Philosophy,Its Pitfalls,Some Rescue Plans,and Their Complications

This article offers the motivation for organising a conference on philosophy as it is practised across several faculties and departments at the University of Cambridge. It also offers an overview of the main themes that emerge in the essays collected in this issue of Metaphilosophy, which derive from the aforementioned conference. In particular it focuses on the risk of scholasticism and dogmatism that philosophy faces when it divorces itself from its own history, other disciplines, and real life. It then discusses the potential problems that can arise from the practice of philosophy in close conjunction with other disciplines, such as the natural sciences and the history of philosophy. Finally, it briefly comments on how institutional/academic structures have an influence on the way philosophy is practised.     

Effectiveness of virtual reality for pediatric pain distraction during i.v. placement.

The objective of this study was to test the efficacy and suitability of virtual reality (VR) as a pain distraction for pediatric intravenous (i.v.) placement. Twenty children (12 boys, 8 girls) requiring i.v. placement for a magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography (MRI/CT) scan were randomly assigned to two conditions: (1) VR distraction using Street Luge (5DT), presented via a head-mounted display, or (2) standard of care (topical anesthetic) with no distraction. Children, their parents, and nurses completed self-report questionnaires that assessed numerous health-related outcomes. Responses from the Faces Pain Scale-Revised indicated a fourfold increase in affective pain within the control condition; by contrast, no significant differences were detected within the VR condition. Significant associations between multiple measures of anticipatory anxiety, affective pain, i.v. pain intensity, and measures of past procedural pain provided support for the complex interplay of a multimodal assessment of pain perception. There was also a sufficient amount of evidence supporting the efficacy of Street Luge as a pediatric pain distraction tool during i.v. placement: an adequate level of presence, no simulator sickness, and significantly more child-, parent-, and nurse-reported satisfaction with pain management. VR pain distraction was positively endorsed by all reporters and is a promising tool for decreasing pain, and anxiety in children undergoing acute medical interventions. However, further research with larger sample sizes and other routine medical procedures is warranted.     

Training in musical rhythm and field dependence of children.

The present experiment investigated the effects of musical rhythm training on field dependence in children. An experimental group of 12 Ss showed significant improvement on the Children's Embedded-figures Test and the Rod-and-frame Test after training, while a matched control group did not improve. Pretest scores on the children's Embedded-figures Test and the Rod-and-frame Test were not correlated.     

Increasing the Cultural Proficiency of Clinical Managers

The author describes the development of a 20‐hour curriculum to train clinical managers to enhance the cultural competence of their staff. After training, managers reported improvements in their multicultural competence and in the ability to enhance their staff's cultural competence. El autor describe el desarrollo de un plan de un currículo de 20 horas de entrenar directores clínicos para aumentar la competencia cultural de su personal. Después del entrenamiento, los directores informaron mejoria en su competencia multicultural y en la habilidad de aumentar la competencia cultural de su personal.     

Virginal Status and Adolescent Delinquency: The Birds and the Bees,Deviance, and Teens

Much of society deems pre-marital adolescent sexual activity to be deviant. Current research seeks to determine if losing one’s virginity has an impact on participation in delinquent acts. It is hypothesized that youth who are more socially bonded to conventional people and activities, with higher levels of self-control, will not have participated in sexual intercourse and will have lower rates of delinquency. Data from Add Health are analyzed. Results do not indicate a significant effect of virginal status on delinquency. However, various social bonds were found to differentially effect delinquency for virgins and non-virgins, which may be important to consider.     

Rethinking impulsivity in suicide

Elevated impulsivity is thought to facilitate the transition from suicidal thoughts to suicidal behavior. Therefore, impulsivity should distinguish those who have attempted suicide (attempters) from those who have only considered suicide (ideators-only). This hypothesis was examined in three large nonclinical samples: (1) 2,011 military recruits, (2) 1,296 college students, and (3) 399 high school students. In sample 1, contrary to traditional models of suicide risk, a unidimensional measure of impulsivity failed to distinguish attempters from ideators-only. In samples 2 and 3, which were administered a multidimensional measure of impulsivity (i.e., the UPPS impulsive behavior scale; Whiteside & Lynam, 2001), different impulsivity-related traits characterized attempters and ideators-only. Whereas both attempters and ideators-only exhibited high urgency (the tendency to act impulsive in the face of negative emotions), only attempters exhibited poor premeditation (a diminished ability to think through the consequences of one's actions). Neither attempters nor ideators-only exhibited high sensation seeking or lack of perseverance. Future research should continue to distinguish impulsivity-related traits that predict suicide ideation from those that predict suicide attempts, and models of suicide risk should be revised accordingly.     

Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5-year-old children: The ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view

Assessing children’s episodic future thinking by having them select items for future use may be assessing their functional reasoning about the future rather than their future episodic thinking. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, we capitalised on the fact that episodic cognition necessarily has a spatial format (Clayton and Russell, 2009, Hassabis and Maguire, 2007). Accordingly, we asked children of 3, 4, and 5 to chose items they would need to play a game (blow football) from the opposite side of the table on which they had never before played. The crucial item was the box that was needed by children to reach the table from the other side. Over four experiments, we demonstrated that, while children of 3 perform poorly on future questions and children of 5 generally perform quite well, children of 4 years find a question about what they themselves will need to play in the future harder to answer than a similar question posed about another child. We suggest that this result is due to the ‘growth error’ of over-applying newly-developed Level 2 perspective-taking skills (Flavell et al., 1981), which encourages the selection of non-functional items. The data are discussed in terms of perspective-taking abilities in children and of the neural correlates of episodic cognition, navigation, and theory of mind.