Selecting the Right Tool For the Job

There are competing ethical concerns when it comes to designing any clinical research study. Clinical trials of possible treatments for Ebola virus are no exception. If anything, the competing ethical concerns are exacerbated in trying to find answers to a deadly, rapidly spreading, infectious disease. The primary goal of current research is to identify experimental therapies that can cure Ebola or cure it with reasonable probability in infected individuals. Pursuit of that goal must be methodologically sound, practical and consistent with prevailing norms governing human subjects research. Some maintain that only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with a placebo or standard-of-care arm can meet these conditions. We maintain that there are alternative trial designs that can do so as well and that sometimes these are preferable to RCTs.     

The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

Brain imaging studies reliably localize a region of visual cortex that is especially responsive to visual words. This brain specialization is essential to rapid reading ability because it enhances perception of words by becoming specifically tuned to recurring properties of a writing system. The origin of this specialization poses a challenge for evolutionary accounts involving innate mechanisms for functional brain organization. We propose an alternative account, based on studies of other forms of visual expertise (i.e. bird and car experts) that lead to functional reorganization. We argue that the interplay between the unique demands of word reading and the structural constraints of the visual system lead to the emergence of the Visual Word Form Area.     

The 1997 coleman roberts griffith address movement expertise: A juncture between psychology theory and practice

Abstract

Two of the major distinguishing characteristics of the pioneering work of Coleman R. Griffith were his theory-practice integration through applied research and his eclectic focus not just on cognitive and emotional aspects of the psychology of sport. but also on elements related to perception, decision-making and movement control, and learning. The first part of this paper discusses the implications of these two attributes to broad issues for sport psychology related to the fragmentation-integration of knowledge, to defining the scope of the field, and to the nature of the relationship with other fields of knowledge, especially motor control and learning. The second part of the paper illustrates some of these issues through an overview of applied research on the enhancement of the perceptual skills of athletes. A critique of current understanding of the nature of perceptual skill in sport is first provided, using expert-novice comparisons as a means of uncovering the essential distinguishing attributes of expert performance. Knowledge about the nature of expert perception is then used to assess the potential of current and prospective training strategies to enhance perceptual skill and, through this, provide new avenues for improving athletic performance.     

Sport-Specific Practice and the Development of Expert Decision-Making in Team Ball Sports

The role of sport-specific practice in the development of decision-making expertise in the sports of field hockey, netball, and basketball was examined. Fifteen expert decision-makers and 13 experienced non-expert athletes provided detailed information about the quantity and type of sport-specific and other related practice activities they had undertaken throughout their careers. Experts accumulated more hours of sport-specific practice from the age of 12 years onwards than did non-experts, spending on average some 13 years and 4,000 hours on concentrated sport-specific practice before reaching international standard. A significant negative correlation existed between the number of additional activities undertaken and the hours of sport-specific training required before attaining expertise, suggesting a functional role for activities other than sport-specific training in the development of expert decision-making.     

Guest Editorial

Explores the impact of expert witnessing on the integrity of forensic scientific information. Complaints on the behavior of expert witnesses; Factors stimulating the susceptibility of experts to abandon their scientific integrity; Implications of the reliance of expert witnesses on ethics codes.     

Institutional Constraints on the Ethics of Expert Testimony

We examined the dilemmas posed by the involvement of expert witnesses in court cases and the institutional constraints on the ethics of expert testimony. The causes for the incorporation of bad science into legal decisions, potential solutions to this dilemma, and the limitations of these solutions are considered. We concluded that law, science, and experts must respond to the problems posed by expert witnessing.     

Congruence Between Near-Death and Mystical Experience

Near-death experiences, altered states during a brush with death, may include mystical features like a sense of sacredness and divine union, timelessness/spacelessness, positive mood, noetic quality, and ineffability. We quantified mystical elements in near-death experience by comparing responses on the Mysticism Scale of 292 near-death experiencers and 34 persons who had come close to death without near-death experiences. Two thirds of near-death experiencers reported mystical experiences during their brush with death, compared to none of the comparison survivors. Near-death experiencers scored higher on the Mysticism Scale than did nonexperiencers; they endorsed noetic quality, positive affect, and unity most often and ego loss, timelessness/spacelessness, and ineffability least often. Depth of near-death experience was correlated highly with scores on the Mysticism Scale, but factor analysis of features during the brush with death yielded two distinct factors representing mystical and near-death elements, suggesting that near-death experiences have commonalities with, but can be differentiated from, mystical experience.     

Predicting adolescent posttraumatic stress in the aftermath of war: Differential effects of coping strategies across trauma reminder,loss reminder,and family conflict domains

Background and Objectives: The vast majority of youth who lived through the Bosnian war were exposed to multiple traumatic events, including interpersonal violence, community destruction, and the loss of a loved one. This study examined factors that predict post-war psychological adjustment, specifically posttraumatic stress, in Bosnian adolescents. Design: Regression analyses evaluated theorized differential relations between three types of post-war stressors – exposure to trauma reminders, loss reminders, and intrafamilial conflict – specific coping strategies, and posttraumatic stress symptom dimensions. Methods: We examined 555 Bosnian adolescents, aged 15–19 years, to predict their long-term posttraumatic stress reactions in the aftermath of war. Results: Findings indicated that post-war exposure to trauma reminders, loss reminders, and family conflict, as well as engagement and disengagement coping strategies, predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms. Secondary control engagement coping responses to all three types of post-war stressors were inversely associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms, whereas primary control engagement coping responses to family conflict were inversely associated with hyperarousal symptoms. Disengagement responses to trauma reminders and family conflict were positively associated with re-experiencing symptoms. Conclusions: These findings shed light on ways in which trauma reminders, loss reminders, and family conflict may intersect with coping responses to influence adolescent postwar adjustment.     

Influence of scale and orientation on the visual perception of natural scenes

It is well known that the distribution of spatial content with respect to spatial scale in real-world scenes falls in accordance with a 1/ f α relation. Equally well known is the tendency for an orientation bias in scene content with the predominant bias in content at the horizontal and vertical orientations. This has led to the suggestion of a relationship in which the mechanisms of the human visual system are optimized for processing such regularities. Here we review current literature concerning the measurement of these regularities (via Fourier analysis) of natural scenes in the context of other work that has psychophysically assessed the extent to which visual perception exploits such regularities of spatial content. In addition, 2 psychophysical experiments are presented that extend this literature and argue for the importance of these regularities in perceiving orientation in real-world visual stimuli.     

Post-Secularity and Religion in Britain: An Empirical Assessment

Abstract

In the almost half-century since Bryan Wilson published Religion in Secular Society, the secularisation paradigm has gone from take-for-granted orthodoxy to passé intellectual dead-end. It is now common to talk of post-secular Europe and de-secularisation. This article presents a very large body of data to demonstrate that despite the change in intellectual fashion, secularisation continues apace in Britain. Religion has become more contentious; it has not become more popular.