Salience,Imagination, and Moral Luck

One key desideratum of a theory of blame is that it be able to explain why we typically have differing blaming responses in cases involving significant degrees of luck. T.M. Scanlon has proposed a relational account of blame, and he has argued that his account succeeds in this regard and that this success makes his view preferable to reactive attitude accounts of blame. In this paper, I aim to show that Scanlon's view is open to a different kind of luck-based objection. I then offer a way of understanding moral luck cases which allows for a plausible explanation of our differential blaming responses by appealing to the salience of certain relevant features of the action in question.     

Implicit racial bias and epistemic pessimism

Implicit bias results from living in a society structured by race. Tamar Gendler has drawn attention to several epistemic costs of implicit bias and concludes that paying some costs is unavoidable. In this paper, we reconstruct Gendler’s argument and argue that the epistemic costs she highlights can be avoided. Though epistemic agents encode discriminatory information from the environment, not all encoded information is activated. Agents can construct local epistemic environments that do not activate biasing representations, effectively avoiding the consequences of activation. We conclude that changing our local environments provides a way to avoid paying implicit bias’s epistemic costs.     

Benefits from retrieval practice are greater for students with lower working memory capacity

We examined the effects of retrieval practice for students who varied in working memory capacity as a function of the lag between study of material and its initial test, whether or not feedback was given after the test, and the retention interval of the final test. We sought to determine whether a blend of these conditions exists that maximises benefits from retrieval practice for lower and higher working memory capacity students. College students learned general knowledge facts and then restudied the facts or were tested on them (with or without feedback) at lags of 0–9 intervening items. Final cued recall performance was better for tested items than for restudied items after both 10 minutes and 2 days, particularly for longer study–test lags. Furthermore, on the 2-day delayed test the benefits from retrieval practice with feedback were significantly greater for students with lower working memory capacity than for students with higher working memory capacity (r?=??.42). Retrieval practice may be an especially effective learning strategy for lower ability students.     

Is Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Related to Neuropsychological Function in Healthy Older Adults? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses have identified cognitive deficits in adults with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). However, quantitative analysis of the association between OSA and neuropsychological performance has not been conducted specifically in older adults, for whom there is a greater risk of cognitive decline. We searched Medline, Embase and PsycINFO through August 2016 for studies describing associations between OSA and neuropsychological outcomes in people aged>50 years. Meta-analyses were performed on these studies for overall cognition and within cognitive domains. Subgroup analyses were performed taking into account risk of bias and moderating differences in study design. 13 studies met eligibility criteria for analysis. A small negative association was found between OSA and all neuropsychological outcomes combined, g=0.18(95% CI 0.04–0.32), and in memory and processing speed domains. Small case-control studies from sleep clinic populations observed the greatest associations, while larger cohort studies from community samples illustrated no association. Analysis accounting for publication bias resulted in a null overall association, g=0.02 (95%CI -0.12 to 0.16). Associations between OSA and cognition in later life are highly variable and the findings differ based on the type and setting of study. It appears some older adults may be at risk of cognitive impairments attributable to OSA; however, the risk of bias renders the evidence inconclusive. High quality research is warranted in clinically diagnosed OSA patients as well as those already experiencing neuropsychological impairment and who may be regarded at higher risk of further cognitive decline.     

Maternal Childhood Sexual Trauma and Early Parenting: Prenatal and Postnatal Associations

Existing research suggests that approximately 19% of females experience childhood sexual trauma (CST). Little is known, however, about the parenting behaviour of mothers who have experienced CST. Using propensity‐matched controls, the present study examines prenatal psychosocial distress, postnatal depressive symptomatology, and caregiving behaviours of women reporting CST at or before the age of 14. Data for these analyses were obtained from mother reports and from observational protocols from a longitudinal study of low‐income, rural families. Propensity score methodology was used to create a contrast group matched on family of origin variables in an effort to isolate and examine the long‐term associations of CST beyond the effects of other childhood adversities such as poverty. Study findings provide evidence that women with CST histories report greater prenatal psychosocial distress compared to women without trauma histories. Findings further provide evidence for a spillover process from prenatal distress to the broader caregiving system including less sensitive parenting through postnatal depressive symptoms for women with CST histories. These results highlight the importance of screening for CST and psychosocial distress and depression prenatally. Interventions for women with CST histories and directions for future study are proposed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Context and cognitions: environmental risk, social influence, and adolescent substance use

This study examined the cognitions thought to mediate the impact of context on adolescent substance use and also the extent to which context moderates the relations between these cognitions and use. Risk cognitions and behaviors were assessed in a panel of 746 African American adolescents (M age 10.5 at Wave 1, 12.2 at Wave 2). Results indicated that adolescents living in high-risk neighborhoods were more inclined toward substance use and more likely to be using at Wave 2. These context effects were mediated by the adolescents' risk cognitions: their risk images, willingness to use, and intentions to use. Also, context moderated the relation between willingness and use (the relation was stronger in high-risk neighborhoods) but it did not moderate the intentions to use relation.     

Alone but feeling no pain: Effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy

Prior findings of emotional numbness (rather than distress) among socially excluded persons led the authors to investigate whether exclusion causes a far-reaching insensitivity to both physical and emotional pain. Experiments 1-4 showed that receiving an ostensibly diagnostic forecast of a lonesome future life reduced sensitivity to physical pain, as indicated by both (higher) thresholds and tolerance. Exclusion also caused emotional insensitivity, as indicated by reductions in affective forecasting of joy or woe over a future football outcome (Experiment 3), as well as lesser empathizing with another person's suffering from either romantic breakup (Experiment 4) or a broken leg (Experiment 5). The insensitivities to pain and emotion were highly intercorrelated.