Professional Responsibility in Elder Law: A Synthesis of Preventive Law and Therapeutic Jurisprudence

This article focuses on the professional responsibilities that a lawyer owes to older clients. Specifically, this article proposes that when working with older clients, lawyers have a special responsibility to ensure that their clients have the capacity to manage their own affairs and to ensure their clients' legal, financial, and personal interests are protected in case of sudden future incapacity. Furthermore, a lawyer working with older clients has a responsibility to remain cognizant of the realities of ageing without giving in to the falsities of senior citizen stereotypes. Through an integration of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Preventive Law, a proactive, client-centered, four-stage framework for advancing therapeutic goals through preventive lawyering is developed. The framework is then applied to a model lawyer/client interaction typical of elder practice. The advantages and limitations of the four-stage framework are discussed.     

Effects of reward magnitude and training frequency on the learning rates and memory retention of the Port Jackson shark Heterodontus portusjacksoni

Animal Cognition - The development of adaptive responses to novel situations via learning has been demonstrated in a wide variety of animal taxa. However, knowledge on the learning abilities of one...     

Bound context features are integrated at encoding

In the present research, we tested the predictions of different accounts of context binding in "remember" judgements. Context binding, defined as the stochastically dependent retrieval of two different context features, has previously been suggested to be due to mechanisms operating at retrieval either by cueing among context features (Meiser & Br?der, 2002) or by cueing between item and context features (Starns & Hicks, 2008). These accounts, however, do not make specific assumptions regarding the underlying memory representation supporting context binding. By contrast, here we propose that a binding process at encoding integrates item and context information into a coherent memory representation. Varying the presentation of the context features during encoding either with both context features presented simultaneously or with features spread over two encoding episodes, data from two experiments corroborate the notion that binding is produced at encoding. This result suggests that a binding process integrating the context features at encoding is necessary for stochastically dependent retrieval of context features.     

Social Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis: a Meta-Analysis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with cognitive decline and impairment in social functioning. Accumulating evidence suggests that patients with MS are impaired in social cognition, including theory of mind (ToM) and emotion recognition. In this meta-analysis of 24 studies, facial emotion recognition and ToM performances of 989 patients with MS and 836 healthy controls were compared. MS was associated with significant impairments with medium effect sizes in ToM (d?=?0.57) and facial emotion recognition (d?=?0.61). Among individual emotions recognition of fear and anger were particularly impaired. The severity of social cognitive deficits was significantly associated with non-social cognitive impairment. These deficits in social cognition may underpin difficulties in social functioning in MS. However, there is a need for further studies investigating the longitudinal evolution of social cognitive deficits and their neural correlates in MS.     

Should I stay or should I go?: Penalties for briefly de-prioritizing work or childcare

We examined penalties against individuals who temporarily de-prioritize their employee or parenting role. Experiment 1 (N = 488) utilized vignettes depicting a mother/father who briefly left their child with a babysitter to engage in work/self-care/did not leave (control). Both mothers and fathers were viewed as less parentally competent, likeable, dedicated to their family (and putting their child at greater risk) when they very briefly de-prioritized their caregiving role by leaving their child for either reason, relative to controls. Experiment 2 (N = 494) utilized vignettes depicting a female/male employee who briefly left work to engage in childcare/self-care/did not leave (control). Both male and female employees were rated as less professionally competent, likeable, dedicated to their work and deserving of organizational rewards (and more deserving of organizational penalties, and putting their organization at greater risk) when they very briefly de-prioritized their employee role by leaving work for either reason, compared to controls. However, employees who left for self-care were viewed more negatively than those who left to engage in childcare. Unexpectedly, results did not reveal target gender differences; they were also largely unaffected by participant gender. This suggests that parents and employees face penalties when they must de-prioritize either of these important roles for even very short periods. Implications for well-being, work-life balance, and productivity are discussed.     

Changing Me,Changing Us: Relationship Quality and Collective Efficacy as Major Outcomes in Systemic Couple Therapy

We examine the sensitivity to change in the Evaluation of Social Systems (EVOS) scale, which assesses relationship quality and collective efficacy. In Study 1 we conducted a waitlist‐control, short‐term couple therapy RCT study (N = 43 couples) with five systemic therapy sessions treating communication and partnership problems; our intent was to provide high external validity. Construct validity of EVOS was assessed by comparison with additionally applied scales (Family Scales; Outcome Questionnaire, OQ‐45.2). In Study 2, N = 332 individuals completed an experiment with high internal validity in order to verify sensitivity to change in three different social contexts. Results from Study 1 revealed a significant increase in relationship quality in the treatment group directly after treatment, as compared to the control group. Sensitivity to change was slightly better for EVOS than for other measures. While this positive change could not be fully sustained between posttreatment and a 4‐week follow‐up, EVOS score did not fall below baseline and pretreatment levels, supporting moderate‐to‐large sensitivity to change. Study 2 supported high sensitivity to change in EVOS for couple relations, family relations, and work‐team relationships. Therefore, EVOS can be used as an outcome measure to monitor the process of systemic interventions focusing on relationship quality and collective efficacy. Due to its sensitivity to change, EVOS can provide evidence for treatment success with regard to relationship aspects.     

Max Ernst,Sedona

Walking through the guarded gate of CERN. a center for peaceful atomic research near Geneva, Switzerland, one finds oneself in what seems to be a typical industrial park Upon coming to thefirst corner, one has a sense of the surreal tofind pleasant signs marking it as the intersection of Einstein and W. Pauli streets. Ambling along a bit further, one comes to a quiet, treeshaded building housing the office of theoretical physicist, John Stewart Bell, whose work on “nonlocality” is regarded by some as fermenting yet another conceptual revolution in our world view. With an almost shy Irish brogue from his native Dublin, however, Bell modestly disavows any such significance to what is called “Bell's Inequality” in the literature of quantum physics.

In this interview, our editor queried Bell on the relevance of his work for Jung's view of synchronicity as a non- causal factor in human affairs. Bell cautions that everything he says here is only his “opinion of the mystery and muddle of it all.”     

Religious disagreement: internal and external

Philosophers of religion have taken the assumption for granted that the various religious traditions of the world have incompatible beliefs. In this paper, I will argue that this assumption is more problematic than has been generally recognized. To make this argument, I will discuss the implications of internal religious disagreement, an aspect of this issue that has been too often ignored in the contemporary debate. I will also briefly examine some implications of my argument for how one might respond to the existence of religious diversity.