3,717 research outputs found
"The Consolidated Assistance Program, Reforming Welfare by Synchronizing Public Assistance Benefits"
No full textLevin-Waldman examines the structure of existing welfare programs and concludes that the current array of benefits could be synchronized and consolidated to create a new system that would provide economic incentives to work. He suggests combining elements of the earned income tax credit (EITC) and current welfare programs into one program, a consolidated assistance program (CAP). Levin-Waldman argues that a program composed of an assistance component (with one set of benefits for working parents and a different set for nonworking parents) and a child support component could be designed to assure minimal subsistence to those unable to work while providing incentives for those on welfare to work without, in effect, penalizing them for getting off welfare. Such a program would reform welfare more expeditiously than a plan that would simply expand the EITC or put a time limit on welfare benefits. Moreover, such a plan would not necessarily add to the national budget deficit.
Assessing the burden of COVID-19 in developing countries: systematic review, meta-analysis and public policy implications
No full textTrabajo realizado por otros catorce autores.Introduction The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 has been carefully measured and analysed in high-income countries, whereas there has been no systematic analysis of age-specific seroprevalence or IFR for developing countries. Methods We systematically reviewed the literature to identify all COVID-19 serology studies in developing countries that were conducted using representative samples collected by February 2021. For each of the antibody assays used in these serology studies, we identified data on assay characteristics,
including the extent of seroreversion over time. We analysed the serology data using a Bayesian model that incorporates conventional sampling uncertainty as well as uncertainties about assay sensitivity and specificity. We then calculated IFRs using individual case reports or aggregated public health updates, including age pecific estimates whenever feasible. Results In most locations in developing countries, seroprevalence among older adults was similar to that of younger age cohorts, underscoring the limited capacity that these nations have to protect older age groups. Age-specific IFRs were roughly 2 times higher than in high income countries. The median value of the population IFR was about 0.5%, similar to that of high-income countries, because disparities in healthcare access were roughly offset by differences in population age structure. Conclusion The burden of COVID-19 is far higher in developing countries than in high-income countries, reflecting a combination of elevated transmission to middle-aged and older adults as well as limited access to adequate healthcare. These results underscore the critical need to ensure medical equity to populations in developing countries through provision of vaccine doses and effective medications
Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 seroassay sensitivity: a systematic review and modelling study
No full textBackground: Serological surveys have been the gold standard to estimate numbers of SARS-CoV-2 infections, the dynamics of the epidemic, and disease severity. Serological assays have decaying sensitivity with time that can bias their results, but there is a lack of guidelines to account for this phenomenon for SARS-CoV-2.
Aim: Our goal was to assess the sensitivity decay of seroassays for detecting SARS-CoV-2 infections, the dependence of this decay on assay characteristics, and to provide a simple method to correct for this phenomenon.
Methods: We performed a systematic review and metaanalysis of SARS-CoV-2 serology studies. We included
studies testing previously diagnosed, unvaccinated individuals, and excluded studies of cohorts highly unrepresentative of the general population (e.g. hospitalised patients).
Results: Of the 488 screened studies, 76 studies reporting on 50 different seroassays were included in the analysis. Sensitivity decay depended strongly on the antigen and the analytic technique used by the assay, with average sensitivities ranging between 26% and 98% at 6 months after infection, depending on assay characteristics. We found that a third of the included assays departed considerably from manufacturer specifications after 6 months.
Conclusions: Seroassay sensitivity decay depends on assay characteristics, and for some types of assays, it can make manufacturer specifications highly unreliable. We provide a tool to correct for this phenomenon and to assess the risk of decay for a given assay. Our analysis can guide the design and interpretation of serosurveys for SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens and quantify systematic biases in the existing serology literature
The deployment of Theory of Mind in specific contexts: More is not always better
No full textIt has been known for some time that attention is often guided by what other people look at and speak about, which can in turn invoke inferences about the beliefs, desires, and goals that drive their forms of reference, a process known as Theory of Mind (ToM; Devine & Hughes, 2013). The link between these forms of reference and Theory of Mind are especially important in new forms of instructional media, where rapid shifts of attention are necessary to effectively elaborate upon and remember rich multimodal streams of information that are driven by an instructor whose communicative goals may be useful to understand. Although attentional cueing is sometimes linked closely with ToM, it remains unclear how automatic and efficient the deployment of ToM is within the context of this new form of multimedia gaze cueing. In this experiment, we assessed the relationship between ToM and learning by testing whether general ToM ability predicts learning and whether contextual ToM tendency predict learning. Not only did we observe a minimal relationship between these two ToM measures, but they were oppositely predictive of learning: general ToM ability was associated with more learning, but contextual ToM tendency negatively predicted learning. We propose that at least part of the heterogeneity in research exploring ToM occurs because general ToM ability should be distinguished from the tendency to engage in strategic ToM inferences, which sometimes can improve understanding but other times can hinder it
Thinking About Other Minds
No full textEvery day, we engage in countless interactions with others. Navigating these interactions requires us to think about others’ minds. We use our observations to make inferences about the beliefs, desires, and goals of the people with whom we are interacting, and shape our own behavior accordingly. Psychologists call this “theory of mind.”
While scientific understanding of theory of mind is broadening, a number of ways in which people think about other minds still lie outside its scope. What inferences do people draw about others’ minds when the others are not specific, observable individuals? Or are not people at all? What inferences do people make about others’ capacities? What cognitive processes are deployed in making these inferences?
This dissertation explores these questions in three different contexts. Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation focus on two relevant legal settings. Law affords a particularly interesting avenue for investigating these questions, as law routinely asks people to reason about unseen causes of events.
Chapter 1 examines how people think about the abstract mind of the "reasonable person" when applying tort law’s reasonable person standard. Chapter 2 investigates how people conceptualize the "minds" of non-human technologies, such as self-driving cars, and how those conceptualizations affect legal decisions and policy opinions. Finally, Chapter 3 explores people’s puzzling inclination to spontaneously adopt the visual perspective of pictorial representations of agents, even when there is no communicative value in doing so
Transforming Experiences Into Expertise: Leveraging Event Cognition to Support Self-Regulation in a Practical Learning System
No full textTheoretical and empirical evidence suggests that event cognition influences both the quantity and quality of self-regulatory processes learners deploy. This dissertation examines the relationship between event cognition, self-regulation, and learning from events, detailing the development of a guided reflection tool designed to leverage basic cognitive and perceptual processing to support self-regulation in experiential learning. This tool was empirically evaluated against a control condition in a within-subjects study with 17 Vanderbilt nursing students completing three clinical simulation exercises. The guided reflection tool was hypothesized to support students’ self-regulation, leading to improved simulation memory, metacognitive judgment accuracy, and simulation performance outcomes. Students who engaged with the Reflect System demonstrated significant improvements in metacognitive judgment accuracy and confidence. However, the tool did not significantly impact simulation memory, follow-up performance, or motivation. Additionally, findings diverge from established theoretical predictions, yet the observed link between event segmentation and metacognitive judgment accuracy highlights a promising avenue for future research. This work represents an initial step toward developing a generalized framework for integrating event cognition principles into experiential learning across diverse educational contexts
A case of Kleine-Levin syndrome with a complete and sustained response to carbamazepine
No full textWe describe a patient with Kleine-Levin syndrome who was initially misdiagnosed as having epilepsy and who achieved complete remission on carbamazepine treatment. A drug effect was established when symptoms recurred after carbamazepine taper and disappeared after reintroduction of the drug. Carbamazepine, a safer drug than lithium, can be a highly effective treatment in some patients with Kleine-Levin syndrome. This syndrome can sometimes be confused with epilepsy because of the episodic nature of the symptoms and the occasional response to anticonvulsants. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.*AM AC SLEEP MED, 2001, INT CLASS SLEEP DIS, P43; Arnulf I, 2005, BRAIN, V128, P2763, DOI 10.1093-brain-awh620; Johnson G, 1998, NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOL, V19, P200, DOI 10.1016-S0893-133X(98)00019-0; Kusalic M, 1999, J PSYCHIATR NEUROSCI, V24, P227; Mukaddes NM, 1999, J AM ACAD CHILD PSY, V38, P791, DOI 10.1097-00004583-199907000-00001; PIKE M, 1994, ARCH DIS CHILD, V71, P355; SAVET JF, 1986, PRESSE MED, V15, P1281; Young AH, 2006, J PSYCHOPHARMACOL, V20, P17, DOI 10.1177-135978680606307252
A cognitive temporal window supports flexible integration of multimodal events
No full textJust as the perception of simple events such as clapping hands requires a linkage of sound with the movements that produce the sound, the integration of more complex events such as describing how to give an injection often requires a linkage between the instructor’s utterances and their actions. However, the mechanism for integrating these more complex multimodal events is unclear. For example, it is possible that predictive temporal relationships are important for multimodal event understanding, but it is also possible that this form of understanding arises much more from meaningful causal between-event links that are temporally unspecified. This latter approach might be supported by a cognitive temporal integration window, within which multimodal event information integrates flexibly with few default commitments about specific temporal relationships. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the consequences of disrupting temporal relationships between instructors’ actions and their speech in narrated screen-capture instructional videos (Experiment 1) and live-action instructional videos (Experiment 2) by displacing the audio channel forward or backward relative to the video by 0, 1, 3, or 7 seconds. We assessed learning, event segmentation, disruption awareness, segmentation uncertainty, and perceived workload. Across two experiments, 7-second temporal disruptions consistently increased uncertainty and workload, and decreased learning in Experiment 2. None of these effects appeared for 3-second disruptions, which were barely detectable. 1-second disruptions produced no effects and were undetectable, even though much intra-event information falls within this range. Our results suggest an event-integration window that supports integration of events independent of constraining temporal relationships between subevents
Troubled Waters Between U.S. and European Antitrust
No full textReview of The Atlantic Divide in Antitrust: An Examination of US and EU Competition Policy by Daniel J. Gifford and Robert T. Kudrle
An Exploratory Study in Measuring Interviews Through Self-Perceptions, Mutual Gaze, and Qualitative Language Analysis
No full textInterviews are frequently used in clinical, media, and research settings to elicit rich information, share experiences, and develop common understandings. Despite their prevalence, it is difficult to determine the objective quality of an interview because assessments usually rely on participants’ subjective post-interview impressions. To establish the basis for more objective assessments, we used two different approaches to test whether gaze behavior during interviews may serve as a useful predictor of interview quality. First, we tested whether global gaze synchrony could be reliably assessed and could positively predict interview outcomes. Second, we rated the interviews and analyzed what qualitatively was common between the higher and lower rated interviews. We corroborated these measures against two basic measures of interview quality: subjective ratings of interviews and cognitive load. We recorded gaze data using Tobii Pro Glasses 3 worn by dyad pairs while they discussed biographical experiences. Participants completed a post interview questionnaire assessing their cognitive load and subjective experiences, and interviews were judged for quality and interestingness of elicited experiences. We tested whether our derived measures were valid by assessing their technical feasibility, their basic psychometric properties, and the degree to which they predicted interview quality. Though gaze did not predict interview quality, participants demonstrated a propensity to overestimate their performance in the interview when compared with outside raters. Additionally, it seemed that gaze was significantly lower in interviews than otherwise reported in literature
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