Is Evidence Non-Inferential?

Evidence is often taken to be foundational, in that while other propositions may be inferred from our evidence, evidence propositions are themselves not inferred from anything. I argue that this conception is false, since the non-inferential propositions on which beliefs are ultimately founded may be forgotten or undermined in the course of enquiry.     

Developmental and sex-related differences in preschoolers' affective decision making

This study investigated developmental and sex-related differences in affective decision making, using a two-deck version of Children's Gambling Task administered to 3- and 4-year-old children. The main findings were that 4-year-old children displayed better decision-making performance than 3-year-olds. This effect was independent of developmental changes in inductive reasoning, language, and working memory. There were also sex differences in decision-making performance, which were apparent only in 3-year-old children and favored girls. Moreover, age predicted awareness of task and the correlation between the latter and decision-making performance was significant, but only in 4-year-old children. This study thus indicates that there is a remarkable developmental leap in affective decision making, whose effects are apparent around the age of 4, which according to our results, also marks the age when the correlation of declarative knowledge and decision-making performance becomes significant.     

Psychiatric Disorders Associated with Substance Use Among Children and Adolescents: Findings from the Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (MECA) Study

The relationships between specific quantities and frequencies of alcohol, cigarette, and illicit substance use and substance use (SUD) and other psychiatric disorders were investigated among 1,285 randomly selected children and adolescents, aged 9 to 18, and their parents, from the Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (MECA) Study. Logistic regressions indicated that daily cigarette smoking, weekly alcohol consumption, and any illicit substance use in the past year were each independently associated with an elevated likelihood of diagnosis with SUD and other psychiatric disorders (anxiety, mood, or disruptive behavior disorders), controlling for sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, family income). The associations between the use of specific substances and specific psychiatric disorders varied as a function of gender.     

Multiple reinforcement contingencies to reduce aggression,self-injury and dysfunctional verbal behaviors in an adult who is sensory impaired

Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) and differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (DRL) have been effective techniques in reducing maladaptive behaviors in therapeutic settings. Reported studies of these reinforcement-based procedures indicate that they are usually implemented in isolation, targeting only a single behavior or class of behaviors. In this study, multiple DRO and DRL contingencies were utilized concurrently in reducing two distinct classes of behaviors with a 26 year-old blind man with moderate retardation. One class of behaviors included socially inappropriate verbalizations, while the other included aggressive, self-injurious and environmentally destructive behaviors. Distinct contingencies were established according to the functions of the targeted behaviors and their severity and separate schedules of reinforcement were derived from baseline frequencies. Over a period of 20 months, the differential reinforcement interventions resulted in rapid reduction of behaviors in both classes to near-zero rates and frequencies were maintained at this low level while contingency schedules were systematically lengthened. Collateral effects are discussed including performance in functional academics and participation in community integration activities.     

A comprehensive institutional treatment program for aggressive- disruptive high functioning mentally retarded persons

A unit wide behavioral programming system for high functioning mentally retarded clients who displayed maladaptive behavioral excesses was developed and implemented on a coeducational institutional living unit for 7 months. Significant clinical reductions were achieved in client injuries, broken windows, emergency restraint usage, the percent of clients receiving psychotropic medications and medication dosages. These reductions continued during the program's maintenance phase. A number of factors are discussed that appear to have contributed to the program's success.     

The development of metacognitive awareness in memory,communication, and attention

Four- and six-year-olds were asked questions about hypothetical situations in which a child was to perform one of three cognitive activities: (1) to remember something, (2) to communicate a message, or (3) to attend to a visual array. Questions focused on the child's understanding of the following four facts about the variables under study: (1) that it is easier to cognize about a shorter than a longer list (length), (2) that it is easier to cognize in the absence of noise than in its presence (noise), (3) that an adult or older child will find a cognitive problem to be easier than will a younger child (age), and (4) that it is generally easier to cognize with more time than with less time (time). Results indicated that the pattern of understanding was the same across the different cognitive activities, that there was a higher level of accuracy in answering questions about length and noise than about age and time, and that, over all, the 6-year-olds were more accurate than the 4-year-olds.     

An examination of orienting task relationships in a proactive interference paradigm

Three experiments investigating release from proactive interference were conducted, in which orienting tasks were employed to bias encoding. Following earlier experiments by Bird (1976, 1977), it was expected that release would be observed when tasks were changed after several trials, but only to the extent that the tasks required different processing. Two obviously related nonsemantic tasks were compared in Experiment 1, and no release was obtained. Experiment 2 was a comparison of part-of-speech classification, considered by some to be a nonsemantic task, and of judgments of word pleasantness. The release obtained was sufficiently low to suggest that part-of-speech decisions involve substantial semantic processing. Finally, Experiment 3 employed four tasks, in order to address various questions about task relationships raised in the earlier experiments. Based on the levels of release observed across experiments and the finding that some tasks led to less proactive interference than others, a tentative categorization of tasks was proposed.     

The Prevalence of Serious Emotional Disturbance: A Re-Analysis of Community Studies

The goal of these analyses was to use existing data to provide an empirically-based estimate of the prevalence in the population of Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) in children and adolescents, to assist States in their task, required under PL 102-321, of including such estimates in their applications for Block Grant funds. Seven data sets were identified that could provide estimates of SED. The principal investigators agreed on common definitions of the key components of SED: a psychiatric diagnosis and significant functional impairment. Two definitions of impairment were used: domain-specific (impairment in one or more of three areas of functioning) and global (in the worst 10% over all). They also defined a set of correlates and risk factors for SED: age, gender, race/ethnicity, and poverty. Investigators then reanalyzed their own data, using these standard definitions, and calculated the proportion of SED youth who received mental health care. The median estimate of SED with global impairment was 5.4%, with a range from 4.3% to 7.4%. Estimates of SED with domain-specific impairment ranged from 5.5% to 16.9% (median 7.7%). Rates were slightly higher in boys. There were no clear ethnic differences. Poverty doubled the risk of SED. Only one SED child in four had recently received mental health care. Estimates of SED are critically dependent on the method used to define diagnosis and functional impairment. Using common definitions, seven studies produced fairly consistent estimates, which were similar to the estimate of prevalence of Serious Mental Illness (SMI) in adults. Implications for the estimate of State-by-State prevalence rates are discussed.