Search results for " Bias"

Metacognitive group training for forensic and dangerous non-forensic patients with schizophrenia: A randomised controlled feasibility trial

2014

BACKGROUND: In schizophrenia, the presence of certain cognitive biases has been established. Informed by this, metacognitive training (MCT) has been developed for schizophrenia. There is increasing evidence of its effectiveness with some patients, but its applicability to dangerous patients has not yet been demonstrated. AIMS: Our aim was to test the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of MCT for patients in a high-security hospital setting. METHODS: Twenty of 33 eligible and selected male in-patients with schizophrenia and a history of violence were randomised pairwise to eight sessions of MCT or treatment as usual. Symptom severity and reasoning, according to the jumping to…

2014

Introduction Monitoring and reduction of aversive tension is a core issue in dialectical behaviour therapy of patients. It has been shown that aversive tension is increased in adult borderline personality disorder and is linked to low emotion labelling ability. However, until now there is no documented evidence that patients with anorexia nervosa suffer from aversive tension as well. Furthermore the usability of a smartphone application for ambulatory monitoring purposes has not been sufficiently explored. Methods and analysis We compare the mean and maximum self-reported aversive tension in 20 female adolescents (12–19 years) with anorexia nervosa in outpatient treatment with 20 healthy co…

Somatosensory Illusions Elicited by Sham Electromagnetic Field Exposure: Experimental Evidence for a Predictive Processing Account of Somatic Symptom…

2020

OBJECTIVE According to the predictive processing theory of somatic symptom generation, body sensations are determined by somatosensory input and central nervous predictions about this input. We examined how expectations shape predictions and consequently bodily perceptions in a task eliciting illusory sensations as laboratory analogue of medically unexplained symptoms. METHODS Using the framework of signal detection theory, the influence of sham Wi-Fi on response bias (c) and somatosensory sensitivity (d') for tactile stimuli was examined using the somatic signal detection task (SSDT). A healthy student sample (n = 83) completed the SSDT twice (sham Wi-Fi on/off) in a randomized order after…

Employment effects of reducing labour costs : considering potential bias in macro-estimates of the elasticity of labour demand

2017

In 2016 the Finnish government decided to implement the competitiveness pact in order to increase employment. The objective is to improve cost-competitiveness by lowering labor costs in the private sector. The elasticity of labour demand plays a key role in assessing the employment effects of the competitiveness pact. The idea of this study is based on the Economic Policy Council Report (2016) which argued that the government’s elasticity estimate is very high and predicts overly optimistic employment effects. The majority of studies estimate demand elasticities using aggregate data, which is likely to produce biased estimates. The problems relate in particular to the lack of exogenous vari…

Numerical Magnitude Affects Accuracy but Not Precision of Temporal Judgments

2021

A Theory of Magnitude (ATOM) suggests that space, time, and quantities are processed through a generalized magnitude system. ATOM posits that task-irrelevant magnitudes interfere with the processing of task-relevant magnitudes as all the magnitudes are processed by a common system. Many behavioral and neuroimaging studies have found support in favor of a common magnitude processing system. However, it is largely unknown whether such cross-domain monotonic mapping arises from a change in the accuracy of the magnitude judgments or results from changes in precision of the processing of magnitude. Therefore, in the present study, we examined whether large numerical magnitude affects temporal ac…

High Bias Voltage CZT Detectors for High-flux Measurements

2017

In this work, we present the performance of new travelling heater method (THM) grown CZT detectors, recently developed at IMEM-CNR Parma, Italy. Thick planar detectors (3 mm thick) with gold electroless contacts on CZT crystals grown by Redlen Technologies (Victoria BC, Canada) were realized, with a planar cathode covering the detector surface (4.1 x 4.1 mm(2)) and a central anode (2 x 2 mm(2)) surrounded by a guard ring electrode. The detectors, characterized by low leakage currents at room temperature (4.7 nA/cm(2) at 1000 V/cm), allow good room temperature operation even at high bias voltages (> 7000 V/cm). At low rates, the detectors exhibit an energy resolution around 4 % FWIEM at 59.5…

Balancing food, activity and the dangers of sunlit nights

2019

Living in northern latitudes poses challenges to the animals that live in those habitats. The harsh environment provides a short breeding season where the sunlit summer nights provide little reprieve from visibility to predators and increased risk. In this paper, we tested the activity and food choice patterns of bank voles Myodes glareolus in early spring season, categorized by 18 h of daylight and 6 h of dusk in every day cycle. We found that territorial females showed a less predictable pattern of activity than males that were most active during the hours of dusk. The voles also showed preference to forage on high carbohydrate foods at sunset, while switching over to a more protein and f…

Data from: Genomics of speciation and introgression in Princess cichlid fishes from Lake Tanganyika

2016

How variation in the genome translates into biological diversity and new species originate has endured as the mystery of mysteries in evolutionary biology. African cichlid fishes are prime model systems to address speciation-related questions for their remarkable taxonomic and phenotypic diversity, and the possible role of gene flow in this process. Here, we capitalize on genome sequencing and phylogenomic analyses to address the relative impacts of incomplete lineage sorting, introgression and hybrid speciation in the Neolamprologus savoryi-complex (the ‘Princess cichlids’) from Lake Tanganyika. We present a time-calibrated species tree based on whole-genome sequences and provide strong ev…

Residential segregation of foreigners: an analysis of the Italian city of Palermo

2015

Ethnic residential segregation in Italy is an emerging key question, which will be crucial in the definition and implementation of both urbanistic and social policies. This paper focuses on this phenomenon in the Italian city of Palermo. We use individual data for all the population residing in the city at 31 December 2011, organized by ethnicity and district. Firstly, we describe the spatial distribution and the residential segregation of foreigners in the city, applying many different segregation measures. Among the others, we also apply the Duncan and Duncan dissimilarity index. Finally, we apply a recent methodological approach, which allows reducing the bias of the Duncan’s index…

The System Hotspot: politics of refusal against the economic migrants and absence of good practicesfor contrasting the gender and sexual violence suf…

2017

Il saggio evidenzia come il discorso istituzionale, il discorso pubblico dei media e, infine, le interviste di testimoni significativi descrivono tre aspetti del fenomeno dei rifugiati / richiedenti asilo che non possono essere ricondotti in un'analisi coerente di "fare Europa" e un'interpretazione unica. L '"occidentalizzazione del pensiero critico" (Latouche, 1995) è quindi probabile che diventi un vero "nazionalismo occidentale", se i discorsi dal basso degli operatori culturali e dei mediatori linguistici non intervengono in maniera massiccia. I punti di crisi (Hotspot) confermano il tentativo di esclusione di alcuni rifugiati e richiedenti asilo. Un'esclusione dal sistema di protezione…