Preliminary evidence for a fronto‐parietal dysfunction in able‐bodied participants with a desire for limb amputation

Background. Reports of able‐bodied participants with the persisting desire for limb amputation raise legal and ethical questions that are partly due to insufficient empirical knowledge about the condition. Here, we searched for potential neurological mechanisms in participants with desire for limb amputation in order to help develop adequate nosological classifications, diagnosis, and treatment. Methods. Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with 20 participants who self‐identified themselves as able‐bodied individuals desiring amputation of a limb. Results. The results suggest that amputation desire is not unspecific, but in most cases specific for a circumscribed part of the body. Most frequently affected was the leg, mostly on the left, non‐dominant side. Left‐sidedness and limb specificity was associated with elementary and complex somatosensory disturbances of the affected limb akin to those reported by neurological patients. The most frequent neurological co‐morbidity was migraine headache. Conclusions. These results document the existence of an unusual condition in able‐bodied participants characterized by a person's desire for the amputation of one or more particular limbs. Left‐sidedness, limb specificity and somatosensory disturbances of the affected limb are suggestive of abnormal brain mechanisms in right fronto‐parietal cortex. Based on this association we suggest that desire for limb amputation may be conceptualized as asomatognosia due to disturbed integration of multi‐sensory information of the affected body parts into a coherent cerebral representation of the own body. This suggestion has to be regarded with caution as we did not perform any neurological examination.     

Precocity of fine motor control and task context: hitting a ball while stepping

To determine if children under 5 years were able to intercept a moving object while stepping, the authors had 9 3-year-olds hit a ball that the authors dropped from a ramp from 5 heights (1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, and 3.5 m). The statistical analysis showed that the hand movement times were similar regardless of ball rolling heights and that the hand initiation times were dependent on the ball rolling times. Children under 5 years were able to hit a moving ball, and they performed this hitting according to a temporal coupling between ball displacements and the hand contact with it. The participants' behavior of hitting while stepping supports the idea that the motor system implicitly knows what the cognitive system ignores.     

Treatment integrity of school-based interventions with children in the journal of applied behavior analysis 1991-2005

We reviewed all school-based experimental studies with individuals 0 to 18 years published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) between 1991 and 2005. A total of 142 articles (152 studies) that met review criteria were included. Nearly all (95%) of these experiments provided an operational definition of the independent variable, but only 30% of the studies provided treatment integrity data. Nearly half of studies (45%) were judged to be at high risk for treatment inaccuracies. Treatment integrity data were more likely to be included in studies that used teachers, multiple treatment agents, or both. Although there was a substantial increase in reporting operational definitions of independent variables, results suggest that there was only a modest improvement in reported integrity over the past 30 years of JABA studies. Recommendations for research and practice are discussed.     

Effect of an interference task on a ball-hitting skill by 6- to 10-yr-old children

We explored the functionality of interference on a forehand tennis shot among 145 6- to 10-yr.-old children using the retroactive interference procedure. First, the children were asked to execute 10 forehand drives with a small tennis racquet (prime test). They were then asked to execute 10 frontal returns (interference test). The final probe test was similar to the first test, but children executed only 3 forehand drives. Children were assessed using a developmental category for the forehand drive skill. Each developmental step reflected a common sequence of body configurations exhibited by all individuals and was evaluated point-by-point. Multivariate analysis showed that boys had higher ratings of developmental steps of coordination than girls and that the rated developmental step initially increased with age before stabilizing. The developmental steps of coordination decreased after the interference task. We also showed that interference mechanisms are operative for this gross motor skill in childhood, but no interaction was found with age and sex. Post hoc analysis showed that developmental steps were not significantly different after the interference task for the oldest children, suggesting the onset of the inhibitory process.     

Ethics across the computer science curriculum: Privacy modules in an introductory database course

This paper describes the author’s experience of infusing an introductory database course with privacy content, and the on-going project entitled Integrating Ethics Into the Database Curriculum, that evolved from that experience. The project, which has received funding from the National Science Foundation, involves the creation of a set of privacy modules that can be implemented systematically by database educators throughout the database design thread of an undergraduate course. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, February 24–27, 2005.     

Perceived supervisor support: contributions to perceived organizational support and employee retention

Three studies investigated the relationships among employees' perception of supervisor support (PSS), perceived organizational support (POS), and employee turnover. Study 1 found, with 314 employees drawn from a variety of organizations, that PSS was positively related to temporal change in POS, suggesting that PSS leads to POS. Study 2 established, with 300 retail sales employees, that the PSS-POS relationship increased with perceived supervisor status in the organization. Study 3 found, with 493 retail sales employees, evidence consistent with the view that POS completely mediated a negative relationship between PSS and employee turnover. These studies suggest that supervisors, to the extent that they are identified with the organization, contribute to POS and, ultimately, to job retention.     

The Older Woman as Sage: The Satisfaction of Mentoring

Mentoring is important to the personal and professional lives of many developing professionals, but it is also beneficial in numerous ways to the mentor. This article focuses on the benefits of mentoring from the mentor's prospective, including satisfaction in seeing protégées succeed and empowerment of both the mentor and protégée. This article showcases the importance of being a mentor, the impact mentoring has on developing psychologists, and how mentoring sustains older women's connections and contributions to their field. The authors discuss what mentoring is, what mentors do, how to become a mentor, and the benefits of being a mentor. How one becomes a mentor in various work settings including academia is also discussed, as are concerns regarding inappropriate mentoring relationships and how to improve the quality of the mentoring relationship. The authors suggest that becoming a mentor can be empowering for women clients as well as therapists.     

A Review of: Growing Up With Autism: Working With School-Age Children and Adolescents With Autism,edited by Robin L. Gabriels and Dina E. Hill (Eds.).

The influence of adult presence, peer smiling, and peer praise on the unprogrammed generalization of physical sharing over time was investigated. During free play three groups of five preschool children were taught to share toys via a behavioral training package composed of instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, prompts, and praise. Immediately following free play the children were given art materials and observed in the presence of different adults. An ABA design with a manipulation of adult presence nested within east phase was used. For all three groups, regardless of the adult presence manipulation, treatment facilitated sharing in both settings. In addition, two groups continued to share in both settings after termination of the training. The presence of an adult was necessary for unprogrammed maintenance of treatment gains in both settings whereas peer smiling and peer praise were not. Observer presence suppressed physical sharing and smiling prior to, during, and after treatment. Implications for behavioral assessment and applied significance are discussed.     

Commentary on “Transformations in hallucinosis and the receptivity of the analyst” by Civitarese

After summarizing Civitareses complex and stimulating thoughts, merits of his conceptualization are emphazised firstly before coming to drawbacks of it. As a supplementary perspective on the conceptualisation (TH) of Civitares the commentary is focused on a slightly different approach. Transformation into hallucinosis is linked to excessive forms of projective identification., which can have massive influence on the analyst, thus pressing him into (behavioral) patterns similar to what was phantazised, or hallucinated or deluded by the patient about the relationsship. If the analyst is after a shorter or longer period able to recognize, how near he is or was to the Patient's deluded or hallucinated Constructions of his world, this will give him a further source to sense and to examine the patients experience.     

Marked referential communicative behaviours,but no differentiation of the “knowledge state” of humans in untrained pet dogs versus 1-year-old infants

The study examines whether untrained dogs and infants take their caregiver’s visual experience into account when communicating with them. Fifteen adult dogs and 15 one-year-old infants were brought into play with their caregivers with one of their own toys. The caregiver gave the toy to the experimenter, who, in different conditions, placed it either above or under one of two containers, with both the infant or dog and the caregiver witnessing the positioning; in a third condition, the caregiver left the room before the toy was placed under one of the two containers and later returned. Afterwards, for each condition, the caregiver asked the participant to indicate the location of the toy. Neither dogs nor infants—untrained to the use of the partner’s knowledge state—showed much difference of behaviour between the three conditions. However, dogs showed more persistence for most behaviours (gaze at the owner, gaze at the toy and gaze alternation) and conditions, suggesting that the situation made more demands on dogs’ communicative behaviours than on those of infants. When all deictic behaviours of infants (arm points towards the toy and gaze at the toy) were taken into account, dogs and infants did not differ. Phylogeny, early experience and ontogeny may all play a role in the ways that both species communicate with adult humans.