Examining children's ability to delay reward: Is the delay discounting task a suitable measure?

Discounting the value of delayed rewards has primarily been measured in children with the delay of gratification task and in adolescents and adults with the delay discounting task. In the present study, we assessed the suitability of the delay discounting task as a measure of temporal discounting in children. A sample of 7- to 9-year-olds (N = 98) completed a delay discounting task, a delay of gratification task, a sensation seeking measure, and IQ measures. In addition, teacher-based assessments of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder traits were measured. The results indicated that the majority of children produced meaningful data on the discounting task and discounted rewards hyperbolically. Children with an elevated risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder showed a trend towards discounting future rewards on the delay discounting task more steeply than did those at low risk. However, delay discounting was unrelated to either delay of gratification or sensation seeking. We interpret these results as providing some support for the use of delay discounting as a measure of intertemporal choice in children, although the results also suggest that delay discounting and delay of gratification tasks may tap different processes in this population.     

Forbidden knowledge

This case is part of a series of case studies used as an exercise within a program on research ethics education. The case involves research on genetic birth defects in a culturally distinct, closed religious community in which elders speak for the community. The case raises ethical issues of informed consent in such a setting; of collaboration with the community; of conflicts between the researchers’ responsibilities to the community as a whole and to individual subjects; of the impact of the researcher’s findings on the practices and values of the community and issues regarding how the researchers share findings with subjects and how the findings are stored.     

Forbidden knowledge. A case study with commentaries exploring ethical issues and genetic research

This case is part of a series of case studies used as an exercise within a program on research ethics education. The case involves research on genetic birth defects in a culturally distinct, closed religious community in which elders speak for the community. The case raises ethical issues of informed consent in such a setting; of collaboration with the community; of conflicts between the researchers' responsibilities to the community as a whole and to individual subjects; of the impact of the researcher's findings on the practices and values of the community and issues regarding how the researchers share findings with subjects and how the findings are stored.     

A mundo valde alieni: Irish Franciscan Responses to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1540–1640

Henry VIII’s dissolution campaigns affected only about one-fifth of Irish mendicant houses. The Observant friars managed a staged withdrawal to the west and north of the island in the face of later Tudor closures. Drawing on a lengthy history of the Irish friars written in Louvain in 1617, this article explores how the Franciscans responded to the 70-year, slow-motion dissolution of the monasteries. Observants continued to be visibly active in the neighbourhood of many former friaries and were even allowed continued residence within the walls by a number of the new Protestant proprietors. The friars’ ability, as members of an international order, to take a global view of their local exigencies was a key element of their strategy. This article argues that excessive focus on the political dimensions of Reformation in Ireland has occluded proper understanding of the continuities built upon by the Catholic Reformers.