Visibility versus accountability in pooling local motion signals into global motion direction

The human observer is surprisingly inaccurate in discriminating proportions between two spatially overlapping sets of randomly distributed elements moving in opposite directions. It was shown that observers took into account an equivalent of 74?% of all moving elements when the task was to estimate their relative number, but only an equivalent of 21?% of the same elements when the task was to discriminate between opposite directions. It was concluded that, in the motion direction discrimination task, a large proportion of the signal from all of the elements was inaccessible to the observers, whereas the majority of the signal was accessible in a numerosity task. This type of perceptual limitation belongs to the attentional blindness category, where a strong sensory signal cannot be noticed when processing is diverted by parallel events. In addition, we found no evidence for the common-fate principle, as the ability to discriminate numerical proportions remained the same, irrespective of whether all estimated elements were moving coherently in one direction or unpredictably in opposite directions.     

Dialogical Self and the Changing Body During the Transition to Motherhood

This article explores the transition to first-time motherhood and focuses on the analysis of integration in the self-system of a new I-position – the maternal one. This dialogical interchange between dynamically related I-positions (I-as-pregnant and I-as-mother) is the arena where the personal affective core of the self and the sociocultural background of social role demands are intertwined. During pregnancy and childbirth, the I-as-pregnant position becomes transformed into the lasting I-as-mother I-position. This process is seen as an activity of the subject to organize general dialogical relations within the self under conditions of bodily transformations which result from fetal development.     

Towards an Alternative Approach to Personhood in the End of Life Questions

Within the Western bioethical framework, we make adistinction between two dominant interpretations of the meaning of moral personhood: thenaturalist and the humanist one. While both interpretations of moral personhood claim topromote individual autonomy and rights, they end up with very different normativeviews on the practical and legal measures needed to realize these values in every daylife. Particularly when we talk about the end of life issues it appears that in general thearguments for euthanasia are drawn from the naturalist interpretation of moral personhoodwhile the arguments against euthanasia, for their part, are derived from the idealistand/or humanist understanding of the same concept. This article focuses onexamining the metaphysical assumptions and internal contradiction found behind the opposingarguments presented by two prominent philosophers of these two traditions:Peter Singer and Ludger Honnefelder. The author claims that neither side of thedebate succeeds in defending its normative position without reconsidering how to takethe social aspects of moral personhood into account. The author holds that, despite ourneed to set individual's decision making into social context, the currentcommunitarian narrative concept of personhood fails to offer a convincing alternative.Instead of merely trying to replace psychological and atomistic view of personhood with acollective understanding of an individual's moral identity, we need to discuss thenormative relation between the concept of `moral personhood' and the demand for respect ofindividual autonomy in Western bioethics within a wider philosophical perspective.     

Semiotic Regulation in the Construction of Maternal Bond: From Body Experience to the Semiotic Field

The objective of this paper is to analyze how the maternal bond in first-time pregnant women emerges from bodily experiences in the pre-semiotic level and leads to the emergence of the semiotic field. The bond as a sign field is internally structured and enables the regulation of connections with other signs outside the field. As a result of the dialogue between biological and sociocultural imperatives, sociocultural meanings are turned into personal meanings and presented by women through behavior. This study is based on longitudinally-collected interview data consisting of six interviews with women from the time they were pregnant until their child turned one year old. During this period, three ruptures as turning points in the formation of the bond were identified. Based on idiographic analyses, it was concluded that body signals caused by the development of the fetus are coded by women into signs of various kinds, which define the status of mother and create the foundation for the mother-child relationship which continues throughout the lifespan.     

Pluralism in Multicultural Liberal Democracy and the Justification of Female Circumcision

This article discusses the problems that a liberal, multicultural democracy has in dealing with cultural practices, such as female circumcision, which themselves suppress the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism. In this context I have chosen the justification of female circumcision as my issue for three reasons. First, with increasing immigration, in Western multicultural and pluralistic societies this practice has recently been given a good deal of public attention; second, I believe that it is time to put this cruel and discriminatory tradition finally in the past; and third, the paradox that the victims of this practice are also often its strongest proponents well demonstrates the problems that liberal democracies have in dealing with the question of autonomy and tolerance in real-life situations. My main argument is that, without giving up tolerance, we can show that there can be no moral justification for such a tradition as female circumcision, even within a multicultural and pluralist society.
I shall first show why neither female circumcision nor any other tradition that oppresses and harms individuals and is maintained by coercion can be satisfactorily defended by liberal arguments. Then I shall discuss why 'communitarian'counter-arguments which appeal to the significance of communal values and traditions or to cultural rights also fail to give any plausible support to the maintenance of this tradition. Finally, I shall consider in more detail how the value of autonomy should be normatively understood in a modern pluralist society [1].     

Prevalence of auditory hallucinations in Norwegian adolescents: Results from a population‐based study

Knowing the prevalence and characteristics of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in adolescents is important for estimations of need for mental health care and assessment of psychosis risk. In this report we assess the prevalence of AVH in a population‐based sample of 16–19 years old Norwegian adolescents (n = 9,646, 46.4% male) using two items assessing AVH (from the extended Launay‐Slade Hallucination Scale). The prevalence of hearing a voice speaking thoughts aloud was 10.6%. The prevalence of being troubled by voices was 5.3%, showing that negative emotionality about AVH is less frequent than the experience of hearing voices. Female respondents had slightly increased risk for being troubled by voices than males (odds ratio = 1.3), while age did not modulate prevalence. This AVH prevalence is in line with earlier reports in smaller samples of adolescents and indicates that AVH are not uncommon in this period of life. Further longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the value of AVH in predicting psychiatric disorder.     

Prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations in a general population: A group comparison study

The present study was specifically designed to investigate the prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in the general population, and sought to compare similarities and differences regarding socio‐demographics, mental health and severe life events between individuals who have never experienced AVH with those who had. The study also aimed to compare those who sought professional help for their experience of AVH with those who had not sought help. Through a postal questionnaire, 2,533 participants ages 18 and over from a national survey completed the Launay‐Slade Hallucinations Scale and other measures examining AVH characteristics and other areas related to AVH. In total, 7.3% of the sample reported a life‐time prevalence of AVH. Those with AVH were more likely to be single and unemployed, reported higher levels of depression and anxiety, and experienced a higher number of severe life events compared with those without AVH. Only 16% of those who experienced AVH in the general population sought professional help for these experiences. Compared to those who did not seek professional help, participants that had were more likely to experience AVH with a negative content, experience them on a daily basis, undergo negative reactions when experiencing AVH, and resist AVH. In conclusion, the prevalence of AVH was found to be relatively high. The results also revealed higher levels of reduced mental health for individuals who sought professional help, followed by those who did not, compared with those who had never experienced AVH.     

Changes in studying abilities as perceived by students attending psychotherapy

In rehabilitative psychotherapy, the goal is to support and improve the person's working and studying capacity and to secure his/her staying in or entering the workforce. In this qualitative study, the aim was to describe the changes students experienced in their studying ability and the advancement of their studies as a result of the therapy process. The results of this study showed many kinds of positive changes in the psychological resources and studying ability of students participating in psychotherapy. The results also show that when psychotherapy is arranged with the aim to support the study process, good connections between psychotherapy, study tutoring and career guidance are needed.     

Democratic Education for Hope: Contesting the Neoliberal Common Sense

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This paper provides a reinterpretation of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of hope and suggests that this interpretation may function as a fruitful ground for...     

Infants’ sense of approximate numerosity: Heritability and link to other concurrent traits

The ability to perceive approximate numerosity is present in many animal species, and emerges early in human infants. Later in life, it is moderately heritable and associated with mathematical abilities, but the etiology of the Approximate Number System (ANS) and its degree of independence from other cognitive abilities in infancy is unknown. Here, we assessed the phenotypic specificity as well as the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the ANS in a sample of 5-month-old twins (N = 514). We found a small-to-moderate but statistically significant effect of genetic factors on ANS acuity (heritability = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.33), but only when differences in numerosity were relatively large (1:4 ratio). Non-verbal ability assessed with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) was found to be heritable (0.47; 95% CI: 0.34, 0.57) and the phenotypic association between ANS acuity and non-verbal ability performance was close to zero. Similarly, we found no association between ANS acuity and general attention during the task. An unexpected weak but statistically significant negative association between ANS acuity and scores on the receptive language scale of the MSEL was found. These results suggest that early ANS function may be largely independent from other aspects of non-verbal development. Further, variability in ANS in infancy seems to, to some extent, reflect genotypic differences in the population.

Highlights

• Assessing 514 infant twins with eye tracking, we found that infants' sense of approximate numerosity is heritable and not positively associated with concurrent attentional, cognitive or motor abilities.
• These results have implications for our understanding of development of mathematical ability and the link between cognitive abilities early in postnatal life.