What We Owe to Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility of Fiction Creators

As audiences demand better and more diverse representation in the fictions they consume, there is a question of how that demand should be placed on fiction creators. In this article, I answer this question by arguing creators of fiction have a hermeneutical responsibility to include diverse characters in their creations, and to do so without relying on harmful stereotypes. I cast this responsibility as the epistemic virtue of due diligence, offset by epistemic laziness and epistemic paralysis as the corresponding vices of absence and excess, respectively. Practicing either vice can constitute a type of hermeneutical gap described by Katharine Jenkins, in which harmful stereotypes (conceptions) become more accessible to epistemic agents than the more accurate concept. By blocking the agent's access to the accurate conception, such stereotypes create a hermeneutical gap and can contribute to hermeneutical injustices, as described by Miranda Fricker and José Medina.     

The organization of attention in typical development: A new preschool attention test battery

This article introduces a new battery of attention tests for typically developing and atypically developing children with a mental age of 3–6 years. In the light of adult and child studies supporting a model of distinct networks for specific attentional operations, tests in the current battery were selected with the aim of measuring functions of selective attention, sustained attention and attentional control (executive function). Normative data were collected from 154 typically developing children aged 3–6 years and examined using exploratory factor analysis to determine latent constructs underlying test performance. This analysis suggested increasing differentiation of attention functions over the age range, with support for the hypothesized three‐factor model only after 4½ years of age. Additional analyses supported the validity of the new attention battery with respect to (1) parent/teacher report measures of everyday attention behaviour and (2) later performance on the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA‐Ch), a battery designed for children aged 6–16 years. The results show the developing differentiation of attention functions and support the ecological and predictive validity of the battery as providing early performance‐based measures of attention and an attention ‘profile’ for each individual child, which may aid characterization and remediation of neurodevelopmental disorders.     

Acute Alcohol Co‐Ingestion and Hospital‐Treated Deliberate Self‐Poisoning: Is There an Effect on Subsequent Self‐Harm?

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between alcohol co‐ingestion in an index deliberate self‐poisoning (DSP) episode with repeated DSP and subsequent suicide. A retrospective cohort study was conducted involving 5,669 consecutive index presentations to a toxicology service following DSP between January 1, 1996, and October 31, 2010. Records were probabilistically matched to National Coronial Information System data to identify subsequent suicide. Index DSPs were categorized on co‐ingestion of alcohol, and primary outcomes analyzed were repetition of any DSP, rates of repeated DSP, time to first repeat DSP, and subsequent suicide. Co‐ingestion of alcohol occurred in 35.9% of index admissions. There was no difference between those who co‐ingested alcohol (ALC+) and those who did not co‐ingest alcohol (ALC?) in terms of proportion of repeat DSP, number of DSP events, or time to first repeat DSP event. Forty‐one (1.0%) cases were probabilistically matched to a suicide death; there was no difference in the proportion of suicide between ALC+ and ALC? at 1 or 3 years. There was no significant relationship between the co‐ingestion of alcohol in an index DSP and subsequent repeated DSP or suicide. Clinically, this highlights the importance of mental health assessment of patients that present after DSP, irrespective of alcohol co‐ingestion at the time of event.