Rule Violations in Intercollegiate Athletics: A Qualitative Investigation Utilizing an Organizational Justice Framework

Cheating and rule violations in intercollegiate athletics continue to be relevant issues in many institutions of higher education because they reflect upon the integrity of the institutions in which they are housed, causing concern among many faculty members, administrators, and trustees. Although a great deal of research has documented the numerous rule violations in NCAA intercollegiate athletics, much of it has failed to combine sound theory with practical solutions. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible extensions of the organizational justice framework to the problem of rule violations in intercollegiate athletics. In doing so, the current study examined (a) perceived areas of injustice among coaches at NCAA Division I institutions, (b) avenues by which coaches resolve these injustices, and (c) potential solutions for resolving injustices in an attempt to reduce NCAA violations. Six NCAA Division I basketball coaches from various parts of the country (four from men's teams and two from women's teams) were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Despite the NCAA's efforts to create parity, results showed that coaches perceived several areas of inequities in recruiting, including financial resources and academic standards. The interviewed coaches described several means that are currently used to resolve these inequities and offered recommendations for changes to reduce injustice in the future.     

The Mereological Foundation of Megethology

In Mathematics is megethology (Lewis (1993). Philosophia Mathematica, 1(1), 3–23) David K. Lewis proposes a structuralist reconstruction of classical set theory based on mereology. In order to formulate suitable hypotheses about the size of the universe of individuals without the help of set-theoretical notions, he uses the device of Boolos’ plural quantification for treating second order logic without commitment to set-theoretical entities. In this paper we show how, assuming the existence of a pairing function on atoms, as the unique assumption non expressed in a mereological language, a mereological foundation of set theory is achievable within first order logic. Furthermore, we show how a mereological codification of ordered pairs is achievable with a very restricted use of the notion of plurality without plural quantification.     

DLEAC: A Dialetheic Logic with Exclusive Assumptions and Conclusions

Topoi - This paper proposes a new dialetheic logic, a Dialetheic Logic with Exclusive Assumptions and Conclusions ( $$\mathsf {DLEAC}$$ ), including classical logic as a particular case. In...     

Whose hand is this? Differential responses of right and left extrastriate body areas to visual images of self and others’ hands

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is involved in perception of human bodies and nonfacial body parts, but its role in representing body identity is not clear. Here, we used on-line high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test the role of EBA in self–other distinction. In Experiments 1 and 2 we compared rTMS of right EBA with stimulation of left ventral premotor cortex (vPM), whereas in Experiment 3 we compared stimulation of right and left EBA. RTMS was applied during a hand laterality task in which self or others’ hand images were presented in first- versus third-person view (Experiments 1 and 3), or while participants had to explicitly recognize their own hands (Experiment 2) presented in first- versus third-person view. Experiment 1 showed that right EBA stimulation selectively speeded judgments on others’ hands, whereas no effect of left vPM stimulation was found. Experiment 2 did not reveal any effect of rTMS. Experiment 3 confirmed faster responses on others’ hands while stimulating right EBA and also showed an advantage when judging self with respect to others’ hands during stimulation of left EBA. These results would demonstrate that EBA responds to morphological features of human body contributing to identity processing.     

Visual Creativity Across Cultures: A Comparison Between Italians and Japanese

Culture-related differences in visual creativity were investigated, comparing Italian and Japanese participants in terms of divergent (figural completion task) and product-oriented thinking (figural combination task). Visual restructuring ability was measured as the ability to reinterpret ambiguous figures and was included as a covariate. Results showed that in divergent thinking, Italians only outperformed Japanese participants in elaboration and in product-oriented thinking in terms of originality of products. Visual restructuring ability was found to play a key role both in originality and practicality of products. Both groups scored the same in terms of fluency, originality, and flexibility of visual divergent thinking, as well as in term of practicality of creative products. These findings are consistent with the idea that Italians and Japanese have the same creative potential, although from the early stages of the design Japanese seem to show a greater tendency to take practicality constraints into account when creating in the visual domain.     

Auditory event perception: The source—perception loop for posture in human gait

There is a small but growing literature on the perception of natural acoustic events, but few attempts have been made to investigate complex sounds not systematically controlled within a laboratory setting. The present study investigates listeners’ ability to make judgments about the posture (upright—stooped) of the walker who generated acoustic stimuli contrasted on each trial. We use a comprehensive three-stage approach to event perception, in which we develop a solid understanding of the source event and its sound properties, as well as the relationships between these two event stages. Developing this understanding helps both to identify the limitations of common statistical procedures and to develop effective new procedures for investigating not only the two information stages above, but also the decision strategies employed by listeners in making source judgments from sound. The result is a comprehensive, ultimately logical, but not necessarily expected picture of both the source—sound—perception loop and the utility of alternative research tools.     

The influence of synchronous audiovisual distractors on audiovisual temporal order judgments

Participants made unspeeded temporal order judgments (TOJs) regarding which occurred first, anauditory or a visual target stimulus, when they were presented at a variety of different stimulus onset asynchronies. The target stimuli were presented either in isolation or positioned randomly among a stream of three synchronous audiovisual distractors. The largest just noticeable differences were reported when the targets were presented in the middle of the distractor stream. When the targets were presented at the beginning of the stream, performance was no worse than when the audiovisual targets were presented in isolation. Subsequent experiments revealed that performance improved somewhat when the position of the target was fixed or when the target was made physically distinctive from the distractors. These results show that audiovisual TOJs are impaired by the presence of audiovisual distractors and that this cost can be ameliorated by directing attention to the appropriate temporal position within the stimulus stream.     

The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds

In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins (Sameness and substance renewed, 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between principles of activity of artifacts that experts in technology have not yet made. We show, moreover, that our argument holds not only in the artifactual realm but also in biology: taking biological functions as (part of the) essences of organs leads to distinctions between principles of activity of organs that biological experts have not yet made. We run our argument on the basis of analyses of artifact and biological functions as developed in philosophy of technology and of biology, thus importing results obtained outside of metaphysics into the debate on ontological realism. In return, our argument shows that a position in metaphysics provides experts reason for trying to detect differences between principles of activities of artifacts and organs that have not been detected so far.     

Pleonastic Entities: Fictional Characters and Propositions

Stephen Schiffer holds that propositions are pleonastic entities. I will argue that there is a substantial difference between propositions and fictional characters, which Schiffer presents as typical pleonastic entities. My conclusion will be that if fictional characters are typical pleonastic entities, then Schiffer fails to show that propositions are pleonastic entities.     

Lateralization of egocentric and allocentric spatial processing after parietal brain lesions

The purpose of this paper was to verify whether left and right parietal brain lesions may selectively impair egocentric and allocentric processing of spatial information in near/far spaces. Two Right-Brain-Damaged (RBD), 2 Left-Brain-Damaged (LBD) patients (not affected by neglect or language disturbances) and eight normal controls were submitted to the Ego-Allo Task requiring distance judgments computed according to egocentric or allocentric frames of reference in near/far spaces. Subjects also completed a general neuropsychological assessment and the following visuospatial tasks: reproduction of the Rey-Osterreith figure, line length judgement, point position identification, mental rotation, mental construction, line length memory, line length inference, Corsi block-tapping task. LBD patients presented difficulties in both egocentric and allocentric processing, whereas RBD patients dropped in egocentric but not in allocentric judgements, and in near but not far space. Further, RBD patients dropped in perceptually comparing linear distances, whereas LBD patients failed in memory for distances. The overall pattern of results suggests that the right hemisphere is specialized in processing metric information according to egocentric frames of reference. The data are interpreted according to a theoretical model that highlights the close link between egocentric processing and perceptual control of action.