Why Research and Teach Early Modern Women Philosophers?

This paper makes explicit some issues of gender that have been implicitly raised in recent discussions concerning the recovery of European women's contributions to the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. A useful way to bring these issues to light is to distinguish between the project of recovering women's contributions and the project of justifying their inclusion. The former project is an important effort to provide a more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy. Within the latter project, there is a distinction between justifying the inclusion of a specific author and justifying women's inclusion in general. The suggestion that we need to justify women's inclusion in general is fundamentally illegitimate because it presumes that either women's philosophical ability is up for debate or that their contributions require special explanation, both of which are misogynist.     

Validation of the Black Community Activism Orientation Scale with racially and ethnically diverse college students

This study fills a methodological gap in racial justice research by assessing the utility and validity of the Black Community Activism Orientation Scale (BCAOS) in a racially and ethnically diverse sample of college-going young adults (N = 624, M = 19.4 years, SD = 1.89) from 10 colleges in the United States. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to estimate the goodness of fit of the proposed three-factor model and assess the validity of the BCAOS. Findings from the confirmatory factor analysis provide statistical support for use of the BCAOS as a measure of racial justice activism in support of Black communities among racially and ethnically diverse college-going young adults. Findings from the study also suggest that White college students and men are less oriented toward racial justice activism than women and racially marginalized students. Convergent and discriminant validity were established through bivariate correlations of the BCAOS factors with other civic development measures. As more and more young people consider the importance of standing against racial oppression, the BCAOS has utility as an assessment instrument in future racial justice research, education, intervention, and youth programming efforts.     

IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF SELF-REPORTS OF ADHERENCE

Behavioral scientists who study socially important but difficult-to-measure behaviors often rely on self-reports. We evaluated the influence of three experimenter demands—demand for adherence, demand for accurate reports, and demand for accurate reports combined with a prompted recall strategy—on the accuracy of self-reports of adherence to a week-long prescribed regimen of twice-daily telephone calls. Self-reports of adherence were significantly more accurate in the accuracy demand/prompted recall group (p < .05). The analogue study should be replicated with other regimens and populations to determine the most effective strategies for enhancing the accuracy of self-reports.     

Narrative aspects of a doctor-patient encounter

In this essay I want to examine the ways that doctors communicate with their patients, in particular the stories that doctors tell their patients. I contend that the kinds of stories that physicians tell patients have a direct bearing on the nature of their relationship as a whole. Specifically, I shall argue that physicians who tell their patients the most complete stories possible about their illnesses, acknowledging uncertainties wherever they exist (to the extent that this is possible), show the greatest amount of respect for their patients as persons. This quest for completeness must be supplemented by an attempt on the part of the physician to explore the patient's understanding and beliefs so as to formulate not only a more complete narrative, but also to formulate one that better serves the needs of the patient.     

Identifying the mechanisms underpinning recognition of structured sequences of action

We present three experiments to identify the specific information sources that skilled participants use to make recognition judgements when presented with dynamic, structured stimuli. A group of less skilled participants acted as controls. In all experiments, participants were presented with filmed stimuli containing structured action sequences. In a subsequent recognition phase, participants were presented with new and previously seen stimuli and were required to make judgements as to whether or not each sequence had been presented earlier (or were edited versions of earlier sequences). In Experiment 1, skilled participants demonstrated superior sensitivity in recognition when viewing dynamic clips compared with static images and clips where the frames were presented in a nonsequential, randomized manner, implicating the importance of motion information when identifying familiar or unfamiliar sequences. In Experiment 2, we presented normal and mirror-reversed sequences in order to distort access to absolute motion information. Skilled participants demonstrated superior recognition sensitivity, but no significant differences were observed across viewing conditions, leading to the suggestion that skilled participants are more likely to extract relative rather than absolute motion when making such judgements. In Experiment 3, we manipulated relative motion information by occluding several display features for the duration of each film sequence. A significant decrement in performance was reported when centrally located features were occluded compared to those located in more peripheral positions. Findings indicate that skilled participants are particularly sensitive to relative motion information when attempting to identify familiarity in dynamic, visual displays involving interaction between numerous features.     

Protecting Against Misleading Post‐event Information with a Self‐Administered Interview

Two studies investigated whether an early recall opportunity, in the form of a self‐administered interview (SAI), reduced forgetting and protected against the negative consequences of post‐event misinformation. In both studies, participants viewed a simulated crime on DVD after which half immediately recorded their statement by using the SAI, whereas control participants did not have an immediate recall opportunity. Following a delay, participants were presented with misinformation encountered either in a misleading news report (Study 1) or in the form of misleading cued‐recall questions (Study 2). Results showed that participants who had completed a SAI after witnessing an event were significantly less prone to forgetting and significantly more resistant to the negative consequences of misinformation. The SAI was able to protect both the quantity and quality of information about a previously witnessed event. Applied implications are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predictors of Maternal Bonding and Responsiveness for Mothers of Very Preterm Infants

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Identify predictors of maternal bonding and responsiveness for mothers of very preterm infants (&lt;?32 weeks gestational age) at 6...     

The phenomenological directness of perceptual experience

When you have a perceptual experience of a given physical object that object seems to be immediately present to you in a way it never does when you consciously think about or imagine it. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) can provide a satisfying account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience while the content view (the view that to perceive is to represent the world to be a certain way) cannot. I argue that this claim is false. Specifically, I maintain that the only acceptable naïve realist account of the relevant phenomenology is circular and that the content view can provide a similar account. In addition, I maintain that a certain specific variety of the content view provides a non-circular and thus more satisfactory account of this phenomenology. If so, then contrary to what is commonly assumed there are powerful phenomenological grounds for preferring the content view to naïve realism.     

Forgiveness aversion: developing a motivational state measure of perceived forgiveness risks

Given the demonstrated psychological, physical, and social benefits of forgiveness, it is striking that there are still strong impediments to its attainment. In this paper, we introduce the multi-dimensional construct of forgiveness aversion, an offense-specific motivational state based on perceived forgiveness risks. The construct and our proposed measure (the Forgiveness Aversion Scale) are composed of three related dimensions: unreadiness, self-protection, and face concerns. Unreadiness refers to the ongoing emotional turmoil that keeps victims from sincerely forgiving. Self-protection refers to the concerns about how offenders will interpret forgiveness. Finally, face concerns reflect victims’ concerns for their reputation. Four studies were completed to develop a state measure of forgiveness aversion through correlation, structural equations modeling, longitudinal analysis, and a hypothetical scenario experiment. Results of four studies reveal differential predictors of the three dimensions of forgiveness aversion and demonstrate that our understanding of the forgiveness process and impediments thereto is enhanced by addressing situation-specific impediments to forgiveness.