A Pilot Evaluation of Portfolios for Quality Attestation of Clinical Ethics Consultants

Although clinical ethics consultation is a high-stakes endeavor with an increasing prominence in health care systems, progress in developing standards for quality is challenging. In this article, we describe the results of a pilot project utilizing portfolios as an evaluation tool. We found that this approach is feasible and resulted in a reasonably wide distribution of scores among the 23 submitted portfolios that we evaluated. We discuss limitations and implications of these results, and suggest that this is a significant step on the pathway to an eventual certification process for clinical ethics consultants.     

Speaking of grief and the grief of speaking: martyrs’ speech and the perils of translation

In Derrida’s Monolinguism of the Other, a theory about the universal and constitutive alienation of the speaking subject from language finds its exemplary grounding in Derrida’s own experience as an Algerian Jew, one whose relationship to the French language is both totalizing and exiled (‘I have only one language, it is not mine.’). He equates speaking not only with contingent citizenship and a divestment of what one never really had in the first place, but also with the extreme experiences of torture, threat and physical violence. He indeed uses the words ‘passion’ and ‘martyr’ to describe his experience. In this paper, I will read Derrida ‘backwards,’ and against the universalizing move Derrida and those following him make in order to suggest a way of reading some scenes of violent death as scenes about diasporic cultural divestment. I’ll specifically attend to martyrs’ speech, and do so reading them as archives of the perils and inescapable expenses of entering dominant cultural ‘languages.’     

The Role of Parent Education and Parenting Knowledge in Children's Language and Literacy Skills among White,Black, and Latino Families

This study investigated the role of parenting knowledge of infant development in children's subsequent language and pre‐literacy skills among White, Black and Latino families of varying socioeconomic status. Data come from 6,150 participants in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort. Mothers' knowledge of infant development was measured when children were 9 months old, and child language and pre‐literacy skills were measured during the fall of the preschool year prior to Kindergarten when children were approximately four years old. Mothers' knowledge of infant development was uniquely related to both maternal education and race/ethnicity. Reported sources of parenting information/advice also varied by education and race/ ethnicity and were related to parenting knowledge. Further, controlling for demographic factors, parenting knowledge partially mediated the relation between parent education and child language and pre‐literacy skills, and this relation differed by race/ethnicity. One way to eliminate socioeconomic status achievement gaps in children's early language and literacy skills may be to focus on parents' knowledge of child development, particularly in Latino families. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Applying Evidence-Centered Design for the Development of Game-Based Assessments in Physics Playground

Game-based assessment (GBA) is a specific use of educational games that employs game activities to elicit evidence for educationally valuable skills and knowledge. While this approach can provide individualized and diagnostic information about students, the design and development of assessment mechanics for a GBA is a nontrivial task. In this article, we describe the 10-step procedure that the design team of Physics Playground (formerly known as Newton's Playground) has established by adapting evidence-centered design to address unique challenges of GBA. The scaling method used for Physics Playground was Bayesian networks; thus this article describes specific actions taken for the iterative process of constructing and revising Bayesian networks in the context of the game Physics Playground.     

Maternal distress during pregnancy and language development in preschool age: A population-based cohort study

Recent studies have emphasized the importance of the prenatal period for children's cognitive development. Prenatal exposure to psychological distress has been identified as one potential agent affecting neurodevelopment, although research in this area has been marked by some contradictory findings and methodological limitations. This study aimed to investigate the effect of maternal distress during pregnancy on language development of preschool children. This study was based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The sample was composed of 34,089 women and their children. We assessed the role of maternal prenatal distress on child language over and above that of premature low birth weight (PLBW) status and postnatal maternal distress. Fear of giving birth had a negative impact on language outcome at age three over and above the effect of PLBW status and postnatal maternal distress. However, this effect was of minimal magnitude. Moreover, when examining whether differences in language skills between siblings were associated with differences in experienced levels of prenatal stress across pregnancies (sibling fixed-effects models), no significant effects were found. Our study suggests that prenatal distress within moderate limits does not seem to have an independent impact on child language performance in the preschool years and emphasizes the importance of considering the contextual role played by more stable maternal and family characteristics.     

A new look at “the hard problem” of bilingual lexical access: evidence for language-switch costs with univalent stimuli

Considerable work has used language-switching tasks to investigate how bilinguals manage competition between languages. Language-switching costs have been argued to reflect persisting inhibition or persisting activation of a non-target language. However, these costs might instead reflect the use of bivalent stimuli (i.e. pictures or digits that can be responded to in either language). That is, language-switching costs may simply reflect a cost of selecting the task-appropriate response for a given item and so may not be reflective of bilingual lexical access [Finkbeiner, M., Almeida, J., Janssen, N., & Carramaza, A. (2006). Lexical selection in bilingual speech production does not involve language suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5), 1075–1089]. The present study addresses this concern by having Chinese/English bilinguals switch between languages in response to inherently univalent stimuli (English words and Chinese Characters) as well as lexically univalent, but orthographically bivalent, stimuli (English words and Chinese Pinyin). Speakers showed switch costs when naming both univalent and orthographically bivalent stimuli, showing that switch costs can be found even with inherently univalent stimuli.     

Developing a treatment for hand‐clapping maintained by automatic reinforcement using sensory analysis,noncontingent reinforcement,and thinning

Two subjects diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and related disabilities who engaged in hand‐clapping maintained by automatic reinforcement participated in this study. We conducted a sensory analysis to evaluate matched stimuli that functioned as an abolishing operation or extinction for different sources of sensory reinforcement. Finally, we implemented noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) using the stimuli found to compete in the assessment to reduce the target behavior, and we thinned item availability. Results showed a decrease in hand‐clapping, and hand‐clapping remained low when we thinned the schedule of reinforcement. This research further elucidates how NCR can treat problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement.     

Clinical functioning and cutoff of eccentricity dimension with psychiatric patients and non-patients

ObjectivesThis study investigated the Eccentricity scale's clinical functioning from the Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory 2 (IDCP-2). Additionally, we sought to establish a cutoff for a screening scenario to be taken as the first indicator of Eccentricity characteristics’ possible clinically relevant functioning.MethodIn total, 2167 adults, aged from 18 to 90 years (M = 28.98, SD = 11.12), being 1244 women (63%), and the majority of undergraduate students (67.9%). Total sample was comprised into five groups, namely, outpatients diagnosed with both schizotypal and schizoid PDs (n = 3), outpatients diagnosed with schizotypal PD (n = 5), outpatients diagnosed with schizoid PD (n = 2), outpatients diagnosed with other PDs and clinical disorders (n = 172), and a general population-based sample (n = 1985). Not all participants answered all the items from IDCP-2; therefore, we used the equating procedure.ResultsThe groups were statistically different in ANOVA. For the −0.40 cutoff in the theta metric scale, equivalent to a total score of 38, the area under the curve was equal to 0.85, reaching 90% of sensitivity and 87.4% of specificity.ConclusionsFindings provide clinical data on the Eccentricity scale, supporting its professional use in a clinical setting; specifically, we suggested a clinical cutoff to the scale, helping the professional address typical characteristics from schizoid schizotypal functioning.     

Breadth versus depth: Cumulative risk model and continuous measure prediction of poor language and reading outcomes at 12

This study examines whether, and how, multiple risks in early childhood are associated with an increased likelihood of a poor language or literacy outcome in early adolescence. Using data from 210 participants in the longitudinal Twins Early Developmental Study, we focus on the following risk factors at age 4: family risk, and poor language, speech, emergent literacy and nonverbal skills. The outcomes of interest at age 12 are language, reading fluency and reading comprehension. We contrast a ‘cumulative risk’ model, counting the presence or absence of each risk factor (breadth), with a model that also considers the severity of the early deficits (depth). A ‘cumulative risk index’ correlated modestly but significantly with outcome (r = 0.32–0.40). Odds ratios confirmed that having many risk factors (3–6) confers a higher probability of a poor outcome (OR 7.86–17.71) than having one or two (OR 3.65–7.28). Logistic regression models showed that predictive validity is not improved by including information about the severity of each deficit. Even with rich information on children's risk status at age 4, we can make only a moderately accurate prediction of the likelihood of a language or literacy disorder 8 years later (Area Under the Curve = 0.74–0.84; Positive Predictive Value = 0.33–0.55, Negative Predictive Value = 0.86–0.91). Taken together, and consistent with the idea of ‘cumulative risk’, these results suggest that the breadth of risk is a core predictor of outcome, and furthermore, that the severity of early deficits does not add significantly to this prediction.     

Driving examiners’ views on data-driven assessment of test candidates: An interview study

Vehicles are increasingly equipped with sensors that capture the state of the driver, the vehicle, and the environment. These developments are relevant to formal driver testing, but little is known about the extent to which driving examiners would support the use of sensor data in their job. This semi-structured interview study examined the opinions of 37 driving examiners about data-driven assessment of test candidates. The results showed that the examiners were supportive of using data to explain their pass/fail verdict to the candidate. According to the examiners, data in an easily accessible form such as graphs of eye movements, headway, speed, or braking behavior, and color-coded scores, supplemented with camera images, would allow them to eliminate doubt or help them convince disagreeing test-takers. The examiners were skeptical about higher levels of decision support, noting that forming an overall picture of the candidate’s abilities requires integrating multiple context-dependent sources of information. The interviews yielded other possible applications of data collection and sharing, such as selecting optimal routes, improving standardization, and training and pre-selecting candidates before they are allowed to take the driving test. Finally, the interviews focused on an increasingly viable form of data collection: simulator-based driver testing. This yielded a divided picture, with about half of the examiners being positive and half negative about using simulators in driver testing. In conclusion, this study has provided important insights regarding the use of data as an explanation aid for examiners. Future research should consider the views of test candidates and experimentally evaluate different forms of data-driven support in the driving test.