Case study: Examining the relationship between self-initiations of an individual with disabilities and directive behavior of staff persons in a residential setting

This case study examines the relationship between self-initiations of an adult woman with severe disabilities and the directive behavior of staff persons in a community residential setting. Hypotheses generated from functional assessment procedures indicated that (a) Susan's low self-initiations were very likely related to high directive behavior of staff persons, and (b) infrequent problem behaviors during the morning routine were maintained by escape from repeated staff demands. An intervention was implemented to enable Susan to increase self-initiation in choice and sequence of activities and simultaneously decrease staff directives. Results and discussion focus on the need for a contextual approach for addressing problematic situations and an affirmation of the effectiveness of the positive behavioral support technology for increasing adaptive behaviors in individuals with severe disabilities.     

Functional Aspects of Recollective Experience in Face Recognition

This article describes two experiments on awareness in recognition memory for novel faces. Two kinds of awareness, recollective experience and feelings of familiarity in the absence of recollective experience, were measured by "remember" and "know" responses. Experiment 1 showed that "remember" but not "know" responses were reduced by divided attention at study. Experiment 2 showed that massed versus spaced repetition of faces in the study list had the opposite effects on "remember" and "know" responses. Massed repetition increased "know" responses and reduced "remember" responses. Spaced repetition increased "remember" responses and reduced "know" responses. The results of both experiments replicate previous findings from the verbal domain in the domain of face recognition, and hence they increase the ecological validity of this experiential approach to memory and awareness and the generality of its database. These findings are discussed from a rehearsal perspective on factors influencing the two states of awareness and in relation to the alternative "process dissociation" procedure.     

Are microsaccades responsible for the gap effect?

Extinguishing a fixation point shortly before, or concurrently with, the onset of a peripheral visual target reduces the latency of saccades to that target. Saslow (1967) hypothesized that thisgap effect might occur because fixation point offsets reduce the incidence of corrective microsaccades with an associated saccadic refractory period. In the present study, a robust gap effect was obtained. However, using a Purkinje image eyetracker with 1 arcmin of resolution, we found that fixation point offsets had no effect on the occurrence of microsaccades and that the occurrence of microsaccades had no impact on the magnitude of the gap effect. Microsaccades therefore do not appear to play any part in the production of the gap effect.     

Audit and family systems consultation: evaluation of practice at a child and family centre

This audit of practice at a child and family centre included a 16-month case note review covering 319 cases, a postal survey of 45 families and an interview survey of ten GPs who typically referred cases to the centre. The audit furnished information from three different perspectives on the referral process, the consultation process, and outcome for clients attending the centre. The referral rate was about one new case per day and peak referral times were the beginning of the autumn and winter school terms. Almost half the referrals came from GPs; the remainder were largely from Paediatrics, Education and Social Services. Most clients were seen within two months. Half of the families referred had serious psychosocial difficulties including multiple problem members, multi-problem children, multi-agency involvement, psycho-educational difficulties, child protection problems or child placement difficulties. The majority of cases received six hours of consultation. Families where child abuse had occurred or families containing a multi-problem adolescent received a more intensive service. Between a half and three-quarters of cases had positive outcomes as rated by staff and parents. The service was viewed by GPs to be highly satisfactory. On the negative side, many parents felt ill-prepared for the consultation process and most children did not enjoy the experience.     

Hiding valuables: A questionnaire study of mnemonically risky behavior

A survey investigated incidences where individuals intentionally hid objects but later forgot the item's location. Surveys from 111 younger and 99 older adults yielded the following prototypical scenario: the person hid the valuable 1 year ago to prevent theft, and waited 1 month before an initial 30-minute search, which included looking in dresser drawers plus 1.5 other locations. The person made three additional searches (total searches = 4) for the missing valuable over a 2 week period. Three-quarters of the hidden valuables were eventually found (usually by accident) about 1 month after hiding the object. About half of the time, the person had already searched the hiding area. Older adults typically hid jewellery from thieves, while younger adults hid money from friends and relatives. Older adults searched more often for longer periods of time for the hidden object, and took longer to eventually find the object, compared with younger adults.     

Frontline,facilitated communication,and Stephen Jay Gould

Journal of Behavioral Education -     

Ideological Beliefs About Family Practices: Contemporary Perspectives Among North Indian Families

Ninety-two dual-wage and 103 single-wage Indian families with a preschool-age child residing in extended and nuclear households provided assessments regarding their beliefs about the division of household chores, financial responsibilities, childcare, and filial obligations. Analysis focused on possible differences in belief structures that may be attributed to the gender of the parent, family structural living arrangement, and maternal employment outside of the home. Husbands and wives did not differ in ideological beliefs on any of the components assessed, but differences did emerge as a function of family structural arrangements and whether or not the wife worked outside of the home. Data are discussed in terms of possible changes in ideological beliefs about family functions and practices and the broader socio-cultural factors operating within Indian society.     

Double-Agents and Trace-Deletion in Agrammatism

The Trace-Deletion Hypothesis (henceforth TDH; Grodzinsky 1986, 1995) states that syntactic traces are deleted in agrammatism and that whenever a trace is deleted, a default strategy is activated. The default strategy assigns the role of Agent to the first NP. In structures where a second NP receives the Agent role syntactically, the consequence is that the agrammatic representation contains two conflicting Agents for the same action. This is the mechanism that induces guessing and the random performance on comprehension tests that has often been observed for passives and certain other structures. In this paper, we isolate the default strategy of the TDH, using a sentence-picture matching task in which one of the pictures matches the meaning arrived at by the default strategy. Our results show that an agrammatic representation does not involve double-Agents, and thus the default strategy (and therefore the TDH) is refuted.