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Exploring the evaluation of antiepileptic drug change in people with intellectual disabilities and high-frequency epileptic seizures: seizure control and sustained responsiveness to the environment.

PURPOSE: Optimum antiepilepsy medication should be successful in reducing seizures with minimal adverse effects on the patient's ability to concentrate or general level of awareness. The purpose was to investigate the potential of a method of measuring responsiveness to environmental events as a means of reflecting awareness levels among people with intellectual disabilities undergoing review of medication for high-frequency epileptic seizures. METHODS: Observations of 22 participants referred to a specialist clinic were conducted three times a month over a 5-month period following the initial baseline measures and clinical intervention. Behavioral responsiveness was measured by calculating the likelihood of appropriate activity occurring given the occurrence of staff interaction. This likelihood was represented by the statistic Yule's Q. Seizure frequency was also evaluated. RESULTS: Participant responsiveness after drug review was similar to baseline indicating an absence of long-term adverse effects. Participants experienced a significant decrease in seizure frequency. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that drug review led to seizure reduction while behavioral measurement confirmed no loss of responsiveness.

Adolescent↗

Analysis of dream contents by scaled and rated measurements.

The study was undertaken in order to test a dream-rating scale and to propose some modifications, especially for use in laboratory situations where the effect of a given experimental factor is to be assessed on mental activity in sleep. Dreams collected from normal subjects under EEG monitoring were analysed in detail in order to establish definitions for each rating point of each dimension of the rating scale. The scoring of a second set of dreams by two judges using this scale resulted in an inter-rater agreement significantly above the level of chance agreement.

Adult↗

Fine-tuning of utterance length to preverbal infants: effects on later language development.

The purpose of this study was to determine (1) whether mothers simplify their speech during the second half of the first year of development when infants begin to comprehend words and use gestures to communicate intentionally, and (2) whether individual differences in mothers' speech adjustments influence their infants' later language acquisition. The subjects for the study were 14 mother-infant pairs from a medically low risk sample who were followed longitudinally. Mothers' mean length of utterance (MLU) was calculated from transcripts of face-to-face interaction when the infants were 0:3, 0:6, and 0:9 in age. Mothers who provided responsive and stimulating environments, as indicated by HOME scores, also reduced their MLU over the age range studied. Moreover, mothers' MLU adjustments during the first year were more predictive than the HOME scale in forecasting receptive language development at 1:6. In contrast, expressive language abilities at 1:6 were unrelated to the environmental variables measured but were predicted by child characteristics such as the infant's sex. These results suggest that a mother's ability to 'fine-tune' her early linguistic input may be predictive of her child's later receptive language functioning. Precursors of fine-tuning, such as maternal beliefs in reciprocity and infant object orientation, are discussed.

Female↗

Agitation and aggressiveness among the elderly population living in nursing or retirement homes in France.

The aim of this study was to describe the epidemiological features of agitation and aggressiveness in elderly individuals living in French nursing and retirement homes in the year 2000. Data were collected on the type, time of onset, and duration of symptoms, medical evaluation and treatment, and medical and psychiatric comorbidities of the elderly patients. The most frequently reported behavior was verbal aggressiveness and the least reported behavior was physical aggressiveness. A triggering factor initiating the symptoms of agitation or aggressiveness was reported in 61% of the cases. In 61% of the study population, there were several morbidities reported as caused by the agitated or aggressive behavior (anorexia, weight loss, dehydration). A specialist was consulted for nearly half of the agitated or aggressive patients. For 55% of the patients, a new medication regimen was started or the administration of previous medications was modified, the most frequently prescribed drugs being antipsychotics. The results of our study and others show that agitation and aggression have a substantial impact on the lives of the elderly population, as well as on the lives of their family members and caretakers.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Does teaching theory of mind have an effect on the ability to develop conversation in children with autism?

The present research examined whether teaching children with autism to pass tasks that assess mental state understanding had any positive effects on communication. Two aspects of communication previously shown to be deficient in children with autism were considered. These are conversational ability, in particular the ability to expand on conversation, and the use of mental state terms in speech. Results showed that no discernible improvement was seen on either measure of communication following mental state teaching. Discussion centers on real versus superficial changes in understanding mental states as a result of teaching.

Autistic Disorder↗

What children say when the teacher is not around: conflicting goals in social comparison and performance assessment in the classroom.

Naturalistic observations and interviews with children in kindergarten, first, second, and fourth grades were used to examine developmental shifts in the focus of social comparison and the expression of comparative and evaluative interests in relation to possibly conflicting goals. First, observers coded the content of peer exchanges and direction of visual gaze during class work times. Children were then interviewed about help seeking and reading performance in the classroom. Classroom observations revealed that comparisons related to personal aspects of peers declined with age, whereas evaluative comments and comparisons related to performance assessment increased sharply in first grade. In the higher grades, blatantly evaluative and comparative statements decreased, whereas more subtle and functional performance-related exchanges continued to increase. Interviews showed that differences in classroom behaviors were associated with knowledge of classroom performance hierarchies, the salience of general ability, and self-evaluation. The data patterns are interpreted in terms of two converging processes: self-socialization and goal conflict. Implications for social comparison theory are also discussed.

Achievement↗

The influence of another's perspective on children's recall of previously misconstrued events.

Children's abilities to reframe their memories of events after hearing another child's perspective of the same events were examined, and links between memory reframing, cognitive ability, and social competence were explored. Nine- to 11-year-olds (N = 79) were told to imagine that the events in a narrated story happened to them. Next, they heard another story that described either the same events (experimental condition) or unrelated events (control condition) from another child's perspective. The children in the experimental group reframed their memories in light of the alternative perspective, whereas the children in the control condition did not. Children with higher cognitive scores had higher memory reframing scores and received higher social competence ratings than children with lower cognitive scores.

Aptitude↗

Social perception deficits after traumatic brain injury: interaction between emotion recognition, mentalizing ability, and social communication.

Thirty-four adults with severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and 34 matched control participants were asked to interpret videotaped conversational exchanges. Study participants were asked to judge the speakers' emotions, the speakers' beliefs (first-order theory of mind), what the speakers intended their conversational partners to believe (second-order theory of mind), and what they meant by remarks that were sincere or literally untrue (i.e., a lie or sarcastic retort). The TBI group had marked difficulty judging most facets of social information. They could recognize speaker beliefs only when this information was explicitly provided. In general, emotion recognition and first-order theory of mind judgments were not related to the ability to understand social (conversational) inference, whereas second-order theory of mind judgments were related to that ability.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Parents' sung performances for infants.

Naive listeners rated the style of singing in mothers' and fathers' sung performances for infants and their simulations of those performances (Experiment 1). Performances in an infant's presence were judged as more expressive--either more playful or more soothing--than were simulations. Parents' style of singing, as reflected in these ratings, differed as a function of the sex of singer and listener. Both parents sang more playfully for same-sex infants than for opposite-sex infants. Independent listeners rated the manner in which parents enunciated the lyrics of their songs (Experiment 2). Parents rendered the lyrics of songs more expressively in infant-present than in infant-absent contexts. Moreover, this expressiveness was greater for same-sex infants than for opposite-sex infants. These findings are consistent with parents' greater attachment to same-sex infants. Discrepancies between parents' choice of songs and their manner of singing lend credence to functional rather than nominal classifications of songs for infants.

Adult↗

Description of a program for social language intervention: "if you can have a conversation, you can have a relationship".

Adolescents with impaired language comprehension and formulation skills often experience difficulty keeping up with the linguistic and social demands of peer interaction. This clinical exchange describes an individualized treatment program designed to increase the conversational skill of an adolescent male with language impairment. Treatment focused on increasing awareness of the listener's needs and on balancing the exchange of conversational turns. Clinical performance, parent report, and client report were used to assess outcomes.

Adolescent↗

Psychometric evaluation of a Swedish version of the communication strategies scale of the communication profile for the hearing impaired.

The Communication Strategies scale of the Communication Profile for the Hearing Impaired (CPHI) was translated into Swedish and used in several studies of people with hearing impairment (Hallberg & Carlsson, in press; Hallberg, Erlandsson, & Carlsson, 1991). In this study the scale was evaluated in terms of descriptive statistics, corrected item-total correlations, principal component analysis, and internal consistency reliability. Agreement with results from American studies is surprisingly good. Normative data based on three samples are presented: a general Swedish hearing-impaired sample with predominantly sensorineural hearing loss (N = 199), a subgroup of 105 younger subjects with noise-induced hearing loss, and a subgroup of 39 older subjects with sensorineural hearing loss due to heredity and/or old age. A significantly more frequent use of maladaptive behaviors (p less than .001) and verbal communication strategies (p less than .01) was reported by older subjects with age-related and/or hereditary hearing loss than by younger subjects with noise-induced hearing loss. The Communication Strategies scale seems to be an adequately reliable and clinically useful instrument for assessing adaptive and maladaptive strategies in hearing-impaired subjects.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Perseveration or the Tower of Babel.

The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to present a study of perseveration in a continuous series of 50 left brain-damaged aphasic subjects and (2) to describe the treatment of 2 patients with high rates of perseveration. In the group of 50 subjects, 20 showed two or more perseverations in one or more language tasks. No difference in number of perseverations was found between fluent and nonfluent subjects, but perseverations in global aphasic subjects with stereotyped speech were less varied than they were in fluent aphasic subjects and were not unlike other types of recurrent utterances. Of the two patients who received treatment, subject 1 had severe semantic disruption and perseverated in all production and comprehension tasks, except in repetition, reading aloud, and writing to dictation, all of which could be performed by the undamaged sublexical routines. Treated subject 2 had writing disorders that were ascribed to damage to the output buffer. She perseverated in all writing tasks. Rehabilitation of the semantic system in subject 1 and of the output buffer in subject 2 greatly reduced the number of perseverations in both subjects. It is argued that recovery of the underlying functional damage reduces the perseverative behavior.

Adult↗