a given mobile robot’s navigation and appearance will impact how it is perceived by humans. Drawing a parallel with vocal prosody, we introduce the notion of movement prosody, which encompasses spatio-temporal and appearance dimensions which are involved in a person’s perceptual experience of interacting with a mobile robot. We design a novel robot motion corpus, encompassing variables (...) related to the kinematics, gaze, and appearance of the robot, which we hypothesize are involved in movement prosody. Initial results of three perception experiments suggest that these variables have significant influences on participants’ perceptions of robot socio-affects and physical attributes. (shrink)

We implemented a user-centered approach to the design of an artificial intelligence (AI) system that provides users with access to information about the workings of the United States federal court system regardless of their technical background. Presently, most of the records associated with the federal judiciary are provided through a federal system that does not support exploration aimed at discovering systematic patterns about court activities. In addition, many users lack the data analytical skills necessary to conduct their own analyses and (...) convert data into information. We conducted interviews, observations, and surveys to uncover the needs of our users and discuss the development of an intuitive platform informed from these needs that makes it possible for legal scholars, lawyers, and journalists to discover answers to more advanced questions about the federal court system. We report on results from usability testing and discuss design implications for AI and law practitioners and researchers. (shrink)

Written in an engaging narrative style these philosophical investigations undermine racist hierarchies along with false natualistic conceptions of the meanings of race and universalistic understandings of gender, by considering whiteness as it shapes and is infused by gender, class, sexuality, and culture. Central to this project are questions about how it is that culture and the state create such a wide range of different people who understand themselves as white. The essays collected here discuss how one learns to be a (...) good white Southern woman, what it means to pass as white, and whether there really is a dilemma that accompanies white privilege. (shrink)