ELSI Priorities for Brain Imaging

As one of the most compelling technologies for imaging the brain, functional MRI (fMRI) produces measurements and persuasive pictures of research subjects making cognitive judgments and even reasoning through difficult moral decisions. Even after centuries of studying the link between brain and behavior, this capability presents a number of novel significant questions. For example, what are the implications of biologizing human experience? How might neuroimaging disrupt the mysteries of human nature, spirituality, and personal identity? Rather than waiting for an ethical agenda to emerge from some unpredictable combination of the concerns of ethicists and researchers, the attention of journalists, or after controversy is sparked by research that cannot be retracted, we queried key figures in bioethics and the humanities, neuroscience, media, industry, and patient advocacy in focus groups and interviews. We identified specific ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) that highlight researcher obligations and the nonclinical impact of the technology at this new frontier.     

Internal reasons and practical limits on rational deliberation

I argue that agent-causal libertarianism has a strong initial rejoinder to Mele's luck argument against it, but that his claim that it has yet to be explained how agent-causation yields responsibility-conferring control has significant force. I suggest an avenue of response. Subsequently, I raise objections to Mele's criticisms of my four-case manipulation argument against compatibilism.     

Psychometric Properties of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescent (MMPI–A) Clinical,Content, and Supplementary Scales in a Forensic Sample

In this study, we evaluated the internal psychometric properties and external correlates of scores on the Clinical, Content, and Supplementary scales in a forensic sample of 496 adolescents (315 boys and 181 girls) who were court-ordered to receive psychological evaluations. We examined Cronbach's alpha coefficients, scale intercorrelation matrices, and frequencies of scale elevations. Further, we found varying degrees of support for the convergent and discriminant validity of scores on the MMPI–A (Butcher et al., 1992 Butcher, J. N., Williams, C. L., Graham, J. R., Archer, R. P., Tellegen, A., Ben-Porath, Y. S. and Kaemmer, B. 1992. MMPI–A (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescent): Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]) Clinical, Content, and Supplementary scales. This study adds to the body of literature establishing the utility of the MMPI–A in forensic evaluations.     

Theatre Review

DreamPlay. Conceived and directed by Tracy Young. Performed in Los Angeles, June 2002. The ensemble: Daniel T. Parker, Angela King, Evie Peck, Scott Proudfit, Chris Wells, Daniel Passer, Will McFadden, Cynthia Ettinger, Don Luce, Melanie Lora, Alison Tatlock, Gary Kelley     

Understanding age-related reductions in visual working memory capacity: Examining the stages of change detection

Visual working memory (VWM) capacity is reduced in older adults. Research has shown age-related impairments to VWM encoding, but aging is likely to affect multiple stages of VWM. In the present study, we recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) of younger and older adults during VWM maintenance and retrieval. We measured encoding-stage processing with the P1 component, maintenance-stage processing with the contralateral delay activity (CDA), and retrieval-stage processing by comparing the activity for old and new items (old–new effect). Older adults showed lower behavioral capacity estimates (K) than did younger adults, but surprisingly, their P1 components and CDAs were comparable to those of younger adults. This remarkable dissociation between neural activity and behavior in the older adults indicated that the P1 and CDA did not accurately assess their VWM capacity. However, the neural activity evoked during VWM retrieval yielded results that helped clarify the age-related differences. During retrieval, younger adults showed early old–new effects in frontal and occipital areas and a late central–parietal old–new effect, whereas older adults showed a late right-lateralized parietal old–new effect. The younger adults’ early old–new effects strongly resembled an index of perceptual fluency, suggesting that perceptual implicit memory was activated. The activation of implicit memory could have facilitated the younger adults’ behavior, and the lack of these early effects in older adults may suggest that they have much lower-resolution memory than do younger adults. From these data, we speculated that younger and older adults store the same number of items in VWM, but that younger adults store a higher-resolution representation than do older adults.     

An Ecological Model of Professional School Counseling

The 21st century has witnessed a drastic transformation in professional school counseling, fueled by calls for social justice and educational equity and characterized by a movement toward collaboration, advocacy, leadership, and systemic change to promote academic success for all students. The authors describe how this transformation is aligned with an ecological perspective, provide an overview of the basic tenets of ecological thinking, and take a first step toward developing an intentional model of ecological school counseling.     

Views of Genetics Health Professionals on the Return of Genomic Results

As exome and whole genome sequencing become clinically available, the potential to receive a large number of clinically relevant but incidental results is a significant challenge in the provision of genomic counseling. We conducted three focus groups of a total of 35 individuals who were members of ASHG and/or NSGC, assessing views towards the return of genomic results. Participants stressed that patient autonomy was primary. There was consensus that a mechanism to return results to the healthcare provider, rather than patient, and to streamline integration into the electronic health record would ensure these results had the maximal impact on patient management. All three focus groups agreed that pharmacogenomic results were reasonable to return and that they were not felt to be stigmatizing. With regard to the return of medically relevant results, there was much debate. Participants had difficulty in consistently assigning specific diseases to ‘bins’ that were considered obligatory versus optional for disclosure. Consensus was reached regarding the importance of informed consent and pretest counseling visits to clarify what the return of results process would entail. Evidence based professional guidelines should continue to be developed and regularly revised to assist in consistently and appropriately providing genomic results to patients.     

An Analysis of Extinction-Cue Features in the Reduction of Operant Behavior Relapse

The Psychological Record - The present free operant conditioning experiments with rats examined the impact of manipulating different traits of an extinction-cue on ABA renewal. All rats were...     

Honey,Sweetie, Dear: Terms of Endearment Communicate,Reflect, and Reinforce Sexism Toward Adult Women

Four studies demonstrated how terms of endearment (ToE; e.g., “honey,” “dear”) communicate, reflect, and reinforce sexism toward adult women outside of close relationships. Study 1 participants reported more negative reactions to ToE as their endorsement of benevolent sexism decreased, and older women reacted more negatively than men and younger women. In Study 2, an interviewer either used or did not use ToE when interviewing women from upper-level business classes. ToE use caused women relatively low in benevolent sexism to feel less positive, warm, and competent, whereas women higher in benevolent sexism were unaffected by the use of ToE. Shifting focus to ToE users, Study 3 participants read about a day in the life of a man protagonist (Tim) who did or did not use ToE. Participants inferred that Tim more strongly endorsed sexist attitudes and hierarchy-enforcing ideologies if he used ToE than if he did not. Finally, Study 4 showed that the more participants self-reported using ToE, the more they endorsed several of these sexist attitudes and ideologies. Altogether, this research demonstrates the deleterious effects of seemingly harmless language and extends knowledge about everyday sexism through language.