Caregiver‐mediated joint attention intervention

Joint attention is a pivotal social communication skill often absent or impaired in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Joint attention is the shared and alternating attention of two individuals on an object or event, and has implications for later communication and social communication skills. This study used a concurrent multiple‐baseline design across 3 caregiver–child dyads to train caregivers to teach response to joint attention behaviors to their 3–6 years old children with moderate to severe autism spectrum disorder. Caregivers were trained on strategies including prompting, time delay, and elements of naturalistic teaching and implemented the intervention in brief 10‐min sessions 2–3 times per week. Results indicate parent mastery of intervention and substantial increase in child response to joint attention behaviors both prompted and independent. Implications for practice and areas for future research are discussed.     

An Examination of the Moderating Effect of Core Self-Evaluations and the Mediating Effect of Self-Set Goals on the Primed Goal-Task Performance Relationship

An understudied issue in the goal priming literature is why the same prime can provoke different responses in different people. The current research sheds light on this issue by investigating whether an individual difference variable, core self-evaluations (CSE), accounts for different responses from the same prime. Based on the findings of experiments showing that individuals with high CSE have higher performance after consciously setting a task-related goal than individuals with lower CSE, two hypotheses were tested: (1) Individuals who score high on CSE perform better following a subconsciously primed goal for achievement than do individuals who score low on CSE, and (2) this effect is mediated by a self-set goal. Two laboratory experiments (n = 207, 191) and one field experiment (n = 62) provided support for the hypotheses. These findings suggest that personality variables such as the CSE can provide an explanation for the “many effects of the one prime problem”.     

Infant mental health home visiting therapists’ reflective supervision self-efficacy in community practice settings

In recent years, there has been an increase in the research on reflective supervision, including the development of tools designed to measure reflective practice in the context of reflective supervision. The Reflective Supervision Self-Efficacy Scale for Supervisees (RSSESS) is a self-report measure that has been used in previous evaluations and is designed to assess perceived reflective practice self-efficacy for Infant Mental Health-Home Visiting (IMH-HV) therapists. Properties of the RSSESS including factor structure and reliability are explored in a first study that lays the foundation for the use of the RSSESS in an IMH-HV evaluation in the State of Michigan. IMH-HV therapists completed the RSSESS at 4 time points over a 12-month period and also completed a Clinician Profile Form that included questions about their IMH background and their work experience, including job satisfaction and burnout. Results indicated that the RSSESS is a reliable tool to measure change in reflective practice skills. IMH-HV therapists demonstrated growth in their use of reflective practice skills with families and their observational skills over the 12-month period. In addition, results indicated correlations between reflective supervision self-efficacy and job satisfaction as well as burnout.     

SELF-MAKING IN EXILE: MORAL EMPLACEMENT BY SYRIAN REFUGEE WOMEN IN JORDAN

This article brings an anthropology of ethics to bear on a case of forced migration and displacement among Syrian refugee women in Jordan. The case reveals how projects of Islamic self-making in displacement become “emplacement” processes within the new state-mediated context. Syrian women in Jordan engage in Islamic self-making as part of their wider emplacement practices in two primary ways: first, operating more publicly in the material world through Islamically-inspired actions and rituals than in Syria. Second, utilizing narratives of Islamic histories to establish dignity in conditions of precarity in exile. Using two focus groups in urban Jordan and participant observation in two religion classes in a Syrian refugee camp, this article focuses on these practices of Islamic self-making that serve an important role in the projects of moral emplacement for Syrian women in the Jordanian context.     

‘Please sort these voice recordings into 2 identities’: Effects of task instructions on performance in voice sorting studies

We investigated the effects of two types of task instructions on performance on a voice sorting task by listeners who were either familiar or unfamiliar with the voices. Listeners were asked to sort 15 naturally varying stimuli from two voice identities into perceived identities. Half of the listeners sorted the recordings freely into as many identities as they perceived; the other half were forced to sort stimuli into two identities only. As reported in previous studies, unfamiliar listeners formed more clusters than familiar listeners. Listeners therefore perceived different naturally varying stimuli from the same identity as coming from different identities, while being highly accurate at telling apart the stimuli from different voices. We further show that a change in task instructions – forcing listeners to sort stimuli into two identities only – helped unfamiliar listeners to overcome this selective failure at ‘telling people together’. This improvement, however, came at the cost of an increase in errors in telling people apart. For familiar listeners, similar non-significant trends were apparent. Therefore, even when informed about correct number of identities, listeners may fail to accurately perceive identity further highlighting that voice identity perception in the context of natural within-person variability is a challenging task. We discuss our results in terms of similarities and differences to findings in the face perception literature and their importance in applied settings, such as forensic voice identification.     

The stability of function of automatically reinforced vocal stereotypy over time

Although prior research has suggested the function of socially reinforced problem behavior can change across time, the stability of the function of automatically reinforced behavior is largely unknown. Further, some authors have suggested automatically reinforced behavior is likely to enter into socially mediated contingencies. The present study compared 2 functional analyses conducted on the same target behavior at least 1 year apart. Participants were 6 individuals diagnosed with an intellectual or developmental disability displaying automatically reinforced vocal stereotypy. Results indicated the function of each participant's vocal stereotypy remained stable over time (i.e., no new functions were acquired); however, future research on functional stability for automatically reinforced behavior of other topographies is needed.     

Preference for free or forced choice in Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii)

Empirical investigations of humans, pigeons, rats, and monkeys have indicated that these species will select free over forced choice, even when faced with identical outcomes. However, the same has yet to be quantitatively confirmed in nonhuman great apes. This experiment is the first systematic investigation of preference for free or forced choice in great apes using a paradigm in which extraneous variables are highly controlled. Three orangutans were given a choice of one of two virtual routes, one that provided a choice and one that did not via a touchscreen computer program. Choice of either route was rewarded with the same type and quantity of food. Initial results indicated a preference for free choice across all three participants. However, in two control conditions, orangutans' preferences varied, suggesting a weaker tendency to exercise choice than species previously tested. We suggest further investigation of preference for free and forced choice in orangutans and other great apes through alternative experimental paradigms that focus on increasing the fidelity of free and forced choice options.     

Stimulus control depends on the subjective value of the outcome

Stimuli that provide information about likely future reinforcers tend to shift behavior, provided a reliable relation between the stimulus and the reinforcer can be discriminated. Stimuli that are apparently more reliable exert greater control over behavior. We asked how the subjective value (measured in terms of preference) of reinforcers associated with stimuli influences stimulus control. Five pigeons worked on a concurrent chains procedure in which half of all trials ended in a smaller reinforcer sooner, and the other half in a larger reinforcer later. In Signaled trials, the color and flash duration on the keys in the initial link signaled the outcome of the trial. In Conflicting probe trials, the color and the flash duration signaled conflicting information about the outcome of the trial. Choice in Signaled trials shifted toward the signaled outcome, but was never exclusive. In Conflicting probe trials, control was divided idiosyncratically between the 2 stimulus dimensions, but still favored the outcome with the higher subjective value. Thus, stimulus control depends not only on the perceived reliability of stimuli, but also on the subjective value of the outcome.