The emergence of untrained mands and tacts in children with autism

Despite Skinner's (1957) assertion that verbal operants are initially functionally independent, recent studies have suggested that in some cases the acquisition of one verbal operant (e.g., mand) gives rise to the other (e.g., tact) without explicit training. The present study aimed to evaluate the functional independence of mands and tacts during instruction with children with autism. Four boys with autism (3 to 6 years old) were taught to construct two 4‐piece structures. Two participants were taught directly to mand, whereas the other 2 were taught to tact the names of the pieces. The effects of training were evaluated in a multiple probe design across verbal operants and tasks. Three of the 4 participants demonstrated an immediate transfer of control from 1 verbal operant to the other. These results were consistent with previous research with typically developing young children.     

COMPUTER‐ASSISTED MEASUREMENT OF WOUND SIZE ASSOCIATED WITH SELF‐INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR

We evaluated an inexpensive, efficient, and noninvasive technique for measuring tissue damage produced by self‐injurious behavior (SIB). The technique involved computerized measurement of wound surface area (WSA) based on digital photographs. In Study 1, we compared photographic measurement to a more commonly used procedure, transparency measurement, in estimating WSA of 20 wound models. Results showed that both methods were reliable and that there was a high degree of correspondence between the 2 sets of measures. In Study 2, we compared photographic WSA measures to direct‐observation measures in documenting changes over time in the SIB exhibited by a woman with Prader‐Willi syndrome. Results showed that increases and decreases in observed SIB during baseline and treatment conditions corresponded with changes in WSA measures, indicating that the computer‐assisted photographic technique may be useful as a corroborative measure or as a primary measure when direct observation of SIB is not feasible.     

项目反应理论观察分数核等值的影响因素

探究带宽选择方法、样本量、题目数量、等值设计、数据模拟方式对项目反应理论观察分数核等值的影响。通过两种数据模拟方式,获得研究数据,并计算局部与全域评价指标。研究发现,在随机组设计中,带宽选择方法表现相似;考生样本量和题目数量影响甚微。在非等组设计中,惩罚法与Silverman经验准则表现优异;增加题目量可降低百分相对误差和随机误差;增加样本量导致百分相对误差变大,随机误差减小。数据模拟方式可影响等值评价。未来应重点关注等值系统评估。     

Theory and teen dating violence victimization: Considering adolescent development

Teen dating violence is an important public health problem, with implications for the future health and well-being of adolescents. However, most work on teen dating violence has developed separately from literature on normative adolescent romantic relationships and development; understanding teen dating violence within the framework of adolescent psychosocial development may provide new areas for research. Thus, the present paper summarizes five theories of adolescent development that are relevant to the study of teen dating violence victimization, as well as empirical literature that demonstrates support for key theoretical tenets in research examining adolescent romantic relationships. We also present questions for future dating violence study that arise from these key theoretical tenets and past empirical research. Researchers interested in dating violence victimization can use the presented theories to guide new directions in research inquiry, so that findings are situated within the broader field of adolescent development.     

Unraveling Brain Functional Connectivity of encoding and retrieval in the context of education

Human memory is an enigmatic component of cognition which many researchers have attempted to comprehend. Accumulating studies on functional connectivity see brain as a complex dynamic unit with positively and negatively correlated networks in perfect coherence during a task. We aimed to examine coherence of network connectivity during visual memory encoding and retrieval in the context of education. School Educated (SE) and College Educated (CE) healthy volunteers (n = 60) were recruited and assessed for visual encoding and retrieval. Functional connectivity using seed to voxel based connectivity analysis of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was evaluated. We noticed that there were reciprocal dynamic changes in both dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) region and PCC regions during working memory encoding and retrieval. In agreement with the previous studies, there were more positively correlated regions during retrieval compared to encoding. The default mode network (DMN) networks showed greater negative correlations during more attentive task of visual encoding. In tune with the recent studies on cognitive reserve we also found that number of years of education was a significant factor influencing working memory connectivity. SE had higher positive correlation to DLPFC region and lower negative correlation to DMN in comparison with CE during encoding and retrieval.     

Short report: correlates of functional disability with disease activity in elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) prevalence increases with age and old people are special patient population. The recognition of functional disability related to RA could be challenging in elderly patients because aging itself and potential co-morbid disease may also cause functional disability. In this study, we aimed to look at the correlation between disease activity and functional disability in elderly RA patients. Elderly RA patients, ≥65 years old at their routine visits were included in the study. The composite ‘disease activity score’ in 28 joints (DAS-28) was used to determine disease activity groups. Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) scores were calculated to describe the functional disability and compared across the disease activity groups. Two hundred and fifty-eight RA patients with the mean age of 71 ± 5 (65–90) and a total disease duration of 8.4 ± 8.5 (.5–50) years were recruited. The proportion of patients with high and moderate disease activity was 70%. HAQ scores were significantly correlated with disease activity (p < .05). Functional disability estimated by HAQ was correlated with disease activity in elderly patients with RA     

Autonomic and subjective responsivity to emotional images in people with dissociative seizures

People with dissociative seizures (DS) report a range of difficulties in emotional functioning and exhibit altered responding to emotional facial expressions in experimental tasks. We extended this research by investigating subjective and autonomic reactivity (ratings of emotional valence, arousal and skin conductance responses [SCRs]) to general emotional images in 39 people with DS relative to 42 healthy control participants, whilst controlling for anxiety, depression, cognitive functioning and, where relevant, medication use. It was predicted that greater subjective negativity and arousal and increased SCRs in response to the affective pictures would be observed in the DS group. The DS group as a whole did not differ from controls in their subjective responses of valence and arousal. However, SCR amplitudes were greater in ‘autonomic responders’ with DS relative to ‘autonomic responders’ in the control group. A positive correlation was also observed between SCRs for highly arousing negative pictures and self‐reported ictal autonomic arousal, in DS ‘autonomic responders’. In the DS subgroup of autonomic ‘non‐responders’, differences in subjective responses were observed for some conditions, compared to control ‘non‐responders’. The findings indicate unaffected subjective responses to emotional images in people with DS overall. However, within the group of people with DS, there may be subgroups characterized by differences in emotional responding. One subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic responders’) exhibit heightened autonomic responses but intact subjective emotional experience, whilst another subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic non‐responders’) seem to experience greater subjective negativity and arousal for some emotional stimuli, despite less frequent autonomic reactions. The current results suggest that therapeutic interventions targeting awareness and regulation of physiological arousal and subjective emotional experience could be of value in some people with this disorder.     

Weak Consistency for Ensuring Priority Vectors Reliability

Consistency and transitivity are important and leading research topics in the study of decision‐making in terms of pairwise comparison matrices. In this paper, we search for conditions that, in case of inconsistency, guarantee ordinal compatibility between ordinal ranking (actual ranking) derived from a transitive matrix and cardinal rankings provided by the most usual priority vectors proposed in the scientific literature. We provide the notion of weak consistency; it is a condition weaker than consistency and stronger than transitivity and ensures that vectors associated with a matrix, by means of a strictly increasing synthesis functional, provide a preference order, on the related set of decision elements, equal to the actual ranking. This notion extends, to the case in which the decision‐maker can be indifferent between two or more alternatives/criteria, weak consistency introduced in previous papers under constraint of no indifference. Finally, we introduce an order relation on the rows of the matrix, that is, a simple order if and only if weak consistency is satisfied; this simple order allows us to easily determine the actual ranking on the set of decision elements. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.