Quality of Life in Flemish Families with a Child with an Intellectual Disability: a Multilevel Study on Opinions of Family Members and the Impact of Family Member and Family Characteristics

This study examined family members’ opinions regarding their family quality of life (FQOL). Parents (n = 97) and youngsters (n = 24) of 63 families with a child with an intellectual disability (ID) receiving home-based support completed the Beach Center FQOL Scale. Multilevel models detected substantial variability in FQOL scores and in most subscale scores both within and between families. The observed differences were partly explained by the respondent’s age, the parents’ employment situation, and the support needs of the child with an ID. Role of the family member and gender of the parent could not explain this variability. By including and comparing multiple family members’ opinions, this study contributes to the methodological and conceptual discussions about measuring FQOL.     

Influential Factors of Poverty Dynamics among Korean Households that Include the Aged with Disability

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine closely the economic status of households that include the aged with disabilities in South Korea, as well as the factors contributing to their poverty dynamics. This study analyzed the poverty dynamics of households that include the aged with disabilities by using data from the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled for the years 2008 to 2012. This Survey is conducted by the Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled. Poverty dynamics were classified by the changes in poverty status in 2008 and 2012, including sustained poverty, sustained non-poverty, poverty exit, and poverty entry. We carried out a multinomial logistic regression for poverty dynamics based on demographics and analyzed the differences of income composition and consumption patterns according to poverty dynamics. Gender, education, degree of disability, economic activity, and change in the number of employed family members were identified as significant factors that determine poverty dynamics.     

Human Enhancement and the Anthropology of the “Entire Human Being”

About one and a half decades ago, two prominent reports were published in the United States (US) which strongly influenced subsequent international discussions on the topic of human enhancement: a 2002 report on “converging technologies for improving human performance”, based on a workshop which was organised by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Commerce in December 2001, and the first report of US President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics (PCBE), published in October 2003 with the title Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The 2002 report included a wide variety of contributions from academics in various fields of research, from representatives of US institutions, and from companies. Due primarily to the influence of the two NSF staff editing the report, it can be regarded as the first major instance of the influence of transhumanism, a techno-futurist ideology and movement, on the US technology and innovation discourse. The PCBE report, on the other hand, is a prime example of a conservative critique of the transhumanist notion of human enhancement. In this invited contribution, these two crucial publications are analysed mainly in order to point out the relevance of philosophical anthropology as developed since the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner and others. This remarkable school of thought is experiencing a revival in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and, to some extent, in the English-speaking world. In this article, it is argued that philosophical anthropology provides us with an important alternative to both anthropological essentialism and scientism, two approaches that are still highly relevant in current discourse on human enhancement.     

Language-mediated object categorization: A longitudinal study with 16- to 20-month-old Serbian-speaking children

This study addressed the development of language-mediated categorization longitudinally, on a sample of Serbian-speaking children aged 16–20 months. Twenty four children were tested 3 consecutive times on: categorization of unknown objects with a shared label and a similar shape; and categorization of unknown objects with a shared label, but no visual similarity. The task was embedded in a game-like activity which included real object manipulation, categorization of novel objects labeled with made-up names, and socio-pragmatic cues provided by the experimenter. Our results indicate that an average child develops the ability to categorize novel objects with a similar shape and a shared label around 16 months of age, whereas for novel objects with a shared label, but no visual similarity, this ability is acquired sometime between 18 and 20 months of age. Our results partly confirm research findings obtained in other languages, thus emphasizing the need for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural validation of all language-related developmental studies.     

Action‐semantic and syntactic deficits in subjects at risk for Huntington's disease

Frontostriatal networks play critical roles in grounding action semantics and syntactic skills. Indeed, their atrophy distinctively disrupts both domains, as observed in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's disease, even during early disease stages. However, frontostriatal degeneration in these conditions may begin up to 15 years before the onset of clinical symptoms, opening avenues for pre‐clinical detection via sensitive tasks. Such a mission is particularly critical in HD, given that patients’ children have 50% chances of inheriting the disease. Against this background, we assessed whether deficits in the above‐mentioned domains emerge in subjects at risk to develop HD. We administered tasks tapping action semantics, object semantics, and two forms of syntactic processing to 18 patients with HD, 19 asymptomatic first‐degree relatives, and sociodemographically matched controls for each group. The patients evinced significant deficits in all tasks, but only those in the two target domains were independent of overall cognitive state. More crucially, relative to controls, the asymptomatic relatives were selectively impaired in action semantics and in the more complex syntactic task, with both patterns emerging irrespective of the subjects’ overall cognitive state. Our findings highlight the relevance of these dysfunctions as potential prodromal biomarkers of HD. Moreover, they offer theoretical insights into the differential contributions of frontostriatal hubs to both domains while paving the way for innovations in diagnostic procedures.     

Zukunftsperspektiven sexualforensischer Psychotherapie

There is a controversial discussion on to what extent sexual forensic psychotherapy has a positive influence on the legal probation of sexually delinquent people. From this the question arises on how treatment with a perspective for success could be structured. This article assumes that such a perspective can only succeed through close cooperation between science and psychotherapeutic practice. Through the analysis of a methodologically elaborate study, considerations on the motivation and the influence of empirically ascertained risk factors are developed and each placed in relation to scientific and therapeutic practice. In this way various problems are tackled, which range from insufficiently described interventions via too little therapeutic flexibility up to limitations in the scientific evaluation. Finally, possible barriers for the development of such a perspective are discussed and the connection to the so-called risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model is explored.     

Psychodynamische Psychotherapie bei antisozialen und psychopathischen Störungen der Persönlichkeit

Important theoretical basic principles of the psychodynamic treatment of patients with antisocial and psychopathic personality disorders are presented. Focusing on delinquency and general orientation to the structural level of the personality organization should be integrated. Indications of treatment difficulties, countertransference problems and technical principles are given. Skepticism of the treatment is poorly evidence-based and forensic psychotherapy of these patient groups should be intensified.     

Learning efficient visual search for stimuli containing diagnostic spatial configurations and color-shape conjunctions

Visual search is often slow and difficult for complex stimuli such as feature conjunctions. Search efficiency, however, can improve with training. Search for stimuli that can be identified by the spatial configuration of two elements (e.g., the relative position of two colored shapes) improves dramatically within a few hundred trials of practice. Several recent imaging studies have identified neural correlates of this learning, but it remains unclear what stimulus properties participants learn to use to search efficiently. Influential models, such as reverse hierarchy theory, propose two major possibilities: learning to use information contained in low-level image statistics (e.g., single features at particular retinotopic locations) or in high-level characteristics (e.g., feature conjunctions) of the task-relevant stimuli. In a series of experiments, we tested these two hypotheses, which make different predictions about the effect of various stimulus manipulations after training. We find relatively small effects of manipulating low-level properties of the stimuli (e.g., changing their retinotopic location) and some conjunctive properties (e.g., color-position), whereas the effects of manipulating other conjunctive properties (e.g., color-shape) are larger. Overall, the findings suggest conjunction learning involving such stimuli might be an emergent phenomenon that reflects multiple different learning processes, each of which capitalizes on different types of information contained in the stimuli. We also show that both targets and distractors are learned, and that reversing learned target and distractor identities impairs performance. This suggests that participants do not merely learn to discriminate target and distractor stimuli, they also learn stimulus identity mappings that contribute to performance improvements.