Miracles in Sport: Finding the ‘Ears to Hear’ and the ‘Eyes to See’

Paralympic Games (PG), involving people with disabilities (PWD), are a manifestation of excellence in sport. They show that athletics performed by PWD counts as genuine sport. They also support a wider meaning of the term ‘health,’ understood not just like a utopian state of perfection, but like the ability to realize oneself in the projects and activities of one’s own choosing. Notwithstanding these virtues, PG—in their current form—may paradoxycally reinforce social prejudice against PWD. This is due to the fact that PG and Olympic Games (OG) are now two distinct events. In this article, I argue that PG should be integrated in the OG, just like women’s and ‘minor’ sports, because the separation of PG and OG indicates a morally arbitrary separation between people with and without disabilities. I also propose to remove the word ‘Para-lympic’ because it stigmatizes the sport performed by PWD as an appendix of ‘normal’ sport. Athletes with disabilities deserve special attention because they have special needs; but they also deserve an arena where their excellence is offered to the public, and this arena should not be different from that of normal-bodied athletes.     

加工焦点性和任务负荷对不同认知方式大学生前瞻记忆的影响

采用双任务范式,探讨了加工焦点性和进行中任务负荷对不同认知方式大学生前瞻记忆的影响。包括两个实验:实验一探讨进行中任务与前瞻记忆任务加工的焦点性和加工类型的一致性对不同认知方式大学生前瞻记忆的影响;实验二探讨进行中任务负荷对不同认知方式大学生在在焦点加工和非焦点加工条件下前瞻记忆的影响。结果显示:焦点加工条件下的前瞻记忆成绩高于非焦点加工,且不受进行中任务负荷的影响;不管进行中任务与前瞻记忆任务的加工类型是否一致,在进行中任务负荷较高且非焦点加工条件下,场独立大学生的前瞻记忆成绩高于场依存大学生。本研究结果支持多重加工理论。     

MRI对儿童难治性、局灶性癫痫的临床诊断及预后判断

癫痫外科的临床病理研究表明,儿童局灶性皮质发育不良(FCD)及海马硬化是儿童难治性局灶性癫痫常见的致病因素。但在术前的常规的MRI检查中,这些结构上的异常经常被忽视,从而造成延误诊断。临床医生在阅片判断上的失误可能是一个原因,但癫痫的影像专业知识的不全面是重要因素。本文结合MRI技术在癫痫临床诊断领域的应用进展,阐述了儿童难治性、局灶性癫痫患者MRI影像中可能出现的结构性病变;重点阐述了临床易于忽视的局灶性皮质发育不良(FCD)及海马硬化的MRI研究、应用进展。     

Objective Evaluation of Performance Stress in Musicians With Focal Hand Dystonia: A Case Series

Five musicians suffering from focal dystonia participated in a pilot study that examined the feasibility of an experimental protocol designed to assess musicians' motor performance under stress. Electrocardiography, free cortisol levels, and subjective assessments were used to monitor alterations of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. As measures of motor outcome, temporal variability of finger movements and muscular cocontraction of the wrist flexor and extensor were assessed. Findings suggest that the specific experimental design could be successfully applied. Several methodological issues such as carryover effects, the use of free cortisol, the inclusion of a double baseline, and the classification of dystonic patients into stress responders and nonresponders are analyzed and discussed.     

Exogenous testosterone and social experience each enhance the development of aggressive behavior in Cyprinodon variegatus

The combined effects of testosterone and social experience from the time of hatching on development of aggressive behaviors in Cyprinodon variegatus were investigated. Social experience was defined as a rearing condition allowing visual, tactile, chemosensory, and auditory contact with zero, three, or 15 additional conspecifics. Behaviors were videotaped once weekly from 3 weeks to 4 months post-hatching, using the focal animal method, and an ethogram was constructed. At 3 months post-hatching, half the fish were injected once with testosterone propionate (2 μg/g b. w., i. p., vehicle-Ringer's solution) and the other half were injected with Ringer's isotonic saline solution. Testosteronetreated subjects showed significantly greater frequencies and durations of behaviors that may be related to aggression than did saline controls. Two weeks after the treatments, a round-robin tournament was conducted between testosterone- and saline-treated fish from each rearing condition. Testosterone-treated fish won significantly more encounters than did saline-treated subjects over all rearing conditions. Furthermore, significantly more aggressive acts were displayed by fish raised in the groups of 16 and the groups of four than did the Isolates. Although the number of aggressive acts exhibited by the group of 16 was greater than the group of four, the difference was not statistically significant.     

内隐联系测验的修正——简式内隐联系测验

简式内隐联系测验(Brief Implicit Association Test,BIAT),是对内隐联系测验(Implicit Association Test,IAT)(也称为内隐联想测验)的修正,它由两部分联合任务组成,使用传统IAT中的两类别的属性材料和两类别的概念材料以及与IAT相同的联接-反应对。在设计BIAT时,焦点类别的选定对其测量效果有着至关重要的影响,Sriram和Greenwald的研究已经初步证明BIAT方法可以成功运用于测量内隐态度,认同和刻板印象。本文回顾了内隐联系测验发展过程中的各种变式,着重介绍了简式内隐联系测验,结合Sriram的应用对其进行综合评价并建议在今后的研究中对此方法进行验证。     

The alternative explanation to the alternative‐outcome effect and the detection of the focal outcome effect

Abstract: Previous studies on subjective probability judgment indicate that pair‐wise comparison between the focal and the strongest alternative outcome plays an important role in probability judgment. This study, however, found that the randomness of alternative outcomes affected probability judgment for focal outcome. In the present study, 182 participants provided probability estimates for winning on hypothetical slot machines where both successes and losses were composed of multiple outcomes. The randomness of both the focal and alternative outcomes were defined by the expression used in Rappoport and Budescu (1997 ). The analysis indicated that the more random the distributions of both focal and alternative outcomes, the higher the estimated probability for focal outcome. Some theoretical suggestions are discussed.     

Physicalism and our knowledge of intrinsic properties

This paper examines recent arguments by Rae Langton and David Lewis intended to prove Humility: the thesis that we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. I argue that at best, these arguments are internally incoherent. They at once presuppose a strong version of physicalism according to which physical science is in a position to give a complete list of the fundamental properties of reality, and at the same time various metaphysical principles which in actuality challenge the completeness of the list of properties given by science. Although these arguments are unsound, their consideration enables us to draw important conclusions regarding the tension between the metaphysician's practice of positing intrinsic properties that give colour to the world, and the scientific attempt at giving a complete account of all phenomena.