'Can you give it to someone who needs it more? Remunerating people who participate in research

In this short commentary, we reflect critically on the practice of remunerating people for their participation in qualitative research by drawing on our own ongoing research exploring ‘working mums’ experiences of mothering during economic crisis

Speech pathology assessment of language and cognitive-communication following traumatic brain injury and developmental language impairment: a survey of international clinical practices

Cognitive communication disorders subsequent to a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or a developmental language impairment (DLI) are two cognitively and linguistically different disorders. Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) play a pivotal role in maximising the long-term educational, vocational, psychosocial, and social outcomes for the individual with such a disorder. Despite this acknowledgement, little is documented from an international perspective about the current assessment practices of SLPs in TBI or DLI. Assessment practices of SLPs in language and cognitive communication were compared across three clinical groups: adult TBI, paediatric TBI and DLI. Online survey methodology was utilised to investigate the SLPs’ use of communication assessments as well as their perceptions of the utility of communication assessments in clinical practice. Specific information was obtained from SLPs working in paediatric TBI and DLI about the use of one specific standardised developmental language assessment: the Clinical Evaluations of Language Fundamentals Fourth Edition (CELF 4). Results highlighted that SLPs working in adult TBI placed more focus on functional communication and tools for cognitive communication disorders whilst also using aphasia assessments incorporating word and sentence-level tasks. SLPs working in both paediatric TBI and DLI focused on receptive and expressive language. They also used the same tool e.g. the CELF 4, which specifically uses subtests measuring core, receptive and expressive language. There was little difference between SLPs working in either TBI or DLI populations in how the tests were used. Although discourse was not routinely assessed by any of the SLPs, when it was conducted, it was done informally via a conversation with the client and no data collection. The findings from the study highlight the need for standardised clinical guidelines in the assessment of language and cognitive communication disorders. Education about cognitive and linguistic difficulties specific to TBI is highlighted for SLPs with less clinical experience in this area. Additionally, assessment tools that target skills beyond traditional word and sentence-levels tasks are required in order to inform the SLP about the strengths and weaknesses of an individual’s communication skills

Detrimental Student Behaviors as Perceived by Elementary Teachers

The purpose of the is study was to identify a common core of behaviors as perceived by elementary teachers who work with socially and emotionally disordered (S-ED) students. Fifty elementary teachers were randomly selected from a pool of 525 teachers to participate by giving perceptions. The teachers rank ordered ten general, ten socialization, and ten communication asocial behaviors in terms of these behaviors\u27 detrimental effect on instruction. The behaviors ranked as the most detrimental 9the common core) were those describing active and/or aggressive actions. When S-ED students exhibit active and aggressive behaviors, elementary teachers perceive them to be behaving in a manner detrimental to instruction

Forty years on: Uta Frith's contribution to research on autism and dyslexia, 1966–2006

Uta Frith has made a major contribution to our understanding of developmental disorders, especially autism and dyslexia. She has studied the cognitive and neurobiological bases of both disorders and demonstrated distinctive impairments in social cognition and central coherence in autism, and in phonological processing in dyslexia. In this enterprise she has encouraged psychologists to work in a theoretical framework that distinguishes between observed behaviour and the underlying cognitive and neurobiological processes that mediate that behaviour

Statistical detection of cooperative transcription factors with similarity adjustment

Motivation: Statistical assessment of cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) is a crucial task in computational biology. Usually, one concludes from exceptional co-occurrences of DNA motifs that the corresponding transcription factors (TFs) are cooperative. However, similar DNA motifs tend to co-occur in random sequences due to high probability of overlapping occurrences. Therefore, it is important to consider similarity of DNA motifs in the statistical assessment

Psychosocial impact of androgenetic alopecia on men: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The adverse psychosocial impact of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is often framed as an essential motivation for developing efficacious treatments to halt hair loss or promote regrowth, especially since AGA is common among men but does not result in physically harmful or life-limiting consequences. Yet, empirical evidence documenting the impact of AGA on men’s psychological wellbeing and quality of life is patchy and has not previously been subject to systematic review. This systemic review and meta-analyses aim to integrate and evaluate evidence regarding the psychosocial impact of AGA on men. A database and manual reference search identified English-language articles which reported: 1) empirical research; of ii) psychosocial distress (mental health, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, or quality of life); and iii) data separately for male AGA participants. Screening of 607 articles resulted in 37 (6%) for inclusion. PRISMA guidelines, the (modified) AXIS quality assessment tool, and independent extraction were deployed. Heterogeneity in measures and study aims, moderate study quality (M = 7.37, SD = 1.31), probable conflicts of interest (78%) and biased samples (68%) suggest that results should be treated cautiously. Meta-analyses revealed no impact on depression (pooled M = 8.8, 95% CI = 6.8–10.8) and moderate impact on quality of life (pooled m = 9.12, 95% CI = 6.14–12.10). Men with AGA were found to have average or better mental health compared to those without AGA. Overall, there was limited evidence of a severe impact on mental health and quality of life for men experiencing hair loss, with most studies evidencing (at best) a moderate impact. Good dermatological care includes accurately educating about the psychosocial impact of AGA on men, taking care not to overstate levels of distress, and screening for distress using validated measures which have clear clinical thresholds

Mitigating Gender Bias in Machine Learning Data Sets

Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to amplify and perpetuate societal biases and presents profound ethical implications for society. Gender bias has been identified in the context of employment advertising and recruitment tools, due to their reliance on underlying language processing and recommendation algorithms. Attempts to address such issues have involved testing learned associations, integrating concepts of fairness to machine learning and performing more rigorous analysis of training data. Mitigating bias when algorithms are trained on textual data is particularly challenging given the complex way gender ideology is embedded in language. This paper proposes a framework for the identification of gender bias in training data for machine learning.The work draws upon gender theory and sociolinguistics to systematically indicate levels of bias in textual training data and associated neural word embedding models, thus highlighting pathways for both removing bias from training data and critically assessing its impact.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 Tables, Presented as Bias2020 workshop (as part of the ECIR Conference) - http://bias.disim.univaq.i