Neural correlates of conventional and harm/welfare-based moral decision-making

The degree to which social norms are processed by a unitary system or dissociable systems remains debated. Much research on children’s social-cognitive judgments has supported the distinction between “moral” (harm/welfare-based) and “conventional” norms. However, the extent to which these norms are processed by dissociable neural systems remains unclear. To address this issue, 23 healthy participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they rated the wrongness of harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions and neutral vignettes. Activation significantly greater than the neutral vignette baseline was observed in regions implicated in decision-making regions including rostral/ventral medial frontal, anterior insula and dorsomedial frontal cortices when evaluating both harm/welfare-based and social-conventional transgressions. Greater activation when rating harm/welfare-based relative to social-conventional transgressions was seen through much of ACC and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. Greater activation was observed in superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left PCC, and temporal-parietal junction when rating social-conventional transgressions relative to harm/welfare-based transgressions. These data suggest that decisions regarding the wrongness of actions, irrespective of whether they involve care/harm-based or conventional transgressions, recruit regions generally implicated in affect-based decision-making. However, there is neural differentiation between harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions. This may reflect the particular importance of processing the intent of transgressors of conventional norms and perhaps the greater emotional content or salience of harm/welfare-based transgressions.     

Acute Stimulant Treatment and Reinforcement Increase the Speed of Information Accumulation in Children with ADHD

The current studies utilized drift diffusion modeling (DDM) to examine how reinforcement and stimulant medication affect cognitive task performance in children with ADHD. In Study 1, children with (n = 25; 88 % male) and without ADHD (n = 33; 82 % male) completed a 2-choice discrimination task at baseline (100 trials) and again a week later under alternating reinforcement and no-reinforcement contingencies (400 trials total). In Study 2, participants with ADHD (n = 29; 72 % male) completed a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 0.3 and 0.6 mg/kg methylphenidate and completed the same task utilized in Study 1 at baseline (100 trials). Children with ADHD accumulated information at a much slower rate than controls, as evidenced by a lower drift rate. Groups were similar in nondecision time and boundary separation. Both reinforcement and stimulant medication markedly improved drift rate in children with ADHD (ds = 0.70 and 0.95 for reinforcement and methylphenidate, respectively); both treatments also reduced boundary separation (ds = 0.70 and 0.39). Reinforcement, which emphasized speeded accuracy, reduced nondecision time (d = 0.37), whereas stimulant medication increased nondecision time (d = 0.38). These studies provide initial evidence that frontline treatments for ADHD primarily impact cognitive performance in youth with ADHD by improving the speed/efficiency of information accumulation. Treatment effects on other DDM parameters may vary between treatments or interact with task parameters (number of trials, task difficulty). DDM, in conjunction with other approaches, may be helpful in clarifying the specific cognitive processes that are disrupted in ADHD, as well as the basic mechanisms that underlie the efficacy of ADHD treatments.     

Cognitive and attentional functioning in adolescents and young adults with Tetralogy of Fallot and d-transposition of the great arteries

The objective of this study is to investigate cognitive and attentional function in adolescents and young adults with operated congenital heart disease. Previous research has indicated that children with congenital heart disease have deficits in broad areas of cognitive function. However, less attention has been given to survivors as they grow into adolescence and early adulthood. The participants were 18 non-syndromic adolescents and young adults with tetralogy of Fallot and d-transposition of the great arteries that required cardiac surgery before the age of 5 years, and 18 healthy, unaffected siblings (11–22 years of age for both groups). Cases with congenital heart disease and their siblings were administered Wechsler Intelligence scales and reported attention problems using the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessments. Cases were compared to both healthy siblings and established norms. Cases performed significantly lower than siblings on full scale IQ and processing speed, and significantly lower than norms on perceptual reasoning. Cases also reported more attention problems compared to both siblings and norms. Effect sizes varied with medium-to-large effects for processing speed, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and attention problems. Findings suggest that neurocognitive function may continue to be affected for congenital heart disease survivors in adolescence and young adulthood, and that comparisons to established norms may underestimate neurocognitive vulnerabilities.     

Self-directedness: A Process Approach to Cognition

Standard approaches to cognition emphasise structures (representations and rules) much more than processes, in part because this appears to be necessary to capture the normative features of cognition. However the resultant models are inflexible and face the problem of computational intractability. I argue that the ability of real world cognition to cope with complexity results from deep and subtle coupling between cognitive and non-cognitive processes. In order to capture this, theories of cognition must shift from a structural rule-defined conception of cognition to a thoroughgoing embedded process approach.     

Thinking about the Needy: A Reprise

This article discusses Jan Narveson’s “Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Today’s World,” and “Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy?” and their relation to my “Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations.” Section 2 points out that Narveson’s concerns differ from mine, so that often his claims and mine fail to engage each other. For example, his focus is on the poor, mine the needy, and while many poor are needy, and vice versa, our obligations may differ regarding the poor than regarding the needy. Also, Narveson invokes a narrow conception of morality as those rules that government or society may compel people to follow. Given a broader, more plausible, conception of morality, many of Narveson’s claims actually support my substantive views. Section 3 shows that many of Narveson’s claims are relevant to the best means of aiding the needy, but do not challenge the validity of that end. This is true, for example, of his claims about the role of poor governments, the importance of freedom, the undesirability of mere “handouts,” and the effects of bad economic policies. Section 4 defends the importance of my distinction between acting justly and acting for reasons of justice. It illustrates that on several widely shared conceptions of justice there might be agent-neutralreasons of justice to aid the needy, even if from an agent-relative perspective one would not be acting unjustly if one failed to do so. Section 5 contests Narveson’s portrayal of egalitarianism as concerned about inequality of wealth, per se, as insensitive to prior wrongs, and as holding that the worse-off have a right to be made better off at the expense of the well-off. In addition, it rejects Narveson’s contention that egalitarians violate impartiality, and aim to impose their personal tastes on others. Section 6 challenges a fundamental assumption underlying Narveson’s doctrine of mutual advantage. In addition, it denies that egalitarians are irrational merely because equality can conflict with the pareto principle. More generally, by appealing to impersonal ideals, it challenges the widely held view that the pareto principle is a condition of rationality. Section 7 argues that Narveson’s meta-ethical assumptions are controversial, internally inconsistent, in tension with his normative views, and ultimately a version of skepticism. In addition, it challenges Narveson’s view about the role intuitions play in moral theory. Section 8 clarifies points where Narveson’s discussion of my views may be misleading. Finally, the paper notes the role that moral reasons may play in deliberation and action, but emphasizes the philosophical and theoretical nature of my work. My aim is to determine the moral considerations that are relevant to how people should act regarding the needy. Whether people will actually be moved to so act, for those reasons or otherwise, is another matter.     

Trans-parency in the workplace: How the experiences of transsexual employees can be improved

Very little research has focused exclusively on the workplace experiences of transsexual employees. Studies that have been done are either qualitative case studies (e.g., Budge, Tebbe, & Howard; 2010; Schilt & Connell, 2007), or aggregate transsexual individuals with lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees (e.g., Irwin, 2002). The current study focuses on this underexamined population and examines general workplace experiences, and both individual and organizational characteristics that influence transsexual employees' job attitudes. Results reveal that organizational supportiveness, transsexual identity centrality, and the degree to which they disclose to individuals outside of work all predict transsexual employees' disclosure behaviors in the workplace. These disclosure behaviors are positively related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and negatively related to job anxiety. These relations are mediated by coworker reactions. This research expands knowledge about diverse employee populations and offers both theory and some of the first large-scale empirical data collected on the workplace experiences of transsexual employees.     

A Pilot Study of Psychotherapist Trainees' Alpha-Amylase and Cortisol Levels During Treatment of Recently Suicidal Clients With Borderline Traits

Psychotherapists often experience stress while providing psychotherapy, in particular when working with difficult presentations such as suicidality. As part of a larger study on the treatment of recently suicidal college students with borderline traits, 6 therapists in training collected their own salivary samples for alpha-amylase (AA) and cortisol (C) analyses immediately before and after sessions with 2 selected clients. On average, samples were collected for the same therapist-patient dyad throughout the year-long study to ensure that data reflected therapist responses across stages of treatment. Therapists also completed a working alliance questionnaire and rated perceived session difficulty immediately after each selected session. Contrary to expectations, therapists demonstrated elevated levels of stress as measured by AA and C at presession relative to postsession levels. Greater session difficulty was related to more pronounced declines in AA, whereas a stronger working alliance was linked to more pronounced reductions in C. Results suggest that physiological stress responses while working with recently suicidal clients with borderline traits occur primarily in terms of session anticipatory anxiety, whereas AA and C changes may be affected differently by factors such as session difficulty and working alliance. This is a pilot study, limited by its sample size, but the design, findings, and inclusion of physiological measures present an initial step in an essential line of research.     

Category effects on stimulus estimation: Shifting and skewed frequency distributions

The category adjustment model (CAM) proposes that estimates of inexactly remembered stimuli are adjusted toward the central value of the category of which the stimuli are members. Adjusting estimates toward the average value of all category instances, properly weighted for memory uncertainty, maximizes the average accuracy of estimates. Thus far, the CAM has been tested only with symmetrical category distributions in which the central stimulus value is also the mean. We report two experiments using asymmetric (skewed) distributions in which there is more than one possible central value: one where the frequency distribution shifts over the course of time, and the other where the frequency distribution is skewed. In both cases, we find that people adjust estimates toward the category’s running mean, which is consistent with the CAM but not with alternative explanations for the adjustment of stimuli toward a category’s central value.