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Video‐based interventions promoting social behavioural skills for autistic children and young people: An evidence and gap map
Get PDFVideo-based interventions (VBIs) are an approach that can be used to promote social behavioural skills for autistic children and young people. Despite an abundance of literature in this area, previous evidence syntheses are limited by their exclusive search strategies and eligibility criteria. Therefore, there is a lack of comprehensive evidence syntheses to provide insight on whether these interventions work, for whom, and in what circumstances. Evidence and Gap Maps (EGMs) are used to collate vast literature on a broad topic area such as this, highlighting areas for synthesis, and identifying gaps for future research. To identify, map and synthesise existing primary research on VBIs promoting social behavioural skills for autistic children and young people, creating a live, searchable and publicly available EGM. Searches were conducted in electronic databases ( = 8), web search engines, and other repositories including published papers and grey literature. The search strategy was developed around two concepts including (1) terms related to autism, and (2) terms related to VBIs. Searches were conducted in May 2021. All primary studies evaluating the effectiveness of VBIs in promoting social behaviours for autistic children and young people aged 3-18 were included in the EGM. Search results were imported into Eppi-Reviewer where duplicates of identical studies were removed. Titles and abstracts were then screened by two independent reviewers. Potentially eligible full texts were located and also screened by two reviewers. Data were then extracted on study design, participant characteristics, type of intervention, type of outcome, and country of study, by one of three reviewers. EPPI-Mapper was used to create the interactive EGM. The current EGM contains 438 studies reporting on 394 single subject research designs, 25 randomised controlled trials, 15 non-randomised group designs, and 8 pretest-posttest designs. Included studies evaluated VBIs in all male ( = 238), mixed gender ( = 172) or all female ( = 17) samples. VBIs employed included video modelling ( = 273), video self-modelling ( = 82), point-of-view modelling ( = 61), video prompting ( = 57), video feedback ( = 12) and computer-based video instruction ( = 4). The most frequently used models were adults ( = 191) and peers ( = 135). In relation to social outcomes, almost half evaluated social engagement ( = 199) with limited studies looking at safety ( = 9) and community ( = 7) skills. This EGM provides a valuable resource for policy-makers, practitioners, researchers, funders and members of the public to access evidence on VBIs promoting social behavioural skills in autistic children and young people. The map has identified areas of sufficient research where evidence can undergo synthesis. In addition, important gaps in the evidence were highlighted and suggest further research is warranted in all female samples and less frequently evaluated types of VBIs and social outcomes. Evidence included in this EGM will be further explored via systematic review and meta-analysis on control group designs. [Abstract copyright: © 2024 The Authors. Campbell Systematic Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Campbell Collaboration.
The mediating role of reflective functioning and general psychopathology in the relationship between childhood conduct disorder and adult aggression among offenders
Get PDFBACKGROUND: The nature of the pathway from conduct disorder (CD) in adolescence to antisocial behavior in adulthood has been debated and the role of certain mediators remains unclear. One perspective is that CD forms part of a general psychopathology dimension, playing a central role in the developmental trajectory. Impairment in reflective functioning (RF), i.e., the capacity to understand one's own and others' mental states, may relate to CD, psychopathology, and aggression. Here, we characterized the structure of psychopathology in adult male-offenders and its role, along with RF, in mediating the relationship between CD in their adolescence and current aggression.METHODS: A secondary analysis of pre-treatment data from 313 probation-supervised offenders was conducted, and measures of CD symptoms, general and specific psychopathology factors, RF, and aggression were evaluated through clinical interviews and questionnaires.RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a bifactor model best fitted the sample's psychopathology structure, including a general psychopathology factor (p factor) and five specific factors: internalizing, disinhibition, detachment, antagonism, and psychoticism. The structure of RF was fitted to the data using a one-factor model. According to our mediation model, CD significantly predicted the p factor, which was positively linked to RF impairments, resulting in increased aggression.CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the critical role of a transdiagnostic approach provided by RF and general psychopathology in explaining the link between CD and aggression. Furthermore, they underscore the potential utility of treatments focusing on RF, such as mentalization-based treatment, in mitigating aggression in offenders with diverse psychopathologies.</p
Cumulative trophic curves elucidate tropical coral reef ecosystems
Get PDFThere are few generalizable patterns in ecology, with widespread observations and predictability. One possible generalizable pattern is the cumulative trophic theory, which consistently exhibits S-curves of cumulative biomass over trophic level (TL) for over 200 different marine ecosystems. But whether those cumulative biomass patterns persist in some of the more distinct marine ecosystems, coral reefs, is unclear. Coral reefs are unique among marine ecosystems, representing global biodiversity hotspots and providing crucial ecosystem services. They are subject to many pressures, including both global (e.g., climate and ocean changes, warming, acidification) and local (e.g., overexploitation/overfishing, increase in turbidity, bleaching, habitat destruction, invasive species) stressors. The analysis of emergent ecosystem features, such as cumulative biomass S-curves, could represent a useful and new analytical option that can also be implemented for coral reefs. The cumulative biomass approach was applied to 42 U.S. Pacific islands (Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, the Pacific Remote Islands Areas, and the Northwestern and Main Hawaiian Islands), using data collected from fish surveys. Results show that coral reef ecosystems do indeed follow the S-curve patterns expected from cumulative trophic theory, which is not trivial for tropical reef systems that tend to be less widely examined and strongly dominated by structuring organisms like corals. The curve parameters results are also consistent with both fish assemblage diversity indexes and the benthic substrate ratio, which suggests this measure could serve as a useful ecosystem indicator to measure the ecological status of reefs. Moreover, the curve shape was consistent with what one would expect for different levels of perturbation, with the areas more densely inhabited showing less pronounced S-curves, in contrast to those observed in low human population density islands. All this is reflected in the curve parameters, particularly inflection point of the TL and steepness, generally showing a negative response to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Cross-archipelago differences have also been detected with the Hawaiian Island chain tending to have lower inflection points for biomass and TL than other regions. Collectively our findings demonstrate the potential application of the cumulative biomass approach to evaluate coral reef ecosystems
Protecting stable biological nomenclatural systems enables universal communication: A collective international appeal
Get PDFThe fundamental value of universal nomenclatural systems in biology is that they enable unambiguous scientific communication. However, the stability of these systems is threatened by recent discussions asking for a fairer nomenclature, raising the possibility of bulk revision processes for “inappropriate” names. It is evident that such proposals come from very deep feelings, but we show howthey can irreparably damage the foundation of biological communication and, in turn, the sciences that depend on it. There are four essential consequences of objective codes of nomenclature: universality,stability,neutrality,and transculturality.These codes provide fair and impartial guides to the principles governing biological nomenclature and allow unambiguous universal communication in biology.Accordingly,no subjective proposals should be allowed to undermine them
The role of Religious Salience and Ethnicity in Weakening Political Institutions in Nigeria since 1960: A Socio-economic analysis
Get PDFProprietors, people, transition and change on a Welsh estate: Gregynog Hall, Montgomeryshire, 1750-1900
Get PDFWhat Does the Evaluation of the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019 in England Tell Us About the Effectiveness of Deemed Consent Systems for Deceased Organ Donation?
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Articulating scholarship in human resource management: Guidance for researchers
Get PDFHRMJ is a business and management journal: we seek to publish excellent work that deals not simply with people and organisations, but with the management of people and the issues and tensions around the latter. As such, the journal is broadly multidisciplinary, the key focus being on advancing theory through empirical evidence, through consolidations and extensions of conceptual knowledge, through revisiting and extending existing theory, literature reviews, as well as the development of salient research methods. This extended editorial brings together a range of perspectives from and beyond the editorial team to advance understanding around developing work for publication. As such, it is intended not only to guide authors interested in publishing in HRMJ, but all with an interest in advancing their scholarly wor
Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense:Conceptual Tense Blindness in Late Bilinguals
Get PDFChinese learners of English often experience difficulty with English tense presumably because their native language is tenseless. We showed that this difficulty relates to their incomplete conceptual representations for tense rather than their poor grammatical rule knowledge. Participants made acceptability judgments on sentences describing two-event sequences that were either temporally plausible or misaligned according to verb tense (time clash). Both upper-intermediate Chinese learners of English and native English speakers were able to detect time clashes between events, showing that Chinese participants could apply tense rules explicitly. However, a predicted modulation of the N400 event-related brain potential elicited by time clashes in English-speaking participants was entirely absent in Chinese participants. In contrast, the same Chinese participants could semantically process time information when it was lexically conveyed in both languages. Thus, despite their mastery of English grammar, high-functioning Chinese learners of English failed to process the meaning of tense- conveyed temporal information in real time