Multiagent Reactive Plan Application Learning in Dynamic Environments

In addition to bottom-up learning approaches, which facilitate emergent policy learning, it also is desirable to have top-down control over learning so that a team of agents can also learn to apply general policies to diverse dynamic situations. We present a multiagent case-based learning methodology to achieve this top-down control. In this methodology, high-level symbolic plans describe policies a team of agents needs to learn to apply to di#erent situations. For each plan whose preconditions match their current team state, agents learn to operationalize that plan. In each training scenario, each agent learns a sequence of actions that implements each step in the given plan such that the entire plan is operationalized under current external conditions. This application knowledge is acquired via searching through a small set of available high-level actions and testing the success of each sequence of actions in the situated environment. Similarity between a new situation and existing cases is measured by considering only the state internal to the team, and an agent stores the successful sequence of actions in the current plan step indexed under the current external state. By repeating this process for each plan step using many diverse training scenarios, a team of agents learns how to operationalize an entire plan in a wide variety of external situations, hence achieving generality. We demonstrate our approach using the RoboCup soccer simulator

Effects of depressive disorders on quality of life perceptions among adolescents

Objective: In our study, the perception of quality of life in the adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) was assessed by using multiple instruments to determine how their parents and adolescents were affected by depression in their own perspective, and the findings were compared with healthy control group. Thus, it is aimed to investigate the complementary nature of different types of instruments used in MDD during evaluation process by examining the relationship between depressive symptoms and quality of life. Methods: In our study, 38 adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) by using DSM IV-TR criteria between 13-18 years old were recruited who admitted to or were already followed in Dokuz Eylul University (DEU) Child and Adolescents Psychiatry Department Outpatient Unit. 38 healthy controls between same age range with MDD adolescents were chosen from DEU's Catchment Area. Both adolescents and their parents were asked to complete Turkish version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory. A self-report inventory called Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used to assess depressive symptoms and a child psychiatrist fulfilled Clinic Global Impression-severity (CGI-S) and Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) forms for each participant. Result: It has been shown that comparing with healthy controls, MDD diagnosed children's PedsQL total points and subtotal points were found statistically significantly lower. Adolescents diagnosed with MDD's both PedsQL total and subtotal points were positively correlated with their parents. There were moderate relationship between both adolescents and their parents PedsQL points, self-report inventory called BDI and clinician rated CGAS and CGI-severity. Discussion: Our findings pointed out that because its descriptive features of experiencing subjective and environmental difficulties in functionality areas, PedsQL is one of the important instruments that supports clinical evaluation of severity of and impairment caused by depressive disorder

Psychometric properties of the Turkish adaptation of the Children's Depression Rating Scale: revised in Turkish adolescents

Objective: Children Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R) is an instrument that is evaluated by a clinician and it needs bringing up the information from child/adolescent, parents and clinical assessment together. In clinical population, CDRS-R provides general information about depressive symptomatology and severity of depression also. The aim of this study was to translate and adapt of CDRS-R in Turkish and evaluate its psychometric properties in adolescence in Turkish population. Methods: Thirty-eight adolescents with major depressive disorders (MDD) and 38 healthy controls between 13 and 18 years old were recruited. Adolescents with at least some symptoms of depression were evaluated using the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS-PL)Present and Lifetime by a child psychiatrist. A child psychiatrist completed the Children Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R). The Clinical Global Impressions-Severity (CGI-S) and the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) were also rated. The participants were asked to complete the self-report inventories and Beck Depression Inventory. Ratings from all available CDRS-R scores were examined for both the study group and healthy controls. Results: Cronbach's alpha was found highly reliable. The interclass correlation coefficients ranged between 0.92 and 0.99 for each item, thus the inter-rater reliability was found statistically significant and highly correlated. We identified 16 factors whose eigenvalues were greater than one. The CDRS-R's items common variables were within the range of 0.45 to 0.87. The CDRS-R, CGI-S, and CGAS scores were compared with the CDRS-R raw score and they were found highly correlated. During evaluation of concurrent validity, BDI's sensitivity was 90.9%, and specificity 87.8%, and the positive and negative predictive values were 88% and 90%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for the CDRS-R were significantly high (100%). Conclusion: We found that Turkish version of the CDRS-R had reliability and validity for use in the diagnosis and rating of severity of major depressive disorders in Turkish children and adolescents