Creating a Space for Acknowledgment and Generativity in Reflective Group Supervision

Small group supervision is a powerful venue for generative conversations because of the multiplicity of perspectives available and the potential for an appreciative audience to a practitioner's work. At the same time, the well‐intentioned reflections by a few practitioners in a room can inadvertently duplicate normative discourses that circulate in the wider culture and the profession. This article explores the use of narrative practices for benefiting from the advantages of group supervision while mindful of the vulnerability that comes with sharing one's work among colleagues. The reflective group supervision processes described were modified from the work of Tom Andersen and Michael White to provide a venue that encourages the creative multiplicity of group conversation while discouraging unhelpful discourses which constrain generative conversation.     

Starting research in interaction design with visuals for low-functioning children in the autistic spectrum: a protocol.

On starting to think about interaction design for low-functioning persons in the autistic spectrum (PAS), especially children, one finds a number of questions that are difficult to answer: Can we typify the PAS user? Can we engage the user in interactive communication without generating frustrating or obsessive situations? What sort of visual stimuli can we provide? Will they prefer representational or abstract visual stimuli? Will they understand three-dimensional (3D) graphic representation? What sort of interfaces will they accept? Can we set ambitious goals such as education or therapy? Unfortunately, most of these questions have no answer yet. Hence, we decided to set an apparently simple goal: to design a "fun application," with no intention to reach the level of education or therapy. The goal was to be attained by giving the users a sense of agency--by providing first a sense of control in the interaction dialogue. Our approach to visual stimuli design has been based on the use of geometric, abstract, two-dimensional (2D), real-time computer graphics in a full-body, non-invasive, interactive space. The results obtained within the European-funded project MultiSensory Environment Design for an Interface between Autistic and Typical Expressiveness (MEDIATE) have been extremely encouraging.     

Gaze behavior in audiovisual speech perception: the influence of ocular fixations on the McGurk effect

We conducted three experiments in order to examine the influence of gaze behavior and fixation on audiovisual speech perception in a task that required subjects to report the speech sound they perceived during the presentation of congruent and incongruent (McGurk) audiovisual stimuli. Experiment 1 showed that the subjects' natural gaze behavior rarely involved gaze fixations beyond the oral and ocular regions of the talker's face and that these gaze fixations did not predict the likelihood of perceiving the McGurk effect. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that manipulation of the subjects' gaze fixations within the talker's face did not influence audiovisual speech perception substantially and that it was not until the gaze was displaced beyond 10 degrees - 20 degrees from the talker's mouth that the McGurk effect was significantly lessened. Nevertheless, the effect persisted under such eccentric viewing conditions and became negligible only when the subject's gaze was directed 60 degrees eccentrically. These findings demonstrate that the analysis of high spatial frequency information afforded by direct oral foveation is not necessary for the successful processing of visual speech information.     

Gender differences in acute and chronic stress in Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats.

While females are considered more susceptible to depressive behavior, this assertion is not strongly supported by the experimental literature. Since stress contributes to depressive behavior, male and female Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats were exposed to either one session (acute stress) or 5 sessions (chronic stress) of restraint plus cold in order to study depressive behavior in male and female rats. After their respective treatment exposure, rats were tested in the open field test (OFT) and for retention of a passive-avoidance (P-A) task. One stress session resulted in significant immobility in the OFT for males, whereas 5 sessions were required to produce similar immobility in female rats. Acute stress interfered with the retention of the P-A response for males, while both acute and chronic stress produced poor P-A responses in female rats. Food consumption decreased progressively, as a function of stress sessions, in female rats, whereas feeding in males returned to control levels after five stress days. Both acute and chronic stress exacerbated the stress ulcer response in male rats, but not in female rats. Chronic, but not acute, stress resulted in an increase in serotonin transporter mRNA levels in the dorsal raphe nucleus of both male and female rats. The general consensus from these data suggested that female rats were more vulnerable to chronic stress and consequently supported the notion that females may be more susceptible to stress-induced behavioral depression. Key Words: WKY rats, acute and chronic stress, gender, passive avoidance, open field behavior, stress-ulcer, adrenal weight, serotonin, dorsal raphe nucleus     

Effect of stress on the behavior and 5-HT system in Sprague-Dawley and Wistar Kyoto rat strains

The effects of chronic novel stressors, for 21 days, on the behavior and the serotoninergic (5-HT) system in Sprague-Dawley (SD) and Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats were studied. Open-field and forced-swim tests revealed a significantly greater behavioral depression in the WKY strain. SD rats showed a decrease in³H-DPAT binding to 5-HT_1A receptors in the hippocampus, whereas WKY rats revealed an increase in³H-DPAT binding in the hippocampus and hypothalamus. Stress did not appear to alter the binding of³H-DPAT to 5-HT_1A sites in the dorsal raphe or median raphe in either strains. SD rats revealed a modest increase in 5-HT transporter (5-HTT) sites in the cortex; WKY rats revealed a decrease in 5-HTT sites in the cortex and the hippocampus. Stress caused an increase in³H-CNIMI binding to 5-HTT sites in the dorsal and median raphe nuclei in both strains. The results suggest that the greater susceptibility to behavioral depression in WKY rats may account for the differential effects on 5HT_1A sites as well as 5-HTT sites in limbic regions and cell body area as compared to SD rats.     

Preparation and postoperative care of an esophageal fistula in the dog

A modification of Pavlov’s surgical procedure for preparing an esophageal fistula is described, including the method of feeding and after-care, preserving the life of the animal without loss of weight.     

Web-based image norming: How do object familiarity and visual complexity ratings compare when collected in-lab versus online?

It has been demonstrated previously that, for some experimental paradigms, Web-based research can reliably replicate lab-based results. Yet questions remain as to what types of research can be reproduced, and where differences arise when they cannot be. The present article examines the effect of research location (laboratory vs. online) on normative data collection tasks. Specifically, participants were randomly assigned to a laboratory or online condition and were asked to rate 593 photorealistic images on the basis of object familiarity (N=5 103) and object visual complexity (N=5 98). Dependent measures were compared across location conditions, including response latencies and image rating agreement. Our results suggest that norming data collected online are reliable, but an interesting interplay between task type and research location was observed. Specifically, we found that participating online (i.e., a more familiar environment) leads to systematically higher familiarity ratings than in the lab (i.e., an unfamiliar environment). These differences are not found when the alternate complexity rating task is used.