The purpose of this study was to compare working memory (WM), executive function, academic ability and problem classroom behaviors in children aged 8 to 11 years who were either identified via routine screening as having low WM, or had been diagnosed with ADHD. Standardised assessments of WM, executive function and reading and mathematics were administered to 83 children with ADHD, 50 children with low WM and 50 typically developing children. Teachers rated problem behaviors on checklists measuring attention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, oppositional behavior, (...) and difficulties associated with executive function in the classroom. The ADHD and low WM groups had highly similar WM and executive function profiles, but were distinguished in two key respects: children with ADHD had higher levels of rated and observed impulsive behavior, and children low WM had slower response times. Possible mechanisms for these common and distinct deficits are discussed. (shrink)

While parents have traditionally provided proxy consent for minors to participate in research, this has proven inadequate for adolescents who are mentally and emotionally capable of making their own decisions. Research has proven that even young children, and certainly most adolescents, are developmentally prepared to make such decisions for themselves. The author challenges the assumption that both consent and assent are static concepts, and proposes that a sliding scale of competence be created to ascertain the adolescent's comprehension of the proposed (...) research by shifting the burden of proof to those who believe a particular adolescent is unable to provide informed consent. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams.Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is (...) necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those rare books that fruitfully combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world. It is both an object lesson in reaching across academic barriers and a demonstration of how the best of feminist philosophy can be in conversation with the best of “mainstream” philosophy—as well as affect the lives of real people. (shrink)

Background Dynamic consent has been proposed as a process through which participants and patients can gain more control over how their data and samples, donated for biomedical research, are used, resulting in greater trust in researchers. It is also a way to respond to evolving data protection frameworks and new legislation. Others argue that the broad consent currently used in biobank research is ethically robust. Little empirical research with cohort study participants has been published. This research investigated the participants’ opinions (...) of adding a dynamic consent interface to their existing study. Methods Adult participants in the Extended Cohort for E-health, Environment and DNA longitudinal cohort study who are members of the EXCEED Public and Participant Engagement Group were recruited. Four focus groups were conducted and analysed for thematic content. Discussion topics were derived from a review of the current literature on dynamic consent. Results Participants were in favour of many aspects of a dynamic consent interface, such as being able to update their information, add additional data to their records and choose withdrawal options. They were supportive provided it was simple to use and not intrusive. Participants expressed a markedly high level of trust in the study and its investigators and were unanimously happy with their current participation. No strong support was found for adding a dynamic consent interface to EXCEED. Conclusions Trust in the study researchers was the strongest theme found. Openness and good data security were needed to retain their trust. While happy to discuss dynamic consent, participants were satisfied with the current study arrangements. There were indications that changing the study might unnecessarily disturb their trust. This raised the question of whether there are contexts where dynamic consent is more appropriate than others. This study was limited by the small number of participants who were committed to the study and biased towards it. More research is needed to fully understand the potential impact of adding a dynamic consent interface to an existing cohort study. (shrink)

Public bioethics bodies are used internationally as institutions with the declared aims of facilitating societal debate and providing policy advice in certain areas of scientific inquiry raising questions of values and legitimate science. In the United States, bioethical experts in these institutions use the language of consensus building to justify and define the outcome of the enterprise. However, the implications of public bioethics at science-policy boundaries are underexamined. Political interest in such bodies continues while their influence on societal consensus, public (...) debate, and science policy remains ambiguous. This article presents a theoretical discussion of public bioethics bodies as boundary organizations and examines them in terms of relationship to the moral and cognitive authority of science and other forms of expertise, mechanisms for public participation in controversial science policy, and the deployment of consensus models. The theoretical discussion is examined in the case of the U.S. Human Embryo Research Panel. (shrink)

Susan Babbitt dissects a common moral perspective for judging importance which she calls 'moral imagination.' In order to explain ourselves, and to recognize in others, what we often already perceive intuitively to be right or good, we instinctively create a story as a framework. She argues that we intentionally create stories which appear artless or chaotic, something capable of imperfection. This allows the story-maker to eventually deviate if he or she chooses, without a loss of hope, even if that (...) direction and goal may not yet be able to be fully articulated or defended. (shrink)

No one denies that people adapt what they say and how they interpret what is said to them, depending on their interactive partners. What is controversial is when and how they do so. Several psycholinguistics research programs have found what appear to be failures to adapt to partners in the early moments of processing and have used this evidence to argue for modularity in the language processing architecture, claiming that the system cannot take into account a partner’s distinct needs or (...) knowledge early in processing. We review the evidence for both early and delayed partner‐specific adaptations, and we identify some challenges and difficulties with interpreting this evidence. We then discuss new analyses from a previously published referential communication experiment (Metzing & Brennan, 2003) demonstrating that partner‐specific effects need not occur late in processing. In contrast to Pickering and Garrod (2004) and Keysar, Barr, and Horton (1998b), we conclude that there is no good evidence that early processing has to be be “egocentric,”“dumb,” or encapsulated from social knowledge or common ground, but that under some circumstances, such as when one partner has made an attribution about another’s knowledge or needs, processing can be nimble enough to adapt quite early to a perspective different from one’s own. (shrink)

By definitively establishing that racism has broad implications for how the entire field of philosophy is practiced -- and by whom -- this powerful and ...

Re-consent in research, the asking for a new consent if there is a change in protocol or to confirm the expectations of participants in case of change, is an under-explored issue. There is little clarity as to what changes should trigger re-consent and what impact a re-consent exercise has on participants and the research project. This article examines applicable policy statements and literature for the prevailing arguments for and against re-consent in relation to longitudinal cohort studies, tissue banks and biobanks. (...) Examples of re-consent exercises are presented, triggers and non-triggers for re-consent discussed and the conflicting attitudes of commentators, participants and researchers highlighted. We acknowledge current practice and argue for a greater emphasis on ‘responsive autonomy,’ that goes beyond a one-time consent and encourages greater communication between the parties involved. A balance is needed between respecting participants' wishes on how they want their data and samples used and enabling effective research to proceed. (shrink)

A live issue in anthropology and development studies, humanism is not typically addressed by analytic philosophers. Arguing for humanism as a view about truths, Humanism and Embodiment insists that disembodied reason, not religion, should be the target of secularists promoting freedom of enquiry and human community. Susan Babbitt's original study presents humanism as a meta-ethical view, paralleling naturalistic realism in recent analytic epistemology and philosophy of science. Considering the nature of knowledge, particularly the radical contingency of knowledge claims upon (...) causal mechanisms, religious thinkers like Thomas Merton and Ivan Illich offer more scientific conceptions of practical deliberation than are offered by some non-religious ethicists. Drawing on philosophical sources such as Marxism, Buddhism and Christianity, this original study considers implications of an embodied conception of reason, revealing philosophical, practical and political implications. (shrink)

: In this paper, I argue that stories about difference do not promote critical self and social understanding; rather, on the contrary, it is the way we understand ourselves that makes some stories relevantly different. I discuss the uncritical reception of a story about homosexuality in Cuba, urging attention to generalizations explaining judgments of importance. I suggest that some stories from the South will never be relevant to discussions about human flourishing until we critically examine ideas about freedom and democracy, (...) and their role in national identity, explaining the significance we give, or not, to such stories. (shrink)

I offer a novel interdisciplinary approach to understanding the communicative task of listening, which is under-theorised compared to its more conspicuous counterpart, speech. By correlating a Rylean view of mental actions with a virtue ethical framework, I show listeners’ internal activity as a morally relevant feature of how they treat people. The listener employs a policy of responsiveness in managing the extent to which they allow a speaker's voice to be centred within their more effortful, engaged attention. A just listener's (...) policy of responsiveness avoids unwarrantedly dismissing speakers’ messages on the basis of peripheral attention alone. (shrink)

Where research was once strictly confined to one laboratory or office, investigators now widely share and compare their plans, analyses, and results. With the advent of genomic knowledge, researchers are seeking to understand the genetics and genomics of complex human disease. They are combining their efforts into international consortia in order to take on problems that face individuals around the world, such as cancer and malaria — problems that are too large to solve by one country alone. These consortia bring (...) together diverse research groups from different parts of the world to focus on a common goal. Their projects may all focus on one disease or condition, but examine it from different perspectives and share the newly gained information with each other and the wider scientific community. (shrink)

This book makes the connection between early Buddhism and nature. Early Buddhism was a system of thinking which applied the universal laws of nature to human beings. It was not a religion. It was a comprehensive worldview. But after the first 400-500 years, it was slowly lost.

In this essay, I suggest that significant insights of recent feminist philosophy lead, among other things, to the thought that it is not always better to choose than to be compelled to do what one might have done otherwise. However, few feminists, if any, would defend such a suggestion. I ask why it is difficult to consider certain ideas that, while challenging in theory, are, nonetheless, rather unproblematic in practice. I suggest that some questions are not pursued seriously enough by (...) philosophers, because certain popular liberal conceptions of individuality and freedom are taken too much for granted. (shrink)

In this essay, I suggest that significant insights of recent feminist philosophy lead, among other things, to the thought that it is not always better to choose than to be compelled to do what one might have done otherwise. However, few feminists, if any, would defend such a suggestion. I ask why it is difficult to consider certain ideas that, while challenging in theory, are, nonetheless, rather unproblematic in practice. I suggest that some questions are not pursued seriously enough by (...) philosophers, because certain popular liberal conceptions of individuality and freedom are taken too much for granted. (shrink)

Since November 2, 2002, every state's abortion law has stood at risk of complete revision. With one easily overlooked sentence, federal regulators declared in October 2002 that effective the following month, states could make available healthcare coverage directly to organisms at the moment of conception.

This article looks at the context of research in treating burns at the dawn of the atomic age. Funded by the Army and other defense agencies, burn research increased as concerns over an atomic attack on an American city intensified.

On September 23, 1949, President Harry Truman announced that the Soviet Union had successfully detonated an atomic bomb. The news that the Soviet Union had done this came as little surprise to a number of American scientists and to some members of the intelligence community who had predicted that the Soviets would quickly acquire this advanced weapons technology. But for many Americans this news was disturbing. Truman’s announcement was taken up by, among others, a young Baptist evangelist named Billy Graham. (...) Opening a tent revival in Los Angeles just two days after the President’s report, Graham preached how the news of the Soviet bomb test had “startled the world” and launched an “arms race unprecedented in the history of the world.” President Truman, he informed his listeners, said that we “must be prepared for any eventuality at any hour….” Perhaps even more ominously he asked the crowd, “Do you know the area that is marked out for the enemy’s first atomic bomb? New York! Secondly, Chicago; and thirdly, the city of Los Angeles!” It was not only evangelical preachers who foresaw catastrophic implications from a growing arsenal of atomic weapons. (shrink)