Visual skills in airport-security screening

Abstract— An experiment examined visual performance in a simulated luggage-screening task. Observers participated in five sessions of a task requiring them to search for knives hidden in x-ray images of cluttered bags. Sensitivity and response times improved reliably as a result of practice. Eye movement data revealed that sensitivity increases were produced entirely by changes in observers' ability to recognize target objects, and not by changes in the effectiveness of visual scanning. Moreover, recognition skills were in part stimulus-specific, such that performance was degraded by the introduction of unfamiliar target objects. Implications for screener training are discussed.     

Are dietary restraint scales valid measures of acute dietary restriction? Unobtrusive observational data suggest not

The finding that dietary restraint scales predict onset of bulimic pathology has been interpreted as suggesting that dieting causes this eating disturbance, despite the dearth of evidence that these scales are valid measures of dietary restriction. The authors conducted 4 studies that tested whether dietary restraint scales were inversely correlated with unobtrusively measured caloric intake. These studies, which varied in foods consumed, settings, and populations, indicated that common dietary restraint scales were largely uncorrelated with acute caloric intake. Results suggest that these scales are not valid measures of short-term dietary restriction and imply that it may be prudent to reinterpret findings from studies thai use these scales, including those that suggest dietary restraint is a risk factor for bulimic pathology.     

Regulatory and ethical principles in research involving children and individuals with developmental disabilities

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable participation. Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy.     

Children's competence for assent and consent: a review of empirical findings

This narrative review summarizes the empirical literature on children's competence for consent and assent in research and treatment settings. Studies varied widely regarding methodology, particularly in the areas of participant sampling, situational context studied (e.g., psychological versus medical settings), procedures used (e.g., lab-based vs. real-world approaches), and measurement of competence. This review also identifies several fundamental dilemmas underlying approaches to children's informed consent. These dilemmas, including autonomy versus best interest approaches, legal versus psychological or ethical approaches, child- versus family-based approaches, and approaches that emphasize consent versus those that emphasize assent, have implications for the measurement of children's competence and interpretation of findings. Recommendations for future research in the area of children's informed consent include the use of diverse samples and control groups, development of multidimensional and standardized measures of competence, utilization of multidimensional and standardized measures of competence, utilization of observational methods and longitudinal designs, examination of noncognitive aspects of children's competence and comparison of children's competence for treatment and research decisions.     

Brain development in autism: early overgrowth followed by premature arrest of growth

Due to the relatively late age of clinical diagnosis of autism, the early brain pathology of children with autism has remained largely unstudied. The increased use of retrospective measures such as head circumference, along with a surge of MRI studies of toddlers with autism, have opened a whole new area of research and discovery. Recent studies have now shown that abnormal brain overgrowth occurs during the first 2 years of life in children with autism. By 2-4 years of age, the most deviant overgrowth is in cerebral, cerebellar, and limbic structures that underlie higher-order cognitive, social, emotional, and language functions. Excessive growth is followed by abnormally slow or arrested growth. Deviant brain growth in autism occurs at the very time when the formation of cerebral circuitry is at its most exuberant and vulnerable stage, and it may signal disruption of this process of circuit formation. The resulting aberrant connectivity and dysfunction may lead to the development of autistic behaviors. To discover the causes, neural substrates, early-warning signs and effective treatments of autism, future research should focus on elucidating the neurobiological defects that underlie brain growth abnormalities in autism that appear during these critical first years of life.     

Comorbidity in compulsive hoarding: a case report

A 56-year-old male presented with compulsive hoarding along with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizotypal personality disorder. Hoarding has been described as difficult to treat both pharmacologically and behaviorally, and this patient's comorbid conditions also contributed to his overall impairment. The patient's treatment regimen of fluvoxamine, amphetamine salts, and risperidone, along with behavioral therapy, has helped with hoarding behaviors, motivation, procrastination, and increased socialization. Hoarding may be a unique subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder with poorer prognosis and distinct neuroanatomic dysfunction. Augmentation with stimulants may provide benefits in aspects of hoarding such as procrastination, especially in patients with comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.     

Impact of recent findings on study design of future autism clinical trials

There are specific challenges to studying the design of pharmacologic trials in child/adolescent and adult autism, such as subject stratification and parallel versus crossover designs. This article describes how optimal study design is influenced by subject selection and outcome measures chosen. Lessons learned in study design from the Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology Autism Network trial with risperidone, Seaver Center trials with fluoxetine and valproate, Dartmouth trials with amantadine, and National Institutes of Health secretin trials are highlighted. The Internet System for Assessing Autistic Children system for managing multicenter clinical trials in autism and statistical issues in autism research are also described.     

Senior capstone design and ethics: A bridge to the professional world

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

The use of a distractor-assigned response slows later responding in a location negative priming task

Responding to a target's location takes longer when that location has recently contained a distractor event (ignored-repetition [IR] trial) relative to when it has been unoccupied (control trial). This is known as the location negative priming (NP) effect. We aimed to determine whether the elevated reaction time observed for IR trials was due to the reuse of a distractor location (location locus) and/or to the need to execute a (just inhibited) distractor response (response locus). We isolated these loci latency effects by using many-to-one and one-to-many location-response assignments. Our results showed that reusing a distractor location hastened target processing at that position (facilitative location locus), whereas the production of a distractor response was associated with a time cost (interfering response locus). Accordingly, part of the latency elevation seen with IR trials results from the need on these occasions to execute ajust inhibited (distractor) response, and, hence, the location NP effect has a response locus.