Researchers’ Perceptions of Ethical Authorship Distribution in Collaborative Research Teams

Science and Engineering Ethics - Authorship is commonly used as the basis for the measurement of research productivity. It influences career progression and rewards, making it a valued commodity in...     

Increasing compliance with wearing a medical device in children with autism

Health professionals often recommend the use of medical devices to assess the health, monitor the well-being, or improve the quality of life of their patients. Children with autism may present challenges in these situations as their sensory peculiarities may increase refusals to wear such devices. To address this issue, we systematically replicated prior research by examining the effects of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) to increase compliance with wearing a heart rate monitor in 2 children with autism. The intervention increased compliance to 100% for both participants when an edible reinforcer was delivered every 90 s. The results indicate that DRO does not require the implementation of extinction to increase compliance with wearing a medical device. More research is needed to examine whether the reinforcement schedule can be further thinned.     

A review and empirical comparison of motivation scoring methods: An application to self-determination theory

Motivation and Emotion - Self-determination Theory differentiates various types of motivation, each of which have different consequences for well-being and behavior. Despite broad agreement...     

Does perceived exertion depend on glycemic index of foods ingested throughout three hours before a one-hour high-intensity exercise?

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships between perceived exertion (RPE) and plasma glucose concentrations or hunger feelings during a 1-hr. bicycle submaximal exercise after ingestion of pre-exercise test foods with a different glycemic index. Each of endurance-trained male triathletes ingested three different glycemic index (GI) foods (HighGI: glucose, LowGI: whole-wheat biscuit or water) throughout the 3 hr. before exercise at 80% maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max). RPE values increased as a logarithmic function of time. This result is opposite to results obtained with longer exercise bouts up to 3 hr. duration. RPE and hunger ratings were not significantly different for the three test foods whatever the time. Moreover, RPE did not correlate with plasma glucose concentrations during exercise. Consequently, RPE did not depend on the GI of the pre-exercise test foods during a 1-hr. exercise at 80% VO2 max. Physiological and psychological factors other than glycemic index may have mediated the perceptual responses during a 1-hr. high-intensity exercise. It is possible that during endurance exercise of longer duration, the level of blood glucose mediates the intensity of peripheral exertional perceptions arising from active skeletal muscle during prolonged exercise.     

Associations Among Perceived Autonomy Support,Forms of Self-Regulation,and Persistence: A Prospective Study

According to self-determination theory, when the social context is autonomy supportive, people are motivated to internalize the regulation of important activities, and whereas when the context is controlling, self-determined motivation is undermined. A model that incorporates perceptions of coaches' interpersonal behaviors (autonomy support vs. control), 5 forms of regulation (intrinsic motivation, identified, introjected and external regulation, and amotivation), and persistence was tested with competitive swimmers (N = 369) using a prospective 3-wave design. Analyses using structural equation modeling revealed that experiencing relationships as controlling fostered non–self-determined forms of regulation (external regulation and amotivation). Greater levels of self-determined motivation occurred when relationships were experienced as autonomy supportive. Individuals who exhibited self-determined types of regulation at Time 1 showed more persistence at both Time 2 (10 months later) and Time 3 (22 months later). Individuals who were amotivated at Time 1 had the highest rate of attrition at both Time 2 and Time 3. Introjected regulation was a significant predictor of persistence at Time 2 but became nonsignificant at Time 3. External regulation was not a significant predictor of behavior at Time 2, but became negatively associated with persistence at Time 3. The findings are discussed in light of the determinants of the internalization process and the consequences of different forms of self-regulation for psychological functioning.     

Religious affiliation and social commitment as determinants of moral attitudes in the prevention of AIDS or the fight against poverty.

The present study is an analysis of the effect of religious affiliation and social commitment on moral attitudes in the fight against acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or the fight against poverty. French citizens (N = 284) who either belonged to the Roman Catholic church or were without religious affiliation, who were committed to the prevention of AIDS or to the fight against poverty, completed a 9-item scale drawn from R. C. Katz, J. Santman, and P. Lonero's (1994) Morally Debatable Behaviors Scale-Revised. Results indicated that the responses were significantly affected by the religious affiliation and beliefs of respondents: Roman Catholics expressed less moral tolerance than nonreligious respondents. An interaction between commitment and religious belief showed that Roman Catholics committed to the fight against AIDS were less tolerant of illegal conduct than those committed to the fight against poverty, whereas no difference appeared between nonreligious respondents. No gender effect appeared.     

Toward a Genealogy of Culture

Using psychoanalytic theory, this paper attempts to trace the natural history of the phenomenon designated as Culture. It postulates that psychoanalysis, a product of the Hegelian philosophical revolution, is still one of the best instruments to understand Culture. It traces the origins of culture as postulated by Freud and the pioneer anthropologists and its course from early and evolved religion through humanism, science, and finally postmodernism. It emphasizes the dialectical concepts in psychoanalysis and reviews summarily those psychoanalysts that, according to the author, have had a major impact on the study of culture: Freud, Horney, and Lacan.     

A program for the semantics of science

Concluding remarks Our program is ambitious, as is any attempt to match life (in our case real science) with virtue (e.g., exactness). We want our semantics to be not only simia mathematicae but also ancilla scientiae: built more geometrico and at the same time relevant, nay useful, to live science. The goal of exactness may sound arrogant but is actually modest, for the more we rigorize the more we are forced to leave out of consideration, at least for the time being. As to the service intention: we should try to be of some help to science because the latter faces semantic problems but has no tools of its own for solving them. If it had such tools scientists would not engage in spirited polemics over matters of sense and reference, as they often do. Witness the debates on whether the relativistic and quantum theories are concerned with sentient observers, whether population genetics refers to populations taken as wholes, whether psychology is actually concerned with the brain, and whether the sense of a theory is excreted by its mathematical formalism or is determined by the way the theory is tested.A semantics of science should help settle these and similar issues. Moreover it should give sound advice as to how to formulate scientific theories so as to avoid such imprecisions and ambiguities as may give rise to debates of the kind. Constructing such a semantics, both exact and relevant to science, should be more rewarding than either manufacturing neat but irrelevant theories or pursuing erratic polemics on meaning and meaning changes.

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Functional and dysfunctional perfectionists: are they different on compulsive-like behaviors?

Both perfectionism and excessive responsibility have been linked to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Up to now however, a greater number of studies have focused on the role of responsibility. The present study compared compulsive-like behavior of people with different styles of perfectionism. Sixteen functional perfectionists (FP) and 16 dysfunctional perfectionists (DP) were compared on three different tasks in order to explore OC type behavior such as doubting, checking and intrusions. Results show that DP participants, compared to FP participants, scored higher on an OC behavior scale, took significantly more time to complete a precision task and precipitated their decision when confronted with ambiguity. The two groups also tended to differ in their intrusive thoughts following an unsolved problem; FP participants were more preoccupied about solving the problem than about the quality of their performance, contrary to DP subjects. Results are discussed according to theoretical models of OCD.     

Sexual orientation and handedness in men and women: a meta-analysis

Recent findings suggest that sexual orientation has an early neurodevelopmental basis. Handedness, a behavioral marker of early neurodevelopment, has been associated with sexual orientation in some studies but not in others. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 20 studies that compared the rates of non-right-handedness in 6,987 homosexual (6,182 men and 805 women) and 16,423 heterosexual (14,808 men and 1,615 women) participants. Homosexual participants had 39% greater odds of being non-right-handed. The corresponding values for homosexual men (20 contrasts) and women (9 contrasts) were 34% and 91%, respectively. The results support the notion that sexual orientation in some men and women has an early neurodevelopmental basis, but the factors responsible for the handedness-sexual orientation association require elucidation. The authors discuss 3 possibilities: cerebral laterality and prenatal exposure to sex hormones, maternal immunological reactions to the fetus, and developmental instability.