Young children suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm : experiences on entering education

Since 2005, the Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University has been tracing the decision-making process influencing the life pathways of a cohort of very young children who were identified as suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm before they reached their first birthdays. The overall objective of the research is to collect evidence which supports decisions concerning which children require permanent out of home placements (such as adoption) and those that can safely remain with their birth parents

Rochester, the City of Beginnings

In her 1919 address to the Rochester Historical Association, H.E.B. Dow juxtaposes the city’s history of social tolerance and forward thinking with its religious conscience. This book is a must-read for those who wish to find out how anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, the temperance movement, the modern cult of spiritualists, anti-masonry, and even the raid on Harper’s Ferry had their beginnings in Rochester, NY. Discover the names and influences of many prominent Rochesterians, most of whom now rest in the city’s famous Mount Hope Cemetery, who had a hand in shaping the nation’s nineteenth century politics and American industry—from the issuance of paper money by the federal government to the founding of Western Union, the Pacific Railroad, the mail order industry, the Republican Party, voting machines, and much more. (summary written by Justina Elmore)https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/historical-reprints/1010/thumbnail.jp

Active Inference, Attention, and Motor Preparation

Perception is the foundation of cognition and is fundamental to our beliefs and consequent action planning. The Editorial (this issue) asks: “what mechanisms, if any, mediate between perceptual and cognitive processes?” It has recently been argued that attention might furnish such a mechanism. In this paper, we pursue the idea that action planning (motor preparation) is an attentional phenomenon directed toward kinesthetic signals. This rests on a view of motor control as active inference, where predictions of proprioceptive signals are fulfilled by peripheral motor reflexes. If valid, active inference suggests that attention should not be limited to the optimal biasing of perceptual signals in the exteroceptive (e.g., visual) domain but should also bias proprioceptive signals during movement. Here, we investigate this idea using a classical attention (Posner) paradigm cast in a motor setting. Specially, we looked for decreases in reaction times when movements were preceded by valid relative to invalid cues. Furthermore, we addressed the hierarchical level at which putative attentional effects were expressed by independently cueing the nature of the movement and the hand used to execute it. We found a significant interaction between the validity of movement and effector cues on reaction times. This suggests that attentional bias might be mediated at a low level in the motor hierarchy, in an intrinsic frame of reference. This finding is consistent with attentional enabling of top-down predictions of proprioceptive input and may rely upon the same synaptic mechanisms that mediate directed spatial attention in the visual system

Decision-making within a child’s timeframe: an overview of current research evidence for family justice professionals concerning child development and the impact of maltreatment

This overview of research evidence was commissioned in response to the Family Justice Review recommendation for consistent training and development for family justice professionals, including a greater emphasis on child development. Aims and Objectives The aim of this study was to bring together key research evidence to facilitate understanding among professionals working in the family justice system in the following areas: • Neuroscience perspectives on children's cognitive, social and emotional development. • The implications of maltreatment on childhood and adulthood wellbeing. • Evidence on the outcomes of intervention by the courts and children's social care. • Timeframes for intervening and how they fit (or don't) with those for children. The paper is intended to assist decision-making by family justice professionals and facilitate a greater understanding of individual children's needs and appropriate timeframes