Causation and evidence‐based practice: an ontological review

Kerry, Roger; Eriksen, Thor Eirik; Lie, Svein Anders Noer; Mumford, Stephen; Anjum, Rani Lill

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2753.2012.01908.x

Cited by 54 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…To diagnose and treat any individual may require understanding their unique genetic, environmental as well as psychosocial background (e.g., Kerry et al, 2012;Murphy, Byrom & Msetfi, 2017 Traditionally the associative 'Mind', a phenotype, is seen to be affected by genes and environment and has a moderating role on the relation between gene and environment but only a weak direct effect. We are proposing that mind can affect gene expression, and environment as well as each one being able to mediate the relation between each separate dyad.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences are more than a gene × environment interaction: The role of learning.

Byrom

Murphy

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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Individual differences in behavior are understood generally as arising from an interaction between genes and environment, omitting a crucial component. The literature on animal and human learning suggests the need to posit principles of learning to explain our differences. One of the challenges for the advancement of the field has been to establish how general principles of learning can explain the almost infinite variation in behavior. We present a case that: 1) individual differences in behavior emerge, in part, from principles of learning; 2) associations provide a descriptive mechanism for understanding the contribution of experience to behavior; 3) learning theories explain dissociable aspects of behavior. We use four examples from the field of learning to illustrate the importance of involving psychology, and associative theory in particular, in the analysis of individual differences, these are; i) fear learning, ii) behavior directed to cues for outcomes (i.e., sign-and goaltracking), iii) stimulus learning related to attention, and iv) human causal learning. Individual Differences 3A goal of research into learning is to characterize how behavior changes with experience within and across species. Thorndike's (1898) Law of Effect was an early attempt to characterize the effect of experience on behavior. In offering a general law of how experience contributes to behavior, Thorndike was also giving an account of how an individual becomes unique.The classic example of Thorndike's method involved cats and an apparatus known as a puzzle box (Thorndike, 1898). The box was a rudimentary cage with latches and gates to afford escape. The cats' dislike of confined space provided a natural motivation to engage in behaviors that might serendipitously lead to release. Thorndike observed that the cats made many false starts but eventually made a response that enabled escape. With repeated exposure to the box, latency to escape decreased. The Law of Effect stated that behaviors preceding any form of 'satisfaction' (e.g., escape) would be reinforced and made more likely on subsequent trials. However, rather than considering this principle as limiting an animal's flexibility to learn, the law only restricts the conditions for learning. Consider that outside the lab, different humans can successfully complete a motivated goal in different ways. They may behave differently but the same Law of Effect strengthens their behaviors.The goals of this paper are to present the case for the individual differences approach to learning theory. We will argue that (1) learning mediates the influence of genes and environment on behavior and (2) there is complexity, to be explored, within models of learning that can account for diversity in learning. Specifically, we suggest that while genes and environment may contribute to the development of differences in learning, that an individual's phenotype interacts with experience and the memories of experience to further cause individual differences. As such, the study of individual diff...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences are more than a gene × environment interaction: The role of learning.

Byrom

Murphy

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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“…To understand how -not only that -a causal factor is productive of an effect, gives evidential priority to individual propensities and mechanistic understanding over statistical frequencies and correlation data [51]. For this, qualitative, experimental or other interactive methods are more appropriate.…”

Section: Individual Variations Should Be Expectedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence-based or person-centered? An ontological debate

Anjum¹

2016

EJPCH

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Evidence-based medicine (EBM) continues to be vigorously debated and person-centered healthcare (PCH) has been proposed as an improvement. But is PCH offered as a supplement to or as a replacement of EBM? Prima facie PCH only concerns the practice of medicine, while the contended features of EBM also include specific methods and the biomedical model. In this paper I argue that there are good philosophical reasons to see PCH as a radical alternative to the existing medical paradigm of EBM, since the two seem committed to conflicting ontologies. I will aim to make explicit some of the most fundamental assumptions that motivate EBM and PCH in order to show that the choice between them ultimately comes down to ontological preference. While EBM has a solid foundation in positivism, or what I here call Humeanism, PCH is more consistent with causal dispositionalism. I conclude that if there is a paradigmatic revolution on the way in medicine, it is first of all one of ontology.

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“…It is beyond the parameters of this chapter to lay out a fully detailed account of the theory of dispositionalism, and for this the reader is directed to supporting resources (Kerry et al, 2012;Eriksen et al, 2013;. For the purpose of this chapter, causal dispositionalism will be introduced within a focussed framework of key areas relevant to the central claims of EBM.…”

Section: Causal Dispositionalism As a Way Forward For Evidence-based mentioning

confidence: 99%