Calvin O. Schrag,The Self After Postmodernity

Continental Philosophy Review -     

Differentiation Matching in School Desegregation Workshops

The effectiveness of matching the conceptual structure of participants in educational training and psychotherapy experiences has been demonstrated in previous research. This paper describes an attempt to test the effectiveness of this model in a school desegregation workshop designed to promote a mandatory bussing proposal by a local school board. Differentiation matching had little effect on participants' global judgments of satisfaction with workshop goals but was significantly and inversely related to the decision to voluntarily bus a child, especially among blacks. Abstractness of topics discussed affected participant endorsement of workshop goals but did not affect bussing decision. The findings suggest that how such workshops are organized is dependent on whether the workshop success is to be evaluated on the basis of community public relations or actual decisions to bus children.     

Control of echolalic speech in psychotic children

Immediate echolalia, a common language disorder in psychotic children, was studied in a series of replicated single-subject designs across six schizophrenic and five normal children. In Experiment 1, each child was presented with several questions and commands, some of which set the occasion for specific, appropriate responses and some of which did not. The former were referred to as discriminative stimuli and the latter, as neutral stimuli. The psychotic children tended to echo the neutral stimuli while responding appropriately to the discriminative stimuli; the normal children, in contrast, typically echoed neither type of stimulus. In Experiment 2, three psychotic children were taught appropriate responses to each of several neutral stimuli. Following this training, the children generally responded appropriately to these stimuli without echoing. A plausible interpretation of these results is that the neutral stimuli were initially incomprehensible or meaningless to the children (whereas the discriminative stimuli were comprehensible or meaningful) and that verbal incomprehensibility may be one important determinant of immediate echolalia. Finally, the results are noteworthy in that they isolate a sufficient treatment variable (i.e., the reinforcement of alternative, nonecholalic responses) for eliminating instances of this language anomaly.     

Review of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) for Prenatal and Pediatric Genetic Counselors

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive neuromuscular condition with degeneration of the anterior horn cells in the spinal column. Five SMA subtypes exist with classification dependent upon the motor milestones achieved. Study of the SMN1 (survival motor neuron) and SMN2 genes as well as the concepts of the “2?+?0” carriers, gene conversion, de novo mutations and intragenic mutations allow for a better understanding of SMA. Detailing the carrier and diagnostic testing options further deepens the genetic counselor’s knowledge of SMA. A review of care guidelines and research options is included as this information gives a patient a well-rounded view of SMA. Although SMA is most commonly associated with the SMN1 gene, a number of spinal muscular atrophies not caused by genetic changes in this gene may be included as differential diagnoses until confirmatory testing can be completed. SMA is a complex condition requiring a detailed knowledge on the genetic counselor’s part in order to explain the disorder to the patient with clarity thus facilitating increased communication and decision making guidance with the patient.     

An Evaluation of a Brief Multiple-Stimulus Without Replacement Preference Assessment Conducted in an Electronic Pictorial Format

We compared the results of a brief electronic pictorial multiple-stimulus without replacement (EP-MSWO) preference assessment to a brief tangible MSWO preference assessment in five children with autism. Results of both assessments yielded a match between high preferred (HP) toys for four participants and low preferred toys for three participants. The overall correlation between assessments across participants was strong and statistically significant (ρ = .67, p < .01). A reinforcer assessment conducted with three participants confirmed HP toys identified in the EP-MSWO functioned as reinforcers.     

Parents’ Experiences of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Among Adolescents and Young Adults

We assessed the impact of adolescent nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) on parents in two studies. In Study 1, 16 Australian parents of adolescents with a history of nonsuicidal self-injury responded to open-ended questions about their child’s nonsuicidal self-injury. Data from 10 of the adolescents were matched with parents’ responses regarding the nature and extent of nonsuicidal self-injury, revealing that parents underestimated the frequency of nonsuicidal self-injury, the age of onset, and the likelihood their child would continue to self-injure. In Study 2, 22 American parents of adolescents with a history of nonsuicidal self-injury participated in interviews about their experiences. Parents in both studies reported changes in the parent–adolescent relationship after self-injury, which posed challenges to the family unit. When professional help had been sought, experiences were largely negative. Results support further investigation into family-based interventions to equip parents with tools to better relate to, and communicate with, their adolescent following self-injury. Results also suggest that mental-health professionals and general practitioners may require further training for nonsuicidal self-injury.     

Pop-out and pop-in: Visual working memory advantages for unique items

Attentional control is thought to play a critical role in determining the amount of information that can be stored and retrieved from visual working memory (VWM). We tested whether and how task-irrelevant feature-based salience, known to affect the control of visual attention, affects VWM performance. Our results show that features of a task-irrelevant color singleton are more likely to be recalled from VWM than non-singleton items and that this increased memorability comes at a cost to the other items in the display. Furthermore, the singleton effect in VWM was negatively correlated with an individual’s baseline VWM capacity. Taken together, these results suggest that individual differences in VWM storage capacity may be partially attributable to the ability to ignore differences in task-irrelevant physical salience.     

The sexual dimorphic association of cardiorespiratory fitness to working memory in children

The present investigation examined the sexual dimorphic patterns of cardiorespiratory fitness to working memory in preadolescent children (age range: 7.7–10.9). Data were collected in three separate studies (Study 1: n = 97, 42 females; Study 2: n = 95, 45 females; Study 3: n = 84, 37 females). All participants completed a cardiorespiratory fitness assessment in addition to a specific measure of working memory (i.e. the operation span task, the n‐back task, or the Sternberg task). Results from all three samples revealed that higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels were associated with better working memory performance only for males with no such relation observed for females. In addition, the sexually dimorphic pattern was selective for the most challenging working memory conditions in each task. Together, these findings reveal new evidence that cardiorespiratory fitness is selectively related to better working memory performance for male children. This investigation provides additional insight into how interventions aimed at improving fitness may influence cognitive development differentially among preadolescent children.