Parent-carer awareness and understanding of dyspraxia: Implications for child development support practices

Dyspraxia manifests as difficulty in thinking, planning, and executing planned movements or tasks. Dyspraxia affects roughly 5–6% of school aged children. This study aimed to explore parent-carer’s awareness and understanding of dyspraxia and the resources they self-perceived to need to manage their children with dyspraxia. Informants were 15 parents from the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. They completed semi-structured interviews on their knowledge of and indicators of dyspraxia in their children and resources they presently utilised or could seek to use. Thematic analysis of the data suggested the parent-carers to be aware of motor rather than cognition oriented limitations. Additionally, parent-carers accessed or sought educator assistance from the school system. Health professionals and educators working with parents of children with dyspraxia can expect them to report reliably on behavioural characteristics of their children’s abilities important for treatment support interventions.     

常人疾病观及其对医患关系的影响

常人疾病观是普通人对于某一疾病的认知、解释和态度的集合。与专业医务人员相比, 普通人更关注心理、家庭和社会因素而非生物学因素的致病作用, 就医选择多元而并不遵循标准化的就医模式, 同时更愿意将疾病体验视为个人生活的特殊问题加以建构性理解。常人疾病观与科学医学观之间的不一致性可能降低患者的就医满意、对医信任和医嘱依从性, 从而影响治疗效果。立足中国社会的医学文化与医疗制度, 研究中国人的常人疾病观, 并探讨其对医患关系的影响作用与社会心理机制, 可为改善当下中国医患关系紧张现状提供有益建议。     

Is knowledge of causes sufficient for understanding?

According to a traditional account, understanding why X occurred is equivalent to knowing that X was caused by Y. This paper defends the account against a major objection, viz., knowing-that is not sufficient for understanding-why, for understanding-why requires a kind of grasp while knowledge-that does not. I discuss two accounts of grasp in recent literature and argue that if either is true, then knowing that X was caused by Y entails at least a rudimentary understanding of why X occurred. If my defense is successful, it would cast doubt on an influential account of the epistemic value of understanding.     

33-month-old children succeed in a false belief task with reduced processing demands: A replication of Setoh et al. (2016)

A recent low-inhibition false belief task showed a high success rate with 33-month-old children when response-generation demands were reduced [Setoh, Scott, & Baillargeon (2016). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(47), 13360–13365]. We found correct responding in 74% of N = 58 33-month-old children, replicating the original findings. Within the same sample, we compared this performance with performance in a concurrent measure of false belief understanding which has previously produced competence in children below the age of 3 years [Hughes & Ensor (2007). Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1447–1459]. Contrasting sharply with findings from the low-inhibition false belief task, we found partial competence in 15%, and full competence in only 5% of the same sample. These results show that the paradigm by Setoh and colleagues generates reliable findings in a different lab and a different language. We discuss this pattern of results in relation to theoretical considerations of early false belief understanding.     

Toward Cyber-Systemic Thinking in Practice

This article is an invitation to be reflexive; reflexivity is a second-order process or reflection on reflection. The possibility that a reader might experience a reflexive moment is sought by avoiding a narrative trap: to believe the “coming to” of the issue title implies a state to arrive at, carefully planned, a purposeful journey, pursued by an enlightened individual devoid of all social relations. The author thus begins situated in a social system. Following Maturana, a social system is explained, as is what constitutes, or triggers, change, in a social system. An example of granting rivers sentience in law as an expansion of the social is explored     

Beyond control of variables: What needs to develop to achieve skilled scientific thinking?

We identify three aspects of scientific thinking beyond the control-of-variables strategy that we claim are essential for students to master as a foundation for skilled scientific thinking. The first is strategic and involves the ability to coordinate effects of multiple causal influences on an outcome. The second is a mature understanding of the epistemological foundations of science, recognizing scientific knowledge as constructed by humans rather than simply discovered in the world. The third is the ability to engage in skilled argumentation in the scientific domain, with an appreciation of argumentation as entailing the coordination of theory and evidence. We present new empirical data with respect to the first two of these competencies, supporting the claim that they are not well developed by early adolescence and warrant attention and provision of effective kinds of scaffolding.     

儿童混合情绪的发展研究述评

混合情绪是指同一情境中同时存在两种不同或者矛盾的情绪状态,主要包括混合情绪理解和混合情绪体验两个方面,其发展模式表现为从单一情绪理解到多种情绪理解、从继时性混合到同时性混合的特点,但在具体的发展年龄特征上研究结果存在分歧。混合情绪的发展研究主要采用临床访谈法,其基本研究范式一致,但在材料的制作、刺激的呈现、被试的反应方式以及结果的处理等方面存在差异。未来,在研究范式上需要有所突破,内隐测量、认知神经科学方法等对揭示混合情绪发展规律都有其独特的优势。同时,应扩大研究对象的年龄范围,从发展水平和模式两个方面系统考察儿童混合情绪的发展特点及其影响与作用。     

Can children resist making interpretations when uncertain?

In two experiments, we examined young children's ability to delay a response to ambiguous input. In Experiment 1, 5- and 6-year-olds performed as poorly when they needed to choose between basing an interpretation on ambiguous input and delaying an interpretation as when making explicit evaluations of knowledge, whereas 7- and 8-year-olds found the former task easy. In Experiment 2, 5- and 6-year-olds performed well on a task that required delaying a response but removed the need to decide between strategies. We discuss children's difficulty with ambiguity in terms of the decision-making demands made by different procedures. These demands appear to cause particular problems for young children.     

正确理解知情同意

知情同意最初由美国于18世纪末19世纪初提出,随着社会不断进步,医学科学的不断发展,人们权力意识的不断增强,知情同意作为患者享有的一项权力,医务人员在医疗过程中应遵循的一条原则已日益到人们的关注。然而在现实的医疗实践中人们对这一的理解和认识还存在一定的偏差。正确理解,践行知情同意既是尊重患者的权利,贯彻“以病人为中心”的原则的保证,也能有效地保护医务人员的合法权益。     

You Can Lead An Ape To A Tool But...: A Review Of Povinelli’s Folk Physics For Apes: The Chimpanzee’s Theory Of How The World Works.

We reviewed Daniel Povinelli's book, Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. After a summary of the book's contents, we analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk psychology: one that explored whether chimpanzees understand that others see (i.e., that apes have internal visual experiences) and another that examined whether chimpanzees can distinguish intended from unintended actions. The conceptual scaffolding on which these studies were conceived was sufficiently faulty that their outcomes were virtually assured a priori. We then analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk physics, reinforcing our view that conceptual confusion guaranteed that certain key predictions about the outcome of these studies could not be supported. A unifying reason for this conceptual confusion is that the author devalues understanding that results from programmatic conditioning. We closed the review by relating Povinelli's findings and conclusions to behavior analysis and by explaining why behavior analysts should read this book