City University London

About: City University London is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 5735 authors who have published 17285 publications receiving 453290 citations.

Cognition and brain function in schizotypy: a selective review.

Abstract: Schizotypy refers to a set of personality traits thought to reflect the subclinical expression of the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia. Here, we review the cognitive and brain functional profile associated with high questionnaire scores in schizotypy. We discuss empirical evidence from the domains of perception, attention, memory, imagery and representation, language, and motor control. Perceptual deficits occur early and across various modalities. While the neural mechanisms underlying visual impairments may be linked to magnocellular dysfunction, further effects may be seen downstream in higher cognitive functions. Cognitive deficits are observed in inhibitory control, selective and sustained attention, incidental learning, and memory. In concordance with the cognitive nature of many of the aberrations of schizotypy, higher levels of schizotypy are associated with enhanced vividness and better performance on tasks of mental rotation. Language deficits seem most pronounced in higher-level processes. Finally, higher levels of schizotypy are associated with reduced performance on oculomotor tasks, resembling the impairments seen in schizophrenia. Some of these deficits are accompanied by reduced brain activation, akin to the pattern of hypoactivations in schizophrenia spectrum individuals. We conclude that schizotypy is a construct with apparent phenomenological overlap with schizophrenia and stable interindividual differences that covary with performance on a wide range of perceptual, cognitive, and motor tasks known to be impaired in schizophrenia. The importance of these findings lies not only in providing a fine-grained neurocognitive characterization of a personality constellation known to be associated with real-life impairments, but also in generating hypotheses concerning the aetiology of schizophrenia.

Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life

Abstract: From the Publisher: Times of the Technoculture, explores the issues surrounding technological change, from the politics of information to questions of culture and identity in cyberspace The late twentieth century has seen a rapid succession of technological innovations, from the silicon chip to virtual reality and the Internet Each development has been accompanied by intense public debate, in which anxieties about change and upheaval combine with excitement at the new possibilities for democracy, education and recreation in the 'information society' But how much faith should we place in technology's ability to improve our lives? In this book, Robins and Webster question whether the new information and communications technologies, such as the Internet, justify the utopian rhetoric with which they are promoted, suggesting, in fact, that they often work to reproduce conservative social practices under a new guise They also provide a genealogy of new technologies, from the Industrial Revolution and 'the coming of the machine' to the development of mass production in the early twentieth century and today's global network society Times of the Technoculture shows how the military has influenced the development of the information society, how commercial imperatives have determined its course, and how government has sought to guide its direction

Is there a case for using visual analogue scale valuations in cost-utility analysis?

Abstract: This paper critically reviews theoretical and empirical propositions regarding visual analogue scale (VAS) valuations of health states and their use in cost-utility analysis (CUA). A widely repeated assertion in the economic evaluation literature is the inferiority, on theoretical grounds, of VAS valuations. Five common criticisms are: VAS lacks a theoretical foundation; VAS values are not 'choice based'; VAS values are not consistent with utility-under-uncertainty requirements; context and range effects observed in VAS valuation data mean that they cannot even be considered to represent measurable value functions; and when completing a VAS, people are not trying to express values. We address each of these points: the VAS does have a theoretical basis, being entirely consistent with the non-welfarist foundations of QALYs and CUA; the 'choiceless' nature of the VAS is incorrectly judged by stated preference criteria relevant to monetary rather than health state valuations, and VAS valuations do in any case involve an element of choice; because valuations are intended for use in social decision-making, it may be advantageous that VAS values are elicited under conditions of certainty; although there are measurement problems with the VAS, means such as better design and transformations of data can deal with these; and with any method of eliciting values, it is unrealistic to expect people consciously to think in terms of social science constructs such as utilities.Moreover, there are problems, both theoretical and empirical, with alternative methods. Selection of the appropriate valuation method should be based on empirical performance, and in this the VAS has important advantages. We conclude that there are strong grounds for disputing the consensus view against the VAS and challenge those who hold it to deploy more convincing arguments and evidence in favour of alternative methods. However, we identify areas where further research is required to establish and consolidate the potential of the VAS as a valuation method.

A static analysis for quantifying information flow in a simple imperative language

Abstract: We propose an approach to quantify interference in a simple imperative language that includes a looping construct. In this paper we focus on a particular case of this definition of interference: leakage of information from private variables to public ones via a Trojan Horse attack. We quantify leakage in terms of Shannon's information theory and we motivate our definition by proving a result relating this definition of leakage and the classical notion of programming language interference. The major contribution of the paper is a quantitative static analysis based on this definition for such a language. The analysis uses some non-trivial information theory results like Fano's inequality and the L 1 inequality to provide reasonable bounds for conditional statements. While-loops are handled by integrating a qualitative flow-sensitive dependency analysis into the quantitative analysis.

Approach and Avoidance Behaviour: Multiple Systems and their Interactions:

Abstract: Approach–avoidance theories describe the major systems that motivate behaviours in reaction to classes of appetitive (rewarding) and aversive (punishing) stimuli. The literature points to two major “avoidance” systems, one related to pure avoidance and escape of aversive stimuli, and a second, to behavioural inhibition induced by the detection of goal conflict (in addition, there is evidence for nonaffective behavioural constraint). A third major system, responsible for approach behaviour, is reactive to appetitive stimuli, and has several subcomponents. A number of combined effects of these systems are outlined. Finally, the hierarchical nature of behavioural control is delineated, including the role played by conscious awareness in behavioural inhibition.