Language in benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes abbreviated form: rolandic epilepsy and language

Although Benign Childhood Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (BECTS) has a good prognosis, a few studies have suggested the existence of language disorders relating to the interictal dysfunction of perisylvian language areas. In this study, we focused on language assessment in 16 children aged 6-15 currently affected by BECTS or in remission. An important proportion of children showed moderate or more severe language impairment. The most affected domains were expressive grammar and literacy skills. We found linguistic deficits during the course of epilepsy but also persistent deficits in children in remission, suggesting possible long-term effects. Our results support the hypothesis that BECTS may be associated with impairment to language and suggest the possibility of a direct link between epileptic activity and language development, and the existence of long-term consequences.     

Critical thinking as cooperation and its relation to mental health and social welfare

The purpose of this theoretical investigation was to examine critical thinking as a realization of human cooperation, affecting both mental health and social welfare. Although critical thinking contains a critical stance toward any asserted standpoint, such a critical stance appears, paradoxically, to have developed from cooperation and the shared goals of human beings. Moreover, although critical thinking has been seen in academic literature to be anchored on culturally developed rules and principles of rational dialogue as well as on effective learning methods, investigators have not interconnected critical thinking and human cooperation comprehensively enough. To solve the dilemma, we will use available scientific knowledge to examine how cooperation and socially shared goals are realized in critical thinking, especially in a critical stance. The view of critical thinking as cooperation places it ontogenetically and phylogenetically into a wider theoretical framework which also provides a novel perspective on mental health and social welfare. The deterioration of rational thinking in the context of mental disorders may be explained by failures of cooperation, which can contain epistemic distrust and an inability to mentalize the viewpoints of others. These features may clarify some causes why some contemporary dialogues and critical contributions are divisive in worldwide, especially in social media.     

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify an Anti-Reductive Paradigm that is guided by an Egalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field's methods to values that can describe the field's purposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric of Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.     

Reflecting Absence: Representing the Extraordinary Deaths of Ordinary Sailors in the Media

This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the commemorative discourse used by the South Korean media, family members, and the general public in response to the deaths of 46 sailors on board a navy ship that was sunk by a North Korean torpedo in 2010. It identifies differences in the methods of remembrance among the different groups, with the media focusing on human values, professional ethics, and universal norms, while family members recalled everyday experiences with the deceased and stressed acceptance of death and the general public emphasized heroism, immortality, and national solidarity. This study discusses the differences in the understanding of death between South Koreans and Westerners.     

The Higgs Boson: An Adventure in Critical Realism

Abstract

The search for the Higgs boson has been like the search of a pirate for buried gold. Like the pirate, the physicist has a map, a conceptual map—the Standard Model (SM) made up of mathematical formulas. Without the Higgs boson in the SM, fundamental particles would be massless. Where could the mass mechanism be? The conceptual map pointed in the right direction. On July 4, 2012 the pirates found their treasure with the help of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In this article a physicist and theologian ask: could this be critical realism (CR) at work? Could CR constitute a set of presuppositions shared by both physicists and theologians who cannot see the object of their inquiry but employ conceptual models that presuppose the reality of its referent? What role could shared CR play in the creative mutual interaction between science and theology?     

Development of a vocabulary of object shapes in a child with a very-early-acquired visual agnosia: A unique case

We report a longitudinal study of an exceptional child (S.R.) whose early-acquired visual agnosia, following encephalitis at 8 weeks of age, did not prevent her from learning to construct an increasing vocabulary of visual object forms (drawn from different categories), albeit slowly. S.R. had problems perceiving subtle differences in shape; she was unable to segment local letters within global displays; and she would bring complex scenes close to her eyes: a symptom suggestive of an attempt to reduce visual crowding. Investigations revealed a robust ability to use the gestalt grouping factors of proximity and collinearity to detect fragmented forms in noisy backgrounds, compared with a very weak ability to segment fragmented forms on the basis of contrasts of shape. When contrasts in spatial grouping and shape were pitted against each other, shape made little contribution, consistent with problems in perceiving complex scenes, but when shape contrast was varied, and spatial grouping was held constant, S.R. showed the same hierarchy of difficulty as the controls, although her responses were slowed. This is the first report of a child's visual–perceptual development following very early neurological impairments to the visual cortex. Her ability to learn to perceive visual shape following damage at a rudimentary stage of perceptual development contrasts starkly with the loss of such ability in childhood cases of acquired visual agnosia that follow damage to the established perceptual system. Clearly, there is a critical period during which neurological damage to the highly active, early developing visual–perceptual system does not prevent but only impairs further learning.     

Additive factors and stages of mental processes in task networks

To perform a task a subject executes mental processes. An experimental manipulation, such as a change in stimulus intensity, is said to selectively influence a process if it changes the duration of that process leaving other process durations unchanged. For random process durations a definition of a factor selectively influencing a process by increments is given in terms of stochastic dominance (also called “the usual stochastic order”). A technique for analyzing reaction times, Sternberg’s Additive Factor Method, assumes all the processes are in series. When all processes are in series, each process is called a stage. With the Additive Factor Method, if two experimental factors selectively influence two different stages by increments, the factors will have additive effects on reaction time. An assumption of the Additive Factor Method is that if two experimental factors interact, then they influence the same stage. We consider sets of processes in which some pairs of processes are sequential and some are concurrent (i.e., the processes are partially ordered). We propose a natural definition of a stage for such sets of processes. For partially ordered processes, with our definition of a stage, if two experimental factors selectively influence two different processes by increments, each within a different stage, then the factors have additive effects. If each process selectively influenced by increments is in the same stage, then an interaction is possible, although not inevitable.     

Conflict partners and infrastructure use in safety critical events in cycling – Results from a naturalistic cycling study

Accident statistics show that cyclists are at considerable risk of being involved in a crash. However, statistics based on police reports are often heavily biased towards on-road, bicycle–motor vehicle crashes. Crashes that do not involve motorised vehicles or that occur on other types of infrastructure are neglected. Naturalistic cycling methodology appears to be a promising approach to address these issues. The goal of this study was to identify and classify safety critical cycling events involving a variety of conflict partners and covering all types of infrastructure. Thirty-one participants in three age groups had their own bicycles equipped with a data acquisition system. Participants rode their modified bike as usual for a period of four weeks. Over 1600 trips were recorded overall. We were able to identify 77 safety critical events during the observation period. Only 43% of these events involved motorised vehicles as conflict partners. Conflicts with other cyclists and pedestrians accounted for about 57% of the situations. Likewise, less than 35% of the events occurred on-road. The data show that although motorised vehicles are still the single biggest threat to cycling safety, and roads still constitute one of the most crash prone types of infrastructure, the importance of crashes that do not involve motorised road users or occur not on-road should not be underestimated.     

The Educational Psychology of Self-Regulation: A Conceptual and Critical Analysis

The multiplicity of definitions and conceptions of self-regulation that typifies contemporary research on self-regulation in psychology and educational psychology is examined. This examination is followed by critical analyses of theory and research in educational psychology that reveal not only conceptual confusions, but misunderstandings of conceptual versus empirical issues, individualistic biases to the detriment of an adequate consideration of social and cultural contexts, and a tendency to reify psychological states and processes as ontologically foundational to self-regulation. The essay concludes with a consideration of educational research and intervention in the area of students’ self-regulated learning in terms of the scientific and professional interests of psychologists and educators, and the disguised manipulation of student self-surveillance in the service of the institutional mandates of schools.     

The Pragma-Dialectical Analysis and Evaluation of Teleological Argumentation in a Legal Context

In this article the author develops a framework for a pragma-dialectical reconstruction of teleological argumentation in a legal context. Ideas taken from legal theory are integrated in a pragma-dialectical model for analyzing and evaluating argumentation, thus providing a more systematic and elaborate framework for assessing the quality of teleological arguments in a legal context. Teleological argumentation in a legal context is approached as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. The legal criteria that are relevant for the evaluation of teleological argumentation are discussed and translated in terms of critical questions that are relevant for the evaluation of the various forms of teleological argumentation.