Utility of Behavior Ratings by Examiners During Assessments of Preschool Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study examines the clinical utility of behavior ratings made by nonclinician examiners during assessments of preschool children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Matched samples of children with (n = 127) and without (n = 125) AD/HD were utilized to test the internal, convergent, concurrent, and incremental validity of ratings completed by examiners on the Hillside Behavior Rating Scale (HBRS). Results indicated that HBRS ratings were internally consistent, possessed sufficient interrater reliability, and were significantly associated with parent and teacher reports of AD/HD when controlling for age, gender, intelligence, and symptoms of other psychopathology. HBRS ratings also were significantly associated with other measures of functioning, and provided a significant increment in the prediction of impairment over parent and teacher report alone. These findings suggest that behavioral ratings during testing provide a unique source of clinical information that may be useful as a supplement to parent and teacher reports.     

Psychological Safety and Appreciation of Differences in Counselor Training Programs: Examining Religion,Spirituality, and Political Beliefs

This study focused on the extent to which religion, spirituality, and political beliefs predicted counseling students' perceptions of psychological safety and appreciation of differences in their programs. The authors used hierarchical regression models to analyze data from 264 students from 4 different institutions. Results indicated that student age, political conservatism, extrinsic religiosity, and intrinsic spirituality were significant predictors of perceived psychological safety and appreciation of differences. The authors discuss implications of these findings.     

Risk and Prisoner's Dilemma: A Reinterpretation of Coombs' Re‐parameterization

We propose a model to measure risk in a prisoner's dilemma based on Coombs' (1973) re‐parameterization of the game as an individual risk decision‐making task that chooses between a gamble of cooperation and another gamble of defection. Specifically, we propose an index, r, to represent the risk associated with cooperation relative to defection. In conjunction with Rapoport's (1967) index of cooperation (K), our formulation of risk allows us to construct games that vary in risk (as indexed by r) while controlling for cooperativeness (as indexed by K). Following utility analysis that models risk seeking as a convex utility function and risk averse as a concave function, we predict that risk‐seeking people cooperate more in games that the cooperation choice is more risky, whereas risk‐averse people cooperate more in games that the cooperation choice is less risky. In the three studies that we varied game parameters, used different measures of risk orientation and prosocial orientation and used different experimental procedures, we found robust results supporting our predictions. Theoretical analysis of our formulation further suggests that risk and cooperativeness of a prisoner's dilemma game is not entirely independent. Games that have a higher cooperativeness index are necessarily more risky. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differences in perceptions of coronary disease among Hong Kong Chinese: implications for the societal readiness in disease prevention

Perceptions of coronary heart disease (CHD) influence individual health behavior, which is central to preventing the disease. Not enough is known about the demographic differences in perceptions of CHD among Chinese communities. This study examined these differences in the perceived seriousness and risk of CHD among Hong Kong Chinese. A self-developed questionnaire was administered to a convenient sample (n = 236). Significant differences were identified in the perceived seriousness and risk of CHD between younger and older age groups (p < 0.001) and groups with lower and higher education levels (p < 0.001), but not between genders (p > 0.05). Over 50% of participants expressed greater concern about infectious disease than about CHD, while two-thirds to over half of female, older, and less educated participants were more concerned about stroke. This study highlighted populations with lower levels of CHD perception that need increased public education. The findings have implications for the societal readiness to establishing ongoing public healthcare strategies to increase awareness of CHD.     

Ground zero for a post-moral ethics in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Julia Kristeva’s melancholic

Perhaps no other novel has received as much attention from moral philosophers as South African writer J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. The novel is ethically compelling and yet no moral theory explains its force. Despite clear Kantian moments, neither rationalism nor self-respect can account for the strange ethical task that the protagonist sets for himself. Calling himself the dog man, like the ancient Cynics, this shamelessly cynical protagonist takes his cues for ethics not from humans but from animals. He does not however claim much in the way of empathy or understanding of animals, and his own odd motives remain a puzzle throughout the stages of his ethical transformation. Many scholars approach Coetzee’s text through an ethics of alterity, and even argue that Disgrace is exemplary in this regard. Kristeva’s rendition of alterity ethics brings us close to the novel’s vision, and yet the novel points towards a more primordial basis for ethics in the search for meaning through the human encounter with other animal species.     

Contract cheating: a new challenge for academic honesty?

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice.