Modeling effects of risk and social distance on vaccination choice

Despite vaccines' consistently demonstrated effectiveness, vaccination rates remain suboptimal due to vaccine refusal. Low vaccination rates are particularly problematic for individuals who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons and thus must rely on herd immunity (i.e., protection of vulnerable individuals due to the high rate of vaccination of other—often socially distant—individuals). The current study uses a novel decision‐making task to examine how three variables impacted participants' highest acceptable probability of side effects to their children: 1) the severity of the side effects their children experience, 2) the social distance to the beneficiary of the vaccination, and 3) the probability that the vaccine will prevent disease for that designated beneficiary. Participants' willingness to risk potential side effects of vaccination systematically decreased as the 1) effectiveness of the vaccination decreased, 2) the beneficiary of the vaccination became more socially distant, and 3) the severity of side effects increased. These data were well‐described by behavioral economic models used to examine the discounting of other health behavior.     

An Examination of the Effects of Feedback Accuracy on Academic Task Acquisition in Analogue Settings

The Psychological Record - Performance feedback is a common procedure used in a variety of settings to change behavior. Although reviews of the literature have identified a number of...     

Differing profiles of developmental experiences across types of organized youth activities

This study inventoried the types of developmental and negative experiences that youth encounter in different categories of extracurricular and community-based organized activities. A representative sample of 2,280 11th graders from 19 diverse high schools responded to a computer-administered protocol. Youth in faith-based activities reported higher rates of experiences related to identity, emotional regulation, and interpersonal development in comparison with other activities. Sports and arts programs stood out as providing more experiences related to development of initiative, although sports were also related to high stress. Service activities were associated with experiences related to development of teamwork, positive relationships, and social capital. Youth reported all of these positive developmental experiences to occur significantly more often in youth programs than during school classes.     

Property rights, genes, and common good

This paper applies aspects of Hugo Grotius's theologically informed theory of property to contemporary issues concerning access to the human DNA sequence and patenting practices. It argues that Christians who contribute to public debate in these areas might beneficially employ some of the concepts with which he worked--notably "common right," the "right of necessity," and "use right." In the seventeenth century, wars were fought over trading rights and access to the sea. In the twenty-first century, information and intellectual property are the issues of the day. Grotius's writings serve to correct the overemphasis in modern liberalism on individual rights, and have practical application to the debate concerning the reduction of the human genome to the status of private property.     

Turning configural processing upside down: part and whole body postures

Like faces, body postures are susceptible to an inversion effect in untrained viewers. The inversion effect may be indicative of configural processing, but what kind of configural processing is used for the recognition of body postures must be specified. The information available in the body stimulus was manipulated. The presence and magnitude of inversion effects were compared for body parts, scrambled bodies, and body halves relative to whole bodies and to corresponding conditions for faces and houses. Results suggest that configural body posture recognition relies on the structural hierarchy of body parts, not the parts themselves or a complete template match. Configural recognition of body postures based on information about the structural hierarchy of parts defines an important point on the configural processing continuum, between recognition based on first-order spatial relations and recognition based on holistic undifferentiated template matching.     

The generalized optic acceleration cancellation theory of catching

The generalized optic acceleration cancellation (GOAC) theory of catching proposes that the path of a fielder running to catch a ball is determined by the attempt to satisfy 2 independent constraints. The 1st is to keep the angle of elevation of gaze to the ball increasing at a decreasing rate. The 2nd is to control the rate of horizontal rotation necessary to maintain fixation on the ball. Depending on the lateral velocity of the ball relative to the fielder, this rate may be zero or constant at a negative or positive value. The authors show that a simulated fielder implementing the GOAC strategy follows a path indistinguishable from that of real fielders running to catch balls thrown on the same trajectories.     

A behavioral intervention for teaching tackling skills to high school football athletes

We evaluated an intervention that combined task analysis and differential reinforcement for teaching tackling skills to 2 high school football athletes. As a result of intervention, both players tackled more proficiently in practice drills and maintained proficient tackling during games.     

Kant's Criticisms of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

According to recent commentators like Paul Guyer, Kant agrees with Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1) that physico-theology can never provide knowledge of God and (2) that the concept of God, nevertheless, provides a useful heuristic principle for scientific enquiry. This paper argues that Kant, far from agreeing with Hume, criticizes Hume's Dialogues for failing to prove that physico-theology can never yield knowledge of God and that Kant correctly views Hume's Dialogues as a threat to, rather than an anticipation of, his own view that the concept of God provides a useful heuristic principle for science. The paper concludes that Kant's critique of physico-theology reflects Kant's deep dissatisfaction with Hume's manner of argumentation and suggests that Kant's attempt to provide a more successful critique of physico-theology merits continued philosophical attention.