Interference Control in Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

The view that Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is associated with a diminished ability to control interfference is controversial and based exclusively on results of (verbal)-visual interference tasks, primarily the Stroop Color Word task. The present study compares medication-naïve children with ADHD (n?=?35 and n?=?51 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) with normal controls (n?=?26 and n?=?32, respectively) on two interference tasks to assess interference control in both the auditory and the visual modality: an Auditory Stroop task and a Simon task. Both groups showed reliable but equal degrees of interference on both tasks, suggesting that children with ADHD do not differ from normal controls in their ability to control interference in either modality.     

An evaluation of intraverbal training to generate socially appropriate responses to novel questions

Four preschool children (with and without disabilities), who often responded inappropriately to questions, participated in the current study. Pretest results were used to create sets of questions that the children either did or did not answer correctly (i.e., known and unknown questions). We then sequentially taught two different responses to a subset of unknown questions: (a) "I don't know" (IDK), and (b) "I don't know, please tell me" (IDKPTM). Results showed that following acquisition with the target set, both responses generalized across questions and teachers for all participants. Following IDK training, some undesirable generalization of IDK to known questions occurred for 3 participants. Training of IDKPTM with the addition of a restricted reinforcement contingency was sufficient to establish correct answers to a portion of previously unknown questions. The importance of teaching generalized responses that enable the acquisition of novel intraverbals is discussed.     

The usefulness of the story recall test in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease

ABSTRACT

Background: The story recall test (SRT) is one of the most reliable neuropsychological assessments for evaluating verbal memory function in order to distinguish between individuals with normal aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease (AD). The SRT is analogous to the logical memory test in Wechsler Memory Scale-III, which has recently been developed and standardized to apply to older adults in Korea. The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of the SRT and its ability to discriminate between normal cognitive aging and patients with MCI or AD. Methods: One hundred and twelve patients with MCI, 97 patients with AD, and 53 healthy elderly adults participated in this study. The SRT was compared with the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), Korean version of the Mini Mental State Examination (K-MMSE), and the Korean version of the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (K-HVLT). Results: The SRT was well-correlated with the dementia rating scales and the K-HVLT. However, the sensitivity and specificity of the SRT was greatly influenced by the level of education of the subjects. Conclusions: The SRT is a sensitive measurement of verbal memory function that can be used in clinical settings to discriminate between normal memory functioning and the very early and moderate stages of AD in a Korean population. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the SRT is more appropriate for subjects with a high level of education rather than a low level of education to differentiate normal cognitive aging from MCI or AD.     

Partial remediation of speaker and listener behaviors in people with severe dementia

We investigated the effects of contingent reinforcement (Intervention 1) and contingent reinforcement with modeling (Intervention 2) on speaker and listener behaviors in 5 people with severe dementia. Intervention 1 generally increased listener behavior; there was no clear effect on tacting, but echoic behavior increased in the one case investigated. Given the weak baseline repertoires of these clients and the paucity of other effective interventions, even the small increases in verbal behaviors found here are important. Further gains may be achieved, for example, if reinforcement opportunity per trial type were to be increased from one to several per day or if participants were trained to echo the listener stimulus in mand compliance tasks.     

Equivalence classes in individuals with minimal verbal repertoires

Studies from two different laboratories tested for equivalence classes in individuals with severe mental retardation and minimal verbal repertoires. In the first study, 3 individuals learned several matching-to-sample performances: matching picture comparison stimuli to dictated-word sample stimuli (AB), matching those same pictures to printed letter samples (CB), and also matching the pictures to nonrepresentative forms (DB). On subsequent tests, all individuals immediately displayed Emergent Relations AC, AD, BC, BD, CD, and DC, together constituting a positive demonstration of equivalence (as defined by Sidman). The second study obtained a positive equivalence test outcome in 1 of 2 individuals with similarly minimal verbal repertoires. Taken together, these studies call into question previous assertions that equivalence classes are demonstrable only in individuals with well-developed language repertoires.     

The level of cholinergic nucleus basalis activation controls the specificity of auditory associative memory

Learning involves not only the establishment of memory per se, but also the specific details of its contents. In classical conditioning, the former concerns whether an association was learned while the latter discloses what was learned. The neural bases of associativity have been studied extensively while neural mechanisms of memory specificity have been neglected. Stimulation of the cholinergic nucleus basalis (NBs) paired with a preceding tone induces CS-specific associative memory. As different levels of acetylcholine may be released naturally during different learning situations, we asked whether the level of activation of the cholinergic neuromodulatory system can control the degree of detail that is encoded and retrieved. Adult male rats were tested pre- and post-training for behavioral responses (interruption of ongoing respiration) to tones of various frequencies (1-15 kHz, 70 dB, 2 s). Training consisted of 200 trials/day of tone (8.0 kHz, 70 dB, 2 s) either paired or unpaired with NBs (CS-NBs = 1.8 s) at moderate (65.7+/-9.0 microA, one day) or weak (46.7+/-12.1 microA, three training days) levels of stimulation, under conditions of controlled behavioral state (pre-trial stable respiration rate). Post-training (24 h) responses to tones revealed that moderate activation induced both associative and CS-specific behavioral memory, whereas weak activation produced associative memory lacking frequency specificity. The degree of memory specificity 24 h after training was positively correlated with the magnitude of CS-elicited increase in gamma activity within the EEG during training, but only in the moderate NBs group. Thus, a low level of acetylcholine released by the nucleus basalis during learning is sufficient to induce associativity whereas a higher level of release enables the storage of greater experiential detail. gamma waves, which are thought to reflect the coordinated activity of cortical cells, appear to index the encoding of CS detail. The findings demonstrate that the amount of detail in memory can be directly controlled by neural intervention.     

A methodology for assessing the functions of emerging speech in children with developmental disabilities

An approach based on Skinner's (1957) theory of verbal behavior has been developed to understand and teach elementary communication skills to children with autism and developmental disabilities (Sundberg & Partington, 1998). However, few studies have directly examined the characteristics of emerging language in children with developmental disabilities. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an assessment for identifying the elementary functions of vocal speech in children. Participants were 4 children with developmental disabilities, aged 6 years to 12 years, who exhibited at least one distinguishable vocal response (word or phrase) frequently in the natural environment. The assessment focused on three verbal operants delineated by Skinner (mand, tact, and intraverbal). One or more functions were identified for at least one vocal response of each child. Results suggested that this assessment would be useful for (a) evaluating Skinner's theory, (b) guiding decisions about language training for individual children, and (c) studying the nature of expressive language development in children with developmental disabilities.     

Preintervention analysis and improvement of customer greeting in a restaurant

We examined customer greeting by employees at one location of a sandwich restaurant chain. First, a preintervention analysis was conducted to determine the conditions under which greeting a customer within 3 s of his or her entry into the restaurant did and did not occur. Results suggested that an appropriate customer greeting was most likely to occur when a door chime was used to indicate that a customer had entered the store and when the store manager was present behind the service counter. Next, a performance improvement intervention, which consisted of the combination of the use of a door chime and manager presence, was evaluated. Results showed that during baseline, a mean of 6% of customers were greeted; during intervention a mean of 63% of customers were greeted. The addition of manager-delivered verbal and graphic group feedback resulted in 100% of customers being greeted across two consecutive sessions.     

Behavioral treatment of children with phonological disorder: the efficacy of vocal imitation and sufficient-response-exemplar training

This study examined whether sufficient-response-exemplar training of vocal imitation would result in improved articulation in children with phonological disorder, and whether improved articulation established in the context of vocal imitation would transfer to other verbal classes such as object naming and conversational speech. Participant 1 was 6 years old and attended first grade in a regular public school. Participant 2 was 5 years 4 months old and attended a public kindergarten. Both participants had normal hearing and no additional handicaps. A multiple baseline design across behaviors (target sounds or blends) was employed to examine whether the vocal imitation training resulted in improved articulation. Results showed that both participants improved articulation once training was implemented, and that the improved articulation transferred from vocal imitation to more natural speech such as object naming and conversational speech. Improvement established during training was maintained posttraining and at a 6-month follow-up.