Therapeutic misconception, as first described by Appelbaum, Roth, and Lidz (1982) is said to occur when a participant who is engaged in... Show moreTherapeutic misconception, as first described by Appelbaum, Roth, and Lidz (1982) is said to occur when a participant who is engaged in research, erroneously conflates the purpose and goals of a given research project with those of therapeutic treatment and personal care. Therapeutic misconception is considered ethically intolerable in research as its presence is thought to undermine the process of voluntary informed consent (Appelbaum, Roth, Lidz, Benson, and Winslade, 1987). Extensive literature suggests that therapeutic misconception is a common phenomenon which occurs within a variety of research domains, and may be present in approximately 62% of research participants (Appelbaum, Lidz, & Grisso, 2004). Despite this alarming prevalence, the possibility of therapeutic misconception in neural interface research, especially projects exploring artificial vision restoration, has received little attention. Vision prosthetic trials may be particularly susceptible to engendering therapeutic misconceptions among participants, due to the intense desire to restore visual functioning, the complexity of this research context, and the dearth of information available concerning vision prosthetic devices. As a mounting number of visual neural prosthetic projects advance and reach the threshold of human-subjects research, assessing for therapeutic misconception will become increasingly essential to ensure that participants fully comprehend the nature of their involvement. The present study, which represents the first known investigation into the potential of therapeutic misconception in artificial vision research, employs semi-structured interviews and qualitative deductive content data analyses to explore the possibility that therapeutic misconception was evident, and operating, among participants of the Dobelle Vision Implant Project. M.S. in Psychology, May 2015 Show less
Query
(-) mods_name_creator_namePart_mt:"Nitsch, Kristian P."
