Access to environmental stimulation via eyelid responses for persons with acquired brain injury and multiple disabilities: a new microswitch arrangement

This study assessed a new microswitch arrangement for eyelid responses using an optic sensor placed above the cheekbone and a small sticker on the person's eyelid. This new arrangement, which was designed to avoid interference of the microswitch with the person's visual functioning, was tested on three adults with acquired brain injury and multiple (consciousness, communication, and motor) disabilities. The study was carried out according to a non-concurrent multiple baseline design across participants. Data showed the new microswitch arrangement was suitable for all three participants, who increased their responding during the intervention phase of the study when their responses allowed them to access preferred stimulation. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Tie my hands, tie my eyes

Previous studies have demonstrated that motor abilities allow us not only to execute our own actions and to predict their consequences, but also to predict others' actions and their consequences. But just how deeply are motor abilities implicated in action observation? If an observer is prevented from acting while witnessing others' actions, will this impact on their making sense of others' behavior? We recorded proactive eye movements while participants observed an actor grasping objects. The participants' hands were either freely resting on the table or tied behind their back. Proactivity of gaze behavior was dramatically impaired when participants observed others' actions with their hands tied. Since we don't literally perceive actions with our hands, the effect may be explained by the hypothesis that effective observation of action depends not only on motor abilities but on being in a position to exercise them. This suggests, for the first time, that actions are observed best when we are actually in the position to perform them.     

The Interplay Between Trust Among Peers and Interpersonal Characteristics in Homophobic Bullying Among Italian Adolescents

This study is based on exploring the trust between peers and the individual characteristics related to homophobic bullying in adolescence. Participants were 334 adolescents (141 boys and 193 girls) aged from 15 to 20 years. Participants completed the homophobic bullying scale, to investigate bullying actions towards sexual minorities, the personal attributes questionnaire, for personal characteristics, and the inventory of parent and peer attachment, to the trust between peers. The results demonstrated how female participants manifested a higher level of interpersonal traits and trust among peers than boys. Results showed how a lack of trust between peers predicts homophobic bullying. Nevertheless, we found that the lack of interpersonal characteristics represents a variable that likely mediates the relationship between lack of trust in peers and homophobic bullying. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Development of Indirect Measures of Conscientiousness: Combining a Facets Approach and Network Analysis

Because indirect measures of personality self‐concepts such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) allow tapping into automatic processes, they can offer advantages over self‐report measures. However, prior investigations have led to mixed results regarding the validity of indirect measures of conscientiousness. We suggest that these results might be due to a failure to consider the different facets of conscientiousness. These facets are of crucial importance because they are associated differentially with other psychobiological constructs and they are also characterized by different mechanisms. Therefore, focusing on facets while developing indirect measures of conscientiousness may improve the validity of such measures. In Study 1, we conducted a psycholexical investigation to develop one IAT for each conscientiousness facet. In Study 2, we examined the convergent and discriminant validities of each facet IAT in relation to self‐report measures, peer‐report measures and self‐report behavioural indicators, and we investigated differential associations of the conscientiousness facets with working memory capacity and self‐control. We employed network analysis as a novel approach to elucidate differential relationships involving personality facets. The results corroborated the convergent and discriminant validity of the conscientiousness facet IATs with self‐reports and showed that the conscientiousness facets were differentially associated with working memory capacity and with self‐control. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Predictive laws of association in statistics and physics

In the present paper we face the problem of estimating cell probabilities in the case of a two-dimensional contingency table from a predictive point of view. The solution is given by a double stochastic process. The first subprocess, the unobservable one, is supposed to be exchangeable and invariant. For the second subprocess, the observable one, we suppose it is independent conditional on the first one.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF ELOPEMENT ACROSS TWO SCHOOL SETTINGS

The elopement of a child with Asperger syndrome was assessed using functional analyses and was treated in two school settings (classroom and resource room). Functional analyses indicated that elopement was maintained by access to attention in the resource room and obtaining a preferred activity in the classroom. Attention- and tangible-based interventions were compared in an alternating treatments design in both settings. Results validated the findings of the functional analyses. Implications for the assessment and treatment of elopement are discussed.     

Recrystallization of amorphous ion-implanted silicon carbide after thermal annealing

Single crystals of 6H–SiC were implanted at room temperature with 4-MeV Au ions to a fluence of 10^15?cm^?2. Raman spectra showed that full amorphization was achieved. The recrystallization process was studied by micro-Raman spectrometry after isochronal thermal annealing between 700 and 1500°C. The spectra permitted the evolution upon annealing of Si–C bonds, and also of Si–Si and C–C bonds, to be followed. Amorphous phase relaxation takes place below 700°C; then recrystallization of the 6H polytype sets in at 700°C. At 900°C crystallites with different crystalline states are formed. Moreover, Raman spectra provide evidence of graphitic nanocluster formation at 1500°C.     

Frequent Versus Non-frequent Prompts and Task Performance in Persons with Severe Intellectual Disability

Abstract

This study extended the evaluation of frequent vs non-frequent prompts to support task performance with people with severe intellectual disability. Three participants were involved in the study. The data indicated that the frequent prompts strategy promoted higher levels of on-task behaviour and correct responding for 2 participants and on-task behaviour for 1 participant. The relation of these data with previous findings and their implications for daily occupation programmes for persons with severe developmental disabilities are discussed     

An iterative procedure for extracting skill maps from data

The methodologies for the construction of a knowledge structure mainly refer to the query to experts, the skill maps, and the data-driven approaches. This last method is of growing interest in recent literature. In this paper, an iterative procedure for building a skill map from a set of data is introduced. This procedure is based on the minimization of the distance between the knowledge structure delineated by a given skill map and the data. The accuracy of the proposed method is tested through a number of simulation studies where the amount of noise in the data is manipulated as well as the kind of structure to be reconstructed. Results show that the procedure is accurate and that its performance tends to be sufficiently stable even with high error rates. The procedure is compared to two already-existing methodologies to derive knowledge structures from a set of data. The use of the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) as a stopping criterion of the iterative reconstruction procedure is tested against the app criterion introduced by Schrepp. Moreover, two empirical applications on clinical data are reported, and their results show the applicability of the procedure.     

A computer-based system providing pictorial instructions and prompts to promote task performance in persons with severe developmental disabilities

This study was aimed at assessing a new computer-based system to promote task performance in three adults with severe developmental disabilities. The new system, which was small and battery powered, could provide auditory and vibratory prompts in addition to pictorial instructions concerning the task steps. To control for the effects of the computer-based system, the subjects were also exposed to a card system. The results showed that the subjects had a significantly higher level of correct performance on the tasks presented with the computer-based system than on the tasks presented with the card system. Two of the subjects, moreover, seemed to prefer the computer-based system to the card system. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.