The Psychology of Epistemic Judgment

Human social intelligence includes a remarkable power to evaluate what people know and believe, and to assess the quality of well- or ill-formed beliefs. Epistemic evaluations emerge in a great variety of contexts, from moments of deliberate private reflection on tough theoretical questions, to casual social observations about what other people know and think. We seem to be able to draw systematic lines between knowledge and mere belief, to distinguish justified and unjustified beliefs, and to recognize some beliefs as delusional or irrational. This article outlines the main types of epistemic evaluations, and examines how our capacities to perform these evaluations develop, how they function at maturity, and how they are deployed in the vital task of sorting out when to believe what others say

Seeing the invisible: from imagined to virtual urban landscapes

Urban ecosystems consist of infrastructure features working together to provide services for inhabitants. Infrastructure functions akin to an ecosystem, having dynamic relationships and interdependencies. However, with age, urban infrastructure can deteriorate and stop functioning. Additional pressures on infrastructure include urbanizing populations and a changing climate that exposes vulnerabilities. To manage the urban infrastructure ecosystem in a modernizing world, urban planners need to integrate a coordinated management plan for these co-located and dependent infrastructure features. To implement such a management practice, an improved method for communicating how these infrastructure features interact is needed. This study aims to define urban infrastructure as a system, identify the systematic barriers preventing implementation of a more coordinated management model, and develop a virtual reality tool to provide visualization of the spatial system dynamics of urban infrastructure. Data was collected from a stakeholder workshop that highlighted a lack of appreciation for the system dynamics of urban infrastructure. An urban ecology VR model was created to highlight the interconnectedness of infrastructure features. VR proved to be useful for communicating spatial information to urban stakeholders about the complexities of infrastructure ecology and the interactions between infrastructure features.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102559Published versio

Providing Effective Career-Readiness Instruction for High School Immigrant and Refugee English Learners

Wright, J. Providing Effective Career-Readiness Instruction for High School Immigrant and Refugee English Learners (2020) The research question addressed in this project was, what do effective high school career-readiness teaching practices look like for refugees and immigrants with limited English proficiency? It documents one teacher’s creation of a website that integrates learnings from the field of career counseling with topics relevant to this unique group of learners in order to create lesson ideas focused on career readiness within an English language instruction setting. She describes the process of choosing the lesson format, outlines the instructional categories included in the website, and shares the resources that assisted her in writing lesson plan ideas

Scaling up from greenhouse resistance to fitness in the field for a host of an emerging forest disease.

Forest systems are increasingly threatened by emergent, exotic diseases, yet management strategies for forest trees may be hindered by long generation times and scant background knowledge. We tested whether nursery disease resistance and growth traits have predictive value for the conservation of Notholithocarpus densiflorus, the host most susceptible to sudden oak death. We established three experimental populations to assess nursery growth and resistance to Phytophthora ramorum, and correlations between nursery-derived breeding values with seedling survival in a field disease trial. Estimates of nursery traits' heritability were low to moderate, with lowest estimates for resistance traits. Within the field trial, survival likelihood was increased in larger seedlings and decreased with the development of disease symptoms. The seed-parent family wide likelihood of survival was likewise correlated with family predictors for size and resistance to disease in 2nd year laboratory assays, though not resistance in 1st year leaf assays. We identified traits and seedling families with increased survivorship in planted tanoaks, and a framework to further identify seed parents favored for restoration. The additive genetic variation and seedling disease dynamics we describe hold promise to refine current disease models and expand the understanding of evolutionary dynamics of emergent infectious diseases in highly susceptible hosts

Constructed Sites ad Collective Memory: A Proposal for Lower Manhattan\u27s African Burial Ground

Architecture should be a derivative of site. As constructed sites, Archaeological sites pose an interesting dilemma with architecture: How does one approach an archaeological site with architecture? What operation best suits the site? The African Burial Ground is an exceptional example of a constructed site as well as the expression of the public’s desire to remember and signify this sacred site. Public request for these associations should result in site-derived architecture. Facilitating architecture as a derivative of site produces an expressive built form of culture, history and temporality. To derive architectural form from the African Burial Ground I will use a process of uncovery, discovery, and recovery. Through researching the history of the site and of the city, I will uncover the site. To discover the site I will use Anthropological and Archaeological analyses. These analyses will aide cultural, historical and temporal knowledge. I will recover the site to the collective memory of Lower Manhattan by re-representing the artifacts and the site itself

PENAL INSTITUTIONS Sentence and Punishment: Impose Mandatory Imprisonment Term for Serious Violent Felonies; Deny First Offender Treatment to Those Persons Committing Serious Violent Felonies

The Act imposes a mandatory term of imprisonment of not less than ten years for a defendant who commits a serious violent felony. The Act further provides that no portion of the ten-year sentence may be suspended, stayed, or reduced by any form of parole or commutation. The seven serious violent felonies include murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnaping, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, and aggravated sexual battery. The Act also explicitly provides that a defendant convicted of a serious violent felony shall be ineligible for first offender treatment

Modulation of Noxious Stimuli: Mechanisms Underlying the Human Experience of Pain

The aim of the current study was to explore the effects of sympathetic arousal on a healthy individual’s experience of pain, and how the presence of central sensitization, experimentally induced using electrical conditioning of the forearm, effects this interaction. It was hypothesized that following electrical conditioning, sympathetic arousal would lead to higher subjective ratings of pain and heightened nociceptive reflexes. Furthermore, it was expected this effect would be more pronounced in participants classified as high in pain catastrophizing. To test these hypotheses, the study used a repeated-measures design, comparing ratings of pain and blink reflex data to a nociceptive stimulus at baseline and post-conditioning. On a number of trials, the nociceptive stimulus was presented with concurrent acoustic stimulation, intended to evoke arousal. Results did not support the hypotheses, as electrical conditioning did not lead to an increase in pain or nociceptive reflexes during heightened states of arousal. Catastrophizing was also found not to have a significant result on the outcome. Alternative explanations, and the implications of these findings are discussed, along with suggestions for future research

Examining ACT process measures with cognitive interviewing

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) proposes that psychological distress manifests as experiential avoidance (the behaviour of moving away from or avoiding perceived negative thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations) which can lead to a reduction in personally meaningful pursuits. A primary focus of ACT is to reduce experiential avoidance by promoting psychological flexibility. With ACT being used more widely in clinical practice and research, it is important that instruments measure processes as intended. Cognitive interviewing (CI) is an established applied qualitative method for examining and improving the validity of psychological measures. Utilising concurrent or retrospective interview techniques, the method examines how individuals interpret, understand, and respond to psychometric items, to determine whether they target expected domains and processes. The study had four aims: (1) To explore how respondents understand, interpret, and respond to items of the CompACT and the AAQ-II; (2) To explore how responses on the CompACT and the AAQ-II correspond with the intended ACT processes being measured and how these relate to the literature relating to psychological flexibility; (3) To highlight any areas of response error or problems with items on the CompACT and the AAQ-II; (4) To compare any differences in responses between the concurrent and retrospective CI groups. Twenty-six ACT-naïve individuals completed both measures and took part in either retrospective or concurrent cognitive interviews. Responses to all CompACT items corresponded with its putative three-factor conceptualization of psychological flexibility. Responses to six AAQ-II items corresponded with concepts of experiential avoidance and committed action; mapping for one item was unclear. Low frequency problems (e.g., unclear wording) were found with items on both measures, and both appeared to target intended (but varied) ACT constructs. No clear difference was found between the two CI groups (retrospective or concurrent). Findings seemingly support the CompACT as a conceptually broader measure of psychological flexibility, while the AAQ-II appears more targeted on experiential avoidance-related domains. The study adds to the discussion about CI methodology and best practice guidelines for the approach