The asymmetrical influence of increasing time-on-task on attentional disengagement

Increasing time-on-task leads to fatigue and, as shown by previous research, differentially affects the deployment of visual attention towards the left and the right visual space. In healthy participants, an increasing rightward bias is commonly observed with increasing time-on-task. Yet, it is unclear whether specific mechanisms involved in the spatial deployment of visual attention are differentially affected by increasing time-on-task. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether prolonged time-on-task would affect a specific mechanism of visuo-spatial attentional deployment, namely attentional disengagement, in an asymmetrical fashion. For this purpose, we administered to healthy participants a prolonged gap/overlap saccadic paradigm, with left- and right-sided target stimuli. This oculomotor paradigm allowed to quantify disengagement costs according to the direction of the subsequent attentional shifts, and to evaluate the temporal development of disengagement costs with increasing time-on-task. Our results show that, with increasing time-on-task, participants demonstrated significantly lower disengagement costs for rightward compared to leftward saccades. These effects were specific, since concurring side differences of saccadic latencies were found for overlap trials (requiring attentional disengagement), but not for gap trials (requiring no or less attentional disengagement). Moreover, the results were paralleled by a non-lateralised decrease in saccadic peak velocity with increasing time-on-task, a common finding indicating an increasing level of fatigue. Our findings support the idea that non-spatial attentional aspects, such as fatigue due to increasing time-on-task, can have a substantial influence on the spatial deployment of visual attention, in particular on its disengagement, depending on the direction of the subsequent attentional shift.

Zur jüdischen Moral [Rezension]

A. K.

The Right to Die Debate: The Demonization of Dr. Kevorkian and the Creation of a Moral Panic Surrounding Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States

The Right to Die Debate is a recent but highly controversial moral matter. In particular, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is an issue that has been evaded by the medical community for years. As of 1990, most states had never encountered the issue before and therefore did not have any laws in place to prohibit PAS (Strate et. al, 2005). Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist from Royal Oak Michigan was the first to publicly address PAS. He brought the issue into the limelight through a bizarre and crude series of assisted deaths that had a lasting impact on not only the Right to Die Debate as whole, but on public policy and both federal and state governmental agendas. This study focuses on the way in which the media, in particular the New York Times (NYT) has portrayed Dr. Jack Kevorkian as incompetent, morally culpable and in an overall negative light in the past twenty years. Applying Stanley Cohen’s 1972 theory of moral panic, a content analysis of NYT media publications between 1990 and 1999 supports Cohen’s theory and reveals that the media has created a moral panic surrounding Kevorkian. This has in turn led to public policy that prevents both terminally ill individuals and their doctors from having a desirable choice; that of voluntary euthanasia and PAS.

Managing Moral Motivations

Firms confront three problems: (1) shirking (sub-optimal provision of effort), (2) smooth transfer of knowledge, and (3) eliciting new knowledge. The motivations possessed by firm members are four: (a) instrumental rationality (i.e., self-interest), (b) moral motivations and integrity, (c) intrinsic motivations, and (d) fairness motivations. The trick for the firm is to manage motivations in a way that solves its particular problems. The purpose of this paper is to provide the foundations for moral motivations and moral integrity, and to discuss the kinds of problems that they can and cannot solve, particularly in context of the complex motivational mix.

Politik und Moral

Benjamin Segel

Politik und Moral

Benjamin Segel

Arische und semitische Moral

Leo Sofer

Jüdische Moral

Chrysanth

Rabbi Nathans System der Ethik und Moral

zum erstenmale übers. und mit Anm. vers. von Kaim Pollak

Geist der Hagada : Sammlung hagadischer Aussprüche aus d. Talmuden und Midraschim über bibl., dogmat., moral. und antiquar. Gegenstände. In alph. Ordnung bearb.

von Jacob Hamburger