1,720,958 research outputs found
Early features of autism spectrum disorder: a cross-sectional study.
Get PDFBACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by impairment in social interaction and communication along with repetitive, restricted, and stereotyped behaviors, interests and activities. It is important to detect this condition as soon as possible and promptly begin targeted treatments. This study aimed to report on age at onset, early signs, and mode at onset in 105 Italian patients with autism spectrum disorder, searching for correlations with a series of clinical and instrumental variables. METHODS: This retrospective cross-sectional study considered the following five categories of symptoms at onset: language, social interaction and relationships, stereotyped behavior and activities, motor skills, and regulation. Three modes of presentation were considered: a delay, a stagnation, or a regression of development, which were defined modes of onset of autism spectrum disorder. The age at onset, the category of clinical features, and the mode at onset were considered in the entire sample and statistically analyzed for several clinical variables. Statistical analysis was performed utilizing Fisher Exact test and Chi Square test. RESULTS: The first symptoms between 7 and 12 months were evident in 41.9% of cases, and between 13 and 24 months in 27.6%; no significant differences for the age at onset related to diagnosis, etiopathogenesis, early onset epilepsy, and intelligence quotient level emerged. Social interaction and relationships (93.3%) and language (92.4%) were the categories of early signs more represented in our sample. Delay in spoken language (to be understood as both verbal production and verbal comprehension) was one of the most common (even though not specific) symptoms prompting initial medical consultation for a possible diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. At onset, patients without intellectual disability manifested stagnation more often than delay or regression of development; patients with a severe/profound intellectual disability more frequently showed delay or regression of development. Language signs at onset were less frequent in cases with regression, whereas motor skill disorders prevailed in cases with delay at onset. Feeding problems were more numerous in cases with delay and stagnation of development. CONCLUSIONS: These data contribute to identifying an early trend of autism spectrum disorder, useful also for pediatricians
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
