Bullying is a phenomenon that affects children and adolescents worldwide, and it has major consequences for all participants involved in these situations. In Chile, researchers have validated several instruments used to investigate aggression between peers and school violence, but there is a lack of validation of instruments to investigate bullying. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence of the validity and reliability of the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire—Revised version in the Chilean context. The participants were 2,775 students from schools (...) of low, medium, and high socioeconomic status. OBVQ-R is a self-report questionnaire with 42 items, which has been used in different countries, and has adequate psychometric properties to assess the prevalence of victimization and aggression and various forms of bullying worldwide. Results confirmed the two-factor structure of the OBVQ-R and good reliability. These dimensions seem to be correlated. Comparison between OBVQ-R with the School Violence between Peers Questionnaire and the Internet Experiences Questionnaire showed some degree of agreement. The Item Response Theory analysis showed that the item about verbal bullying, in both subscales, had the lowest-severity parameters, meaning that these forms of bullying were the most prevalent. The higher-severity parameter in the victimization scale was the cyberbullying item, and the sexual bullying item showed higher severity in the perpetration subscale. The differential item functioning analysis by gender showed a trend in which boys responded with lower-severity parameters than girls. In the victimization scale, the exception was the item about spreading rumors, and in the perpetration subscale, it was the item about racial bullying. We have provided evidence of the validation of OBVQ-R among school-age children and adolescents in Chile. This study is part of a trial registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02898324. (shrink)

A presente proposta busca sistematizar a importância da valorização do docente através do período extraclasse, prevista pela Lei do Piso Salarial Profissional Nacional docente (PSPN), observando a proposta de formação continuada, e, também, formação permanente, desenvolvida no Centro de Formação Carolina Garcia (CFCG), localizado no município de Macaé/RJ. A discussão aprofundada por meio da monografia de pedagogia da extinta Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Macaé – FAFIMA, tem como base os relatos apresentados nos questionários semiestruturados respondido pelas coordenadoras (...) do local, no ano de 2019. Nesse sentido, buscamos perceber o processo de elaboração da proposta do CFCG, que marca todo um movimento de formação pioneira em diálogo com o PSPN. Concluímos ao longo da pesquisa, que existem várias experiências que priorizam o fazer docente em diálogo com o período extraclasse, mas historicamente o CFCG propõe a ampliação do conhecimento de dentro da profissão e do seu entorno. (shrink)

Recently, approach-avoidance tendencies and visual perception biases have been increasingly studied using bistable point-light walkers (PLWs). Prior studies have found a facing-the-viewer bias when one is primed with general threat stimuli (e.g. angry faces), explained by the “error management theory”, as failing to detect a threat as approaching is riskier than the opposite. Importantly, no study has explored how disease threat – linked to the behavioural immune system – might affect this bias. This study aimed to explore whether disease-signalling cues (...) can alter how we perceive the motion direction of ambiguous PLWs. Throughout 3 experiments, participants indicated the motion direction of a bistable PLW previously primed with a control or disease-signalling stimuli – that is, face with a surgical mask (Experiment 1), sickness sound (Experiment 2), or face with a disease cue (Experiment 3). Results showed that sickness cues do not significantly modulate the perception of approach-avoidance behaviours. However, a pattern emerged in Experiments 2 and 3, suggesting that sickness stimuli led to more facing away percepts. Unlike other types of threat, this implies that disease-related threat stimuli might trigger a distinct perceptual bias, indicating a preference to avoid a possible infection source. Nonetheless, this finding warrants future investigations. (shrink)

Our paper examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We demonstrate how Anzaldúa developed a transnational Philosophy of Mexicanness, effectively contributing to what has been recently characterized as the “multi-generational project to pursue philosophy from and about Mexican circumstances” (Vargas). More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using (...) the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers from the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. The three sections of our paper: 1) define the terms Mexican and philosophy in conversation with Anzaldúa’s work, 2) examine the Mexican philosophical sources that Anzaldúa cites in Borderlands/La Frontera, and 3) present the other major Mexican philosophical influences on Anzaldúa that we have found in her archive. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we discuss here include: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

This article examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We argue that Anzaldúa effectively contributed to la filosofía de lo mexicano by developing an Inter-American Philosophy of Mexicanness. More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at the Benson Latin American Collection at (...) the University of Texas at Austin. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we examine and discuss here are: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:138 In 2010 the city of Colorado Springs was strapped for cash. Government officials announced that they would either have to raise revenue through increased taxation or cut public services—­ in some cases rather severely—­ including, perhaps, police and fire protection, and even more basic bits of municipal infrastructure. The city shut down one-­ third of residential streetlights and closed public restrooms. Citi­ zens were outraged, but a majority (...) of voters had recently defeated a proposed tax increase. It’s tempting to suppose that the city was trying to teach its citizens a lesson: if you want public services, you have to be willing to pay for them. Colorado Springs is, and has been for some time now, a died-­in-­the-­wool small-­government, anti-­tax-­increase, fiscally conservative town. As Colorado Springs resident Bo Sharifi put it, “As soon as I hear government [say] ‘Oh, we need more money’... I guess I kind of automatically assume there’s probably some other things you could probably cut before firemen, policemen, city lights and that sort of thing.”1 On the surface, that seems reasonable. So... what comes to mind? How about food stamps? What about WIC? Of course these are federal services, not funded by Coloradans alone. There’s government, and then there’s government. Well, how about... well... what? Doesn’t the government spend money on all sorts of things we could very easily do without? Perhaps. Isn’t it part of our job to know or to decide which things these are? If we don’t trust government, even more obviously we don’t trust it with our money, though we pretty clearly have no idea how public funds are actually allocated or spent. When asked whether he remembered the proposed tax increase that the city had voted against, Sharifi replied, “maybe.” Bo and his wife were charged $125 to have Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century By Steven Cassedy Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014 JOHN MARIANA Book Reviews 139 their streetlight turned back on. Bo’s wife Sara viewed this as extortion. “By shoveling out a hundred dollars to turn on a streetlight that we kind of felt was supposed to be on anyway, that it was giving them what they wanted,” she said. They who? One resident wrote the city of Colorado Springs a check for $300 to turn the lights on for his entire neighborhood. City Councilwoman Jan Martin pointed out to him that the total cost to the individual Colorado Springs taxpayer to keep the streetlights on—­and to fund the maintenance of public parks and medians, as well as community centers and pre-­recession-­level police and fire services—­by approving the tax increase would have been: $200. He replied that he would never vote for a tax increase. In other words, as the reporter who covered the story (Robert Smith) observed, he would rather pay more to keep the streetlights on in his own neighborhood than to pay for all city services combined. Smith remarked that “Colorado Springs was stepping away from one of the things that we take for granted in most American cities: that we’re all in it together—­ at least when it comes to basic services.”2 As near as I can tell, this is the moral of Steven Cassedy’s exceptionally timely Connected: that we’re all in it together. For much of the book Cassedy merely traces the history of the emergence in the consciousness of ordinary Americans of the concept of the social network, but he is not so much talking about the notion of a network society as such, as I understand him. Or, at any rate, the network society as such is not really his main concern. He is talking about the idea of social, political, national, and ultimately global and universal human interconnectedness that was a distinct product of the complex networked structures (both concrete and abstract) that came to constitute modern American life in the twentieth century (and of course life pretty much everywhere ), and about our understanding of ourselves as so networked.3 On this... (shrink)

A number of perceptual (exteroceptive and proprioceptive) illusions present problems for predictive processing accounts. In this chapter we’ll review explanations of the Müller-Lyer Illusion (MLI), the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) and the Alien Hand Illusion (AHI) based on the idea of Prediction Error Minimization (PEM), and show why they fail. In spite of the relatively open communicative processes which, on many accounts, are posited between hierarchical levels of the cognitive system in order to facilitate the minimization of prediction errors, perceptual (...) illusions seemingly allow prediction errors to rule. Even if, at the top, we have reliable and secure knowledge that the lines in the MLI are equal, or that the rubber hand in the RHI is not our hand, the system seems unable to correct for sensory errors that form the illusion. We argue that the standard PEM explanation based on a short-circuiting principle doesn’t work. This is the idea that where there are general statistical regularities in the environment there is a kind of short circuiting such that relevant priors are relegated to lower-level processing so that information from higher levels is not exchanged (Ogilvie and Carruthers, Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7:721–742, 2016), or is not as precise as it should be (Hohwy, The Predictive Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). Such solutions (without convincing explanation) violate the idea of open communication and/or they over-discount the reliable and secure knowledge that is in the system. We propose an alternative, 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) solution. We argue that PEM fails to take into account the ‘structural resistance’ introduced by material and cultural factors in the broader cognitive system. (shrink)

A number of theories about the origins of musicality have incorporated biological and social perspectives. Darwin argued that musicality evolved by sexual selection, functioning as a courtship display in reproductive partner choice. Darwin did not regard musicality as a sexually dimorphic trait, paralleling evidence that both sexes produce and enjoy music. A novel research strand examines the effect of musicality on sexual attraction by acknowledging the importance of facial attractiveness. We previously demonstrated that music varying in emotional content increases the (...) perceived attractiveness and dating desirability of opposite-sex faces only in females, compared to a silent control condition. Here, we built upon this approach by presenting the person depicted (target) as the performer of the music (prime), thus establishing a direct link. We hypothesized that musical priming would increase sexual attraction, with high-arousing music inducing the largest effect. Musical primes (25 s, piano solo music) varied in arousal and pleasantness, and targets were photos of other-sex faces of average attractiveness and with neutral expressions (2 s). Participants were 35 females and 23 males (heterosexual psychology students, single, and no hormonal contraception use) matched for musical background, mood, and liking for the music used in the experiment. After musical priming, females’ ratings of attractiveness and dating desirability increased significantly. In males, only dating desirability was significantly increased by musical priming. No specific effects of music-induced pleasantness and arousal were observed. Our results, together with other recent empirical evidence, corroborate the sexual selection hypothesis for the evolution of human musicality. (shrink)

The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pass the test from the previous 4 years in the standard version to only 15 months or even a striking 6 months in the nonverbal modification. These results are often taken as evidence that infants already possess an—at least implicit—theory of mind (ToM). We criticize this inferential leap on the grounds that inferring a ToM from the predictive success on a false belief (...) task requires to assume as premise that a belief reasoning is a necessary condition for correct action prediction. It is argued that the FBT does not satisfactorily constrain the predictive means, leaving room for the use of belief-independent inferences (that can rely on the attribution of non-representational mental states or the consideration of behavioral patterns that dispense any reference to other minds). These heuristics, when applied to the FBT, can achieve the same predictive success of a belief-based inference because information provided by the test stimulus allows the recognition of particular situations that can be subsumed by their ‘laws’. Instead of solving this issue by designing a single experimentum crucis that would render unfeasible the use of non-representational inferences, we suggest the application of a set of tests in which, although individually they can support inferences dissociated from a ToM, only an inference that makes use of false beliefs is able to correctly predict all the outcomes. (shrink)

Workplace Incivility (WI) occurs worldwide and has negative consequences on individuals and organizations. Valid and comprehensive instruments have been used, specifically in English speaking countries, to measure such adverse process at work, but it is not available a validated instrument for research carried out in Spanish speaking countries. In this study we aim to test the psychometric properties of the Matthews and Ritter’s four-item Workplace Incivility Scale (2016) with Spanish workers (N= 407) from different sectors. Participants’ mean age was 38.73 (...) (SD= 10.45) years old and the percentage of female employees was 59.2%. Confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS 19.0 was carried out, presenting a good fit. The internal consistency, convergent and concurrent validity of the scale were examined. Results show good scale reliability and expected high correlations with social undermining. Moreover, the scale related to propensity to leave a job, job satisfaction, and psychological well-being in the expected way. After configural invariance across groups was established, testing for metric invariance and scalar invariance was performed. Considering Δχ² and ΔCFI tests for two nested models, the 4-item scale was invariant when the employment status is considered (permanent vs temporal, full-time vs part-time and supervisor vs non supervisors). Overall, our findings showed good psychometric properties of the shorter version of the Workplace Incivility Scale in Spain. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed. (shrink)

Background:In the variegated legislative framework on advance directives, the first specific regulation in Italy on this issue came into force only in 2018.Research objective:This qualitative study...

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer (...) physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice. (shrink)

The educational use of daily-life contexts is considered a valuable strategy to promote meaningful science learning, since it facilitates the establishment of connections between previous knowledge, personal interests, and new learning. The aim of this work is to provide evidence to support the presence of gardens at educational centers, by assessing key science topics whose learning is promoted at the pre-school, primary, secondary, and university stages. To this end, we analyzed the paired graphic representations of “a garden” that students drew (...) both before and after their participation in a garden-based learning program. Firstly, we obtained the frequency of appearance of every represented element, and afterwards characterized the level of change between paired graphic representations. Sample size was of 24-19-25-29 pairs per stage, respectively. Across all stages, an overall improvement in students’ graphic expression was observed, which can be attributed to their experience in the space. At the pre-school stage, the garden favored the establishment of some simple cause-effect relationships which were consolidated at the primary stage, and provided a climate of motivation and affectivity that was evident in the final drawings, given the enormous quantity of details represented, the level of the finished product, and the careful combination and variety of colors. The presence of elements related to water notably increased in final graphic representations from pre-school, primary, and secondary education, thus evidencing that the use of gardens facilitates an approach to responsible water management. At the university stage, students initially demonstrated good knowledge of conventional agriculture, while the gardening experience -which was based on permaculture practices- helped evolve their ideas towards an alternative model of cultivation. The most prevalent science learning across all stages was related to plant knowledge, particularly to their anatomical traits and diversity. Finally, the role of educational gardens as models for students was evidenced, which suggests the importance of teachers and institutions carefully considering which model to offer. Overall, our results support the legitimacy of incorporating gardens to educational centers, particularly for promoting contact with live plants and plant knowledge, and potentially for promoting contact with garden fauna and activities oriented towards learning about it. (shrink)

The Operation Lava Jato, initiated in 2014 by the Ministry of Finance and carried out by the Brazilian Government Agency for Law Enforcement and Prosecution of Crimes, brought to light the unethical practices of several national contractors, despite their declared commitment to social responsibility and ethical management—a corporate conduct epitomized in the popular saying: “Do what I say; don’t do what I do”. In this chapter, we analyze such disconnection between discourse and practice vis-a-vis the literature on leadership and business (...) ethics, Brazilian culture and historical analyses of the Brazilian contractors industry. We examine the official discourse of a Brazilian contractor, as observed in documents retrieved from websites and statements to the press, and its practices, as depicted in the media and documented in testimonies already conducted by the federal courts and attached to the original case-files. Specifically, we aim to contribute to the reflection on management and ethics in Brazil by identifying and discussing the factors that seem to have promoted such disconnection, including aspects of national culture and the institutional environment, together with organizational culture and leadership. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthropological Perspectives in Psychiatric NosologyJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)KeywordsDSM, etiology, Aristotelian causes, social dramasPsychiatry and clinical psychology, as we learn in this paper, are disciplines in need of an ontological perspective. Very few branches of contemporary learning share this characteristic. Probably only theoretical physic and theology—as the rest have long ago given up trying to define and understand the essence of their object, for (...) example, life in the case of biology or mind in psychology. Consequently, the paper by Pérez-Álvarez, Sass and García-Montes, “The Ontology of Mental Disorders in Constructivist Perspective,” (2008) should be welcomed and indeed included in the reading lists for trainees in psychiatry and clinical psychology.The authors propose an approach to the understanding of mental disorders that is extremely attractive and well articulated, and which also has practical implications for clinicians. It is not just another “philosophical divertimento” devoid of scientific and practical importance. Let us analyze the article in an orderly way.Less DsmThe authors of the target paper disapprove of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-III/IV approach to defining illnesses by starting from the symptoms that are present—on the grounds that this may lead clinicians to assume that their sole role is to identify, fight, and suppress the symptoms by whichever procedure. They propose an alternative that is dear to myself because it follows the path of the so-called “anthropological” psychiatry of Binswanger, von Gebsattel, Erwin Strauss, Zutt, López-Ibor, Sr., and others. In essence, this is a phenomenological approach to the meaning of mental diseases, one that emphasizes how the illness is revealed to the patient him- or herself.The target article’s criticism of DSM should be considered in the context of the abuses committed on its behalf. The DSM is not a textbook of psychiatric disorders, nor does it contain a definition of the diseases. The DSM does not tell what a disease is (Klerman et al. 1984)—something that is impossible with a classification system based on the manifestations of the diseases, the signs and symptoms. The DSM, as its title states, is just a diagnostic and statistical manual, which does not contain anything about the origin of [End Page 259] any disease nor an explanation of why it exists or what it means. The DSM is, in fact, just a tool to determine whether a disease is present, and therefore to facilitate communication between professionals and with other individuals, without saying anything about the disease’s aitia—a key term (associated with notions of essence as well as cause) to be discussed below. In theory, most clinicians should understand these limitations; it may be, however, that this is not really the case for many who read or use the DSM. In the world there are around 200,000 psychiatrists; since 1980 the number of DSM copies sold is in the order of several hundred thousand.The misuse of a classification system is even more noticeable in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 Research Version. The instructions for the use of this version recommend that the first step is to make an inventory of all the symptoms present, and then to construct a diagnosis based on them. This how all computer-assisted systems work. This procedure can, however, only be valid if the clinician has already reached a diagnostic conclusion by other means—a diagnosis then to be confirmed for research purposes. It may be that this is one of the reasons why the ICD-10 Research Version has almost never actually been used for research.Furthermore, the concept of symptoms in psychiatry applies only to organic mental disorders (Schneider 1959), conditions in which the patient’s attitude and way of experiencing the symptoms do not play the kind of role that they play in schizophrenia and other mental disorders. The quotation from the important paper by Sass and Parnas in this context is most appropriate. It is indeed that case that “subjective experience can play an important causal role in the progressive experiential transformations of a developing schizophrenic illness... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creativity Belongs to the Person, not to DiseaseJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)Keywordscreativity, patho-biography, Saint Teresa, visionsIn the paper, “From the Visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the Voices of Schizophrenia,” Cangas, Sass, and Pérez-Álvarez (2008) take an original approach to patho-biography that is very welcome.The temptation to designate historical individuals or characters of fiction as suffering from mental disease has always produced disagreeable (...) feelings in me. This sort of abuse of psychiatry and of the people in question is parallel to the abuse by the media or lay citizens when they describe, say, an especially violent murderer as a schizophrenic—forgetting that the vast majority of people with schizophrenia are not in the least violent. Having read Santa Teresa’s writings during my adolescence, well before I even considered entering medicine, I reacted to comments about her alleged psychiatric illnesses with uneasiness, to put it mildly. The Santa Teresa of La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús (her autobiography), of the Camino de Perfección, and of the El Castillo Interior was surely not a mental patient, it seemed to me. The same would apply to San Juan de La Cruz, Jean D’Arc, Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Edipus, and Clitemnestra, to mention a few. Even van Gogh’s paintings did not seem to me the productions of a patient with schizophrenia or epilepsy. Of course all of them may have suffered, at certain periods of life, symptoms attributable to a mental disorder, but their creativity rested elsewhere, and was often manifest during healthy periods of their lives. After years spent fighting the stigma of mental diseases, and after organizing several exhibitions of works of art of people with mental diseases, we came to the conclusion that creativity and singularity belong to the person, not to the illness. Some of the diseases of these individuals may have being accidents (van Gogh’s hallucinations and psychotic symptoms, for example, were most probably due to intoxications with absinthe, then rich in hallucinogenic alkaloids such as tujone), or, together with other life circumstances, may have had unspecific influences on the person’s condition. In contrast with many other psychiatric disorders that are represented in ancient Greek and Roman literature, there are no descriptions of individuals with schizophrenia in the Greek and Roman literature dating from the fifth century bc to the beginning of the second century Ad (Evans et al. 2003), and several authors have speculated that schizophrenia did not exist before the eighteenth century (Ellard 1987).Caution is important when dealing with mental health and religious issues in contrast with creativity. The creativity of people suffering from bipolar disorders is well recognized (Jamison 1993) and [End Page 277] the same applies to alcohol and drug intoxication. Tellenbach (1986) has also written on the creativity of depressed persons, although he refers more to the disposition of mood (Schwermut) than to clinical depression as such. The link between melancholia and genius put forward by Aristotle has often been misinterpreted. The philosopher was considering the melancholic temperament and not the melancholic illness as we would understand it today. Of the four temperaments, it is in his view only the melancholic that is gifted with creativity. The sanguine person seeks the immediate pleasures of life, the choleric one considers himself powerful and dedicates himself to manifesting this power, and the phlegmatic individual is disconnected from life and seeks to live without effort or pleasure. The melancholic temperament leads to creativity because of the predominance of doubt, reflection, and dissatisfaction with the miseries of life.Freud’s notion of religiosity as a collective obsessive neurosis is totally mistaken, in my view. The three main themes of obsessions are cleanliness, order, and guilt. In none of these cases is the theme the goal of the action; rather, it is a strategy to contain anxiety. As a consequence, patients with obsessions and compulsions about dirt and cleanliness tend to be dirty themselves, because the real purpose of their compulsions is not in fact to be clean but rather to satisfy a ritual. When order... (shrink)

La sobrecarga de información resulta un problema epistemológico que preocupa a distintas áreas del conocimiento tales como al campo de las ciencias cognitivas, en su intento por modelar sistemas capaces de detectar relevancia como a la ya olvidada enciclopedística, practicada durante los siglos XVI- XVIII y abocada a la organización, disposición y difusión de la información científica de la época. El presente artículo intenta dar cuenta del fracaso de estos dos campos de investigación a la hora de hallar soluciones ante (...) la problemática de la sobrecarga informacional. Para abordar nuestra cuestión clave, examinaremos particularmente las miradas relativamente pesimistas de H. Dreyfus y de Novalis. Los tratamientos de estos autores demuestran que la sobrecarga de información no puede, ni podrá ser resuelta, si no se recurre a otra vía de investigación por fuera de aquellas que se muestran como insuficientes, a saber: el modelo computacional de la mente (Dreyfus) y la operación enciclopedística clasificatoria (Novalis). (shrink)

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties in the recollection of past experiences (Episodic Memory). Accumulating evidence suggests that they might have also difficulties in the ability to imagine potential future scenarios (Episodic Future Thinking, EFT) and in narrative generation skills. This investigation aimed to determine 1) whether impairments of EFT can be identified in a large cohort of children with high functioning ASD using a task with minimal narrative demands; and 2) if such impairments are related to the (...) ability to generate a narrative's scenario. 77 children with high-functioning ASD and 77 children with typical development were recruited for the study. The two groups were balanced for age, level of formal education, and IQ. EFT was assessed by administering a task with minimal narrative demands, whereas narrative generation skills were assessed with three tasks requiring children to generate past, middle or future episodes in a narrative discourse. With respect to control participants, a subgroup of children with ASD had impaired EFT skills and also showed significant impairments in the ability to generate adequate narratives. On the contrary, participants with spared EFT had normal performance on the narrative generation task. Interestingly, EFT skills predicted narrative generation abilities in both groups. The results of this study support the hypothesis that EFT may be impaired in some but not all children with ASD and of a relation between difficulties with EFT and impairments in the process of narrative generation. The assessment of EFT should employ tasks that do not require narrative production, as children with impaired EFT may also have reduced narrative skills. (shrink)

Background:The high level of satisfaction of users of a health service is largely due to the fact that they receive excellent care from healthcare professionals. Compassionate care is an essential...

Kok-Chor Tan argues that cosmopolitan liberalism can serve as a means to implement the ideal of moral universalism, if one sufficiently distinguishes non-toleration from intervention and moral universalism from dogmatism. In a further move, Tan claims that such an understanding of cosmopolitan liberalism can work to mutually regulate the behavior of states in the global arena. Tan’s co-panelists engage different aspects of his vision. Steve Coutinho underscores that changes within cultures do not typically result from a dialogue across cultures but (...) from within individual cultures. Instead of propping up universal morality on the ideal of cosmopolitan liberalism, we should, Coutinho proposes, work toward finding values that have been implemented to create practical circumstances that resemble those found in liberal cultures. Putting the spotlight on the historical context of liberal cosmopolitanism, Zachary Penman argues that to engage in a global dialogue, the onus is on cosmopolitan liberals to shift the geography of reasoning from imperiality to decoloniality. Equally, their decolonial partners in this dialogue should throw into light the normative content of their decolonial practical reason to facilitate the shift. Saranindranath Tagore encourages Tan to think about a more expanded account of autonomy that is set on a more explicit cosmopolitan register. To this end, he suggests that a cosmopolitan sensibility be fostered through education. Sympathetic to Tan’s larger project of a liberal cosmopolitanism that subscribes to epistemic modesty, Inés Valdez brings into focus structures of epistemic dogmatism that currently allow for political and economic control and exploitation of other peoples and their resources. Tan’s response considers how his own defense of liberal cosmopolitanism as well as his interlocutors’ responses relate to the broader project of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

There are major concerns about the level of personal borrowing, particularly sourced from credit cards. This paper charts the progress of an initiative to create a Responsible Lending Index (RLI) for the credit industry. The RLI proposed to voluntarily benchmark lending standards and promote best practice within the credit industry by involving suppliers of credit, customer representatives and regulators. However, despite initial support from some banks, consumer bodies and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, it failed to gain sufficient (...) support from financial institutions in its original format. The primary reasons for this were related to the complexity of building such a robust index and the banks trade body’s fear of exposing its members to public scrutiny. A revised alternative, the Responsible Lending Initiative, was proposed which took into account these concerns. However, the Association of Payment Clearing Service (APACS), the trade body of the credit industry, then effectively destroyed the proposal. This article describes an attempt to address the challenges in the credit card industry with the initiation of the RLI, reflected in stakeholder discourse and in the context of a wider concern expressed by the involved stakeholders in terms of the need for greater responsibility in the banking industry’s lending practices. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for advanced Parkinson’s disease. However, identifying stimulation parameters, such as contact and current amplitudes, is time-consuming based on trial and error. Directional leads add more stimulation options and render this process more challenging with a higher workload for neurologists and more discomfort for patients. In this study, a sweet spot-guided algorithm was developed that automatically suggested stimulation parameters. These suggestions were retrospectively compared to clinical monopolar reviews. A cohort of 24 Parkinson’s disease (...) patients underwent bilateral DBS implantation in the subthalamic nucleus at our center. First, the DBS’ leads were reconstructed with the open-source toolbox Lead-DBS. Second, a sweet spot for rigidity reduction was set as the desired stimulation target for programming. This sweet spot and estimations of the volume of tissue activated were used to suggest (i) the best lead level, (ii) the best contact, and (iii) the effect thresholds for full therapeutic effect for each contact. To assess these sweet spot-guided suggestions, the clinical monopolar reviews were considered as ground truth. In addition, the sweet spot-guided suggestions for best lead level and best contact were compared against reconstruction-guided suggestions, which considered the lead location with respect to the subthalamic nucleus. Finally, a graphical user interface was developed as an add-on to Lead-DBS and is publicly available. With the interface, suggestions for all contacts of a lead can be generated in a few seconds. The accuracy for suggesting the best out of four lead levels was 56%. These sweet spot-guided suggestions were not significantly better than reconstruction-guided suggestions (p = 0.3). The accuracy for suggesting the best out of eight contacts was 41%. These sweet spot-guided suggestions were significantly better than reconstruction-guided suggestions (p < 0.001). The sweet spot-guided suggestions of each contact’s effect threshold had a mean error of 1.2 mA. On an individual lead level, the suggestions can vary more with mean errors ranging from 0.3 to 4.8 mA. Further analysis is warranted to improve the sweet spot-guided suggestions and to account for more symptoms and stimulation-induced side effects. (shrink)

Studies show bilingualism entails an advantage in cognitive control tasks. There is evidence of a bilingual advantage in the context of aphasia, resulting in better cognitive outcomes and recovery in bilingual persons with aphasia compared to monolingual peers. This bilingual advantage also results in structural changes in the right hemisphere gray matter. Very few studies have examined the so-called bilingual advantage by reference to specific anomia therapy efficacy. This study aims to compare the effect of French-Phonological Component Analysis (Fr-PCA) in (...) monolinguals and bilingual persons with aphasia, both at the linguistic and cognitive control level, and to examine the structural impact of left hemisphere lesion location and right hemisphere structural data. Eight participants with chronic aphasia received Fr-PCA for a total of 15 h over 5 weeks. The results showed improved accuracy for treated words and generalization to untreated items and discourse in both groups, and improved Flanker task performance for some participants. Bilingual participants improved more than monolinguals for picture-naming tasks and narrative discourse. Damage to the left postcentral gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus was associated with less therapy-induced improvement. Additionally, left hemisphere damage to the inferior parietal gyrus and postcentral gyrus was associated with reduced cognitive control pre-therapy. Undamaged right hemisphere cortical thicknesses were significantly different between groups; the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus were greater for the bilingual participants and correlated with cognitive control skills. These results suggest a bilingual advantage in anomia recovery following Fr-PCA, potentially resulting from enhanced cognitive control abilities that could be supported by right hemisphere neural reserve. (shrink)

Currently, millions of minors are being inoculated against SARS-CoV-2 in many countries in the world. Ethical concerns about clinical research involving children have barely been addressed in the literature, despite the fact that the paediatric population is particularly vulnerable within this context. Children should be included in the research plans for COVID-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, it is necessary to critically assess to what extent clinical trials are being conducted according to methodological and ethical criteria that allow us to conclude that the (...) results are valid and, in consequence, how far the vaccination plans for children are scientifically justified.The principal aim of this article is to analyse critically the process of clinical research on COVID-19 vaccines involving children, highlighting the ethical concerns that arise, including the need to stratify the results from older adolescents separately for analysis before proceeding, if further research is warranted, in descending age order. The development of COVID-19 vaccines is examined, with a special look at the participation of children throughout their clinical development, including a review of the clinical trials registered in three international databases. We also offer some additional considerations about the inclusion of minors in vaccination plans. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations, with particular emphasis on the following ethical duties: research in children should be carried out only once the relevant research in adults has previously been conducted; issues that concern children’s needs and rights should be specifically addressed; and, therefore, the highest standards of ethical and scientific quality should be met. (shrink)

Benzodiazepines and antidepressants have been shown to change responses to unfairness; however, the effects of their combined use on unfairness evaluation are unknown. This study examines the effects of concomitant benzodiazepines and antidepressants long-term use on the evaluation of fair and unfair offers. To analyze behavioral changes on responses to unfairness, we compared the performance of medicated participants and healthy controls in the Ultimatum Game, both in the proposer and in the respondent role. The results showed that long-term psychotropic users (...) had the worse economic strategy by accepting less offers than control subjects. However, in the proposer role, the unfair offers made by participants were similar between groups. The present results suggest that long-term use of psychotropic medication, specifically the combination of benzodiazepines and antidepressants, may increase the sensitivity to unfairness, resulting in higher rejection rates in conditions where this strategy is the most disadvantageous. (shrink)

Investigaciones previas muestran que existe una importante relación entre la capacidad de los estudiantes para realizar una descomposición morfológica de las palabras y sus habilidades para adquirir vocabulario. El objetivo de esta investigación fue evaluar la reproducibilidad de un proyecto didáctico en torno a la descomposición de palabras como estrategia para adquirir vocabulario en estudiantes de tercer grado de secundaria. Participó un grupo experimental cuyas habilidades de descomposición morfológica se compararon en un pre y post-test con las de un grupo (...) control. Los resultados mostraron en el grupo experimental un incremento en las habilidades para segmentar las palabras, aunque no hubo diferencias significativas entre grupos en la obtención del significado de palabras. Un análisis cualitativo de las emisiones del docente y de los estudiantes señaló factores importantes a tomar en cuenta para la reproducibilidad de un proyecto didáctico de esta índole en la escuela secundaria. (shrink)

Des historiens de l'Asie du Sud spécialisés dans divers domaines (études missionnaires, Empire moghol, orientalismes, etc.) tentent de cerner les contours du cosmopolitisme entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècles. Ils montrent que cette région constitua un pôle majeur de l'espace de circulation de l'Asie musulmane mais aussi un lieu de communication entre l'Orient et l'Occident.

This introductory chapter integrates two different steps: a global consideration of the problems which the “signifier” limits is able to include and a detailed mapping of the reflective path which the following thirteen chapters effectively pursue.

In the last decades the concept of objectivity has been criticized by the "new epistemologies". These criticisms favour the consolidation of relativist and subjective positions, which condition the objectivity of scientific knowledge to such an extent that it seems to be a goal impossible to achieve.

Analisamos, alguns aspectos da estrutura organizativa e dos mecanismos teórico-metodológicos para a gestão da formação de adultos na Europa. A formação passa a ser o movimento dado ao já conhecido, mas que se modifica em contato com o novo. Esse é desnudado no diálogo estabelecido entre os formandos, os formadores, o contexto e todos os envolvidos no processo formativo.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of “arrogant” as well as of “loving” perception and presents an explanation of “loving, knowing ignorance.” The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and (...) María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of “‘world’-traveling” may help us deal with “loving, knowing ignorance.” Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of “loving, knowing ignorance,” especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

The business world is facing a very complicated situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Small- and medium-sized companies —both in Spain and at the global level—are seeing their survival jeopardized by a fall in revenues. This scenario is aggravated in the case of micro-SMEs headed by female entrepreneurs. Accordingly, micro-SMEs, particularly those led by female entrepreneurs, need to reinvent themselves to overcome the current adversities that could lead to the destruction of their businesses and hence their jobs. One of the (...) ways to do this is to take advantage of digital transformation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze which variables influence the financial results of female-led Spanish micro-SMEs when they carry out social marketing actions. For that purpose, an online survey was designed and analyzed using the “PROCESS” macro. Results show that social media marketing actions have significant effects on financial performance. (shrink)