Identifying environmental contributions to autism: provocative clues and false leads

The potential role of environmental factors in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is an area of emerging interest within the public and scientific communities. The high degree of heritability of ASD suggests that environmental influences are likely to operate through their interaction with genetic susceptibility during vulnerable periods of development. Evaluation of the plausibility of specific neurotoxicants as etiological agents in ASD should be guided by toxicological principles, including dose-effect dependency and pharmacokinetic parameters. Clinical and epidemiological investigations require the use of sufficiently powered study designs with appropriate control groups and unbiased case ascertainment and exposure assessment. Although much of the existing data that have been used to implicate environmental agents in ASD are limited by methodological shortcomings, a number of efforts are underway that will allow more rigorous evaluation of the role of environmental exposures in the etiology and/or phenotypic expression of the disorder. Surveillance systems are now in place that will provide reliable prevalence estimates going forward in time. Anticipated discoveries in genetics, brain pathology, and the molecular/cellular basis of functional impairment in ASD are likely to provide new opportunities to explore environmental aspects of this disorder.     

A longitudinal study of gender-related cognition and behaviour

Gender schema theory proposes that children's acquisition of gender labels and gender stereotypes informs gender-congruent behaviour. Most previous studies have been cross-sectional and do not address the temporal relationship between knowledge and behaviour. We report the results of a longitudinal study of gender knowledge and sex-typed behaviour across three domains in children tested at 24 and 36 months (N = 56). Although both knowledge and sex-typed behaviour increased significantly between 2 and 3 years, there was no systematic pattern of cross-lagged correlations between the two, although some concurrent relationships were present at 24 months. Future longitudinal work might profitably focus on younger children using reliable preverbal measures of gender knowledge and employing a shorter lag between measurement times.     

Collecting responses through Web page drag and drop

This article describes how to collect responses from experimental participants using drag and drop on a Web page. In particular, we describe how drag and drop can be used in a text search task in which participants read a text and then locate and categorize certain elements of the text (e.g., to identify the main claim of a persuasive paragraph). Using this technique, participants respond by clicking on a text segment and dragging it to a screen field or icon. We have successfully used this technique in both the argument element identification experiment that we describe here and a tutoring system that we created to teach students to identify source characteristics while reading historical texts (Britt, Perfetti, Van Dyke, &; Gabrys, 2000). The implementation described here exploits the capability of recent versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser to handle embedded XML documents and drag and drop events.     

Psychological research online: report of Board of Scientific Affairs' Advisory Group on the Conduct of Research on the Internet

As the Internet has changed communication, commerce, and the distribution of information, so too it is changing psychological research. Psychologists can observe new or rare phenomena online and can do research on traditional psychological topics more efficiently, enabling them to expand the scale and scope of their research. Yet these opportunities entail risk both to research quality and to human subjects. Internet research is inherently no more risky than traditional observational, survey, or experimental methods. Yet the risks and safeguards against them will differ from those characterizing traditional research and will themselves change over time. This article describes some benefits and challenges of conducting psychological research via the Internet and offers recommendations to both researchers and institutional review boards for dealing with them. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creating activity schedules using Microsoft Powerpoint

We describe how PowerPoint presentation software can be used to create computer activity schedules to teach individuals with special needs. Presented are the steps involved in creating activity schedules with close-ended and open-ended activities, and for preparing schedules that include photos, sounds, text, and videos that can be used to occasion an individual's engagement in a variety of learning activities.     

Assessment of therapists' and patients' personality: relationship to therapeutic technique and outcome in brief dynamic psychotherapy

My first focus of this study was to explore therapists' personal characteristics as predictors of the proportion of interpretation in brief dynamic psychotherapy (N=39; maximum 40 sessions). In this study, I used data from the Norwegian Multicenter Study on Process and Outcome of Psychotherapy (1995). The main finding was that therapists who had experienced good parental care gave less interpretation (28% variance was accounted for). Therapists who had more negative introjects used a higher proportion of interpretation (16% variance was accounted for). Patients' pretreatment characteristics were not predictive of therapists' use of interpretation. The second focus was to investigate the impact of therapists' personality and the proportion of interpretation on the development of patients' maladaptive defensive functioning over the course of therapy. Better parental care and less negative introjects in therapists were associated with a positive influence and accounted for 5% variance in the reduction of patients' maladaptive defense.     

A comparative study of values and attitudes of inner-city and middle-class postpartum women

This study compared postpartum women from the inner city (n = 94) and postpartum women from the urban middle class (n = 80) on values and goals for themselves and their newborn children. Terminal values of inner-city women for themselves related more to social and religious goals in contrast to the more intrapersonal and personal goals of middle-class women. Instrumental values of inner-city women for their newborn children demonstrated concern with conformity and control, whereas for the middle class there was more concern with competence. Goals for the near future of the inner-city mothers were based on a desire for jobs and education.     

Multimodal classical conditioning of fear: contributions of direct, observational, and verbal experiences to current fears

The authors propose that a multimodal classical conditioning model be considered when clinicians or clinical researchers study the etiology of fears and anxieties learned by human beings. They argue that fears can be built through the combined effects of direct, observed, and verbally presented classical conditioning trials. Multimodal classical conditioning is offered as an alternative to the three pathways to fear argument prominent in the human fear literature. In contrast to the three pathways position, the authors present theoretical arguments for why "learning by observation" and "learning through the receipt of verbal information" should be considered classical conditioning through observational and verbal modes. The paper includes a demonstration of how data, commonly collected in research on the three pathways to fear, would be studied differently using a multimodal classical conditioning perspective. Finally, the authors discuss implications for assessment, treatment, and prevention of learned fears in humans.     

Framing social information and generalized social phobia

Patients with generalized social phobia (GSP, N=33) and matched community controls (N=31) engaged in a social interaction that was constructed to go well, and then received feedback that framed social cues reflecting either the absence of negative outcomes or the presence of positive outcomes. Following feedback that framed positive social cues, the GSP group predicted they would experience more anxiety in a subsequent interaction than did non-phobic controls. In contrast, following feedback framing the absence of negative outcomes, the GSP group did not differ from controls in their anxiety predictions. The results demonstrated that framing paradigms and methods can be usefully applied to the study of cognitive processes in social phobia and indicated that research to examine how GSP patients process specific types of social information is needed.     

Illicit drug use and risky sexual behavior among African American and Puerto Rican urban adolescents: the longitudinal links

The authors assessed whether (a) early illicit drug use predicted later risky sexual activity, (b) early risky sex predicted later illicit drug use, and (c) common factors affected both risky sexual behavior and illicit drug use. African American and Puerto Rican youth completed questionnaires in their classrooms at Time 1 (T1) and face-to-face interviews with the authors in their homes 5 years later at Time 2 (T2). Logistic regression analyses showed the association between T1 illicit drug use and T2 risky sexual activity and between T1 risky sexual behavior and T2 illicit drug use. With few exceptions, T1 illicit drug use was associated with all of the T2 risky sexual behaviors. After controlling for demographic factors, the authors found that multiple sex partners at T1 was not related to illicit drug use at T2. Condom use at T1 was related to illicit drug use at T2, whereas sexually transmitted diseases and adolescent pregnancy were not related to this drug use. The findings indicated that assessments of and treatments for substance use should focus on the risky sexual behaviors that seem to accompany illicit drug use.