More Alike than Different? Comparison of Formerly Incarcerated Youth with and Without Disabilities

We describe and compare the demographic characteristics of incarcerated youth with and without disabilities. These data were gathered as part of a 5-year longitudinal study that examined the experiences of 531 incarcerated youth from Oregons juvenile justice system as they left the correctional system on parole and returned to the community. Data on the demographic characteristics of the sample were gathered from files and through interviews conducted while the sample was still in state custody. We compared the two groups on 22 selected variables. Statistical comparisons indicated that the two groups were similar on most variables. The final statistical model indicated that participants with disabilities were more likely to have flunked a grade while in school, been committed to the juvenile correctional system for a person-related crime, and to have been last adjudicated for a felony in an urban setting. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

The Moderating Effect of Within‐Group Similarity on Change in a Strengths‐Based Programme for Incarcerated Young Men

Many youth who are incarcerated within juvenile correctional facilities experience mental health disorders, histories of victimization and suicide ideation. Strengths‐based intervention programmes are intended to enhance participants' resilience against such challenges. However, little is known about how the composition of intervention groups contributes to programmes' efficacy. This study addresses the impact of within‐group similarity on the success of a strengths‐based intervention for incarcerated young men (n = 141). Similarity was assessed in terms of self‐reported demographics and behaviours and belief systems. Youths' masculine ideology, caring and cooperative behaviours, ethnic pride and respect for differences, self‐efficacy regarding education and non‐violence, and attitudes about criminal behaviour were measured before and after intervention. Results indicate that participants' caring and cooperative behaviour increased during the intervention. However, their education‐related self‐efficacy was reduced, and the perceived benefits of criminal activity increased. These changes were moderated by group composition: less similarity between participants and their group members was associated with less negative change. In the context of juvenile corrections facilities, where staying the same may be a relatively positive outcome, perhaps the more relevant question is not which processes and characteristics of others better enable youth to change but which experiences help them retain positive aspects of themselves. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal predictive mechanisms modulate motor reaction time during initiation and inhibition of speech and hand movement

Skilled movement is mediated by motor commands executed with extremely fine temporal precision. The question of how the brain incorporates temporal information to perform motor actions has remained unanswered. This study investigated the effect of stimulus temporal predictability on response timing of speech and hand movement. Subjects performed a randomized vowel vocalization or button press task in two counterbalanced blocks in response to temporally-predictable and unpredictable visual cues. Results indicated that speech and hand reaction time was decreased for predictable compared with unpredictable stimuli. This finding suggests that a temporal predictive code is established to capture temporal dynamics of sensory cues in order to produce faster movements in responses to predictable stimuli. In addition, results revealed a main effect of modality, indicating faster hand movement compared with speech. We suggest that this effect is accounted for by the inherent complexity of speech production compared with hand movement. Lastly, we found that movement inhibition was faster than initiation for both hand and speech, suggesting that movement initiation requires a longer processing time to coordinate activities across multiple regions in the brain. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms of temporal information processing during initiation and inhibition of speech and hand movement.     

Infant Movement Motivation Questionnaire: Development of a measure evaluating infant characteristics relating to motor development in the first year of life

This paper highlights the development and testing of the Infant Movement Motivation Questionnaire (IMMQ), an instrument designed to evaluate qualities of infant characteristics that relate specifically to early motor development. The measurement development process included three phases: item generation, pilot testing and evaluation of acceptability and feasibility for parents and exploratory factor analysis. The resultant 27-item questionnaire is designed for completion by parents and contains four factors including Activity, Exploration, Motivation and Adaptability. Overall, the internal consistency of the IMMQ is 0.89 (Cronbach's alpha), with test–retest reliability measured at 0.92 (ICC, with 95% CI 0.83–0.96). Further work could be done to strengthen the individual factors; however it is adequate for use in its full form. The IMMQ can be used for clinical or research purposes, as well as an educational tool for parents.     

Lifts and stops in proficient and dysgraphic handwriting

In this study, the handwriting performances of dysgraphic children were compared to those of proficient children and adults. The task consisted in writing a single word at normal and fast speeds. A distinction was made between two kinds of pauses, which are often confounded: pen lifts, when the pen is above the paper, and pen stops, when it is immobile on the paper. The number and duration of lifts and stops were analyzed, together with the mean velocity. No difference in the number of lifts was observed between the three groups of writers, but the lift durations were shorter for adults. While dysgraphic children were able to write as fast as proficient children, their stops were more numerous and longer than those of proficient children who, themselves, made more stops than adults. A distinction was made between short, normal, and long, abnormal, stops. The results of this study suggest that pen stops are more appropriate than pen lifts in differentiating the handwriting fluency of dysgraphic and proficient children.     

Anticipating action effects recruits audiovisual movement representations in the ventral premotor cortex

When table tennis players anticipate the course of the ball while preparing their motor responses, they not only observe their opponents striking the ball but also listen to events such as the sound of racket–ball contact. Because visual stimuli can be detected more easily when accompanied by a sound, we assumed that complementary sensory audiovisual information would influence the anticipation of biological motion, especially when the racket–ball contact is not presented visually, but has to be inferred from continuous movement kinematics and an abrupt sound. Twenty-six observers were examined with fMRI while watching point-light displays (PLDs) of an opposing table tennis player. Their task was to anticipate the resultant ball flight. The sound was presented complementary to the veracious event or at a deviant time point in its kinematics.Results showed that participants performed best in the complementary condition. Using a region-of-interest approach, fMRI data showed that complementary audiovisual stimulation elicited higher activation in the left temporo-occipital middle temporal gyrus (MTGto), the left primary motor cortex, and the right anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS). Both hemispheres also revealed higher activation in the ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) and the pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44). Ranking the behavioral effect of complementary versus conflicting audiovisual information over participants revealed an association between the complementary information and higher activation in the right vPMC. We conclude that the recruitment of movement representations in the auditory and visual modalities in the vPMC can be influenced by task-relevant cross-modal audiovisual interaction.     

动作疗法在灾后心理康复中的运用

在四川经历了汶川大地震后两年,青海又发生了玉树地震。地震灾害不仅对灾区幸存者造成了身体上的伤害,让人们失去家园和亲人,在心理上也给他们造成了严重的创伤。因此,对于这类人群的灾后心理康复治疗尤为重要。然而,幸存者心理的康复,单纯依靠心理辅导和治疗是不够的,而肢体上的运动能够起到缓解心理症状的良好效果。动作疗法就是一种行之有效的疗法。本文将介绍动作疗法在灾后心理康复的治疗中的运用,并提出具有针对性的动作疗法的措施。     

Women's empowerment: the insights of Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai of Kenya has written about empowerment, practiced it in many ways in her own life, and shared her reflections on it with many other women in the Green Belt Movement. Yet to date, no study has been devoted to her ideas on the topic. This paper will highlight Maathai's insights regarding empowerment, tracing several important themes in her approach, namely, empowerment's relationship to self-esteem, teamwork, and political action, its ambivalent relationship to formal education, and the role of cultural traditions in providing alternatives to colonial-era cultural impositions and current exploitative effects of neo-liberal capitalism. After reviewing Maathai's thoughts on each of these topics, I will briefly draw upon other East African thinkers and Africanists' studies of East African communities to present corroborating evidence for Maathai's views or for challenges to her position. Listening to the perspectives of Maathai and other East Africans provides several important correctives to current popular uses of the term ‘empowerment’.     

Flexibility in strategy use: Adaptation of numerosity judgement strategies to task characteristics

In previous investigations we documented that people use several strategies to determine numerosities of blocks that are presented in a square grid. One of these strategies is the clever subtraction strategy, wherein the number of empty squares in the grid is subtracted from the total number of squares in the grid. In the present study we investigated participants' flexibility in strategy use when varying the size of the grids. Results are described in terms of the theoretical framework of Lemaire and Siegler (1995) regarding strategic change, and show that this contextual variable affected the frequency, execution time, and accuracy of subjects' use of the subtraction strategy. The usefulness of this framework for analysing the nature of the adaptation to contextual variations is discussed. From a methodological point of view, this study documents the potential of Beem's (1993, 1999) segmented linear regression models for assessing subjects' strategy use in cognitive tasks.     

Nonword repetition and nonword reading abilities in adults who do and do not stutter

Purpose

In the present study a nonword repetition and a nonword reading task were used to investigate the behavioral (speech accuracy) and speech kinematic (movement variability measured as lip aperture variability index; speech duration) profiles of groups of young adults who do (AWS) and do not stutter (control).

Method

Participants were 9 AWS (8 males, Mean age = 32.2, SD = 14.7) and 9 age- and sex-matched control participants (Mean age = 31.8, SD = 14.6). For the nonword repetition task, participants were administered the Nonword Repetition Test ( Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998). For the reading task, participants were required to read out target nonwords varying in length (6 vs. 11 syllables). Repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted to compare the groups in percent speech accuracy for both tasks; only for the nonword reading task, the groups were compared in movement variability and speech duration.

Results

The groups were comparable in percent accuracy in nonword repetition. Findings from nonword reading revealed a trend for the AWS to show a lower percent of accurate productions compared to the control group. AWS also showed significantly higher movement variability and longer speech durations compared to the control group in nonword reading. Some preliminary evidence for group differences in practice effect (seen as differences between the early vs. later 5 trials) was evident in speech duration.

Conclusions

Findings suggest differences between AWS and control groups in phonemic encoding and/or speech motor planning and production. Findings from nonword repetition vs. reading highlight the need for careful consideration of nonword properties.Educational objectives At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) summarize the literature on nonword repetition skills in adults who stutter, (b) describe processes underlying nonword repetition and nonword reading, (c) summarize whether or not adults who stutter differ from those who do not in the behavioral and kinematic markers of nonword reading performance, (d) discuss future directions for research.