Maternal interactive behaviour towards children with and children without cleft lip and palate

The present study examined qualitative and quantitative differences in maternal interactive behaviour towards infants with and without cleft lip and palate (CLP). Thirty-three mother-child pairs with CLP and 34 pairs without CLP were videotaped at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of age in two sorts of play situations at home. In addition, the mothers were questioned by letter about their ability to recognize and interpret the child's signals; their willingness to respond to such signals; and the duration of shared daily activities in the context of feeding and play. The results showed that mothers of CLP children are somewhat less sensitive than other mothers. In addition, it appeared that CLP children play less with other people. Longer feeding times for CLP children appeared to be restricted to the age of 3 months. It is suggested that mothers of CLP children may be comparatively directive and stimulating because of uncertainty about additional deficiencies. Furthermore, they may be inclined to keep their children away from the outside world.     

Incidence of neurological soft signs in children with isolated cleft of the lip or palate

The purpose of this study was to assess neurological soft signs in children and adolescents with isolated cleft of the lip or palate (iCL/P) compared with healthy controls. Children with iCL/P were recruited through the university cleft clinic. Control subjects were recruited through advertisements. Of the 166 subjects who participated (age range 7 to 17 years, M = 12.5, SD = 3.2), 77 had iCL/P (48 male) and 89 were healthy controls (44 male). All participants took the Physical and Neurological Examination of Subtle Signs and selected tests of motor coordination. A multivariate analysis of variance assessed differences between subjects with and without iCL/P. Also, a Pearson correlation estimated the relationship between the neurological soft signs and age. Subjects with iCL/P scored significantly higher on all neurological soft signs variables. These higher scores were associated with younger age. Findings lend support to the hypothesis of aberrant brain development in children with iCL/P.     

Psychological adjustment to cleft lip and/or palate: A narrative review of the literature

Objective: Adjustment to cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) is multifaceted, involving several domains of psychological and social functioning. A substantial increase in research in this area has been evident in recent years, along with a preliminary shift in how adjustment to CL/P is conceptualised and measured. An updated and comprehensive review of the literature is needed in light of the rapidly expanding and changing field.

Design: A narrative review of 148 quantitative and qualitative studies published between January 2004 and July 2015.

Main outcome measures: Findings are presented according to five key domains of adjustment: Developmental Trajectory, Behaviour, Emotional Well-being, Social Experiences and Satisfaction with Appearance and Treatment. Data pertaining to General Psychological Well-being were also examined.

Results: The overall impact of CL/P on psychological adjustment appears to be low. Nonetheless, the review demonstrates the complexity of findings both within and across domains, and highlights recurring methodological challenges.

Conclusions: Research findings from the last decade are considered to be largely inconclusive, although some areas of emerging consensus and improvements in the approaches used were identified. Efforts to collect data from large, representative and longitudinal samples, which are comparable across studies and encompassing of the patient perspective, should be doubled.     

Relative efficacy of using behavioral consultation as an approach to teacher stress management

The general literature has been slow to focus on the empirical validation of approaches to teacher occupational stress management. Using matched teacher groups, in this investigation we have outlined, compared, and evaluated two teacher stress management techniques, collaborative behavioral consultation (CBC) and relaxation training. Analyses of perceived teacher stress levels before intervention, after intervention, and at the follow-up assessment period revealed greater maintenance of effectiveness for the CBC group than for a control group. Such an ongoing effect was not found for the relaxation training approach. The possible reasons for these results were seen in terms of the more durable systemic, problem-solving nature of CBC, which, when focused on organizational and environmental stressors, contrasts sharply with the more individual-clinical approach to stress management exemplified by relaxation training.     

Teaching performance management using behavior analysis

A special undergraduate track in performance management, taught using behavior analysis principles, is described. The key elements of the program are presented, including the point systems and other reinforcement contingencies in the classes, the goals of the instructional activities, and many of the requirements used to evaluate student performance. Finally, the article provides examples of the performance management projects students have conducted with local businesses.     

Comprehensive course management and delivery using POISE-CIS

At SUNY-Plattsburgh, we are using the POISE-CIS course management and delivery software to teach one section of introductory psychology each semester. Although this course uses a traditional textbook and covers the same material as most introductory psychology courses, it uses a self-paced mastery-based approach to learning and is managed and delivered over the Plattsburgh computer network. Students receive assignments, take on-line diagnostic assessments, receive feedback, and communicate with the instructor over the campus network. In a departmental laboratory facility, students also work with a computerized tutorial, complete computerized learning activities, take supervised on-line exams, and consult with teaching assistants. The present paper describes the overall design of the course as well as the specific characteristics of the course as it was offered in the spring of 1995, at which time data were collected on student attitudes toward computers.     

Ethics in an operations management course

Graduates of the management major at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg find employment in a variety of organizations. As future managers with employees from different professions, students expressed an interest in discussing ethics cases in the operations management class. The semester starts with students familiarizing themselves with various professional and corporate codes of ethics. Throughout the semester a number of short ethics’ cases in operations’ areas such as inventory management, scheduling, facility location, and product design are introduced to illustrate ethical issues that a manager and his/her employees might face. Students prepare individual responses before the in-class discussions. The semester ends with a long group ethics case discussion and formal case presentations. In the end-of-semester survey, students responded very favorably to an ethics component in the operations management class. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, February 24–27, 2005.     

The effect of cleft sentence structures on attention

Summary The frequency of correct recognition of agent and patient concepts as a function of agent and patient cleft sentence structures was studied. It was expected that the presentation of agent sentences would lead to a better recognition of the concept of agent than of the concept of patient. Such a different recognition performance should, however, not be found under the influence of patient sentences. These expectations were studied in an experiment in which the Ss first saw a sentence which was followed after 5 seconds by a pictorial representation of the agent and patient concepts. After the subjects had seen 12 such sentence-picture-pairs they were shown each concept individually, together with three distractors in a recognition test. The expectations were confirmed by the results.Our thanks are due to T.E. Scott M.A. for help in preparing the English text.     

Evaluating risk propensity using an objective instrument

Risk propensity is the stable tendency to choose options with a lower probability of success, but greater rewards. Its evaluation has been approached from various perspectives: from self-report questionnaires to objective tests. Self-report questionnaires have often been criticized due to interference from voluntary and involuntary biases, in addition to their lack of predictive value. Objective tests, on the other hand, require resources that make them difficult to administer to large samples. This paper presents an easy-to-administer, 30-item risk propensity test. Each item is itself an objective test describing a hypothetical situation in which the subject must choose between three options, each with a different gain function but equivalent in expected value. To assess its psychometric fit, the questionnaire was administered to 222 subjects, and we performed a test of its reliability as well as exploratory factor analysis. The results supported a three-factor model of risk (Sports and Gambling, Long-term Plans, and Loss Management). After making the necessary adjustments and incorporating a global factor of risk propensity, confirmatory factor analysis was done, revealing that the data exhibited adequate goodness of fit.     

Error reframing: studying the promotion of an error management culture

In the organizational behaviour and organizational psychology literature, individual errors are considered either as sources of blame (error-prevention culture) or as sources of learning and something to be encouraged in order to promote innovation (error-management culture). While we can assume that a third perspective exists somewhere in between, error management is usually considered as the best solution. Yet scholars have tended to neglect the planned and directed transition from a pure error-prevention to an error-management culture. We thus examine to what extent and under what conditions an organization can culturally transform the representation of individual errors through its business leaders. To answer this question, we conducted a qualitative study on the case of a French insurance company. We portray a realistic image of the promotion of an error management culture, pointing out certain limitations and constraints, while nonetheless identifying some conditions for successful error reframing.     

Investigation of visual space using an exocentric pointing task

Classically, it has been assumed that visual space can be represented by a metric. This means that the distance between points and the angle between lines can be uniquely defined. However, this assumption has never been tested. Also, measurements outdoors, where monocular cues are abundant, conflict with this model. This paper reports on two experiments in which the structure of visual space was investigated, using an exocentric pointing task. In the first experiment, we measured the influence of the separation between pointer and target and of the orientation of the stimuli with respect to the observer. This was done both monocularly and binocularly. It was found that the deviation of the pointer settings depended linearly on the orientation, indicating that visual space is anisotropic. The deviations for configurations that were symmetrical in the median plane were approximately the same, indicating that left/right symmetry was maintained. The results for monocular and binocular conditions were very different, which indicates that stereopsis was an important cue. In both conditions, there were large deviations from the veridical. In the second experiment, the relative distance of the pointer and the target with respect to the observer was varied in both the monocular and the binocular conditions. The relative distance turned out to be the main parameter for the ranges used (1-5 m). Any distance function must have an expanding and a compressing part in order to describe the data. In the binocular case, the results were much more consistent than in the monocular case and had a smaller standard deviation. Nevertheless, the systematic mispointings remained large. It can therefore be concluded that stereopsis improves space perception but does not improve veridicality.     

Measurement of olfactory signal detectability using an air-dilution olfactometer

The Cheesman air dilution olfactometer, although designed for group threshold measurements, was modified to allow individual testing of subjects. However, adaptation effects of olfactory stimuli precluded use of interstimulus intervals of less than 30 sec. so that 3-hr. testing sessions were necessary to obtain a single measurement of sensitivity. Four subjects were tested intensively with isopropyl alcohol (CH3CH(OH)CH3) at concentration levels determined by previous group threshold studies. In the first condition, one concentration only was presented in testing sessions, while in the second condition, six concentrations were presented and the limits of concentrations adjusted to allow subthreshold presentations. Signal detectability indices (dc') were calculated more frequently and more reliably in the second condition than in the first.     

Abatement of intractable vocal stereotypy using an overcorrection procedure

We conducted a series of reversals to compare the effects of four different treatments on vocal stereotypy emitted by a 7‐year‐old boy with autism. The results showed that (1) the level of vocal stereotypy decreased during exposure to matched stimulation but returned to high levels immediately upon its removal; (2) stereotypy did not significantly decrease during differential reinforcement of other behavior; and (3) contingent withdrawal of movies and music (i.e., response cost) was only moderately effective. However, positive practice overcorrection decreased vocal stereotypy by clinically significant levels. Further, when differential reinforcement of engagement in a Lego^® building task was implemented, the level of engagement was significantly higher when positive practice overcorrection was in place than when overcorrection was withdrawn. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contingency management in an introductory psychology course produces better learning

For the contingency management techniques first devised by Keller (1966, 1968) to become a widely accepted teaching method, it is necessary that they be shown (1) to be applicable to general subject matter and (2) to be superior to traditional lecture methods. The present study demonstrated (1) by successfully teaching the material from a standard psychology text. The superiority of contingency management was established by direct comparison of final examination scores from comparable groups taught the same subject matter by either Keller's method or traditional methods. Students taught by Keller's method also rated the course more favorably.     

Assessing the feasibility of using contingency management to modify cigarette smoking by adolescents

Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Many smokers initiate this dangerous behavior during adolescence. This report describes a contingency management intervention designed to initate and maintain a period of abstinence from cigarettes by adolescent smokers. Results suggest that the intervention was generally successful and that further investigation of this topic is warranted.