Search Results

Accessing Accountability: Individual Versus Collective Voices 1

Jonathan Fox

in Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico

This study compares innovations that encourage voice for accountability within two large-scale anti-poverty programs, Mexico's flagship welfare program, Oportunidades (formerly known as Progresa), ... More

This study compares innovations that encourage voice for accountability within two large-scale anti-poverty programs, Mexico's flagship welfare program, Oportunidades (formerly known as Progresa), and the subsidized rural food store network supplied by Diconsa. Oportunidades provides material incentives to mothers to keep their children in school and to follow basic preventive health measures. Based on the program's tangible results and its substantial coverage of the poorest, Oportunidades has become an international model for ‘conditional cash transfer’ programs. The program's emphasis on individuals' ‘co-responsibility’ with the state contrasts with the state-society council approach detailed in the previous chapter and embodied in the Diconsa program. However, new program leadership recognized the lack of transparency and accountability mechanisms, and launched a new ‘Citizen Attention’ initiative for registering complaints and information requests. This chapter compares this new channel for the expression of individual voice with the Diconsa food program's system of regional council oversight.Less

Measuring Attention at the Cognitive Level: Measuring Attention at the Cognitive Level: Batteries and Tasks

Kim Cornish and John Wilding

in Attention, Genes, and Developmental Disorders

Chapter 6 reviews the test batteries and a multitude of specific tasks that measure attention at the cognitive level. The relative insensitivity of standardized tasks to tap subtle variations in ... More

Chapter 6 reviews the test batteries and a multitude of specific tasks that measure attention at the cognitive level. The relative insensitivity of standardized tasks to tap subtle variations in cognitive abilities is highlighted and the need for more sensitive experimental paradigms is stressed. This chapter also emphasizes the importance of incorporating age- and ability-appropriate tasks to assess subtle attention trajectories across age in typical and atypically developing populations. The authors warn about the diagnostic weakness of some attention paradigms that involve complex EF processing, making it difficult to identify whether the source of any impairment is due to a problem in a specific component or whether it is a more general EF weakness. In developmental research, the increased use of experimentally driven paradigms has begun to produce a much-needed understanding of atypical trajectories of attention. Developmentally sensitive paradigms must be further developed that can be used across a range of neurodevelopmental disorders to facilitate cross-syndrome analysis of attention performance.Less

Personalized Integrative Markers for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents

Michael R. Kohn, Simon D. Clarke, and Leanne M. Williams

in Integrative Neuroscience and Personalized Medicine

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common disorder of childhood-adolescent brain health. Here, we take an integrative neuroscience approach to personalized medicine. The goal ... More

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common disorder of childhood-adolescent brain health. Here, we take an integrative neuroscience approach to personalized medicine. The goal of this approach is: 1) to identify promising markers that bridge cognitive and brain measures, as well as genomics; these currently have value for supporting diagnostic and personalized treatment decisions in clinical practice. These markers are sensitive and specific for distinguishing ADHD, focusing on the triad of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. These markers are assessed with straightforward cognitive tests that relate to brain function and genes affecting dopamine. The same markers are also implicated in predicting response to stimulants. A different set of markers capturing alterations in emotion, feeling and their regulation shows promise in identifying comorbid internalizing conditions, such as anxiety, and externalizing conditions, such as conduct disorder.Less

Just Show Up

Ann Burack-Weiss

in The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman's Life

Burack-Weiss meditates on what is truly important during aging: the gift of “presence” in late life, paying attention, to love what is.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Jacqueline Corcoran

in Mental Health Treatment for Children and Adolescents

In the U.S. the prevalence rate for the diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents is nearly 8%, and worldwide rates are 5%. This chapter reviews the ... More

In the U.S. the prevalence rate for the diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents is nearly 8%, and worldwide rates are 5%. This chapter reviews the evidence basis for the treatment of ADHD. The evidence for treatment of ADHD mainly centers around medication (particularly the psychostimulants) and one type of psychosocial treatment: behavioral therapy. Controversy exists about which should be the first-line intervention. These interventions are also evaluated against how well they address risk factors for the development of ADHD and an afflicted youth's ongoing adjustment. Recommendations for future research are explored, such as establishing whether there are certain, discrete subpopulations of ADHD that warrant particular treatment approaches.Less

Treatment of Adolescents With Disruptive Behavior Disorders

JACQUELINE CORCORAN and DAVID W. SPRINGER

in Building Strengths and Skills: A Collaborative Approach to Working with Clients

This chapter highlights how the strengths- and skills-building model can be used with adolescent disruptive behavior disorders, which include Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct ... More

This chapter highlights how the strengths- and skills-building model can be used with adolescent disruptive behavior disorders, which include Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Solution-focused therapy and motivational interviewing can be used together to build strengths and motivation and to get teens to take responsibility for the change process. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is then offered to address cognitive or behavioral deficits that may have played a role in the disruptive behavior.Less

Attention

Kate Breckenridge, Janette Atkinson, and Oliver Braddick

in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Across the Lifespan: A neuroconstructivist approach

This chapter analyses the developing processes of attention in early childhood, in the context of a model in which ‘attention’ comprises a number of distinct, but related, processes. First it briefly ... More

This chapter analyses the developing processes of attention in early childhood, in the context of a model in which ‘attention’ comprises a number of distinct, but related, processes. First it briefly describes some of the theories of attention in typical development that have provided the basis for a model of development of attention throughout childhood and review existing data on how attention processes are affected in Williams syndrome (WS). It then describes a new test battery (the Early Childhood Attention Battery, or ECAB), based on this concept of multiple attention systems developed from neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies on adults. The ECAB was designed to extend research on the structure of the attention domain to younger (three to six years) typically developing (TD) children than had hitherto been done, but also to provide a suitable tool for the assessment of individuals with learning difficulties whose overall cognitive abilities and/or attentional capacities correspond to those seen in TD children aged three to six years. Using the ECAB, attentional disorders in WS and Down syndrome are compared. Finally, existing knowledge about attention within this framework is summarised.Less

Introduction

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

The aim is to provide a theory of consciousness, and of the relation of consciousness through perception with the World. Consciousness is not a mystery, being an internal state analysable into ... More

The aim is to provide a theory of consciousness, and of the relation of consciousness through perception with the World. Consciousness is not a mystery, being an internal state analysable into internal constituents. However, it is essentially directed to the World, and this necessitates some knowledge of the World. Certain epistemological powers are peculiar to it, but are they essential? It emerges that consciousness necessitates an accessible perceptual attentive capacity. This is demonstrated through appeal to the principle: the conscious are ‘in touch with’ Reality, and are of necessity oriented towards the truth. Part of the proof turns upon the theory that perception is the sheer presence to awareness of extensionally given phenomenal objects. It contacts objects (broadly understood), not propositions. This is accomplished through the mediation of perceptual ‘proxies’ like side, surface, and ultimately also in seeing through light and visual sensations. However, even prior to this encounter, a ‘The Visual Given’ is presented to consciousness, a causal posit necessitated by the presence of mental causation in the aetiology of the visual experience. This is where the ‘journey’ of the Attention begins, and it ends in Physical Reality, in a complex mental perceptual‐cognitive phenomenon in which in humans the conceptual powers of the mind are engaged in constituting the physical object and its universal setting. Consciousness has from the start an appointment in the concrete with the World in its ultimate physical form, and the introduction sets out to explain how it is that it keeps that appointment.Less

The Attention

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

In perception, objects come to the attention. Accordingly, one might come to believe that ‘The Attention’ names the capacity to harbour events of the specific idiosyncratic type, noticing. In fact it ... More

In perception, objects come to the attention. Accordingly, one might come to believe that ‘The Attention’ names the capacity to harbour events of the specific idiosyncratic type, noticing. In fact it signifies an experiential mental space to which objects can come in perception and, which can contain experiences. After all, many mental phenomena other than perception require awareness if they are to so much as exist, e.g. emotion and thought, thanks to being experiences. That experiential space is of limited extent, for at any moment the mind can experience so much and no more. Indeed, the space is no more than the existence of such a limit, and has no autonomous existence other than the fact of that limit, and it is a dangerous illusion to hypostatize the limit as a real space, leading one to misunderstand what it is to experience an experience. Then there is reason for supposing that the experiences of the moment constitute a system. This circle or centre of awareness is the Attention. And it is to this Attention that perceived existents come—as object. This happens when a noticing or perceiving occurs.Less

The Attention and Perception (1)

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

The two functions of the Attention—providing psychic space for experiences, and bringing phenomenal existents to consciousness—are diverse functions of a unitary phenomenon. And so perception simply ... More

The two functions of the Attention—providing psychic space for experiences, and bringing phenomenal existents to consciousness—are diverse functions of a unitary phenomenon. And so perception simply is awareness or consciousness or experience of an existent object, and cannot be an idiosyncratic indefinable capacity, being explicated in universal a priori‐given terms, viz. object and awareness. But why should not any intentionally directed experience that is directed onto a phenomenal reality be rated a perception? It is because ‘aware of’ has the same meaning in ‘Perception is awareness of an existent’ and ‘We are aware of the occupants of the Attention’, and a different meaning in ‘We are aware of any actually existing object of an intentionally directed experience’. For example, we are aware of sounds and anxiety as we are not aware of actual events that are at once unperceived‐by‐us but visualized or thought‐of by us.Less

Seeing the Light

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

In visual perception, the Attention reaches its final object‐goal through the mediation of more proximate visibilia. How to discover their existence? The answer is by philosophical argument. The ... More

In visual perception, the Attention reaches its final object‐goal through the mediation of more proximate visibilia. How to discover their existence? The answer is by philosophical argument. The present claim is that we see the environment through seeing the light reflected by it. This discussion has a close bearing upon the sense–datum theory, since much of the counter‐intuitiveness of the one theory is shared by the other. Arguments are presented for the claim, one of which is that if sound is heard why is light not seen? It shares all the relevant properties. A light‐representationalist theory of the perception of material object is advanced, such that light at the retina is merely directionally seen and is one and the same thing as the directional seeing of objects at a distance in space. This is made possible by the ‘Transitivity of the Attention’, whereby non‐deviant causal relations ensure the multiplication of objects given to the Attention in the one visual experience. This theory is proposed as a model via which one may suitably amend G.E. Moore's instructions for singling out sense‐data. If the theory is correct, it undercuts the usual objections to the sense‐datum theory completely, and disproves Direct Realism along with it.Less

Sense‐Data (1) or the Ways of the Attention

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

A theory of sense‐data is defended, which takes its cue from light. It is that the (monocular) visual perception of outer physical objects is noticing visual sensations set in two‐dimensional ... More

A theory of sense‐data is defended, which takes its cue from light. It is that the (monocular) visual perception of outer physical objects is noticing visual sensations set in two‐dimensional body‐relative physical space, which stands in non‐deviant causal relation to outer phenomenal causes. The first leg of the argument is that there exist regular causally sufficient bodily conditions for the existence of a visual field of given colour‐bright spatial character, quite irrespective of the outer causes of those bodily causes. Now if those bodily conditions were caused by piecemeal scientific intervention we would deem the resulting visual field a psychological existent of type, visual sensations. Since they are also satisfied when the bodily conditions are caused by outer visibles, the same set of sensations must occur in perception of outer items. The theory is defended against the claim that the visual field has no separate existence from our awareness of it, through showing that the criteria for the content of visual field and of visual impression ensure divergence of content. Finally, an explanatorial argument is proposed for the view that sensations generally are psychological individuals, and are not to be understood as merely the internal objects of awareness‐experiences.Less

Conclusion

Brian O'Shaughnessy

in Consciousness and the World

Why is consciousness so closely linked to perception? It is because consciousness is directed to the World, and perception our ultimate mode of access to the World. Thus, the most fundamental of the ... More

Why is consciousness so closely linked to perception? It is because consciousness is directed to the World, and perception our ultimate mode of access to the World. Thus, the most fundamental of the empirical relations of consciousness to the World is the perceptual. Through it the mind acquires both the content necessary for intentionality, and an awareness of the setting in which to lead a life. What does consciousness bring to this situation? Apart from availability of the perceptual Attention, the most important property is the rationality of the state. Two mental conditions of rationality were explored: self‐knowledge, and an overall mental activeness and pre‐eminently the active process of thinking. Then in the state of consciousness thus constituted we typically encounter the phenomenon of perception, set in the stream of experience, the unique experience, which is of the species‐type, experience‐of. Here we have the original epistemological relation between consciousness and the World, and the basis of all more developed or thought‐mediated intentional consciousnesses. Then, sight has a multitude of assets that make it the most effective example to demonstrate how in the perceptions of the conscious we encounter the fully constituted object in its universal setting. At that point, consciousness fufils an appointed destiny.Less

Consciousness and Predictive Processing

Wanja Wiese

in Experienced Wholeness: Integrating Insights from Gestalt Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Predictive Processing

Predictive processing (PP) is not a theory of consciousness. Hence, it is not obvious that PP should have any relevance to research on consciousness. A first promising possibility opens up if we ... More

Predictive processing (PP) is not a theory of consciousness. Hence, it is not obvious that PP should have any relevance to research on consciousness. A first promising possibility opens up if we consider the ambitious assumption that PP is a general theory of brain function. If the brain’s function is to minimize prediction error (just as the heart’s function is to pump blood), as Jakob Hohwy (2015) suggests, then it might well be that the computational processes underlying consciousness can usefully be described within the PP framework. This chapter focuses on (i) how PP accounts for attention, and what this suggests with regards to the relation between attention and consciousness (e.g., how volitional attention may change the contents of consciousness); (ii) furthermore, it is suggested that PP can provide a unifying perspective on some proposed functions and theories of consciousness (such as global workspace theory, attention schema theory, and integrated information theoy).Less

Control

Seb Franklin

in Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic

This chapter opens with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s theorization of control societies and its relation to concepts of post-Fordism, neoclassical economics, immaterial labor, and attention ... More

This chapter opens with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s theorization of control societies and its relation to concepts of post-Fordism, neoclassical economics, immaterial labor, and attention economies. Following this, the chapter traces the historical relationship between the conceptual structure of control and the fundamental logic of the capitalist mode of production. This historical examination passes through three major stages: an analysis of Marx’s work on capital, labor, and abstraction; a discussion of Charles Babbage’s work on computing machines, political economy, factories, and theology; and a close reading of the automation of essentialism that undergirds Herman Hollerith’s late-nineteenth century work on machine tabulation.Less

Visual Attention and the Attention-Action Interface

John M. Henderson

in Perception

The chapter focuses on the often neglected aspect of the perceptual experience—the impact and effect of the visual process on our attention-action interface. The chapter utilizes studies on eye ... More

The chapter focuses on the often neglected aspect of the perceptual experience—the impact and effect of the visual process on our attention-action interface. The chapter utilizes studies on eye movement control to explore further the linkage between action and perception. A selection function is ascribed to the visual system, which causes an intended motor action to be directed at a specific object within the visual field. This selective capability links the various visual representations with visual processing and motor programming. Succeeding sections explore the concept of visual attention further and its relationship to eye movements, citing studies using the Moving Window Paradigm, the Sequential Attention Model, and Feature Integration Theory. These studies support the theory that visual attention precedes saccadic eye movement to a specific location of a stimulus in the visual field, and enables the motor system to bind the said location with a motor action.Less

The Proven Benefits of Spending Time in Nature

Rakow Donald

in Nature Rx: Improving College-Student Mental Health

The chapter focus is the science behind the mental health benefits of spending more time in nature, specifically the ways in which such time improves concentration and reduces stress. Models include ... More

The chapter focus is the science behind the mental health benefits of spending more time in nature, specifically the ways in which such time improves concentration and reduces stress. Models include Attention Restoration Theory and Stress-Reduction Theory, and practices include Forest Bathing, Wilderness Adventure Experiences and gardening. The potential of each approach to reduce stress and build resilience is described.Less

Neurofeminism: An Eco-Pharmacology of Childhood ADHD

Julian Gill-Peterson

in Mattering: Feminism, Science, and Materialism

This chapter considers childhood ADHD and its pharmacological treatment with amphetamine drugs as a case of biopolitical performance enhancement. It takes up the child’s body in the historical ... More

This chapter considers childhood ADHD and its pharmacological treatment with amphetamine drugs as a case of biopolitical performance enhancement. It takes up the child’s body in the historical extension of psychiatry from an institutional to a pharmaceutical mode to accent the increasingly dominant role of chemical molecules in managing and optimizing human development and capital. Drawing on recent feminist scholarship on the biological body, it speculates on the possibility of a neurofeminism to match the natural and cultural complexity of ADHD as a phenomenon folded into and grown out of the plastic body of the child.Less