Étude des comportements-problèmes de 148 adultes atteints de troubles du spectre autistiques institutionnalisés

Objectives

We studied adults with autism spectrum disorder living in a specialized residential care home (n = 148). The participants’ behavioral problems were assessed using the French-language Scale for the Observation of Behavioral Problems in Adults with Autism (Échelle Pour l’Observation des Comportements-problèmes d’Adultes avec Autisme, EPOCAA; Recordon-Gaboriaud & Granier-Deferre). The study's main objectives were to (i) replicate the data from the EPOCAA reference group in a new sample of institutionalized adults, and (ii) study the impact of intellectual disability and medication on the EPOCAA scale. Our first hypothesis was that the severity of intellectual impairment would be associated with a greater likelihood of major behavioural problems. Our second hypothesis was that treatment (or the absence of treatment) with psychotropic and/or anti-epileptic medications would interact with the behavioural problems evaluated on the EPOCAA.

BOOK REVIEW

No abstract available for this article.     

Beliefs,points of view,and multiple environments

The paper describes a system for dealing with nestings of belief in terms of the mechanism of computational environment. A method is offered for computing the beliefs of A about B (and so on) in terms of the systems existing knowledge structures about A and B separately. A proposal for belief percolation is put forward: percolation being a side effect of the process of the computation of nested beliefs, but one which could explain the acquisition of unsupported beliefs. It is argued that the mechanism proposed is compatible with a general least effort hypothesis concerning human mental functioning.     

Experimental psychopathology, clinical science, and practice: An irrelevant or indispensable alliance?

Psychopathology research is the scientific foundation for legitimate and credible forms of clinical practice and the ethical delivery of mental health services. Experimental psychopathology is a subfield of psychopathology research; its aims are to elucidate variables and processes that contribute, either in whole or in part, to the etiology, exacerbation, or maintenance of abnormal behavior. To date, experimental psychopathology has been poorly understood with regard to its identity, aims, history, and relevance for clinical practice. In this article, we critically review and address the role of experimental psychopathology in the contemporary field of clinical science and practice. Overall, we suggest that experimental psychopathology can maintain its important contributions to the field, and perhaps more important, adapt to the current health care context to have an even larger impact on directing conceptual and empirical analyses of core psychopathology processes.     

The minimal self hypothesis

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness.     

Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children

Traditional approaches to the study of young children's behavior in helping relationships are examined and criticized as inadequate because they have failed to represent the child's perspective from the role of “active helpee” (i.e., help-seeker in such relationships). By failing to look at helping from the perspective of the one who seeks help, researchers have neglected to pursue an important lead in understanding why some children are able to learn and progress independently when confronted with the same obstacles that serve to defeat other children. This article focuses on instrumental help-seeking defined as an active, complex social-cognitive activity that is essential to learning and achievement. In the first sections of this article, it is argued that instrumental help-seeking can be formally distinguished from passive dependency as well as from the actual giving and receiving of help. In following sections, a heuristic model of the help-seeking process is offered, prior research relevant to the model is reviewed, and ideas for research on help-seeking in children are suggested within the framework of this model.     

国内领导干部职业人格特征的研究进展

通过对国内研究文献的回顾，介绍了人格研究的发展历程。对领导干部研究的进展和研究中的不足进行了总结，并建议应加大研究的系统性和协作性，加强干预性研究的力度，将研究成果指导实践工作以提高领导干部的职业适应性。