Human trafficking is increasingly recognized as an outcome of economic insecurity, gender inequality, and conflict, all significant factors in the region of southern Africa. This paper examines policy responses to human trafficking in southern Africa and finds that there has been a diffusion of international norms to the regional and domestic levels. This paper finds that policy change is most notable in the strategies and approaches that differ at each level: international and regional agreements emphasize prevention measures and survivor assistance, (...) but national policies emphasize prosecution measures. Leaders across the region have adapted these policy norms to fit regionally specific conditions, including HIV/AIDS, conflict, traditional leaders, and prostitution. Yet, national policies often fail to incorporate preventative solutions to address gender inequality, human rights, and economic development. Until appropriate funding and preventative measures are introduced, the underlying issues that foster human trafficking will continue. (shrink)

Describing rabbinic reasoning as a rational response to experience. Hashkes combines insights from the analytic philosophy of Wittgenstein, Quine, and Davidson with the semiotics of Peirce to construe knowledge as systematic reasoning occurring within a community of inquiry. Her reading of the works of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion allows her to create a philosophical bridge between a discourse of God and a discourse of reason. This synthesis of analytic philosophy and pragmatism, hermeneutics and theology provides Hashkes with a sophisticated (...) tool to understand Rabbinic Judaism. It also makes this study both unique and path breaking in contemporary Jewish philosophy and Rabbinic thought. (shrink)

Rorty and the Religious: Christian Engagements with a Secular Philosopher brings together twelve essays discussing Rorty’s philosophy from a theological point of view. These essays, tackling Rorty’s epistemology, moral views, and social vision, carry out “constructive and serious” engagement with his work. The writers even declare they find “promising nuggets” in Rorty’s work for addressing particular questions within philosophy and theology.Why would Christian theologians bother to engage in this manner with a philosopher whose epistemological and moral thought has centered on (...) the notion of conversation and yet has declared religion a “conversation stopper?”1 Calling himself “religiously unmusical,”... (shrink)

Parentage analyses via microsatellite markers have revealed multiple paternity within the broods of polytocous species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and invertebrates. The widespread phenomenon of multiple paternity may have attending relationships with such evolutionary processes as sexual selection and kin selection. However, just how much multiple paternity should a species exhibit? We developed Bayesian null models of how multiple paternity relates to brood sizes. For each of 114 species with published data on brood sizes and numbers of sires, we (...) compared our null model estimates to published frequencies of multiple paternity. The majority of species fell close to our null model, especially among fish and invertebrate species. Some species, however, had low probabilities of multiple paternity, far from the predictions of the null model, likely due to sexual selection and environmental constraints. We suggest a major division among species’ mating systems between those with close to random mating and high levels of multiple paternity, and those with constraints that produce low levels of multiple paternity. (shrink)

When managing their emotions, individuals often recruit the help of others; however, most emotion regulation research has focused on self-regulation. Theories of emotion and aging suggest younger and older adults differ in the emotion regulation strategies they use when regulating their own emotions. If how individuals regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others are related, these theorised age differences may also emerge for interpersonal emotion regulation. In two studies, younger and older adults’ intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy (...) choices were examined via self-report and behavioural assessments of regulating the emotions of another participant (Study 1; N = 80) and of a virtual human (Study 2; N = 100). Across both studies, younger adults reported greater intrapersonal suppression but not greater reappraisal. Younger and older adults were generally similar (supported by Bayesian analyses) for both self-reported and behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation was not related to self-reported intra- and interpersonal preferences. These results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation in ageing may show distinct patterns from theorised age differences in intrapersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

Studies of multiple paternity in mammals and other animal species generally report proportion of multiple paternity among litters, mean litter sizes, and mean number of sires per litter. It is shown how these variables can be used to produce an estimate of the probability of reproductive success for a male that has mated with a female. This estimate of male success is more informative about the mating system that alternative measures, like the proportion of litters with multiple paternity or the (...) mean number of sires per litter. The probability of success for a mated male can be measured both theoretically and empirically, and gives an estimate of the intensity of sperm competition and of a male's “confidence of paternity” upon mating. The probability of success for mated males for ten “exemplar” species of mammals is estimated and they are compared for insights into the functioning of their mating systems. (shrink)

Older adults report high emotional well-being, but age-comparative studies of emotion regulation strategies have not identified systematic age differences. We propose that emotion regulation tactics may be more promising. Emotion regulation tactics involve strategy implementation in a specific situation, and have features shared across strategies involving positive or negative elements (objects/thoughts) in the environment that may be approached or receded from in the regulation attempt (i.e., a valence dimension about the environmental element, and a direction dimension indicating movement toward or (...) away from it). Across several studies, older adults used more positive-approaching than negative-receding tactics. Positive-approaching tactics may also be more effective at regulating mood. We consider implications for aging, as well as group differences in emotion regulation behavior generally. (shrink)

Foveated stimuli receive visual processing that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from nonfoveated stimuli. At normal interpersonal distances, people move their eyes around another’s face so that certain features receive foveal processing; on any given fixation, other features therefore project extrafoveally. Yet little is known about the processing of extrafoveally presented facial features, how informative those extrafoveally presented features are for face perception (e.g., for assessing another’s emotion), or what processes extract task-relevant (e.g., emotion-related) cues from facial features that first (...) appear outside the fovea, and how these processes are implemented in the brain. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data collection for longitudinal studies in developmental sciences to an immeasurable extent. Restrictions on conducting in-person standardized assessments have led to disruptive innovation, in which novel methods are applied to increase participant engagement. Here, we focus on remote administration of behavioral assessment. We argue that these innovations in remote assessment should become part of the new standard protocol in developmental sciences to facilitate data collection in populations that may be hard to reach or engage due (...) to burdensome requirements. We present a series of adaptations to developmental assessments and a detailed discussion of data analytic approaches to be applied in the less-than-ideal circumstances encountered during the pandemic-related shutdown. Ultimately, these remote approaches actually strengthen the ability to gain insight into developmental populations and foster pragmatic innovation that should result in enduring change. (shrink)

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the earliest (...) of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotion differentiation refers to the precision with which people can identify and distinguish their emotions and has been associated with well-being in adults. This study investigated ED and its relation with emotional well-being in adolescents. We used an experience sampling method with 72 participants to assess adolescents’ positive and negative emotions at different time points over the course of two weekends and a baseline questionnaire to assess emotional well-being. Differentiating negative emotions was related to less negativity intensity and propensity, and (...) to the belief that emotions are malleable. Differentiating positive emotions was not related to any of the assessed well-being variables. Together, these results suggest that a detailed awareness of one’s negative emotional states is an important dimension of well-being, also in adolescence. (shrink)

Background Over the last decade, the return of results (ROR) in precision medicine research (PMR) has become increasingly routine. Calls for individual rights to research results have extended the “duty to report” from clinically useful genetic information to traits and ancestry results. ROR has thus been reframed as inherently beneficial to research participants, without a needed focus on who benefits and how. This paper addresses this gap, particularly in the context of PMR aimed at increasing participant diversity, by providing investigator (...) and researcher perspectives on and questions about the assumed value of ROR in PMR.Methods Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of investigators and researchers across federally funded PMR studies in three national consortia, as well as observations of study activities, focused on how PM researchers conceptualize diversity and implement inclusive practices across research stages, including navigating ROR.Results Interviewees (1) validated the value of ROR as a benefit of PMR, while others (2) questioned the benefit of clinically actionable results to individuals in the absence of sufficient resources for translating findings into health care for diverse and disadvantaged populations; (3) expressed uncertainties in applying the presumed value of ROR as a benefit for non-clinical results; and (4) and debated when the promise of the value of ROR may undermine trust in PMR, and divert efforts to return value beyond ROR.Conclusions Conceptualizations of diversity and inclusion among PM researchers and investigators raise unique ethical questions where unexamined assumptions of the value of ROR inform study recruitment efforts to enroll minoritized and under-represented populations. A lack of consideration for resources and infrastructure necessary to translate ROR into actionable information may hinder trustworthy community-research relationships. Thus, we argue for a more intentional interrogation of ROR practices as an offer of benefit and for whom. (shrink)

Child sexual exploitation and abuse has grave implications for the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. It has been linked to a wide range of difficulties which may extend into adulthood. School-based prevention programs that aim to raise awareness are popular, however, have historically lacked robust and consistent evaluation. The purpose of the present study was therefore to explore young people’s experiences of attending a school-based theater-in-education program, and the impact this had on their awareness and understanding (...) of CSEA. Four focus groups of between four to six participants each were conducted with young people from two co-educational State schools in the United Kingdom. The approach of Template Analysis was used to analyze the data, and revealed a number of themes related to the superordinate themes of “Information and Detail Delivered” and “Format and Timing.” The results suggest that participants gained new awareness and understanding of aspects related to CSEA, including other forms of exploitation, as well as how to avoid harm and what to do “if bad things happen.” Participants further reported that the theater performance/live element of the program was particularly impactful, feeling that this was delivered to them at the right time, but suggesting that younger people would also benefit from the important messages. In addition, areas for improvement were identified in terms of the delivery of the program, and the issue of victim blaming. Findings are discussed with a view to practical implications and directions for future research. (shrink)

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

We sought to expand on the concept of the moral self to include not just the duty to develop the moral self but the moral duty to develop the self in both moral and non-moral ways. To do this, we focused on how leaders can promote a climate in which individuals feel a sense of duty to develop themselves for the betterment of the team and organization. In our theoretical model, duty orientation plays a key role in determining whether followers (...) will seek performance feedback to develop their work selves. We hypothesized that followers with ethical leaders would experience a greater sense of duty to improve themselves and would therefore be more likely to seek and less likely to avoid leader feedback. Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesized that duty orientation would mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and feedback-seeking/feedback-avoiding behavior, expert power would moderate the relationship between ethical leadership and duty orientation such that duty orientation would be higher when followers perceived their leader to be both highly ethical and competent, and expert power would moderate the indirect effect of ethical leadership on feedback-seeking/feedback-avoiding behavior through duty orientation. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 249 followers across two waves of data collection. Results suggest that ethical leadership and leader competence interact to drive followers’ duty orientation, thereby reducing followers’ feedback-avoiding behaviors. Further, ethical leadership had a direct positive relationship with followers’ feedback-seeking behaviors. (shrink)

Japanese pop idols occupy an ambiguous position in the broader popular music landscape, straddling a line between fiction and non-fiction, simultaneously characterological yet physically instantiated. As idealized representations of the girl or boy next door, idols serve as both ‘image characters’ who can be used to sell a variety of products, as well as ‘quasi companions’ meant to provide fans with a manufactured sense of intimacy. Using a joint quantitative and qualitative approach, this article analyses the lyrics of female idol (...) groups. Specifically, I demonstrate how the combination of first- and second-person pronouns and sentence-final expressions are utilized to construct both female-coded and male-coded gendered personae, revealing that idol lyrics engage in the process of cross-gender performance. As a result, through their performance of these personae, female idol groups explicitly reinforce a binary imagination of normative gender expressions, allowing such idol groups to capitalize on idealized heterosexual adolescence through affective resonance and nostalgia. (shrink)

This text departs from a contradictory claim in deaf studies and sound studies: both disciplines describe a hierarchical regime of the sensible – visuocentrism and audiocentrism – which they try to counter with conceptualisations as “acoustemology” or “deaf gain.” However, as we argue, they both thereby erect what they claim to overcome: a sensual regime that privileges one sense over another and a restricted conception of subjectivity deriving from it. First, we draw a philosophical line in the critique of sensual (...) regimes. Then we propose a figure for the transcendence of the separation of the sensible: in re-reading of the myth of Odysseus and the sirens, we engage various examples from literature, art, and acoustics to describe sirens as a mythological and technical archetype of the transcendence of the sensual regime, as well as reified subjectivity. The question, then, is not how to escape the sirens, but how they can be approached. It is necessary, we argue, for sound studies to develop a critical self-consciousness of its own restricted concepts in order to move from sonic thinking towards a sirenic thinking. (shrink)

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods have resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems (...) using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

A speaker's manner of delivery of an utterance can affect a listener's pragmatic interpretation of the message. Disfluencies influence a listener's off-line assessment of whether the speaker is truthful or deceptive. Do listeners also form this assessment during the moment-by-moment processing of the linguistic message? Here we present two experiments that examined listeners’ judgments of whether a speaker was indicating the true location of the prize in a game during fluent and disfluent utterances. Participants’ eye and mouse movements were biased (...) toward the location named by the speaker during fluent utterances, whereas the opposite bias was observed during disfluent utterances. This difference emerged rapidly after the onset of the critical noun. Participants were similarly sensitive to disfluencies at the start of the utterance and in the middle. Our findings support recent research showing that listeners integrate pragmatic information alongside semantic content during the earliest moments of language processing. Unlike prior work which has focused on pragmatic effects in the interpretation of the literal message, here we highlight disfluency's role in guiding a listener to an alternative non-literal message. (shrink)

Neural substrates of fatigue in traumatic brain injury are not well understood despite the considerable burden of fatigue on return to productivity. Fatigue is associated with diminishing performance under conditions of high cognitive demand, sense of effort, or need for motivation, all of which are associated with cognitive control brain network integrity. We hypothesize that the pathophysiology of TBI results in damage to diffuse cognitive control networks, disrupting coordination of moment-to-moment monitoring, prediction, and regulation of behavior. We investigate the cingulo-opercular (...) and frontoparietal networks, which are engaged to sustain attention for task and maintain performance. A total of 61 individuals with mild TBI and 42 orthopedic control subjects participated in functional MRI during performance of a constant effort task requiring altering the amount of effort utilized to manually squeeze a pneumostatic bulb across six 30-s trials. Network-based statistics assessed within-network organization and fluctuation with task manipulations by group. Results demonstrate small group differences in network organization, but considerable group differences in the evolution of task-related modulation of connectivity. The mild TBI group demonstrated elevated CO connectivity throughout the task with little variation in effort level or time on task, while CO connectivity diminished over time in controls. Several interregional CO connections were predictive of fatigue in the TBI group. In contrast, FP connectivity fluctuated with task manipulations and predicted fatigue in the controls, but connectivity fluctuations were delayed in the mild traumatic brain injury group and did not relate to fatigue. Thus, the mTBI group’s hyper-connectivity of the CO irrespective of task demands, along with hypo-connectivity and delayed peak connectivity of the FP, may allow for attainment of task goals, but also contributes to fatigue. Findings are discussed in relation to performance monitoring of prediction error that relies on internal cues from sensorimotor feedback during task performance. Delay or inability to detect and respond to prediction errors in TBI, particularly evident in bilateral insula-temporal CO connectivity, corresponds to day-to-day fatigue and fatigue during task performance. (shrink)

The current study investigates whether self-talk phrases can influence behavior in Ultimatum Games. In our three self-talk treatments, participants were instructed to tell themselves (i) to keep their own interests in mind, (ii) to also think of the other person, or (iii) to take some time to contemplate their decision. We investigate how such so-called experimenter-determined strategic self-talk phrases affect behavior and emotions in comparison to a control treatment without instructed self-talk. The results demonstrate that other-focused self-talk can nudge proposers (...) towards fair behavior, as offers were higher in this group than in the other conditions. For responders, self-talk tended to increase acceptance rates of unfair offers as compared to the condition without self-talk. This effect is significant for both other-focused and contemplation-inducing self-talk but not for self-focused self-talk. In the self-focused condition, responders were most dissatisfied with unfair offers. These findings suggest that use of self-talk can increase acceptance rates in responders, and that focusing on personal interests can undermine this effect as it negatively impacts the responders’ emotional experience. In sum, our study shows that strategic self-talk interventions can be used to affect behavior in bargaining situations. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 133-138.