A-symmetric confirmation and anthropic skepticism

Synthese - In recent years, anthropic reasoning has been used to justify a number of controversial skeptical hypotheses (both scientific and philosophical). In this paper, we consider two prominent...     

Physicians’ gender bias in the diagnostic assessment of medically unexplained symptoms and its effect on patient–physician relations

Nonspecific, functional, and somatoform (NFS) syndromes is an umbrella term for various diagnoses with medically unexplained symptoms. These syndromes are more prevalent among women than among men, and associated with negative preconceptions that can impede rehabilitation. In two studies, we quantitatively assess how patients’ gender affects the diagnostic assessment of NFS syndromes, as well as the healthcare experiences of individuals diagnosed with NFS syndromes. In the first study, our vignette‐based experiment showed that Swedish general practitioners (N = 90) were gender biased in their diagnostic assessment of NFS syndromes, such that a female patient with back pain was more likely to be assigned a NFS syndrome compared to an otherwise identical male patient. In the second study, a large community sample of Swedish individuals with medically explained (n = 432) and unexplained pain (n = 521) evaluated their treating physician's relational conduct. Even after accounting for a variety of sociodemographic variables and other pain characteristics, women with at least one NFS syndrome percieved their physician's relational conduct as significantly poorer than other women as well as men with and without NFS syndromes. When women's pain is more likely than men's to be assessed as NFS, their rehabilitation could be prolonged as pertient alternative diagnoses and treatments are omittied and their negative healthcare experiences lower their volition to partake and persevere in treatment.     

Do seductive details do their damage in the context of graph comprehension? Insights from eye movements

In educational research, interesting but irrelevant materials are often considered seductive details, which are suspected to have detrimental effects on learning. Although seductive details have been mostly examined in the context of text comprehension, such elements are also used in graphs (e.g., depicting data points). In the present experiment, we investigated both seductive text and seductive pictures in the context of graph comprehension as well as the interaction of seductive details with spatial working memory capacity (SWMC). We recorded N = 68 students' eye movements, while they analyzed bar graphs in a within‐subject design. Data were analyzed with linear mixed‐effects models. Results show that seductive details did not affect students' graph reading performance but prolonged the task processing time. Eye‐fixation measures revealed that additional processing time was best explained by attention distraction towards the seductive material. SWMC did not affect the presence or the extent of the seductive details effect.     

Moral Representativeness and Satisfaction with One’s Religious Community

Belonging to a community of believers represents a basic component of most religions. According to a social-functional account of religion, a primary function of religious belief is to bind individuals to these types of cooperative, moral groups. However, this framework has yet to investigate what factors are associated with being more or less “bound” to a particular community. Although previous research has found that being very representative of the congregation in terms of religious belief (e.g., fundamentalism) is an important factor, the social-functional account suggests that being representative of the binding moral beliefs of the community should mediate this effect. In this study, participants from 23 churches completed measures assessing religious and moral beliefs. Analyses revealed that moral representativeness was associated with greater satisfaction with one’s faith community, above and beyond theological belief. Moreover, representativeness in terms of binding moral foundations mediated the relationship between satisfaction and representativeness in terms of religious fundamentalism.     

Home Groups: Integrating Peer Support and Clinical Care in a Community Mental Health Center

With peer supporters now comprising one of the most rapidly growing components of the mental health workforce, group interventions that combine their expertise with those of more traditional mental health providers are needed. An example of one such intervention, developed and implemented at a large community mental health center for individuals with serious mental illnesses, is presented. Called a “Home Group” and co-led by peers and clinical psychology interns, this intervention provides unique learning opportunities for peers and trainees and many potential benefits to group members. Vignettes to illustrate the model are presented and the potential therapeutic and empowering aspects of this innovative and promising approach are identified and discussed.     

The Effects of Text Structure Discrimination Training on the Writing Performance of Students with Learning Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine whether teaching three participants with learning disabilities to name and identify critical components (i.e., opening sentence, detail sentences, and key words) for four expository text structures, and to discriminate between well-written and poorly written components would improve their expository writing performance. After instruction, one participant immediately improved her expository paragraph writing skills. However, two participants needed additional instruction and feedback on their writing before their paragraph writing improved. Social validation of the study outcomes was assessed by comparing participants' paragraphs before and after instruction to paragraphs produced by same age peers without disabilities. After instruction, participants' paragraph scores were above the mean score of the normative comparison group. Implications for teaching writing skills to students with learning disabilities, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Stimulus processing constraints in audition

In 3 experiments, the authors tested performance in simple tone matching and classification tasks. Each tone was defined on location and frequency dimensions. In the first 2 experiments, participants completed a same-different matching task on the basis of one of these dimensions while attempting to ignore irrelevant variation in the other dimension. In Experiment 3, in which the tones were classified either by frequency or location, the authors explored intertrial repetition effects. The patterns of performance across these different tasks were remarkably similar and were taken to reveal basic characteristics of stimulus encoding processes. The data suggest a processing sequence in audition that reveals an early stage in which location and frequency are treated as being integral and a latter stage in which location and frequency are separable.