Psychomotor therapy for individuals with mild intellectual disabilities or borderline intellectual functioning presenting anger regulation problems and/or aggressive behaviour:A qualitative study on clients' experiences

Background Psychomotor therapy (PMT) is often applied in Dutch clinical practice to address aggressive behaviour in individuals with mild intellectual disabilities or borderline intellectual functioning. However, the literature on clients' experiences is lacking. Methods An interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the semi-structured interviews of seven participants (19-60 years; four male, three female) who completed PMT targeting anger regulation problems. Results According to the participants, becoming aware of increasing tension and/or learning to downregulate the tension were the main goals of PMT. They emphasised both the possibility to learn by doing and the therapeutic alliance as essential to create a safe context, where participants can experiment with alternative behaviour. After completing PMT, participants perceived fewer aggressive outbursts and an increased self-esteem. Conclusions Participants in our sample experienced PMT as being helpful in targeting anger regulation problems and aggressive behaviour. The experiential nature of the program was perceived as a valuable aspect of PMT

Design of stated adaptation experiments: discussion of some issues and experiences

Rescheduling of daily activities and associated travel in response to unforeseen events such as travel delays is receiving increased attention in the context of traffic management. In this paper, we describe the results of a stated adaptation experiment held among a large sample of individuals through a web-based questionnaire, to estimate parameters of such dynamic behaviour. In the experiment, subjects indicated their response to a reduction in available time for a planned activity in a number of hypothetical situations. A mixed logit model was used to estimate subjective preferences for adapting in certain ways conditional upon activity attributes and socio-economic variables. The results indicate that location and transport-mode adaptations are rare compared to duration adjustment or postponing/cancelling the activity, dependent on the relative size of reduced time. Socio-economic variables and activity attributes play a significant role too

Dense packing on uniform lattices

We study the Hard Core Model on the graphs ${\rm {\bf \scriptstyle G}}$ obtained from Archimedean tilings i.e. configurations in $\scriptstyle \{0,1\}^{{\rm {\bf G}}}$ with the nearest neighbor 1's forbidden. Our particular aim in choosing these graphs is to obtain insight to the geometry of the densest packings in a uniform discrete set-up. We establish density bounds, optimal configurations reaching them in all cases, and introduce a probabilistic cellular automaton that generates the legal configurations. Its rule involves a parameter which can be naturally characterized as packing pressure. It can have a critical value but from packing point of view just as interesting are the noncritical cases. These phenomena are related to the exponential size of the set of densest packings and more specifically whether these packings are maximally symmetric, simple laminated or essentially random packings.Comment: 18 page

Pickup and delivery selection problem

Abstract This paper focuses on the modelling of carrier decisions within an activity-based freight transportation model. To model freight transport, the different actors who are included in the decision making process have to be represented. One of these actors is the carrier. This paper formulates the decisions of the carrier as a selective pickup and delivery problem. To be able to better represent the influence of carrier decisions on the logistic module within an activity based freight transportation model. The objective is to maximize the profit gained, by selecting transport requests. A local search heuristic is presented to solve the problem. Keywords: Logistic decisions, Freight transport modelling, PDSP To represent logistic decisions within an activity based freight transportation model, decisions of a carrier have to be modelled. A carrier faces the daily problem of optimally scheduling his transport orders. Each day a carrier receives transport requests from his clients, which have to be executed within a certain time period. To obtain a maximal profit the carrier has to group certain orders and create an optimal sequence of pickup and delivery tasks. The assumption mostly made is that all requests have to be fulfilled. In reality a carrier can refuse a transport order, when he believes this order is not profitable. In our activity-based freight framework In a PDSP not all transportation requests have to be fulfilled. A carrier receives transportation requests during the entire day. When new requests are received a decision has to be made, whether the carrier will take the responsibility of the transport or not. Unknown requests of the future cannot be taken into account when considering the current request. Hence, the PDSP is modelled as a static planning problem. In literature this problem is not often investigated, but several variations on the problem exist. Two mai

Psychomotor therapy targeting anger and aggressive behaviour in individuals with mild or borderline intellectual disabilities:A systematic review

Background: Poor anger regulation is considered a risk factor of aggression in individuals with mild or borderline intellectual disabilities. Psychomotor therapy (PMT) targets anger regulation through body- and movement-oriented interventions. This study aims to inform practitioners on efficacy and research-base of PMT in this population. Method: This systematic review evaluated nine studies which met inclusion criteria in terms of participants, intervention procedures, outcomes and certainty of evidence. Results: Seven studies revealed a substantial reduction of aggressive behaviour or anger. Certainty of evidence was rated inconclusive in most cases due to absence of experimental control. Conclusions: We can conclude that body-oriented PMT, involving progressive relaxation and meditation procedure "Soles of the Feet", is a promising approach. However, the paucity of studies and methodological limitations preclude classifying it as an evidence-based practice. This suggests stronger methodological research and research aimed at PMT's mechanisms of action (e.g., improved interoceptive awareness) is warranted.</p

Developing an optimised activity type annotation method based on classification accuracy and entropy indices

The generation of substantial amounts of travel and mobility related data has spawned the emergence of the era of big data. However, this data generally lacks activity-travel information such as trip purpose. This deficiency led to the development of trip purpose inference (activity type imputation / annotation) techniques, of which the performance depends on the available input data and the (number of) activity type classes to infer. Aggregating activity types strongly increases the inference accuracy and is usually left to the discretion of the researcher. As this is open for interpretation, it undermines the reported inference accuracy. This study developed an optimised classification methodology by identifying classes of activity types with an optimal balance between improving model accuracy, and preserving activity information from the original data set. A sensitivity analysis was performed. Additionally, several machine learning algorithms are experimented with. The proposed method may be applied to any study area

Investigating Pedestrian Walkability using a Multitude of Seoul Data Sources

Currently walking is a multidisciplinary and emerging point of attention for urban sustainability and for ensuring the quality of pedestrian environments. In order to understand pedestrian behaviour, walkability researches estimate the factors which affect the level of pedestrian satisfaction. Past studies focused on the relationship between environmental factors and pedestrian behavioural outcomes. In this study, we developed pedestrian satisfaction multinomial logit models using various datasets, examining the relative impact of five differently themed sets of attributes: personal, walk-facilities, land-use, pedestrian volumes, and weather-related variables. The results show that the personal variability attributes were selected as most significant. We investigated effects of personal variability, such as the spatial cognition level and travel purpose, and detailed effects of environmental features. In addition, crowdedness, land-use types, and residential information were investigated. The results from this study offer contributions by providing evidence of the importance of personal and contextual variables in influencing the pedestrian walkability

Validation of Activity-based Travel Demand Model using Smart-card Data in Seoul, South Korea

This study aims to validate an activity-based travel demand model, FEATHERS, using smart-card data which is collected in Seoul, South Korea, and to discuss some limits and challenges in the prediction of public traffic demands. To achieve the goal, global/local trip pattern indices and a hot-spot analysis were applied for the validation test as a comparison method in this study. Using those methods, the public traffic demands predicted by the simulation in the study area were evaluated comparing with ones in the smart-card data. As a result, FEATHERS Seoul shows the enough performance in predicting the global pattern of the public traffic demands, but a low performance in a local pattern, particularly in some areas with a mixture land-use type and/or a frequent public transit. This is because the current model does not handle such a complicate type of land-use and also a multi-modal trip in the simulation process. In conclusion, this study addressed the limits of the current model through the validation test using smart-card data and suggested some solution to the improvement in the specific models As a future work, we will apply smart-card data for the validation of the models operated in FS, such as a location choice model and a trip mode choice model