Children's competence for assent and consent: a review of empirical findings

This narrative review summarizes the empirical literature on children's competence for consent and assent in research and treatment settings. Studies varied widely regarding methodology, particularly in the areas of participant sampling, situational context studied (e.g., psychological versus medical settings), procedures used (e.g., lab-based vs. real-world approaches), and measurement of competence. This review also identifies several fundamental dilemmas underlying approaches to children's informed consent. These dilemmas, including autonomy versus best interest approaches, legal versus psychological or ethical approaches, child- versus family-based approaches, and approaches that emphasize consent versus those that emphasize assent, have implications for the measurement of children's competence and interpretation of findings. Recommendations for future research in the area of children's informed consent include the use of diverse samples and control groups, development of multidimensional and standardized measures of competence, utilization of multidimensional and standardized measures of competence, utilization of observational methods and longitudinal designs, examination of noncognitive aspects of children's competence and comparison of children's competence for treatment and research decisions.     

Using video modeling and reinforcement to teach perspective-taking skills to children with autism

We evaluated video modeling and reinforcement for teaching perspective-taking skills to 3 children with autism using a multiple baseline design. Video modeling and reinforcement were effective; however, only 2 children were able to pass an untrained task, indicating limited generalization. The findings suggest that video modeling may be an effective technology for teaching perspective taking if researchers can continue to develop strategies for enhancing the generalization of these new skills.     

Homo Orans: Von Balthasar's Christocentric Philosophical Anthropology

Hans Urs von Balthasar's philosophical anthropology is the premise not only of his religious epistemology, but also of his whole theological enterprise. The importance of his anthropology to the rest of his theology is often overlooked, because its fundamentals are set out in an early work to which little critical attention has been given: Das Betrachtende Gebet – a work which emphasizes the "necessity of prayer". According to von Balthasar, in praying, one encounters God, and it is through this encounter that one can attain authentic personal identity and genuine fulfilment. In short, what this early work indicates is a conception of humanity as homo orans .     

Human holiness as religious shape apologia

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Sweet-cheeks vs. pea-brain: embodiment,valence, and task all influence the emotional salience of language

Previous research has found that more embodied insults (e.g. numbskull) are identified faster and more accurately than less embodied insults (e.g. idiot). The linguistic processing of embodied compliments has not been well explored. In the present study, participants completed two tasks where they identified insults and compliments, respectively. Half of the stimuli were more embodied than the other half. We examined the late positive potential (LPP) component of event-related potentials in early (400–500?ms), middle (500–600?ms), and late (600–700?ms) time windows. Increased embodiment resulted in improved response accuracy to compliments in both tasks, whereas it only improved accuracy for insults in the compliment detection task. More embodied stimuli elicited a larger LPP than less embodied stimuli in the early time window. Insults generated a larger LPP in the late time window in the insult task; compliments generated a larger LPP in the early window in the compliment task. These results indicate that electrophysiological correlates of emotional language perception are sensitive to both top-down and bottom-up processes.     

The Importance of Knowing your History: Perceiving Past Women as less Agentic than Contemporary Women Predicts Impaired Quantitative Performance

Research on dynamic stereotypes of women has shown that women perceive large differences between contemporary women and women who lived in the past in terms of agentic (or masculine) traits. This temporal discrepancy in agentic attributes of women may suggest that agency is not a stable trait of women and may result in impaired performance in domains associated with agency, such as quantitative reasoning. We propose that women who think that agency has always characterized their gender group would perform better in quantitative tasks. Indeed, we found that as the difference between agency attributed to present and past women decreased, U.S. college women’s (n?=?80) accuracy in a quantitative test increased (Study 1). Further, reading a text about women’s achievements in the history of science reduced the discrepancy between agency attributed to past and present women and had an indirect positive effect on quantitative performance by 150 U.S. college women (Study 2). Findings suggest that women’s participation and performance in science could be improved by raising awareness of women’s historical achievements in male-dominated areas.     

Infant pointing serves an interrogative function

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the motivations behind, and the function of, infant pointing behaviour. Many studies have converged on the view that early pointing reflects a motivation to share attention and interest with others. Under one view, it is the sharing of attention itself that is the ultimate function of pointing, and is an early manifestation of a uniquely human social cognition that is geared towards cooperation and collaboration. In the current study, we tested an alternative hypothesis in which the goal of pointing is not attention sharing itself, but the information-laden response that infants tend to receive as a result of sharing attention. If infants indeed point in order to obtain information, their pointing should be modulated by the perceived ability of the other to provide this information. In Experiment 1, 16-month-olds who interacted with a demonstrably knowledgeable experimenter pointed significantly more to novel objects than infants who interacted with an ignorant experimenter. In Experiment 2, we confirmed that this finding was due to the perceived competence of the experimenter rather than to the different ways in which the experimenter responded to infants' points. Our results suggest that one function of pointing in infancy is to obtain information from others, and that infants selectively elicit desired information from those whom they perceive could competently provide it.