Sketch this: extended mind and consciousness extension

This paper will defend the claim that, under certain circumstances, the material vehicles responsible for an agent’s conscious experience can be partly constituted by processes outside the agent’s body. In other words, the consciousness of the agent can extend. This claim will be supported by the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) example of the artist and their sketchpad (Clark 2001, 2003). It will be argued that if this example is one of EMT, then this example also supports an argument for consciousness extension. Clark (2009) rejects claims of consciousness extension. This paper will challenge Clark and argue that he fails to show that the material vehicles responsible for consciousness must be internal to the agent.     

Gender and Compensation: Understanding the Impact of Gender and Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Rewards

Children’s understanding of rewards for task completion was examined in the context of gender, and gender-based stereotypes. Eighty-eight children (43 girls, M_overall?=?58.39 months) completed a measure assessing gender-based occupational stereotypes. This measure, along with gender, was used to predict children’s self-reward for undergoing the testing, as well as their reward for a fictional other child having undergone the same procedure. The methodology provided a novel approach for studying reward allocation in children, as it did not require children to divide resources between themselves and another child for completing the same task. An occupation-based stereotype measure was found to predict the self-reward, as well as the reward allocated to the other child. In addition, the participant’s gender predicted self-reward, and an interaction between participant gender and gender of the experimenter contributed to predicting the other child reward. Overall, these findings suggest that gender and gender-based stereotyping have an impact on reward allocation of young children. Implications of these results in the context of reward allocation research among children and adult populations are discussed.     

Containment Through Relationship: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

Psychoanalytic education is undergoing probably the greatest scrutiny in its history. Emanuel Berman brings the relational point of view to this discussion. Through both content and process, he shows how relationships and dialogue have the power to contain training while preserving individuality and creativity better than rigid structure, whether theoretical or administrative.     

Reexamining the Ethics of Nuclear Technology

This article analyzes the present status, development trends, and problems in the ethics of nuclear technology in light of a possible revision of its conceptual foundations. First, to better recognize the current state of nuclear technology ethics and related problems, this article focuses on presenting a picture of the evolution of the concepts and recent achievements related to technoethics, based on the ethics of responsibility. The term ‘ethics of nuclear technology’ describes a multidisciplinary endeavor to examine the problems associated with nuclear technology through ethical frameworks and paradigms. Second, to identify the reasons for the intensification of efforts to develop ethics in relation to nuclear technology, this article presents an analysis of the recent situation and future prospects of nuclear technology deployment. This includes contradictions that have aggravated nuclear dilemmas and debates stimulated by the shortcomings of nuclear technology, as well as the need for the further development of a nuclear culture paradigm that is able to provide a conceptual framework to overcome nuclear challenges. Third, efforts in the field of nuclear technology ethics are presented as a short overview of particular examples, and the major findings regarding obstacles to the development of nuclear technology ethics are also summarized. Finally, a potential methodological course is proposed to overcome inaction in this field; the proposed course provides for the further development of nuclear technology ethics, assuming the axiological multidisciplinary problematization of the main concepts in nuclear engineering through the basic ethical paradigms: analytical, hermeneutical, and poststructuralist.     

Religious Belonging,Religious Agency,and Women's Autonomy in Mozambique

Women's autonomy has frequently been linked with women's opportunities and investments, such as education, employment, and reproductive control. The association between women's autonomy and religion in the developing world, however, has received less attention, and the few existing studies make comparisons across major religious traditions. In this study, we focus on variations in levels of female decision‐making autonomy within a single religious tradition—Christianity. Using unique survey data from a predominantly Christian area in Mozambique, we devise an autonomy scale and apply it to compare women affiliated with different Christian denominations as well as unaffiliated women. In addition to affiliation, we examine the relationship between autonomy and women's religious agency both within and outside their churches. Multivariate analyses show that women belonging to more liberal religious traditions (such as Catholicism and mainline Protestantism) tend to have higher autonomy levels, regardless of other factors. These results are situated within the cross‐national scholarship on religion and women's empowerment and are interpreted in the context of gendered religious dynamics in Mozambique and similar developing settings.     

Parallel development of ERP and behavioural measurements of visual segmentation

Visual segmentation, a process in which elements are integrated into a form and segregated from the background, is known to differ from adults at infancy. The further developmental trajectory of this process, and of the underlying brain mechanisms, during childhood and adolescence is unknown. The aim of the study was to investigate the developmental trajectory of ERP reflections of visual segmentation, and to relate this to behavioural performance. One hundred and eleven typically developing children from 7 to 18 years of age were divided into six age groups. Each child performed two visual tasks. In a texture segmentation task, the difference in event‐related potential (ERP) response to homogeneous (no visual segmentation) and checkered stimuli (visual segmentation) was investigated. In addition, behavioural performance on integration of elements into contours was measured. Both behavioural and ERP measurements of visual segmentation differed from adults in 7–12 year‐old children. Behaviourally, young children were less able to integrate elements into a contour than older children. In addition, a developmental change was present in the ERP pattern evoked by homogeneous versus checkered stimuli. The largest differences in behaviour and ERPs were found between 7–8‐ and 9–10‐, and between 11–12‐ and 13–14‐year‐old children, indicating the strongest development between those age groups. Behavioural as well as ERP measurements at 13–14 years of age showed similar results to those of adults. These results reveal that visual segmentation continues to develop until early puberty. Only by 13–14 years of age, children do integrate and segregate visual information as adults do. These results can be interpreted in terms of functional connectivity within the visual cortex.     

Psychologists’ Evaluation of Bariatric Surgery Candidates Influenced by Patients’ Attachment Representations and Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety

This study examines whether patients self-reported attachment representations and levels of depression and anxiety influenced psychologists’ evaluations of morbidly obese patients applying for bariatric surgery. A sample of 250 patients (mean age 44, 84 % female) who were referred for bariatric surgery completed questionnaires to measure adult attachment and levels of depression and anxiety. Psychologists rated patients’ suitability for bariatric surgery using the Cleveland Clinic Behavioural Rating System (CCBRS), unaware of the results of the completed questionnaires. Attachment anxiety (OR = 2.50, p = .01) and attachment avoidance (OR = 3.13, p = .001) were found to be associated with less positive evaluations on the CCBRS by the psychologists, and symptoms of depression and anxiety mediated this association. This study strongly supports the notion that patients’ attachment representations influence a psychologist’s evaluation in an indirect way by influencing the symptoms of depression and anxiety patients report during an assessment interview. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Preview benefit in speaking occurs regardless of preview timing

Speakers access information from objects they will name but have not looked at yet, indexed by preview benefit—faster processing of the target when a preview object previously occupying its location was related rather than unrelated to the target. This suggests that speakers distribute attention over multiple objects, but it does not reveal the time course of the processing of a current and a to-be-named object. Is the preview benefit a consequence of attention shifting to the next-to-be-named object shortly before the eyes move to that location, or does the benefit reflect a more unconstrained deployment of attention to upcoming objects? Using the multiple-object naming paradigm with a gaze-contingent display change manipulation, we addressed this issue by manipulating the latency of the onset of the preview (SOA) and whether the preview represented the same concept as (but a different visual token of) the target or an unrelated concept. The results revealed that the preview benefit was robust, regardless of the latency of the preview onset or the latency of the saccade to the target (the lag between preview offset and fixation on the target). Together, these data suggest that preview benefit is not restricted to the time during an attention shift preceding an eye movement, and that speakers are able to take advantage of information from nonfoveal objects whenever such objects are visually available.