Emotioner och moral : Kan moral förklaras genom de känslor vi känner?

Trots att människor intresserat sig för moral och etik sedan antikens Grekland så verkar vi inte kommit närmare konsensus i en enda fråga. Förklaringen till detta kan vara att moral är subjektivt. En teori som stödjer detta subjektiva synsätt är CAD-teorin (Community, Autonomy & Divinity). Den säger att vissa känslor är kopplade till olika typer av moraliska brott, och att vi använder moralen som ett sätt att förklara dessa känslor. Enligt teorin så finns det tre stycken moraliska ”system”. Dessa är: individens etik, samhällets etik och den gudomliga etiken. CAD-teorin antar att tre stycken emotioner uppstår i oss när någon annan utför ett moraliskt brott mot något av dessa tre system. Dessa tre känslor är ilska, förakt och äckel. I ett försök att replikera tidigare studier så fick deltagarna i en enkät avgöra vilken känsla ett antal situationer gav upphov till, och sedan klassificera vilken typ av moraliskt brott som begåtts i dem. Dessutom undersöktes om CAD-teorin är tillämpbar på situationer som baserats på det som inom spelteorin kallas för utbyte och koordination. Hypotesen där var att ilska skulle uppstå när endast deltagaren höll överenskommelsen, samt att skam och skuld skulle uppstå när deltagaren bröt mot den. Resultaten stämde med hypoteserna i sammanlagt 24 av 39 fall. Kulturella, samt vissa språkliga, faktorer kan ha varit det som påverkade resultaten mest

Number Magnitude Processing and Verbal Working Memory in Children with Mild Intellectual Disabilities

This study examined if children (M-age = 14.60) with Mild Intellectual Disabilities (MID) display weaknesses in number processing and verbal working memory. An age-matched and mental age-matched (MA, M-age = 6.17) design extended by a group of 9-10-year-olds, and a group of 11-12-year-olds were used. The MID childrens working memory was equal to the MA group but poorer than the other groups. On number tasks, the MID group was faster than the MA group but slower than the other groups. All groups obtained equal Weber fraction scores and distance effects on the number comparison tasks. The MID group performed subitizing and counting faster than the MA group, but slower than the 11-12-year-olds. The results demonstrate that number processing and working memory in children with MID is characterized by a developmental delay, not a deficit. Their main problem is to access the quantitative meaning of Arabic numerals. The development of different types of cognitive abilities is differently affected by educational experience and intellectual ability. The innate number system appears to be unaffected by intellectual capacity or educational experience, while the innate working memory ability is affected by intellectual capacity but not by educational experience. Culturally acquired symbolic number abilities are strongly affected by educational experience.Funding Agencies|Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research Council [2015-02157, 721-2011-2872]</p

App-based mathematical intervention for youth with intellectual disabilities: a randomised controlled trial

The purpose of the study was to evaluate whether students with intellectual disabilities (ID) can improve their arithmetic skills by participating in an arithmetic intervention programme, theoretically founded on explicit instruction (EI) and administered via an application developed for tablet computers. The intervention study used a randomised controlled trial design (RCT) (n = 30, aged 10-16, 13 females) and lasted for up to 12 weeks. The results show that the intervention group significantly improved in arithmetic fact fluency compared to the controls and the effects remained six months after the intervention. The effects were larger for subtraction than for addition, and this difference remained six months later. These results suggest that mathematics applications based on explicit instruction can be an effective way of teaching arithmetic facts to youth with mild ID

Structural Differences of the Semantic Network in Adolescents with Intellectual Disability

The semantic network structure is a core aspect of the mental lexicon and is, therefore, a key to understanding language development processes. This study investigated the structure of the semantic network of adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) and children with typical development (TD) using network analysis. The semantic networks of the participants (nID = 66; nTD = 49) were estimated from the semantic verbal fluency task with the pathfinder method. The groups were matched on the number of produced words. The average shortest path length (ASPL), the clustering coefficient (CC), and the network’s modularity (Q) of the two groups were compared. A significantly smaller ASPL and Q and a significantly higher CC were found for the adolescents with ID in comparison with the children with TD. Reasons for this might be differences in the language environment and differences in cognitive skills. The quality and quantity of the language input might differ for adolescents with ID due to differences in school curricula and because persons with ID tend to engage in different out-of-school activities compared to TD peers. Future studies should investigate the influence of different language environments on the language development of persons with IDFunding agencies: European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement FP7-607139 (iCARE) and by the Swedish Research Council (2013-01363 and 2016-04217)</p