Why doesn’t feedback correct Vierordt’s law?

Vierordt [(1868). Der zeitsinn nach versuchen. Tübingen: Laupp] observed that participants over-reproduce short durations and under-reproduce long durations within a test range of sample durations (Vierordt’s law). Similar phenomena have been reported for sensory and other processing (e.g. [Helson (1964 Helson, H. (1964). Adaptation-level theory. New York, NY: Harper &; Row. [Google Scholar]). Adaptation-level theory. New York: Harper &; Row; Stevens, and Greenbaum (1966). Regression effect in psychophysical judgment. Perception &; Psychophysics, 1, 439–446]. Performance feedback (knowledge of results) does not correct this performance distortion although it does correct other errors. In Experiment 1, I tested the hypothesis that a random presentation order of the standard durations makes feedback on one trial inappropriate for the next trial preventing correction of the Vierordt effect. In Experiment 2, participants performed two consecutive reproductions after each standard duration. Having the opportunity to immediately utilize the feedback from the first reproduction did not eliminate the Vierordt effect, although participants did attempt to correct the error on the first reproduction. In Experiment 3, the Vierordt effect was reduced in a blocked presentation design. Feedback produced more veridical performance. I conclude that the resistance of the Vierordt effect to correction by feedback may result, in part, from feedback on a given trial being misapplied to correcting performance on the next trial. Ironically, the Vierordt effect, which produced the differing directions and magnitudes of performance errors reported by the feedback, may be what prevents feedback from correcting for the Vierordt effect.     

The Factors that Motivate Law Enforcement's Use of Force: A Systematic Review

Media attention relevant to law enforcement use of force in the last decade finally alerted the scientific community to the need for more research regarding law enforcement discretion and decision making. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the existing literature to explore the motivating factors for law enforcement use of force. This study will utilize a social–ecological framework to systematically examine factors that impact officer decisions to use force at the individual and community levels. The paper includes recommendations for research and practice through an equity lens that highlights the disparate use of force against men of color in particular. Interventions, trainings, education, and research to stop the promotion of perceived safety over justice will be highlighted.     

Analyse du cadre réglementaire des certificats médicaux demandés par une municipalité en 2019

Medical certificates have a regular place in general medicine consultation. Since 2011, the french law has highlighted the absence of regulatory support of certain certificates, in particular of public services. The objective of this study was to find out which regulatory texts were based on the medical certificates required by a municipal administration, 8 years after the 2011 rationalization circular?Material and methodQualitative study by observation and critical analysis of certificates by literature reviews according to the main PRISMA quality criteria (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes). The first step consisted of the exhaustive collection of the medical certificates provided by the municipality, for the citizens or the employees of the city. The origin of one of the municipal services was the only criterion for inclusion. The second stage consisted in analyzing the certificates according to the law by using databases classified depending on their level, taking their regulatory value into account as a priority. The research equations were constructed with an inductive process as the certificates were collected.ResultsForty-two certificates were collected and analyzed. Twenty-seven had regulatory support, two of which (not concerned in general medicine) complied with its content. No regulatory support was found for the 15 other certificates. The regulatory vagueness around sports accidents, or even the abuse of authority, are explanations for these certificates without existing or respected regulatory support.ConclusionThe general practitioner is put in a difficult and ambivalent position. A major institutional commitment should be considered for the rationalization of medical certificates, in particular through medical education, health education for users and law enforcement.     

Intelligence artificielle et médecine : quelles règles éthiques et juridiques pour une IA responsable ?

Combining AI and medicine means talking about the medicine of the future, but even more about improving the quality of care. Its fields of application: predictive medicine, precision medicine, decision support, prevention, computer-assisted surgery, robotic support for the elderly, etc. are all related concerns: the possibility of maintaining human contact with the patient, the explicability of the algorithm - the collection of health data - and the improvement of the health care system. AI applications are already improving the quality of care. Its deployment at the heart of the medicine of the future is in constant evolution. To be acceptable and legitimate, the decisions of any algorithm must be understood and therefore explained. Only a good understanding of the diagnoses and therapies proposed by the AI application will allow doctors to discuss with their patients and to explain the possible alternatives. In the opposite case, the doctor risks to dismiss the use of algorithms because he will not be able to justify the decisions which will pose problems in terms of liability research in particular.     

The Wax and the Mechanical Mind: Reexamining Hobbes's Objections to Descartes's Meditations

Many critics, Descartes himself included, have seen Hobbes as uncharitable or even incoherent in his Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy. I argue that when understood within the wider context of his views of the late 1630s and early 1640s, Hobbes's Objections are coherent and reflect his goal of providing an epistemology consistent with a mechanical philosophy. I demonstrate the importance of this epistemology for understanding his Fourth Objection concerning the nature of the wax and contend that Hobbes's brief claims in that Objection are best understood as a summary of the mechanism for scientific knowledge found in his broader work. Far from displaying his confusion, Hobbes's Fourth Objection in fact pinpoints a key weakness of Descartes's faculty psychology: its unintelligibility within a mechanical philosophy.     

Kingship and the ‘Apostolic Church,’ 1620-1650

Abstract

During the 1640s, English divines came to place new weight on the role of the Apostles in founding the Christian Church. Earlier in the century, Archbishop Laud and his allies had tended to appeal to the Old Testament, and especially to the Jerusalem of King David, as a model for the English church. In Jerusalem, they argued, king and church had cooperated in perfect harmony, and they sought to emulate this situation. With the outbreak of civil war, however, Jerusalem no longer seemed such an appropriate model. Clerics and laymen alike had to think afresh about the relationship between church and state, and several episcopalian clergymen began to appeal instead to the church of the Apostles, seeing this as a template for a church which was independent of the state. This essay examines the concept of apostolicity as understood between 1620 and 1650, showing that it proved both fruitful and problematic for English theologians.     

Endings as gain: The capacity to end and its role in creating space for growth

The paper describes an application of child psychotherapy in a paediatric setting. It examines the crucial part that attention to endings played in a clinical intervention where the phantasy of going on for ever threatened to inhibit growth. Case material is used to illustrate the different meanings and functions of endings and their significance in terms of parenting issues and developmental tasks. In this context the concept of negative elasticity is put forward as a useful tool for exploring the nature of boundaries. The final part of the paper focuses on the value of the external-reality experience of ending, its relationship to potential professional omnipotence and the importance of sustaining a tension between inner- and outer-world factors.     

A Tortoise in a Hurry: The Ordering of the Anglican Communion

Many Anglicans have begun to see the institutions of the Anglican Communion as something of a ‘tortoise’, either because of their halting journey towards gay and lesbian inclusion, or because of the way in which they have only slowly moved towards a clear rejection of such an ‘innovation’. How does the Anglican Communion actually operate in the face of such developments? This article argues that the Instruments of Communion have adopted an ordered approach to the Communion's life – working through legitimate structures both at provincial and Communion level. It sets out some of the main channels through which the Communion has been working – the Windsor Process and the proposal for an Anglican Covenant – and argues in favour of such an ordered approach to life.     

Detrimental effects of using negative sentences in the autobiographical IAT

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is a method that accurately identifies which one of two contrasting autobiographical events is true for the subject. The aIAT indexes the real autobiographical event (e.g. I was in Paris for Christmas) on the basis of the facilitating effect because it maps the real autobiographical event with true sentences (e.g. I am in front of a computer) on the same motor response. In this paper we focus on the conditions under which the autobiographical IAT accurately and reliably identifies autobiographical memories. A recent study showed a reduction in the accuracy of the aIAT when negative sentences are used. We have investigated the detrimental effect on aIAT accuracy of such negative sentence items, used to describe autobiographical events, compared with affirmative sentence items. While we highlight the reliability of the results obtained using negative sentences, we also show that the use of affirmative sentences in describing autobiographical events guarantees high accuracy and reliability of results in identifying the true autobiographical event. Finally, we summarise the criteria for preparing stimuli for an effective aIAT in order to maximise correct classifications of individual subjects.     

Piéron's Law holds during stroop conflict: insights into the architecture of decision making

Piéron's Law describes the relationship between stimulus intensity and reaction time. Previously (Stafford & Gurney, 2004), we have shown that Piéron's Law is a necessary consequence of rise-to-threshold decision making and thus will arise from optimal simple decision-making algorithms (e.g., Bogacz, Brown, Moehlis, Holmes, & Cohen, 2006). Here, we manipulate the color saturation of a Stroop stimulus. Our results show that Piéron's Law holds for color intensity and color-naming reaction time, extending the domain of this law, in line with our suggestion of the generality of the processes that can give rise to Piéron's Law. In addition, we find that Stroop condition does not interact with the effect of color saturation; Stroop interference and facilitation remain constant at all levels of color saturation. An analysis demonstrates that this result cannot be accounted for by single-stage decision-making algorithms which combine all the evidence pertaining to a decision into a common metric. This shows that human decision making is not information-optimal and suggests that the generalization of current models of simple perceptual decision making to more complex decisions is not straightforward.