Swiss National Science Foundation
Originally published August 30, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
For several decades many characteristics originally classed as being specific to humans have been seen in a new light. This exclusive interpretation has given way to the view that our ability to plan and remember does not differentiate us from other great apes. In fact, the opposite is true. These cognitive abilities, along with our use of tools, link us to our closest biological relatives. And yet there is a substantial difference to which reference is frequently made when it comes to explaining the unique nature of humans’ cognitive and cultural skills.
The entire pressor is here.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
School Psychology in Rural Contexts: Ethical, Professional, and Legal Issues
Lynn M. Edwards, Amanda L. Sullivan
Journal of Applied School Psychology
Vol. 30, Iss. 3, 2014
Abstract
Delivering psychological services in rural communities presents a number of unique challenges for practitioners relative to their peers in urban and suburban communities. In this article, the authors describe the current context of rural schools and examine the ethical and legal issues school psychologists may face when practicing in rural educational settings. They link these issues to the field's ethical guidelines and educational policy and offer practical recommendations for resolving potential dilemmas. Implications for practice, training, and research are discussed.
(cut)
As in any professional context, it is important that rural practitioners engage in ongoing self-reflection of their competence, well-being, and ethical conduct. Our focus was on professional issues for rural practitioners, but these issues apply to small communities generally, including those located within more densely populated locations where similar social dynamics operate (e.g., ethnicity/cultural communities, a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community, universities, or military communities; Schank et al., 2010). For school psychologists practicing outside of schools (e.g., private practice), other ethical issues related to the provision of mental health services and social justice may be more salient than the topics addressed herein (see Bradley, Werth, & Hastings, 2012, for discussion). In general, practicing in tightly bound communities requires recognition and responsiveness to the distinct professional context created by social and geographic parameters in order to ensure the provision of ethical, effective services.
The entire article is here.
Journal of Applied School Psychology
Vol. 30, Iss. 3, 2014
Abstract
Delivering psychological services in rural communities presents a number of unique challenges for practitioners relative to their peers in urban and suburban communities. In this article, the authors describe the current context of rural schools and examine the ethical and legal issues school psychologists may face when practicing in rural educational settings. They link these issues to the field's ethical guidelines and educational policy and offer practical recommendations for resolving potential dilemmas. Implications for practice, training, and research are discussed.
(cut)
As in any professional context, it is important that rural practitioners engage in ongoing self-reflection of their competence, well-being, and ethical conduct. Our focus was on professional issues for rural practitioners, but these issues apply to small communities generally, including those located within more densely populated locations where similar social dynamics operate (e.g., ethnicity/cultural communities, a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community, universities, or military communities; Schank et al., 2010). For school psychologists practicing outside of schools (e.g., private practice), other ethical issues related to the provision of mental health services and social justice may be more salient than the topics addressed herein (see Bradley, Werth, & Hastings, 2012, for discussion). In general, practicing in tightly bound communities requires recognition and responsiveness to the distinct professional context created by social and geographic parameters in order to ensure the provision of ethical, effective services.
The entire article is here.
Punishment or Child Abuse?
By Michael Eric Dyson
New York Times - Opinion pages
September 17, 2014
THE indictment last week of the N.F.L. player Adrian Peterson by a Texas grand jury for reckless or negligent injury to a child has set into relief the harmful disciplinary practices of some black families. Mr. Peterson used a “switch,” a slim, leafless tree branch, to beat his 4-year-old son, raising welts on the youngster’s legs, buttocks and scrotum. This is child abuse dressed up as acceptable punishment.
While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject. Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World. As the black psychiatrists William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs wrote in “Black Rage,” their 1968 examination of psychological black life: “Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological roots in slavery and even yet black parents will feel that, just as they have suffered beatings as children, so it is right that their children be so treated.”
The entire article is here.
New York Times - Opinion pages
September 17, 2014
THE indictment last week of the N.F.L. player Adrian Peterson by a Texas grand jury for reckless or negligent injury to a child has set into relief the harmful disciplinary practices of some black families. Mr. Peterson used a “switch,” a slim, leafless tree branch, to beat his 4-year-old son, raising welts on the youngster’s legs, buttocks and scrotum. This is child abuse dressed up as acceptable punishment.
While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject. Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World. As the black psychiatrists William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs wrote in “Black Rage,” their 1968 examination of psychological black life: “Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological roots in slavery and even yet black parents will feel that, just as they have suffered beatings as children, so it is right that their children be so treated.”
The entire article is here.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Drug Addiction Seen as 'Moral Failing,' Survey Finds
By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
Originally posted on October 3, 2014
People with drug addiction are much more likely to face stigma than those with mental illness because they're seen as having a "moral failing," according to a new survey.
The poll of more than 700 people across the United States also found that the public is less likely to approve of insurance, housing and employment policies meant to help people with drug addiction.
The study results suggest that many people consider drug addiction a personal vice rather than a treatable medical condition, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers.
The entire article is here.
HealthDay Reporter
Originally posted on October 3, 2014
People with drug addiction are much more likely to face stigma than those with mental illness because they're seen as having a "moral failing," according to a new survey.
The poll of more than 700 people across the United States also found that the public is less likely to approve of insurance, housing and employment policies meant to help people with drug addiction.
The study results suggest that many people consider drug addiction a personal vice rather than a treatable medical condition, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers.
The entire article is here.
Ayn Rand's Continued Influence
Ayn Rand's Continued Influence Adds a Bizarre Twist to Conservative Politics
By Evan McMurry
Alternet
Originally posted on October 3, 2014
On Last Week Tonight, perhaps to balance out his less-than-friendly main segment on Obama’s drone policies, John Oliver asked a question that has bothered people about Ayn Rand since she first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century: why are people into this dreck?
Rand was the founder of Objectivism, a sub-Nietzschean philosophy that glorified selfishness and denigrated altruism, aggressively detailed in two novels bearing both the weight and prose style of a cement brick. Not surprisingly, this organized atavism never gained serious purchase: during her lifetime she was rejected by everyone from literary critics to philosophy professors to Frank Lloyd Wright, who didn’t appreciate her cribbing protagonist Howard Roark from his biography.
The entire article is here.
By Evan McMurry
Alternet
Originally posted on October 3, 2014
On Last Week Tonight, perhaps to balance out his less-than-friendly main segment on Obama’s drone policies, John Oliver asked a question that has bothered people about Ayn Rand since she first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century: why are people into this dreck?
Rand was the founder of Objectivism, a sub-Nietzschean philosophy that glorified selfishness and denigrated altruism, aggressively detailed in two novels bearing both the weight and prose style of a cement brick. Not surprisingly, this organized atavism never gained serious purchase: during her lifetime she was rejected by everyone from literary critics to philosophy professors to Frank Lloyd Wright, who didn’t appreciate her cribbing protagonist Howard Roark from his biography.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
The Internet, Suicide, & How Sites Like PostSecret Can Help
Studies show the Internet fails suicidal users. PostSecret shows how to help.
by Jennifer Golbeck, Ph.D.
Psychology Today Blog
Originally published October 4, 2014
People suffering from depression can feel isolated, lonely, and in need of help. As with so many other areas, the Internet is a natural place to turn for support. But, as with so many other things, the Internet is not always safe.
William Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse who lives in Minnesota, was convicted last month for assisting the suicide of a British man online. Melchert-Dinkel spent his time visiting suicide-related internet forums where he posed as a suicidal female nurse. He would offer people step-by-step instructions on how to kill themselves (usually by hanging), and in ten cases, he entered into suicide pacts with other forum members. He believes five of those people went through with the suicides. In some cases, he may have watched people commit suicide over a webcam.
The entire blog post is here.
by Jennifer Golbeck, Ph.D.
Psychology Today Blog
Originally published October 4, 2014
People suffering from depression can feel isolated, lonely, and in need of help. As with so many other areas, the Internet is a natural place to turn for support. But, as with so many other things, the Internet is not always safe.
William Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse who lives in Minnesota, was convicted last month for assisting the suicide of a British man online. Melchert-Dinkel spent his time visiting suicide-related internet forums where he posed as a suicidal female nurse. He would offer people step-by-step instructions on how to kill themselves (usually by hanging), and in ten cases, he entered into suicide pacts with other forum members. He believes five of those people went through with the suicides. In some cases, he may have watched people commit suicide over a webcam.
The entire blog post is here.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology
Hagop Sarkissian and Jennifer Cole Wright (eds.), Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology, Bloomsbury, 2014, 256pp., $112.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781472509383.
Reviewed by Jesse S. Summers, Duke University
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
The distinction between moral psychology and moral philosophy has never been a clear one. Observations about what humans are like plays an indispensable role in understanding our moral obligations and virtues, and great swaths of moral philosophy until the 19th century are psychology avant la lettre, empirical speculations about how we form moral judgments, about mental faculties and rationality, pleasure, pain, and character. This relationship between philosophy and psychology becomes both opaque and strained once experimental psychology develops its own academic discipline. Nevertheless, many contemporary moral debates -- like those surrounding moral character and moral motivation -- are clearly aware of and are sometimes in response to findings of empirical psychology. Experimental psychology is again leaching into the philosophical water.
It is a credit to Hagop Sarkissian and Jennifer Cole Wright that the research they assembled adds further nutrients to the soil. This collection is not a survey of empirical moral psychology. It instead pushes into debates whose philosophical implications have yet to be widely considered. As a result, the collection's primary audience is anyone already interested in moral psychology understood broadly, and it will need no further recommendation to those with empirical interests in the topic.
The entire book review is here.
Reviewed by Jesse S. Summers, Duke University
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
The distinction between moral psychology and moral philosophy has never been a clear one. Observations about what humans are like plays an indispensable role in understanding our moral obligations and virtues, and great swaths of moral philosophy until the 19th century are psychology avant la lettre, empirical speculations about how we form moral judgments, about mental faculties and rationality, pleasure, pain, and character. This relationship between philosophy and psychology becomes both opaque and strained once experimental psychology develops its own academic discipline. Nevertheless, many contemporary moral debates -- like those surrounding moral character and moral motivation -- are clearly aware of and are sometimes in response to findings of empirical psychology. Experimental psychology is again leaching into the philosophical water.
It is a credit to Hagop Sarkissian and Jennifer Cole Wright that the research they assembled adds further nutrients to the soil. This collection is not a survey of empirical moral psychology. It instead pushes into debates whose philosophical implications have yet to be widely considered. As a result, the collection's primary audience is anyone already interested in moral psychology understood broadly, and it will need no further recommendation to those with empirical interests in the topic.
The entire book review is here.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Can Our Brains Handle the Information Age?
An Interview with Daniel Levitin
By Bret S. Stetka
Medscape
Originally posted September 24, 2014
In his new book, The Organized Mind, best-selling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, PhD, discusses our brain's ability—or lack thereof—to process the dizzying flow of information brought on us by the digital age. Dr Levitin also suggests numerous ways of organizing mass information to make it more manageable. Medscape recently spoke with Dr Levitin about the neuroscience of information processing as well as approaches potentially useful to overworked clinicians.
The Fear of Information
Medscape: Your new book discusses how throughout history humans have been suspicious of increased access to information, from the printing press back to the first Sumerian writings. But I think most would agree that these were positive advancements. Do you think the current digital age weariness expressed by many is more of the same and that today's rapid technological progression will end up being a positive development for humanity? Or has the volume of data out there just gotten too big for the human brain to handle?
Dr Levitin: I have two minds about this. On one hand, there is this "same as it ever was" kind of complaint cycle. Seneca complained at the time of the ancient Greeks about the invention of writing—that it was going to weaken men's minds because they would no longer engage in thoughtful conversation. You couldn't interrogate the person who was telling you something, meaning that lies could be promulgated more easily and passed from generation to generation.
(cut)
If we look back at our evolutionary history, the amount of information that existed in the world just a few thousand years ago was really just a small percentage of what exists now. By some estimates, the amount of scientific and medical information produced in the last 25 years is equal to all of the information in all of human history up to that point.
The human brain can really only attend to a few things at once, so I think we are reaching a point where we have to figure out how to filter information so that we can use it more intelligently and not be distracted by irrelevant information. Studies show that people who are given more information in certain situations tend to make poorer decisions because they become distracted or overwhelmed by the irrelevant information.
The entire interview is here.
By Bret S. Stetka
Medscape
Originally posted September 24, 2014
In his new book, The Organized Mind, best-selling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, PhD, discusses our brain's ability—or lack thereof—to process the dizzying flow of information brought on us by the digital age. Dr Levitin also suggests numerous ways of organizing mass information to make it more manageable. Medscape recently spoke with Dr Levitin about the neuroscience of information processing as well as approaches potentially useful to overworked clinicians.
The Fear of Information
Medscape: Your new book discusses how throughout history humans have been suspicious of increased access to information, from the printing press back to the first Sumerian writings. But I think most would agree that these were positive advancements. Do you think the current digital age weariness expressed by many is more of the same and that today's rapid technological progression will end up being a positive development for humanity? Or has the volume of data out there just gotten too big for the human brain to handle?
Dr Levitin: I have two minds about this. On one hand, there is this "same as it ever was" kind of complaint cycle. Seneca complained at the time of the ancient Greeks about the invention of writing—that it was going to weaken men's minds because they would no longer engage in thoughtful conversation. You couldn't interrogate the person who was telling you something, meaning that lies could be promulgated more easily and passed from generation to generation.
(cut)
If we look back at our evolutionary history, the amount of information that existed in the world just a few thousand years ago was really just a small percentage of what exists now. By some estimates, the amount of scientific and medical information produced in the last 25 years is equal to all of the information in all of human history up to that point.
The human brain can really only attend to a few things at once, so I think we are reaching a point where we have to figure out how to filter information so that we can use it more intelligently and not be distracted by irrelevant information. Studies show that people who are given more information in certain situations tend to make poorer decisions because they become distracted or overwhelmed by the irrelevant information.
The entire interview is here.
When do people cooperate? The neuroeconomics of prosocial decision making.
Declerck CH, Boone C, Emonds G. When do people cooperate? The neuroeconomics
of prosocial decision making. Brain Cogn. 2013 Feb;81(1):95-117.
doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2012.09.009.
Abstract
Understanding the roots of prosocial behavior is an interdisciplinary research endeavor that has generated an abundance of empirical data across many disciplines. This review integrates research findings from different fields into a novel theoretical framework that can account for when prosocial behavior is likely to occur. Specifically, we propose that the motivation to cooperate (or not), generated by the reward system in the brain (extending from the striatum to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex), is modulated by two neural networks: a cognitive control system (centered on the lateral prefrontal cortex) that processes extrinsic cooperative incentives, and/or a social cognition system (including the temporo-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala) that processes trust and/or threat signals. The independent modulatory influence of incentives and trust on the decision to cooperate is substantiated by a growing body of neuroimaging data and reconciles the apparent paradox between economic versus social rationality in the literature, suggesting that we are in fact wired for both. Furthermore, the theoretical framework can account for substantial behavioral heterogeneity in prosocial behavior. Based on the existing data, we postulate that self-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt an economically rational strategy) are more responsive to extrinsic cooperative incentives and therefore rely relatively more on cognitive control to make (un)cooperative decisions, whereas other-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt a socially rational strategy) are more sensitive to trust signals to avoid betrayal and recruit relatively more brain activity in the social cognition system. Several additional hypotheses with respect to the neural roots of social preferences are derived from the model and suggested for future research.
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6. Concluding remarks and directions for future research
Prosociality includes a wide array of behavior, including mutual cooperation, pure altruism, and the costly act of punishing norm violators. Neurologically, these behaviors are all motivated by neural networks dedicated to reward, indicating that prosocial acts (such as cooperating in a social dilemma) are carried out because they were desired and feel good. However, the underlying reasons for the pleasant feelings associated with cooperative behavior may differ. First, cooperation may be valued because of accruing benefits, making it economically rational. This route to cooperation is made possible through brain regions in the lateral frontal cortex that generate cognitive control and process the presence or absence of extrinsic cooperative incentives. Second, consistent with proponents of social rationality, cooperation can also occur when people expect to experience reward through a “warm glow of giving.” Such intrinsically motivated cooperation yields collective benefits from which all group members may eventually benefit, but it can only be sustained when it exists in concert with a mechanism to detect and deter free-riding. Hence socially rational cooperation is facilitated by a neural network dedicated to social cognition that processes trust signals.
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