The differential impact of social services on young people’s resilience

Differential Impact Theory (DIT) can help explain which services and supports work best for which young people at which levels of risk exposure. As a complement to a growing understanding of how a child’s genetic and phenotypic traits influence treatment outcomes, DIT focuses attention on the relative impact of a child’s environment on psychosocial development. In this article, three principles of DIT will be discussed: (1) demands of higher level systems compel individuals to adapt; (2) the factors that influence individual change the most depend on the individual’s degree of risk exposure; and (3) the more complex the challenges an individual faces, the more complex the systems required to improve functioning. Two detailed case studies based on interviews and multiple file reviews will be used to illustrate these principles of DIT. Both case studies were drawn from a study of young people (average age 16.1 years) who were clients of multiple social services. While support for DIT requires further study, findings presented in this paper demonstrate the potential of the theory to explain the differential impact of services and supports on young people’s developmental trajectories where there has been exposure to high levels of risk. The application of DIT to service design is also discussed.     

Moral Schemas and Tacit Judgement or How the Defining Issues Test is Supported by Cognitive Science

Ideas from cognitive science are increasingly influential and provide insight into the nature of moral judgement. Three core ideas are discussed: modern schema theory, the frequency of automatic decision-making and implicit processes as the default mode of human information processing. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) measures the beginnings of moral understanding, which are largely non-verbal and intuitive, in contrast to the Moral Judgement Interview (MJI), which measures the highest level of verbal understanding. The positive attributes of the DIT and its conceptualisation of moral judgement schemas are more apparent in a time of increasing respect for implicit knowledge and processing. The DIT offers a means of measuring moral judgement that fits with current views in cognitive science. Although the MJI and interview techniques generally are worthwhile for measuring production competence, the DIT is better able to measure understanding at the level that drives most decisions for most people.     

Does Moral Judgment Development Reduce to Political Attitudes or Verbal Ability? Evidence Using the Defining Issues Test

Recent critics of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) suggest that moral judgment development as currently measured is neither developmental nor moral. Instead, scores on the DIT are claimed to be the result of political attitudes or verbal ability. In making such claims, these critics raise the possibility that the validity of the DIT is suspect as well as the construct it purports to measure. We begin our response with an overview of the various claims that DIT scores reduce to political attitudes or verbal ability. Then, a relevant sample of the DIT literature is summarized in order to assess the degree to which relationships between DIT scores and criterion variables typically used to support the validity of the DIT can be explained by political attitudes or verbal ability. This summary suggests that moral judgment development as measured by the DIT provides a unique source of information that cannot be explained by general/verbal ability or political attitudes.     

Do negative mood states impact moral reasoning?

This paper presents three studies exploring the relationship between emotional responses to classic cognitive developmental moral dilemmas and moral reasoning indices as measured by the Defining Issues Test (DIT). Each study indicated that certain moral dilemmas elicit varying levels of anger and sadness as compared to a neutral baseline. In each study, decreased moral reasoning was observed in those instances where reports in both sadness and anger were high following a dilemma. This did not occur, however, in those instances where only sadness or anger was high following a dilemma. Affective inductions prior to taking the DIT (study 3) did not impact trends beyond that found for individual moral dilemmas in studies 1 and 2. Although certain dilemmas elicited affective states that temporarily influenced reasoning, in general participants’ reasoning levels stayed consistent across dilemmas. Results are discussed in terms of the role of affect on the moral judgment process.     

Supporting resilience in war-affected children: How differential impact theory is useful in humanitarian practice

This paper examines the utility of the Differential Impact Theory for child protection practitioners who work in humanitarian settings, with a focus on war-affected children. A primary advantage of DIT is that it focuses efforts to strengthen children's resilience on improving children's social ecologies at different levels. This ecological focus is more likely to address the sources of children's suffering and resilience and also helps to avoid the problems associated with an individualized focus. It also shows how DIT provides a differentiated view of war-affected children and stimulates multiple interventions at different ecological levels, avoiding the common error of taking a one size fits all approach to intervention. In keeping with DIT, it suggests that child protection practice would benefit from addressing macro-level risks such as poverty and discrimination that are drivers of various harms to children and from more systematic linkages between macro- and micro-levels. It concludes that DIT serves as a critical lens for viewing current work on child protection in humanitarian settings and also for illuminating ways to develop more comprehensive supports for children's resilience.     

Longitudinal study of levels of moral reasoning of undergraduate students in an Irish university: the influence of contextual factors

This paper reports a longitudinal study of levels of moral reasoning in a convenience sample of Irish undergraduate university students, using the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). The study was timely, as higher education institutions are becoming increasingly interested in the promotion of social capital and the development of the whole person. A total of 259 students completed the DIT2 at the beginning, mid-point and conclusion of their degree course. As with similar international studies, increases in levels of moral reasoning over time were statistically significant. However, Irish students' DIT2 scores were markedly lower than their international peers with 62% of graduating students at the pre-conventional and conventional stages. The paper suggests some context-related explanations for the under-performance of Irish students including the instrumentalist nature of Irish post-primary education, the prevailing culture of consensualism, authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism, the conflation of religious and moral education and the emphasis on economic outputs and contractual accountability.     

Accessing,Integrating, and Inhibiting Word Meaning in Poor Comprehenders

This study examined three processes crucial to reading comprehension (semantic access, integration, and inhibition) to identify causes of comprehension impairment. Poor comprehenders were compared to chronological-age controls and vocabulary-age (VA) controls. When listening to homonym primes (“bank”) versus unrelated primes, controls were faster to name pictures related to dominant (money) and subordinate (river) meanings at 250 ms interstimulus interval (ISI) but only showed dominant priming at 1,000 ms ISI, whereas poor comprehenders only showed dominant priming. When listening to subordinately biased sentences ending in homonyms (“John fished from the bank”) versus control sentences, all groups showed priming when naming subordinate (appropriate) pictures at 250 ms ISI: VA controls and poor comprehenders also showed priming when naming dominant (inappropriate) pictures. At 1,000 ms ISI, controls showed appropriate priming, whereas poor comprehenders only showed inappropriate priming. These findings suggest that poor comprehenders have difficulties accessing subordinate word meanings, which can manifest as a failure to inhibit irrelevant information.     

Realtime vision-based surface defect inspection of steel balls

In the proposed system for online inspection of steel balls, a diffuse illumination is developed to enhance defect appearances and produce high quality images. To fully view the entire sphere, a novel unfolding method is put forward based on geometrical analysis, which only requires one-dimensional movement of the balls and a pair of cameras to capture images from different directions. Moreover, a realtime inspection algorithm is customized to improve both accuracy and efficiency. The precision and recall of the sample set were 87.7% and 98%, respectively. The average time cost on image processing and analysis for a steel ball was 47 ms, and the total time cost was less than 200 ms plus the cost of image acquisition and balls’ movement. The system can sort 18 000 balls per hour with a spatial resolution higher than 0.01 mm.     

Modifying Defining Issues Test (DIT) as a tool for assessing secondary students’ social–emotional competencies

This paper discusses the use of an alternative instrument to assess the social–emotional competence (SEC) of secondary school students in Singapore. The instrument was used in a larger study to explore an approach to infuse social–emotional learning in the curriculum for children in school. The design of this research instrument is based on the Rest’s (Development in judging moral issues. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1979) Defining Issues Test (DIT) originally developed based on Kohlberg’s moral dilemma (Kohlberg in child psychology and childhood education: a cognitive developmental view. Longman, New York, 1987). The modified DIT instrument which focuses specifically on social–emotional development presents scenarios that are most likely encountered by adolescents and seeks the students’ responses to five open-ended questions related to the scenarios. The verbatim written responses were coded and categorized to assess their SECs. The instrument was able to elicit the self-management strategies of the secondary students, which was not as easily assessable with alternative instruments measuring SECs. The findings also highlighted the psychosocial developmental stage and moral development of the adolescents in the study from the SEC responses that they made.     

The effects of illumination on the acquisition of delayed matching-to-sample

Illumination effects during steady-state performance of discrimination tasks in animals have been well documented, whereas research on illumination effects during acquisition has been largely ignored. Exceptions to this rule are Wasserman’s (1973) autoshaping experiments and Maki’s (1979) successive discrimination experiment. The present experiment investigated the effects of illumination changes on acquisition of a conditional discrimination—delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS). Pigeons were used in a between-groups design which factorially varied house-light illumination, on or off, during the presentations of DMTS stimuli, the delay interval, and the intertrial interval (ITI). DMTS performance over five blocks of sessions was the dependent variable. The major result was the three-way interaction of sessions, the intertrial interval, and the DMTS stimuli. Constant illumination resulted in the highest discrimination ratios over the last four blocks of sessions. A constant dark condition did not differ from a condition with dark ITIs and illuminated stimulus presentations or from a condition with illuminated ITIs and dark stimulus presentations. The proffered explanation of these data emphasizes the disruptive effects of stimulus changes and Wasserman’s (1973) cue localization hypothesis. The loci of the stimulus change and cue localization effect are suggested to be either at the beginning of a trial or at the end of a trial. A pretrial account emphasizes the role of stimulus changes on the encoding of the sample stimulus, and a posttrial account emphasizes the role of stimulus changes during consolidation processing.     

无人机航迹规划与状态追踪系统

针对小型无人机控制的复杂性,设计了一套地面站综合控制系统。该系统具有航向的监测与控制、航迹的规划与显示、任务信息的接收与执行等功能,可以实现小型无人机的超视距控制和任务信息的回传与追踪。实验表明,系统可实现64bit数据帧间隔50ms收发与间隔1 000ms显示数据更新,满足实际应用需求。     

Dumbing Down America: The War on Our Nation’s Brightest Young Minds (And What We Can Do to Fight Back). Delisle,J. (2014)

A study was conducted to assess the levels of moral development in gifted adolescents. The participants attended a one month intensive summer institute in which they were administered the Defining Issues Test (DIT) which measures levels of moral development. The results indicated that the students received scores above the norm for their age range. Implications and further considerations for educators are discussed.     

Value of the adenosine test for diagnosis of dual AV nodal physiology in patients with AV nodal reentrant tachycardia

Objectives: This study was aimed at assessing the value of the adenosine test for noninvasive diagnosis of dual AV nodal physiology (DAVNP) in patients with AV nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT). Methods: 53 patients with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) were given incremental doses of adenosine intravenously during sinus rhythm before electrophysiological study. The adenosine test was repeated on a subset of 18 patients with AVNRT after radiofrequency catheter ablation. Results: Sudden increments of PR interval of more than 60 msec between two consecutive beats were observed in 26 (83.9%) of 31 patients with typical AVNRT and 2 (9.1%) of 22 patients with AVRT and AT (P<0.01). The maximal PR increment between 2 consecutive beats in the AVNRT group (105±45ms) was significantly greater than that in the AVRT and AT group (20±13ms) (P<0.01). In postablation adenosine test, DAVNP was eliminated in all 8 patients who underwent slow pathway abolition that EPS showed the slow pathway disappeared and 4 of 10 patients who underwent slow pathway modification that EPS showed the slow pathway persisted. Six of 10 patients who exhibited persistent duality showed a marked reduction in the number of beats conducted in the slow pathway after adenosine injection (P<0.01). Conclusions: Administration of adenosine during sinus rhythm may be a useful bedside test for diagnosis of DAVNP in high percentage of patients with typical AVNRT and additionally for evaluating the effects of radiofrequency ablation.     

How Teachers Help Children Resolve Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

The present study investigated the strategies that elementary school teachers employ when they help other people resolve moral dilemmas. Thirty‐six elementary school teachers were randomly assigned to one of three groups and administered the ‘Defining Issues Test’ (DIT). Teachers in Groups One and Two were instructed to respond to the DIT as if they were helping a ‘10‐year‐old child’ or a ‘40‐year‐old adult’ resolve a number of difficult moral problems. Teachers in Group Three were instructed to respond to the DIT with their own opinions concerning the resolution of the same moral problems.

Results revealed that teachers made no differentiation between their own views as to the resolution of moral problems and the advice that they gave a 10‐year‐old child or a 40‐year‐old adult attempting to solve the same problems. The implications of these findings for moral education are discussed.     

基于暗通道先验与 YOLO 的水下河蟹识别研究

为解决全自动均匀投饵作业船在河蟹养殖过程中投饵不精准问题,引入水下摄像设备采集图像,但采集的图像存在对比度低、模糊和图像退化等问题。为此,采用暗通道先验提高图像对比度。利用 YOLO 卷积神经网络技术快速准确地识别出低照度环境下的河蟹,识别准确率达到 98%,平均耗时 50ms。获得河蟹生长、分布信息后测算出河蟹养殖密度,为全自动均匀投饵作业船精准投饲提供数据支持     

Stages of moral judgment development: Applying item response theory to Defining Issues Test data

ABSTRACT

The Defining Issues Test (DIT) has been the dominant measure of moral development. The DIT has its roots in Kohlberg’s original stage theory of moral judgment development and asks respondents to rank a set of stage typed statements in order of importance on six stories. However, the question to what extent the DIT-data match the underlying stage model was never addressed with a statistical model. Therefore, we applied item response theory (IRT) to a large data set (55,319 cases). We found that the ordering of the stages as extracted from the raw data fitted the ordering in the underlying stage model good. Furthermore, difficulty differences of stages across the stories were found and their magnitude and location were visualized. These findings are compatible with the notion of one latent moral developmental dimension and lend support to the hundreds of studies that have used the DIT-1 and by implication support the renewed DIT-2.     

Moral foundations theory and moral development and education

This article reviews studies examining the effect of professional education on ethical development. Most studies limit assessment to the measurement of moral judgement, observing that moral judgement plateaus during professional school unless an ethics intervention is present. Whereas interventions influence the shift to postconventional reasoning (the DIT P score), a more illuminating picture of change may emerge if researchers examined DIT profiles. More importantly, limiting assessment to measures of moral judgement ignores important aspects of moral functioning suggested by the Four Component Model. Assessment methods have been validated for sensitivity, reasoning, role concept and ethical implementation that could be adapted to provide individuals in a particular profession with a more complete picture of abilities needed for real-life professional practice.     

Effects of stimulus dimension and of trial and intertrial illumination on acquisition of a match/mismatch task by pigeons

Birds were trained on a higher order conditional discrimination task, one that required birds to match samples and comparisons on some trials and to mismatch on other trials. Which task component was in effect was indicated by the level of chamber illumination (houselight-on and houselight-off instructions). Acquisition of the components of a color (red and green) match/mismatch task in the first half of the experiment was not differentially affected by the level of illumination associated with each task component, by houselight changes per se, or by the level of illumination during the intertriai interval (ITI). However, when shapes (plus and circle) were used to train the task in the second half of the experiment, performance on the houselight-cued task component exceeded performance on the dark-cued task component, and ITI illumination facilitated performance on both task components. These results suggest that attention to shape stimuli, but not to colors, may vary systematically as a function of chamber illumination level.     

Event duration memory: The effects of delay-interval illumination and instructional cuing

The effect of interference treatments on pigeons’ working memory for event duration was investigated, using a successive matching-to-sample procedure. In three experiments, birds were trained to match different keylight durations (2 or 6 sec) to different comparison colors (red or green) following delays of 0 to 12 sec. The interfering effect of delay-interval illumination and illumination change was assessed in Experiments 1 and 2. It was found that the absolute levels of houselight illumination influenced delayed matching accuracy. Birds trained with houselight illumination showed larger decrements in matching accuracy with increasing delays than did birds trained with darkened delay intervals. In addition, increases in delay-interval illumination relative to baseline produced greater interference with delayed matching accuracy than did decreases in houselight illumination relative to baseline. In Experiment 3, the effect of interpolated instructional cues to remember or forget was examined. As in other directed forgetting experiments employing conventional modality characteristics as the samples to be remembered, it was found that instructional cues to forget, presented during the delay interval, reduced matching accuracy compared to instructional cues to remember. It was concluded that these findings support models of temporal memory that assume temporal information is coded into categorical information onto some nontime dimension over models that assume temporal information is remembered amodally as specific time durations.