Medical school oath-taking: the moral controversy

Professions typically formulate codes of ethics. Medical students are exposed to various codes and often are expected to recite some code or oath at their graduation. This article reports the findings of a study of one large medical class, asked upon entry to medical school and again at the beginning of their fourth term, which of 13 specified professional, religious, and secular codes of ethics they would turn to for moral guidance in their practice of medicine. The study finds great diversity in the students' choices and no clear pattern of change by their fourth term. Very few students chose the oath they would be asked to recite at their graduation. The article probes the problems this creates for school administrators and professors as well as students. It asks the implications for professional oath-taking at graduation and in the practice of the profession.     

Ethics in the Humanities: Findings from Focus Groups

This project examined the ethical issues faced by academics and professionals in the Humanities. We conducted focus groups to gather information about the ethical concerns in these fields and used the qualitative data arising from the discussions to create a taxonomy that represents the structure of ethical issues in the Humanities. A key implication of our findings is that while the focus of ethics research and interventions has been primarily on the sciences and engineering, academics and professionals in other fields also encounter some unique critical ethical dilemmas that require further research and methods of intervention.     

Simulating social interaction to address deficits of autistic spectrum disorder in children.

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed on the basis of impairment in reciprocal social interaction and language, and rigidity of behavior. This brief paper describes the development of an experimental intervention for preschool children newly diagnosed with ASD. The rationale for this intervention is the hypothesis that failure to attend to social cues in very early life, of itself, may bear a large share of responsibility for core social and communicative deficits. The intervention, therefore, uses eye-tracking to monitor and trigger rewards for attention to facial expression and direction of gaze.     

Intimate partner violence and preschoolers' explicit memory functioning.

This research examines whether parents' intimate partner physical violence (IPV) relates to their preschoolers' explicit memory functioning, whether children's symptoms of hyperarousal mediate this relation, and whether mothers' positive parenting moderates this relation. Participants were 69 mothers and their 4- or 5-year-old child (34 girls). Mothers completed measures of IPV, children's hyperarousal symptoms, parent-child aggression, and positive parenting. Measures of explicit memory functioning were administered to preschoolers. As expected, IPV correlated negatively with preschoolers' performance on explicit memory tasks, even after controlling for parent-child aggression and demographic variables related to preschoolers' memory functioning. Preschoolers' hyperarousal symptoms did not mediate the relation between IPV and explicit memory functioning, but mothers' positive parenting moderated this relation. Specifically, the negative relation between IPV and preschoolers' performance on 2 of the 3 explicit memory tasks was weaker when mothers engaged in higher levels of positive parenting. These findings extend research on IPV and children's adjustment difficulties to explicit memory functioning in preschoolers and suggest that mothers can ameliorate the influence of IPV on preschoolers' memory functioning via their parenting.     

Evaluation of the psychometric properties of the developmental coordination disorder questionnaire for parents (DCD-Q): results from a community based study of school-aged children

In this study, we examine several key psychometric properties (reliability, construct validity, concurrent validity) of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCD-Q) using a large, school-based sample of children (n=523) and their parents. Children completed the Children's Self-perceptions of Adequacy in and Predilection toward Physical Activity (CSAPPA) and parents completed the DCD-Q. The internal reliability of the DCD-Q was high for both the full scale and the subscales. Confirmatory factor analysis established that the scale was multifactorial, but the fit of the hypothesized factor structure was poor. Finally, moderate correlations were observed between the CSAPPA and the DCD-Q, with the strongest correlation found between the "perceived adequacy" subscale of the CSAPPA and "control during movement" subscale of the DCD-Q. Implications for screening and further research are discussed in relation to both instruments.     

Spatial reasoning with external visualizations: what matters is what you see, not whether you interact

Three experiments examined the effects of interactive visualizations and spatial abilities on a task requiring participants to infer and draw cross sections of a three-dimensional (3D) object. The experiments manipulated whether participants could interactively control a virtual 3D visualization of the object while performing the task, and compared participants who were allowed interactive control of the visualization to those who were not allowed control. In Experiment 1, interactivity produced better performance than passive viewing, but the advantage of interactivity disappeared in Experiment 2 when visual input for the two conditions in a yoked design was equalized. In Experiments 2 and 3, differences in how interactive participants manipulated the visualization were large and related to performance. In Experiment 3, non-interactive participants who watched optimal movements of the display performed as well as interactive participants who manipulated the visualization effectively and better than interactive participants who manipulated the visualization ineffectively. Spatial ability made an independent contribution to performance on the spatial reasoning task, but did not predict patterns of interactive behavior. These experiments indicate that providing participants with active control of a computer visualization does not necessarily enhance task performance, whereas seeing the most task-relevant information does, and this is true regardless of whether the task-relevant information is obtained actively or passively.     

Progesterone to ovariectomized mice enhances cognitive performance in the spontaneous alternation, object recognition, but not placement, water maze, and contextual and cued conditioned fear tasks

Research on how steroid hormones mediate mnemonic processes have focused on effects of 17β-estradiol (E₂); yet, progesterone (P₄) co-varies with E₂ across endogenous hormonal milieu, and itself may influence cognitive processes. We investigated the hypothesis that acute P₄ treatment enhances cognitive performance compared to vehicle. Ovariectomized (OVX) c57/BL6J mice were randomly assigned to be subcutaneously injected with oil vehicle or P₄ (10 mg/kg). Mice were trained in the spontaneous alternation, object recognition, object placement, water maze, or fear conditioning tasks, and injected with vehicle or P₄ before training or immediately post-training, and then were tested 1, 4, or 24 h later. The data obtained from these experiments supported our hypothesis. P₄ increased the percentage of spontaneous alterations made in a T-maze more so than did vehicle. P₄, compared to vehicle, increased the percentage of time spent exploring the novel object in the object recognition task, but did not alter performance in the object placement task. P₄, compared to vehicle, decreased latencies to reach the location in the water maze where the platform had been during training in a probe trial, but did not alter performance in the control, cued trial. Compared to vehicle, P₄ treatment increased freezing in contextual and cued fear testing. Thus, acute P₄ treatment to OVX mice can improve cognitive performance across a variety of tasks.     

Treatment effectiveness of combined medication/behavioural treatment with chinese ADHD children in routine practice

BACKGROUND: The effectiveness of a combined methylphenidate/behavioural treatment (BT) versus methylphenidate-only for Chinese children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was tested in routine clinical practice in Hong Kong. METHODS: A randomized group comparison design was adopted with two treatment conditions (methylphenidate-only; methylphenidate/BT), which lasted for 6 months. There were four assessment time points (pre-treatment, post-treatment, and 6-month and 12-month follow-ups), using the Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal Behaviours (SWAN) Rating Scale. Parental attitude toward different treatment options of ADHD was also assessed at pre-treatment and post-treatment. Participants included 90 Chinese ADHD children (mean age=8 years, SD=.95). RESULTS: The combination of BT and a low-dose methylphenidate was significantly more effective than methylphenidate-only in reducing ADHD and ODD symptoms at post-treatment. At follow-ups, the benefits of the combined treatment were maintained, while the methylphenidate-only group caught up in improvement in ADHD symptoms. Parents in both treatment conditions showed improved attitude toward medication after the 6-month treatment phase, while their attitude toward BT was positive all along. CONCLUSIONS: This study supported the added benefits of BT, on top of medication, for Chinese ADHD children in routine practice with treatments conducted by regular medical and paramedical staffs.