FUNCTIONAL ASSESSMENT,CURRICULAR REVISION,AND SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

An adolescent female with multiple handicaps and a long history of severely disruptive behavior participated in a functional assessment linked directly to specific revisions in her school curriculum. During Phase 1, reversal designs were used to test hypotheses pertaining to antecedent and auricular influences on problem behavior. During Phase 2, a multiple baseline across afternoon and morning time periods demonstrated that the auricular revisions were effective in eliminating severely disruptive behavior and increasing on-task responding. Data also showed that inappropriate “psychotic” speech was reduced and appropriate social interactions were increased. Follow-up results showed that the changes were maintained throughout the school year. Questionnaire data provided social validation of the procedures and outcomes. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for functional assessment, individualized curricula, and positive programming for students with disabilities and serious behavior problems.     

Binocular depth discrimination depends on orientation

Using both the method of adjustment and forced-choice techniques, it was found that binocular depth thresholds depend on the orientation of the test targets, which in these experiments consisted of long, thin rods. Stereoacuity is greatest with vertical rods and decreases progressively as the angle of orientation approaches horizontal. The relationship between stereoacuity and orientation is governed by the orientation of the images of the targets on the retina, and is predicted fairly well by the sine of the angle of orientation, suggesting an equivalence between angular rotation and reductions in rod length.     

Neuropsychological testing: evolution and emerging trends

Neuropsychological (NP) test batteries have evolved as an amalgam of intelligence tests, various individual measures of "biological" cognition, and sensory and motor testing. The early emphasis of NP testing was to identify "organicity" and central nervous system lesion localization. More recent approaches have emphasized the profiling of performance across individual neurocognitive domains (eg, attention, memory, and language) to facilitate diagnosis and treatment planning. However, the field is still hampered by the use of many tests that are antiquated, excessively long, or of dubious psychometric quality. Some of these problems may have contributed to the current under-utilization of NP testing in diagnostic workups of neuropsychiatric disorders. This paper reviews some of the recent changes in the field that hold promise for substantially shortening assessments, improving diagnostic reliability, and making NP testing more cost-effective and practical.     

A replication of the MMPI-A PSY-5 scales and development of facet subscales

McNulty, Harkness, Ben-Porath and Williams recently developed Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) scales for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-A (MMPI-A). This study examined these new scales in a sample of 545 adolescents receiving inpatient psychiatric treatment. Item-level principal components analyses were employed to determine the internal structure of each PSY-5 scale and to aid in the creation of facet subscales for each PSY-5 scale. Results suggest that the MMPI-A PSY-5 scales display adequate internal consistency and our findings generally replicate the original work of McNulty et al. but also extend this work by showing that several of the PSY-5 scales may also be subdivided into meaningful lower level dimensions. These facet subscales for each of the MMPI-A PSY-5 scales are offered for further study.