Effects of Embedded Tacting Trials and Systematic Prompting On Intraverbal Skill Acquisition

For all students, the ability to communicate is the most fundamental educational outcome leading to academic success (Kearns et al., 2011). Students with autism (ASD), however, demonstrate particular difficulty with spontaneous communication and use of functional language throughout a variety of settings (CDC, 2018), including academic contexts. The framework of verbal behavior and training of tacting and intraverbal responses has been widely used to increase the language for students with autism (Sundberg & Michael, 2001), but these skills do not begin in or generalize to academic contexts, particularly during reading instruction. Embedded instruction (Jimenez & Kamei, 2015) and systematic prompting (Doyle et al.,1988) have widely been used as strategies to improve skill acquisition for students with developmental disabilities, including autism, but a majority of the skill acquisition relates to play, transition, functional skill development, and communicating within a social and behavioral context as opposed to within the contexts of access to academic content (Odom et al., 2010). This study provides support to the existing literature by combining two previously evidence-based practices to increase the verbal behavior (tacting and intraverbal responses) of students with autism during reading instruction. A single subject multiple probe design across participants was used to analyze the outcomes of the use of embedded trials and systematic prompting on tacted and intraverbal responses, as well as the content and accuracy of the responses. Additionally, social validity was measured in this study through surveys administered to the student and teacher participants, as well as parents of the participants in the study. Delimitations, limitations, and future research considerations were discussed

Non-legible writing: what can't be read in what is written

O artigo apresenta uma discussão a respeito dos elementos teóricos que tornam possível a abordagem do fenômeno da ilegibilidade na escrita de uma criança como sintoma clínico. Para tal, pretende articular, em um fragmento clínico, as questões referentes à letra alfabética em sua vertente imagética e à instituição da imagem do corpo como próprio. Assim, a escrita, enquanto fato de linguagem, poderia situar uma formação sintomática referida à estruturação da imagem do corpo.This paper presents the non-legibility of a child's writing as a clinic symptom and discusses a theoretical approach that makes this assumption possible. With this aim, it proposes an articulation between the alphabetical letter in its imagetical materiality and the construction of the body image as a body proper, and presents a clinical fragment to expose this articulation. Understood as a fact of language writing can relate the constitution of a symptom to the structuration of the body image.El artículo presenta una discusión acerca de los elementos teóricos que' habilitan el abordaje del fenómeno de la ilegibilidad en la escritura de un niño como síntoma clínico. Con ese fin, intenta articular, en una viñeta clínica, las cuestiones referentes a la letra alfabética en su vertiente imagética y la institución de la imagen del cuerpo como propio. Así, la escritura, en tanto hecho del lenguaje, podria ubicar una formación sintomática alusiva a la estructuración de la imagen del cuerpo

Pais na escola: mais um fruto do encontro da psicanálise com a educação

This paper aims to discuss about the possibilities of intervention in the assistence to parents in an institution for education using references brought up through the confluence of psychoanalyses and education.Este artigo pretende discutir algumas possibilidades de intervenção no trabalho com pais em uma instituição escolar a partir de referenciais contruídos no encontro dos campos da psicanálise e da educação

Disease-modifying therapies alter gut microbial composition in MS.

Objective:To determine the effects of the disease-modifying therapies, glatiramer acetate (GA) and dimethyl fumarate (DMF), on the gut microbiota in patients with MS. Methods:Participants with relapsing MS who were either treatment-naive or treated with GA or DMF were recruited. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were immunophenotyped. Bacterial DNA was extracted from stool, and amplicons targeting the V4 region of the bacterial/archaeal 16S rRNA gene were sequenced (Illumina MiSeq). Raw reads were clustered into Operational Taxonomic Units using the GreenGenes database. Differential abundance analysis was performed using linear discriminant analysis effect size. Phylogenetic investigation of communities by reconstruction of unobserved states was used to investigate changes to functional pathways resulting from differential taxon abundance. Results:One hundred sixty-eight participants were included (treatment-naive n = 75, DMF n = 33, and GA n = 60). Disease-modifying therapies were associated with changes in the fecal microbiota composition. Both therapies were associated with decreased relative abundance of the Lachnospiraceae and Veillonellaceae families. In addition, DMF was associated with decreased relative abundance of the phyla Firmicutes and Fusobacteria and the order Clostridiales and an increase in the phylum Bacteroidetes. Despite the different changes in bacterial taxa, there was an overlap between functional pathways affected by both therapies. Interpretation:Administration of GA or DMF is associated with differences in gut microbial composition in patients with MS. Because those changes affect critical metabolic pathways, we hypothesize that our findings may highlight mechanisms of pathophysiology and potential therapeutic intervention requiring further investigation

Enhanced functional synchronization of medial and lateral PFC underlies internally-guided action planning

Actions are often internally guided, reflecting our covert will and intentions. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, including the pre-Supplementary Motor Area (pre-SMA), has been implicated in the internally generated aspects of action planning, such as choice and intention. Yet, the mechanism by which this area interacts with other cognitive brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a central node in decision-making, is still unclear. To shed light on this mechanism, brain activity was measured via fMRI and intracranial EEG in two studies during the performance of visually cued repeated finger tapping in which the choice of finger was guided by either a presented number (external) or self-choice (internal). A functional-MRI (fMRI) study in 15 healthy participants demonstrated that the pre-SMA, compared to the SMA proper, was more active and also more functionally correlated with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during internally compared to externally guided action planning (p < 0.05, random effect). In a similar manner, an intracranial-EEG study in five epilepsy patients showed greater inter-regional gamma-related connectivity between electrodes situated in medial and lateral aspects of the prefrontal cortex for internally compared to externally guided actions. Although this finding was observed for groups of electrodes situated both in the pre-SMA and SMA-proper, increased intra-cluster gamma-related connectivity was only observed for the pre-SMA (sign-test, p < 0.0001). Overall our findings provide multi-scale indications for the involvement of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and especially the pre-SMA, in generating internally guided motor planning. Our intracranial-EEG results further point to enhanced functional connectivity between decision-making- and motor planning aspects of the PFC, as a possible neural mechanism for internally generated action planning

Construções e comentários sobre os documentos Linha de Cuidado para a Atenção das Pessoas com Espectro Autista e suas Famílias na Rede de Atenção Psicossocial do Sistema Único de Saúde/SUS e Diretrizes de Atenção à Reabilitação de pessoas com Transtorno do Espectro do Autista (TEA)

Em audiência com o então Ministro da Saúde Alexandre Padilha, no dia 17 de abril de 2013, o MPASP reafirmou o apoio à implementação do documento Linha de Cuidado. Nesse contexto, o MPASP expôs suas preocupações com a publicação pelo Ministério da Saúde de outro documento - Diretrizes de Reabilitação - vinculada à Rede de Cuidados às Pessoas com Deficiência no SUS. Analisamos os documentos a partir de quatro eixos: 1) Seus objetivos; 2) As concepções de autismo e deficiência presentes em cada um deles; 3) A ideia de detecção precoce que cada um sustenta; 4)A proposta de ordenação de um  fluxo de atenção nas redes do SUS no que tange ao autismo. A análise que fazemos, a partir da disposição das convergências, das divergências e de nossos comentários críticos aos documentos visa defender a permanência da noção de sujeito no campo do tratamento ao autismo no que diz respeito ao estabelecimento de uma política pública de atenção à saúde