Effect of Training on Sensory Room and Cart Usage

In this study, the authors assess the effectiveness of education on the consistency of use of sensory rooms within a large mental health facility. Eleven staff and thirty-six clients received additional multimodal education in sensory strategies, the use of the sensory rooms on their assigned units, and the link between the rooms and clients' personal crisis intervention plans. Staff knowledge and room usage rates were analyzed pre- and post-training. The authors found statistically significant increases in staff knowledge post-training and increases in the use of the sensory rooms by study participants. The results support the effectiveness of training which uses hands-on, population-specific strategies.     

基于GRM模型的BP神经网络参数估计

目前参数估计多采用统计方法,存在耗时长、要求被试样本容量大和项目数多等缺点。本文将BP神经网络和降维法相结合,对GRM的项目参数和考生能力参数进行估计。蒙特卡洛模拟结果显示：（1）不管是人多题少还是题多人少,该网络设计下的参数估计精度都较高;（2）可以应用到多个不同等级评分的参数估计中,甚至是超过15个等级的项目参数,估计精度也较高,这是其他参数估计方法所不可比拟的;（3）运行的时长和统计估计方法相比大大缩减。     

Caution! Warnings as a Useless Countermeasure to Reduce Overconfidence? An Experimental Evaluation in Light of Enhanced and Dynamic Warning Designs

People often display excessive overconfidence when providing interval estimates, which biases decision‐making. Research has investigated the various measures to effectively reduce overconfidence, and the use of warnings has subsequently been considered to have a negligible reduction effect. We demonstrate with two separate experiments that the impact of warnings has to be reviewed in light of dynamic warning designs and cognitive warning process models. In experiment 1, in contrast to previous studies that only used unstructured warnings, we implement a warning incorporating some core elements of a structured warning design based on research in the fields of human factors and ergonomics. Furthermore, accounting for recent developments in the warning literature, we distinguish between static and dynamic warning design. In experiment 2, we examine the effectiveness of different elements of dynamic warnings. We show that a significantly higher reduction of overconfidence can be achieved by combining a structured warning content with a dynamic stimulus change to increase the warning's noticeability. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preference for the outcome that follows a relatively aversive event: Contrast or delay reduction?

Pigeons prefer a positive discriminative (S+) stimulus that follows a less preferred event (a large number of required responses, a longer delay, or the absence of food) over a different S+ with a similar history of reinforcement that follows a more preferred event (a single required response, no delay, or food). We proposed that this phenomenon results from contrast (referred to as within-trial contrast) between the less preferred initial event and the signal for reinforcement. Delay reduction theory (Fantino, 1969) can account for these results by proposing that the less preferred initial event lengthens the duration of the trial, thereby allowing the S+ stimulus to occur later in the trial and thus become a better predictor of reinforcement. In the present experiments, we further explored this effect. In Experiment 1, we controlled for trial duration by using a fixed ratio response (30 pecks) as one initial event and the absence of pecking for the same duration as the other initial event (0 pecks). The pigeons showed a reliable preference for the positive stimulus that followed the least preferred initial event. In Experiment 2, we controlled for trial duration by using 30 pecks as one initial event and 1 peck followed by a delay that matched the duration of the preceding 30-peck trial. (Group Time Same). For Group Time Different, there was no delay following the 1-peck initial event. For Group Time Same, preference for the initial event negatively predicted the pigeons’ preference for the S+ stimulus that followed, supporting the contrast account. A somewhat greater preference for the discriminative stimulus that followed the least preferred initial event was found for Group Time Different suggesting that in addition to contrast, delay reduction also may play a small role. However, the greater initial-event preference found for Group Time Different suggests that contrast can account for the group difference as well.     

Promoting positive parenting practices in primary pare: outcomes and mechanisms of change in a randomized controlled risk reduction trial

The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether a short parent-training program (PT) reduces risk factors related to development of childhood socio-emotional and behavior problems in a non-clinical community sample. Data were obtained from parents in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on PT for children aged 2 to 8 years (N=186) at pre-intervention, post-intervention and one-year-follow up. There were significant differences in the changes in the two groups, with reductions in harsh parenting and child behavior problems, an enhancement of positive parenting and of the parents' sense of competence in the intervention group. The effects on parenting and parents' satisfaction all lasted through one-year follow up. Our findings suggests that a shortened version of a well-structured parenting intervention, The Incredible Years program, implemented in primary care at community level, reduces harsh parenting and strengthens positive parenting and parents' sense of competence, as reported by the parents. Issues related to a public health approach to promote positive parenting are discussed.     

What a Rational Parser Would Do

This article examines cognitive process models of human sentence comprehension based on the idea of informed search. These models are rational in the sense that they strive to find a good syntactic analysis quickly. Informed search derives a new account of garden pathing that handles traditional counterexamples. It supports a symbolic explanation for local coherence as well as an algorithmic account of entropy reduction. The models are expressed in a broad framework for theories of human sentence comprehension.     

Reductive and Emergent Views on Motor Learning in Rehabilitation Practice

To allow different views on motor learning to inform rehabilitation research, the authors aimed to explicate a frequently missed yet fundamental difference in starting point of such views. By considering how rehabilitation in practice answers the question of what parts an activity consists of, reductive and emergent approaches to motor learning are identified and traced throughout rehabilitation practice. The authors show that when a task is cut up along reductive dimensions while also apparently relying on emergent components, this unequally favors the reductive approach and acts to limit the views on motor learning available. By showing the approaches in practice, the authors hope to inspire an awareness that brings both approaches the opportunity to independently inform research so that new theories and practices can proliferate.     

When shared group membership signifies shared subjective experience: I-sharing and the minimal group paradigm

Ingroup favoritism is pervasive. It emerges even in the minimal group paradigm, where participants are assigned to novel groups based on seemingly insignificant characteristics. Yet many of the grouping schemes used in minimal group research may imply something significant: namely, that ingroup members will share in-the-moment subjective experience, or I-share. Two studies examine the role of inferred I-sharing in the minimal group paradigm. We found that (1) people inferred that they would I-share with ingroup members more than outgroup members; (2) inferred I-sharing increased ingroup favoritism; and (3) inferred I-sharing accounted for this ingroup favoritism. Moreover, expecting to I-share with the outgroup improved participants’ attitudes toward the outgroup. These results converge with other research suggesting that people favor ingroup members, in part, because they expect to I-share with them.     

Multiple Realizability Intuitions and the Functionalist Conception of the Mind

A popular argument supporting functionalism has been what is commonly called the “multiple realizability” argument. One version of this argument uses thought experiments designed to show that minds could be composed of different types of material. This article offers a metaphilosophical analysis of this argument and shows that it fails to provide a strong case for functionalism. The multiple realizability argument is best understood as an inference‐to‐the‐best‐explanation argument, whereby a functionalist account of our mental concepts serves to explain our multiple realizability intuitions. I show that the argument is inadequate because alternative accounts of our mental concepts exist that provide equally plausible explanations for these intuitions. Moreover, in the case of our qualia concepts, a nonfunctionalist account explains several other intuitions that functionalism cannot explain. Thus, despite its popularity, the intuition‐based version of the multiple realizability argument is a poor reason for accepting functionalism.     

What is Classical and Non-Classical Knowledge?

Mamardašvili’s ‘classical’ paradigm of knowledge is seen to be minimally based on extrapolations from Descartes’ classical philosophy to which Mamardašvili attributes features that rather anticipate his own post-classical ontology. The latter is oriented towards the primacy of perception as a subjective process, in which the self-conscious subject constructs the world, not as illusion, but as a ‘picture’ or ‘model’ (Wittgenstein’s Bild). By examining Mamardašvili’s definition of the ‘phenomenon’ against the␣background of Husserl’s ‘reduction’, Wittgenstein’s ‘object’ and the Freudian and post-structuralist psychoanalytic model of subjectivity, the paper arrives at the inference that Mamardašvili is essentially a post-Structuralist thinker who appropriates concepts from various critical and philosophical disciplines to construct his own multi-disciplinary theory of consciousness and perception.