Conflict of interest in medicine in Lithuania: legal and ethical aspects

The current legal framework within the Lithuanian health system is described including a review of the physician’s autonomy, rights and duties, and patients’ rights including the right to reimbursement. The role of ethical codes and the law are discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

The Ontological Status of Human DNA: Is It Not First and Foremost a Biological ``File Self'?

This paper investigates which of the various legal notions proposed for human DNA is the most appropriate from an ontological viewpoint - unique legal status, private property, common property, person, or information. The focus is on the difficulties that private property, common property and person present. By using Harré's notion of "file-self" we argue that, ontologically, the most appropriate legal notion to be applied is information. This has consequences for storage, control and use of genetic information as well as identifiable human body material.     

Duchenne smile,emotional experience,and autonomic reactivity: a test of the facial feedback hypothesis

This study examined the modulatory function of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles on subjective and autonomic components of emotion. Participants were asked to hold a pencil in their mouth to either facilitate or inhibit smiles and were not instructed to contract specific muscles. Five conditions--namely lips pressing, low-level non-Duchenne smiling, high-level non-Duchenne smiling, Duchenne smiling, and control--were produced while participants watched videoclips that were evocative of positive or negative affect. Participants who displayed Duchenne smiles reported more positive experience when pleasant scenes and humorous cartoons were presented. Furthermore, they tended to exhibit different patterns of autonomic arousal when viewing positive scenes. These results support thefacial feedback hypothesis and suggest that facial feedback has more powerful effects when facial configurations represent valid analogs of basic emotional expressions.     

Hierarchical categorization by bilingual Latino children: does a basic-level bias exist?

Research has shown that children classify most easily at the basic level where objects in the same category look similar enough to each other to be grouped together but are distinct enough from objects in other categories to be discriminated (e.g., animal/bird/duck). In this article, the authors report on 2 experiments they conducted to determine whether children maintain this basic category bias when the perceptual similarity of stimuli at different hierarchical levels is equalized. Pictures within and across 3 hierarchical levels were made perceptually equivalent and shown to 71 Latino children who were bilingual in Spanish and English. In Experiment 1, the pictures used as exemplars could be categorized on any of the 3 hierarchical levels. In Experiment 2, example pictures unambiguously defined the level of categorization that would be accurate, and linguistic cues were given that might assist in the selection of the correct category. In both experiments, the children sorted pictures from all 3 levels equally well, but they found it harder to justify their sorting of superordinate pictures. English competence predicted sorting on the more ambiguous sorting task in Experiment 1; and English competence predicted verbal justifications in both experiments, even though the experiments were conducted in Spanish. Competence in Spanish or English was an equally good predictor of sorting in the better defined sorting task in Experiment 2. These findings indicate that a superordinate level deficiency remains after perceptual differences are eliminated and that the deficiency is cognitive in nature. Differences in the performances of children who differed in bilingualism support the hypothesis that a threshold of proficiency in both languages is an important determinant of the effect of bilingualism on categorization.     

From majority to minority and vice versa: the asymmetrical effects of losing and gaining majority position within a group

Two studies examined the effects of stable, partially changed, and completely changed majority and minority positions within a group on perception and evaluation of the group. It was hypothesized that loss of majority position (majority-to-minority change) would have stronger effects than gain of majority position (minority-to-majority change). The hypothesized asymmetrical effect was demonstrated in that loss of majority position decreased perception of group-self similarity, group attraction, and expectations for positive interactions with the group, whereas a corresponding gain of position did not increase them. Thus immediately following changes, the group is especially fragile because disintegrative forces created by the loss of majority position are stronger than integrative forces created by the gain of majority position.     

The personal-group discrepancy: Is there a common information basis for personal and group judgment?

In contrast to motivational accounts of the personal-group discrepancy, results from this article suggest that the discrepancy is explained by aggregating different sets of comparison outcomes for either personal or group ratings. Results from a longitudinal study with East German (the minority group) and West German (the majority group) samples confirm the personal-group discrepancy and support our approach. First, social comparisons influenced evaluations of economic situation at both group and personal levels. Second, ratings of group versus personal economic situation were based on different sets of comparisons. Third, the mean structure of both sets of comparison outcomes mirrored the personal-group discrepancy. Fourth, an interaction between personal-group discrepancy and group status supported the authors' suggestions-concerning the direction of the discrepancy.     

How do we communicate stereotypes? Linguistic bases and inferential consequences

The linguistic expectancy bias is defined as the tendency to describe expectancy-consistent information at a higher level of abstraction than expectancy-inconsistent information. The communicative consequences of this bias were examined in 3 experiments. Analyses of judgments that recipients made on the basis of linguistically biased information generated by transmitters indicated that behavior in expectancy-consistent messages was attributed more to dispositional and less to situational factors than behavior in expectancy-inconsistent messages. Moreover, this effect was mediated by the level of linguistic abstraction of the messages. These findings provide direct evidence for the hypothesis that recipients are sensitive to variations in linguistic abstraction in spontaneous language use because of stereotypes. Results are discussed with respect to the interpersonal aspects of stereotyping.