The wizard behind the curtain: programmers as providers

It is almost universally accepted that traditional provider-patient relationships should be governed, at least in part, by the ethical principles set forth by Beauchamp and Childress (Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 1979). These principles include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice (Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 1979). Recently, however, the nature of medial practice has changed. The pervasive presence of computer technology in medicine raises interesting ethical questions. In this paper we argue that some software designers should be considered health care providers and thus be subject the ethical principles incumbent upon “traditional” providers. We argue that these ethical responsibilities should be applied explicitly rather than as a passive, implicit, set of guidelines.     

On Pascal's Wager, or Why All Bets are Off

Pascal's wager seems to demonstrate that it is rational to believe in God and to act accordingly. I argue, however, that Pascal's wager appears to establish that it is rational to believe exclusively in p , while also apparently establishing that it is rational to hold exclusively a contrary belief. I also argue that the wager seems to establish that it is rational to perform only actions of type F, while also seemingly establishing that it is rational to perform contrary actions as often as possible. Thus Pascal's argument appears to establish far too much. And in apparently establishing too much, it establishes, in effect, nothing at all.     

Can we differentiate sensory over‐responsivity from anxiety symptoms in toddlers? perspectives of occupational therapists and psychologists

Suppose a toddler becomes distressed after hearing a loud noise or when getting messy; are these indicators of sensory over‐responsiveness or indicators of anxiety? There is little evidence regarding the distinction between sensory over‐responsivity and anxiety disorders in toddlers. This construct validity study examined differences between occupational therapists' and psychologists' judgments of behaviors as representing sensory processing disorders (SPD) versus anxiety disorders. Twenty‐four occupational therapists and 25 psychologists completed a mailed survey, rating items from sensory and anxiety scales as representing sensory and/or anxiety disorders in toddlers, and analyzing cases of toddlers with these disorders. Occupational therapists were more likely to rate items as representing SPD than psychologists, and occupational therapists were more certain of the distinction of the sensory scales from anxiety. For the case designed to present a general anxiety disorder and the one designed to present sensory over‐responsivity, more occupational therapists diagnosed as sensory over‐responsive, while more psychologists diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder. The overlap in judgments of sensory over‐responsivity and anxiety supports the notion that these constructs in part reflect different professionals' perspectives upon behaviors as well as the difficulty in distinguishing these constructs in toddlers.     

Knowing who knows: Metacognitive and causal learning abilities guide infants’ selective social learning

Given the widespread interest in the development of children's selective social learning, there is mounting evidence suggesting that infants prefer to learn from competent informants (Poulin‐Dubois & Brosseau‐Liard, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2016, 25). However, little research has been dedicated to understanding how this selectivity develops. The present study investigated whether causal learning and precursor metacognitive abilities govern discriminant learning in a classic word‐learning paradigm. Infants were exposed to a speaker who accurately (reliable condition) or inaccurately (unreliable condition) labeled familiar objects and were subsequently tested on their ability to learn a novel word from the informant. The predictive power of causal learning skills and precursor metacognition (as measured through decision confidence) on infants' word learning was examined across both reliable and unreliable conditions. Results suggest that infants are more inclined to accept an unreliable speaker's testimony on a word learning task when they also lack confidence in their own knowledge on a task measuring their metacognitive ability. Additionally, when uncertain, infants draw on causal learning abilities to better learn the association between a label and a novel toy. This study is the first to shed light on the role of causal learning and precursor metacognitive judgments in infants' abilities to engage in selective trust.     

Mild Affective Shifts and Creativity: Effects on Idea Generation,Evaluation, and Implementation Planning

This study investigated the impact of mild shifts in affective tone (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant) and arousal (i.e., high vs. low) on three creative processes. Undergraduates read short stories designed to induce affective shifts and then were asked to generate solutions to a complex business problem. Shifts in affective tone and arousal interacted to influence idea generation and implementation planning, but not idea evaluation. The strongest creative performance was exhibited by participants who experienced a stable and pleasantly toned, low-arousal (i.e., relaxed) state and by those who shifted to an unpleasantly toned, high-arousal (i.e., angry) state. In contrast, those who shifted to an unpleasantly toned, low-arousal (i.e., sad) state or a pleasantly toned, high-arousal (i.e., happy) state tended to exhibit poorer creative performance. These results demonstrate the need to revisit the popular conception that organizations should promote intense levels of pleasant affect to enhance employee creativity.     

Children Expressing Mixed Emotion in a Nonsocial Context

Abstract

Efforts to demonstrate children’s ability to report experiencing mixed emotions have typically used an allocentric approach, asking children to report on emotions of other individuals in response to stories or movie clips demonstrating social themes. In contrast, literature examining children’s personal experiencing and understanding of their own mixed emotions, typified as an egocentric approach, in nonsocial situations remains underdeveloped. The current study examined the development of children’s reported understanding and experience of mixed emotions egocentrically. By examining a nonsocial context, this investigation extends existing gender- and age-related research on expressing egocentric mixed emotion. Using a computerized game with a disappointing wins paradigm, egocentric mixed emotional experience was elicited in 142 children (80 boys, 62 girls) aged 6 to 12?years. Results revealed that age, but not gender, was a statistically significant predictor of expressing egocentric mixed emotion experience and understanding. When studying mixed emotion development in a nonsocial context, gender did not contribute to differences in child reports. A significant positive relationship between egocentric mixed emotion experiencing and understanding also emerged. These findings contribute to our understanding of children’s emotion development and offer future directions for examining the broad domain of nonsocial contexts in youth expression of mixed emotions.     

Protective Buffering by Service Members During Military Deployments: Associations with Psychological Distress and Relationship Functioning

To shield a romantic partner from potential distress due to stressors occurring during deployment, service members (SMs) may engage in protective buffering, or withholding information or concerns from a romantic partner. This study utilized data from 54 couples collected before, during, and after a military deployment to assess whether SMs engaged in protective buffering while deployed and the possible associations between buffering and psychological, relationship, and contextual factors. Only 2% of SMs indicated never engaging in protective buffering during a deployment. In bivariate analyses, only partners’ psychological distress prior to deployment was significantly associated (negatively) with protective buffering. In multilevel models with time nested within individuals, and individuals nested within couples, higher buffering was associated with less partner distress during deployment, but was also associated with higher SM distress both during and after deployment. In these multilevel models, protective buffering was not significantly associated with SM or partner marital satisfaction.     

A discriminated rapid-acquisition laboratory procedure for human continuous choice

Previous continuous choice laboratory procedures for human participants are either prohibitively time-intensive or result in inadequate fits of the generalized matching law (GML). We developed a rapid-acquisition laboratory procedure (Procedure for Rapidly Establishing Steady-State Behavior, or PRESS-B) for studying human continuous choice that reduces participant burden and produces data that is well-described by the GML. To test the procedure, 27 human participants were exposed to 9 independent concurrent random-interval random-interval reinforcement schedules over the course of a single, 37-min session. Fits of the GML to the participants' data accounted for large proportions of variance (median R²: 0.94), with parameter estimates that were similar to those previously found in human continuous choice studies [median a: 0.67; median log(b): -0.02]. In summary, PRESS-B generates human continuous choice behavior in the laboratory that conforms to the GML with limited experimental duration.     

Holistic Human Development

One of the tenets of holism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Applying this theorem epistemologically, we could say that a holistic view is greater than the sum of the specialized views that contribute to it. Within the framework of three divergent worldviews (mechanistic, organismic and contextual) as originally proposed by Pepper (World hypotheses: A study in evidence, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1961), holism as both a philosophical position and a practical approach to research is applied to the study of adult human development. Because spiritual development has received less scholarly attention than biological, cognitive, or emotional functioning, topics such as meditation research, non-religious spirituality, and the concept of soul are covered to promote a balanced developmental perspective. Historical and philosophical factors leading to holism are described, a sampling of interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology and theology is presented, and conclusions regarding the need for holistic thinking and the relationship between religion and spirituality are offered.     

Compliance, conversion, and category induction

When children hear an object referred to with a label that is moderately discrepant from its appearance, they frequently make inferences about that object consistent with the label rather than its appearance. We asked whether 3-year-olds actually believe these unexpected labels (i.e., conversion) or whether their inferences simply reflect a desire to comply with the considerable experimental demands of the induction task (i.e., compliance). Specifically, we asked how likely children would be to pass an unexpected label on to another person who had not been present during the labeling event. Results showed that children who used an unexpected label as the basis for inference passed that label on to another person about as often as they could remember it. This suggests that children’s label-based inferences do reflect conversion rather than mere compliance.