Evidence-based Kernels: Fundamental Units of Behavioral Influence

This paper describes evidence-based kernels, fundamental units of behavioral influence that appear to underlie effective prevention and treatment for children, adults, and families. A kernel is a behavior–influence procedure shown through experimental analysis to affect a specific behavior and that is indivisible in the sense that removing any of its components would render it inert. Existing evidence shows that a variety of kernels can influence behavior in context, and some evidence suggests that frequent use or sufficient use of some kernels may produce longer lasting behavioral shifts. The analysis of kernels could contribute to an empirically based theory of behavioral influence, augment existing prevention or treatment efforts, facilitate the dissemination of effective prevention and treatment practices, clarify the active ingredients in existing interventions, and contribute to efficiently developing interventions that are more effective. Kernels involve one or more of the following mechanisms of behavior influence: reinforcement, altering antecedents, changing verbal relational responding, or changing physiological states directly. The paper describes 52 of these kernels, and details practical, theoretical, and research implications, including calling for a national database of kernels that influence human behavior

Uniparental markers in Italy reveal a sex-biased genetic structure and different historical strata

University of Adelaide Genographic Consortium contributers: Christina J. Adler, Alan Cooper, Clio S. I. Der Sarkissian, Wolfgang Haak.Located in the center of the Mediterranean landscape and with an extensive coastal line, the territory of what is today Italy has played an important role in the history of human settlements and movements of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. Populated since Paleolithic times, the complexity of human movements during the Neolithic, the Metal Ages and the most recent history of the two last millennia (involving the overlapping of different cultural and demic strata) has shaped the pattern of the modern Italian genetic structure. With the aim of disentangling this pattern and understanding which processes more importantly shaped the distribution of diversity, we have analyzed the uniparentally-inherited markers in ~900 individuals from an extensive sampling across the Italian peninsula, Sardinia and Sicily. Spatial PCAs and DAPCs revealed a sex-biased pattern indicating different demographic histories for males and females. Besides the genetic outlier position of Sardinians, a North West–South East Y-chromosome structure is found in continental Italy. Such structure is in agreement with recent archeological syntheses indicating two independent and parallel processes of Neolithisation. In addition, date estimates pinpoint the importance of the cultural and demographic events during the late Neolithic and Metal Ages. On the other hand, mitochondrial diversity is distributed more homogeneously in agreement with older population events that might be related to the presence of an Italian Refugium during the last glacial period in Europe.Alessio Boattini, Begoña Martinez-Cruz, Stefania Sarno, Christine Harmant, Antonella Useli, Paula Sanz, Daniele Yang-Yao, Jeremy Manry, Graziella Ciani, Donata Luiselli, Lluis Quintana- Murci, David Comas, Davide Pettener, the Genographic Consortiu

Adaptação sócio-comunicativa no espectro autístico: dados obtidos com pais e terapeutas Social communicative adaptation in the autistic spectrum: data provided by parents and therapists

OBJETIVO: Verificar a efetividade da aplicação do protocolo de adaptação sócio-comunicativa a diferentes fontes de informação, neste caso, pais e terapeutas, na identificação de diferenças individuais em crianças com Distúrbios do Espectro Autístico. MÉTODOS: Participaram deste estudo 48 crianças, entre três anos e 11 anos e dez meses de idade, com diagnóstico clínico incluído no espectro autístico. Foram também sujeitos deste trabalho, 46 mães e dois pais, bem como 15 terapeutas, responsáveis legais e pelo atendimento fonoaudiológico especializado, respectivamente, das mesmas crianças, por um período mínimo de aproximadamente 12 meses, sendo que estes participaram respondendo a um questionário sobre o relacionamento social das crianças, sujeitos deste estudo. RESULTADOS: Genericamente, pode-se dizer que as respostas sobre a adaptação sócio-comunicativa, obtidas por meio de diferentes fontes de informação, ou seja, pais e terapeutas foram semelhantes. Entretanto, analisando os dados brutos observa-se que os pais apresentaram consistentemente um número maior de respostas positivas do que as terapeutas, para as questões relativas ao desempenho social. CONCLUSÃO: O estabelecimento de dados de adaptação sócio-comunicativa pode caracterizar esta população, demonstrando que este instrumento pode ser aplicado a diferentes informantes; as respostas dadas pelos mesmos foram homogêneas, reforçando a fidedignidade dos dados, apesar de existirem diferenças significativas na comparação entre os níveis e estágios sócio-comunicativos. A aplicação do questionário e protocolo de adaptação sócio-comunicativa a diferentes informantes pode fornecer um resultado bastante homogêneo, sendo possível realizar de forma fidedigna a caracterização das habilidades de relacionamento social dessas crianças.<br>PURPOSE: To verify if the application of the social-communicative adaptation protocol with different information sources, in this case, parents and therapists, is effective to identify individual differences in children of the autistic spectrum. METHODS: Subjects were 48 children, with ages ranging from three to 11 years and ten months, with psychiatric diagnosis included in the autistic spectrum. The parents of those children (46 mothers and two fathers) and 15 speech therapists, who were, respectively, legal caregivers and responsible for their speech-language therapy for at least 12 months, were also subjects of the study. They answered a questionnaire regarding each child's social relation performance. RESULTS: Generically, it is possible to say that the answers obtained from different sources (parents and therapists) were similar. However, the analysis of raw data showed that parents consistently presented higher number of positive answers when compared to therapists, in questions regarding social performance. CONCLUSION: The determination of data about social-communicative adaptation could characterize these subjects, demonstrating that this protocol can be used with different information sources; the answers provided by parents and therapists were homogeneous, confirming data reliability despite of significant differences in the comparison among social-communicative stages and levels. The application of the questionnaire and the social communicative protocol to different information sources can provided homogeneous results, allowing a reliable characterization of these children's social abilities

Feeding Disorders

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facbooks/1408/thumbnail.jp

Effects of season, sex and body size on the feeding ecology of turtle-headed seasnakes (Emydocephalus annulatus) on IndoPacific inshore coral reefs

In terrestrial snakes, many cases of intraspecific shifts in dietary habits as a function of predator sex and body size are driven by gape-limitation - and hence, are most common in species that feed on relatively large prey, and exhibit a wide body-size range. Our data on seasnakes reveal an alternative mechanism for intraspecific niche partitioning, based on sex-specific seasonal anorexia induced by reproductive activities. Turtle-headed seasnakes (Emydocephalus annulatus) on coral reefs in the New Caledonian Lagoon feed entirely on the eggs of demersal-spawning fishes. DNA sequence data (cytochrome b gene) on eggs that we palpated from stomachs of 37 snakes showed that despite this ontogenetic-stage specialization, the prey come from a taxonomically diverse array of species including damselfish (41% of samples, at least 5 species), blennies (41%, 4 species) and gobies (19%, 5 species). The composition of snake diets shifted seasonally (with damselfish dominating in winter but not summer), presumably reflecting seasonality of fish reproduction. That seasonal shift affects male and female snakes differently, because reproduction is incompatible with foraging. Adult female seasnakes ceased feeding when they became heavily distended with developing embryos in late summer, and males ceased feeding while they were mate-searching in winter. The sex divergence in foraging habits may be amplified by sexual size dimorphism; females grow larger than males, and larger snakes (of both sexes) feed more on damselfish (which often lay their eggs in exposed sites) than on blennies and gobies (whose eggs are hidden within narrow crevices). Specific features of reproductive biology of coral-reef fish (seasonality and nest type) have generated intraspecific niche partitioning in these seasnakes, by mechanisms different from those that apply to terrestrial snakes