Using activity schedules to promote varied application use in children with autism

We evaluated the effects of an activity schedule embedded within an iPad on varied play across applications. After establishing a pattern of repetitive gameplay, we taught three children with autism to follow the activity schedule using physical guidance. All participants increased their varied play to four applications per session and demonstrated independent and accurate activity schedule usage. The activity schedule was removed, and responding decreased to baseline levels, demonstrating the activity schedule's control over varied responding. The activity schedule was reintroduced and participant responding maintained when engaging with novel applications.     

The Power to Detect and Predict Individual Differences in Intra-Individual Variability Using the Mixed-Effects Location-Scale Model

Our goal is to provide empirical scientists with practical tools and advice with which to test hypotheses related to individual differences in intra-individual variability using the mixed-effects location-scale model. To that end, we evaluate Type I error rates and power to detect and predict individual differences in intra-individual variability using this model and provide empirically-based guidelines for building scale models that include random and/or systematically-varying fixed effects. We also provide two power simulation programs that allow researchers to conduct a priori empirical power analyses. Our results aligned with statistical power theory, in that, greater power was observed for designs with more individuals, more repeated occasions, greater proportions of variance available to be explained, and larger effect sizes. In addition, our results indicated that Type I error rates were acceptable in situations when individual differences in intra-individual variability were not initially detectable as well as when the scale-model individual-level predictor explained all initially detectable individual differences in intra-individual variability. We conclude our paper by providing study design and model building advice for those interested in using the mixed-effects location-scale model in practice.     

Intraindividual reaction time variability predicts prospective memory failures in older adults

This study investigated the relationship between intraindividual variability (IIV) in reaction time and prospective memory errors in older adults using data from the Zurich Longitudinal Study of Cognitive Aging (n = 336 individuals aged 66–81 years). The results indicated that increased IIV measured from independent tasks was associated with a greater proportion of prospective memory errors. These significant findings were not influenced by age and did not vary according to prospective memory cue type. Variability is thought to reflect fluctuations in attentional and executive control and these attentional processes may also impact on prospective memory through failure to detect the target cue. The findings suggest, therefore, that measures of variability may have some potential in the identification of older persons who are more vulnerable to everyday errors such as prospective memory failures.     

Shared timing variability in eye and finger movements increases with interval duration: Support for a distributed timing system below and above one second

The origins of the ability to produce action at will at the hundreds of millisecond to second range remain poorly understood. A central issue is whether such timing is governed by one mechanism or by several different mechanisms, possibly invoked by different effectors used to perform the timing task. If two effectors invoke similar timing mechanisms, then they should both produce similar variability increase with interval duration (interonset interval) and thus adhere to Weber's law (increasing linearly with the duration of the interval to be timed). Additionally, if both effectors invoke the same timing mechanism, the variability of the effectors should be highly correlated across participants. To test these possibilities, we assessed the behavioural characteristics across fingers and eyes as effectors and compared the timing variability between and within them as a function of the interval to be produced (interresponse interval). Sixty participants produced isochronous intervals from 524 to 1431?ms with their fingers and their eyes. High correlations within each effector indicated consistent performance within participants. Consistent with a single mechanism, temporal variability in both fingers and eyes followed Weber's law, and significant correlations between eye and finger variability were found for several intervals. These results can support neither the single clock nor the multiple clock hypotheses but instead suggest a partially overlapping distributed timing system.     

Promoting response variability and stimulus generalization in martial arts training

The effects of reinforcement and extinction on response variability and stimulus generalization in the punching and kicking techniques of 2 martial arts students were evaluated across drill and sparring conditions. During both conditions, the students were asked to demonstrate different techniques in response to an instructor's punching attack. During baseline, the students received no feedback on their responses in either condition. During the intervention phase, the students received differential reinforcement in the form of instructor feedback for each different punching or kicking technique they performed during a session of the drill condition, but no reinforcement was provided for techniques in the sparring condition. Results showed that both students increased the number of different techniques they performed when reinforcement and extinction procedures were conducted during the drill condition, and that this increase in response variability generalized to the sparring condition.     

Heart Rate Variability and Sustained Attention in ADHD Children

The major goal of the current study was to investigate the association between continuous performance tests (CPTs) and the heart rate variability (HRV) of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children. The HRV, specifically the 0.10-Hz component, may be considered to be a psychophysiological index of effort allocation (motivation): The less effort the subject allocates, the greater the 0.10-Hz component. Results indicated that, compared to controls, ADHD subjects had a greater 0.10-Hz component, which was associated with poor test performance over time. Thus, using a psychophysiological measure, we were able to confirm the clinical concept of ADHD from a motivational perspective.     

Coping with dialects from birth: Role of variability on infants’ early language development. Insights from Norwegian dialects

Previous research suggests that exposure to accent variability can affect toddlers’ familiar word recognition and word comprehension. The current preregistered study addressed the gap in knowledge on early language development in infants exposed to two dialects from birth and assessed the role of dialect similarity in infants’ word recognition and comprehension. A 12-month-old Norwegian-learning infants, exposed to native Norwegian parents speaking the same or two Norwegian dialects, took part in two eye-tracking tasks, assessing familiar word form recognition and word comprehension. Their parents’ speech was assessed for similarity by native Norwegian speakers. First, in contrast to previous research, our results revealed no listening preference for words over nonwords in both monodialectal and bidialectal infants, suggesting potential language-specific differences in the onset of word recognition. Second, the results showed evidence for word comprehension in monodialectal infants, but not in bidialectal infants, suggesting that exposure to dialectal variability impacts early word acquisition. Third, perceptual similarity between parental dialects tendentially facilitated bidialectal infants’ word recognition and comprehension. Forth, the results revealed a strong correlation between the raters and parents’ assessment of similarity between dialects, indicating that parental estimations can be reliably used to assess infants’ speech variability at home. Finally, our results revealed a strong relationship between word recognition and comprehension in monodialectal infants and the absence of such a relationship in bidialectal infants, suggesting that either these two skills do not necessarily align in infants exposed to more variable input, or that the alignment might occur at a later stage.     

Guess Who Buys Cheap? The Effect of Consumers’ Goal Orientation on Product Preference

The current research examines how goal orientation affects consumer preference among products with different prices. We argue that a less expensive product may have not only lower perceived quality but also greater perceived quality variability. This greater perceived variability provides the opportunity for optimistic, promotion‐oriented consumers to overestimate the quality of the less expensive product. This effect is weaker, however, for a more expensive product that consumers perceive to have less quality variability and which thus provides less room for quality overestimation. As a result, we hypothesize that promotion‐oriented consumers, as compared to prevention‐oriented consumers, will demonstrate a stronger preference for a less expensive product. In a field study and two laboratory experiments, we obtain empirical support both for the hypothesized effect of consumers’ goal orientation on their product preference and for its underlying process. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our results.