Collaborative Research, Knowledge and Emergence

We use the notion of emergence to consider the sorts of knowledge that can be produced in a collaborative research project. The notion invites us to see collaborative work as a developmental dynamic system in which various changes constantly occur. Among these we examine two sorts of knowledge that can be produced: scientific knowledge, and collaborative knowledge. We argue that collaborative knowledge can enable researchers to reflectively monitor their collaborative project, so as to encourage its most productive changes. On the basis of examples taken from this special issue, we highlight four modes of producing collaborative knowledge and discuss the possible uses of such knowledge.

The role of moral commitments in moral judgment

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments.     

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of human cognitive processes

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is now widely accepted as a tool for analyzing human brain function. Since the realization of fMRI in the early 1990s, numerous reports have been published. In this paper, we present three studies. The first examined syntactic processing of Japanese sentences and the results prove that Broca's area is involved in the use of grammar. The second study compared binocular with monocular stereopsis. There were significant activations in the right inferior parietal lobe. The third study concerned the encoding and retrieval processes underlying face recognition. It revealed activations mainly in the right prefrontal areas, which is contrary to the hemispheric encoding and retrieval asymmetry (HERA) theory. fMRI will continue to play an important role in the analysis of human brain function.     

Community Implementation Successes and Challenges of a Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Group for Individuals with a First Episode of Psychosis

CBT for psychosis has recently been called a best practice, suggesting that studies have demonstrated its efficacy with many populations. Community settings are encouraged to implement best practices such as CBT yet many factors can make the implementation of CBT challenging. Issues such as clinician resistance, setting, as well as client variables (refusal, denial of symptoms, etc.) come into play. Examples of successes and challenges of a community based study of CBT groups for first episodes will be described. The strategies used to overcome these challenges and the successes of the program will be presented.     

Young children’s learning and generalization of teleological and mechanistic explanations

Young children often endorse explanations of the natural world that appeal to functions or purpose—for example, that rocks are pointy so animals can scratch on them. By contrast, most Western-educated adults reject such explanations. What accounts for this change? We investigated 4- to 5-year-old children’s ability to generalize the form of an explanation from examples by presenting them with novel teleological explanations, novel mechanistic explanations, or no explanations for 5 nonliving natural objects. We then asked children to explain novel instances of the same objects and novel kinds of objects. We found that children were able to learn and generalize explanations of both types, suggesting an ability to draw generalizations over the form of an explanation. We also found that teleological and mechanistic explanations were learned and generalized equally well, suggesting that if a domain-general teleological bias exists, it does not manifest as a bias in learning or generalization.     

Ethical Dilemmas in Genetic Testing: Examples from the Cuban Program for Predictive Diagnosis of Hereditary Ataxias

Predictive testing protocols are intended to help patients affected with hereditary conditions understand their condition and make informed reproductive choices. However, predictive protocols may expose clinicians and patients to ethical dilemmas that interfere with genetic counseling and the decision making process. This paper describes ethical dilemmas in a series of five cases involving predictive testing for hereditary ataxias in Cuba. The examples herein present evidence of the deeply controversial situations faced by both individuals at risk and professionals in charge of these predictive studies, suggesting a need for expanded guidelines to address such complexities.     

Health-related quality of life in children and adolescents: subjective well being

The main objective of this study was to build a model, which includes personal and social factors, that helps to highlight factors that promote health-related quality of Life (HRQoL) in children and in adolescents. A sample of 3195 children and adolescents was acquired from 5th and 7th graders from all five Portuguese regions. In this study three independent latent variables were specified--Physical, Psychological and Social and two dependent latent variables were measured: Health behavior and Quality of Life. The integrative model was composed by different components: (1) health-related quality of life, integrated by 8 dimensions from KIDSCREEN-52; (2) health behavior, (3) variables related to physical health; (4) variables related to social health; (5) variables related to psychological health. As results were found strong correlation between psychological dimensions and self-esteem and other factors and a structural equation model was developed. The model presented a RMSEA index of .08. Similarly, adjustment levels for the CFI, NFI and IFI vary above or around .90, which suggests a good adjustment for the hypothesized model. The model presented significant qui-square. This study showed that in all the samples studied, the psychological variables were those that contributed at a superior level to HRQoL.