Student Interview and Preference Assessment as Functional Behavior Assessment Tools in Schools

Functional behavior assessments (FBA) identify the consequences that maintain challenging behavior. Much of the current literature suggests that functional analyses are the most effective component of an FBA. However, functional analyses are most commonly used with children with developmental and intellectual disabilities. For children with complex verbal repertoires, other types of assessment may identify consequences maintaining behavior that can be subsequently manipulated as part of a classroom-based intervention. In the current study, we compared a student-completed interview and preference assessment to the outcomes of a functional analysis, and used the outcomes of all three assessments to evaluate classroom-based interventions to reduce challenging behavior. Conclusive assessment outcomes aligned for three of four target responses and interventions based on outcomes suppressed target responding for two of three students, indicating that students can identify functions of their own behavior during student-informed indirect assessments

The Heart of Experience: The Education of a Practitioner\u27s Journey

This Capstone, The Heart of Experience: The Education of a Practitioner’s Journey, is an illustrative reflection of myself experiencing my learning cycle, taking the reader through my own journey of growth as an experiential education practitioner. To engage the reader, I first shine light on the context of what role experience played in my life as a form of education, specifically reflecting on my time living abroad in China and my cross-cultural work with Chinese youth in Manhattan, New York, emphasizing basketball’s involvement as a tool for engagement. I describe how such experiences helped me return to school. To portray my education at SIT Graduate Institute, I reflect on my application of David A. Kolb’s experiential learning theory and learning styles, bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy, social justice education, and facilitation roles while founding the student-centered poetry club A Nook for Rhyme Crooks. Through Paulo Freire’s teachings, my analytical reflection of my educational journey transforms into a newfound purpose of using alternative methods to educate the upcoming Chinese youth. I deepen my education further by choosing to work as the Global Leadership and Engagement Program Director for an organization called VIA: Volunteers in Asia during my practicum phase, continuing to operate within the East Asian-United States cross-cultural youth development demographic and implementing creative expression into the experiential learning cycle. Through reflection and analysis of my practicum experience, a reformation of biases result in a new realization about Chinese youth engagement and interest, culminating into a revelation regarding the education of basketball as experiential learning. I draw on philosophies of basketball particularly John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success and his peers to parallel experiential learning theory to support its substance with intellectual underpinnings that align with my own morals and beliefs of what I feel successful education is to be. To conclude, I present an original program design called Heart of Basketball: Leadership, Teamwork, and the Pursuit of Success, which is the manifestation of myself as a half-Chinese experiential education practitioner, what my life experiences have taught me, and what I believe to be the most impactful way to successfully cultivate experiential education for Chinese youth. This capstone serves as the final product of my landings as an experiential education practitioner, the fulfillment of my own learning cycle, and the ensuing segue into the next cycle of my transformation

Behavioral and Endocrine Consequences of Simultaneous Exposure to Two Different Stressors in Rats: Interaction or Independence?

Although behavioral and endocrine consequences of acute exposure to stressors have been extensively studied, little is known about how simultaneous exposure to two different stressors interacts to induce short- and long-term effects. In the present experiment we studied this interaction in adult male rats exposed to cat fur odor (impregnated cloth) or immobilization on boards either separately or simultaneously. We reasoned that exposure to the odor of a potential predator while immobilized, may potentiate its negative consequences as compared to exposure to only one of the stressors. Exposure to cat odor elicited the expected reduction of activity and avoidance of the area where the impregnated cloth was located. The endocrine response (plasma levels of ACTH and corticosterone, as a measure of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, HPA) was markedly greater after immobilization than after cat fur odor and no additive effects were found by simultaneous exposure to both stressors. Cat odor, but not immobilization, increased anxiety-like behavior as evaluated in the elevated plus-maze 7 days after the stressors, with no evidence of enhanced HPA activation. In addition, cat odor exposure resulted in long-lasting (8 days later) fear conditioning to the box containing a clean cloth, which was reflected by hypoactivity, avoidance of the cloth area and enhanced HPA activation. All these effects were similarly observed in rats exposed simultaneously to cat odor and immobilization. In rats only exposed to immobilization, only some weak behavioral signs of fear conditioning were found, but HPA activation in response to the context paired to immobilization was enhanced to the same extent as in cat odor-exposed animals, supporting a certain degree of endocrine conditioning. The present results did not reveal important behavioral interactions between the two stressors when animals experienced both simultaneously, whereas some interactions were found regarding HPA activation. Theoretical implications are discussed

Stress Impairs Cognitive and Electrophysiological Measures of Hippocampal Function

Throughout this century, studies have shown that the strength of the formation of memories is influenced by emotional state. In one of the earliest investigations of the relationship between arousal and cognition, Yerkes and Dodson (1908) demonstrated that the rate of learning declined with low or high levels of arousal. With an intermediate level of arousal, performance reached its optimal level. In the next decade, Stratton (1919) evaluated the complexity of the arousal-related modulation of memory. He discussed how emotions can produce either hypermnesic (enhancing) or hypomnesic (impairing) effects on learning. Subsequent analyses of the modulation of learning by arousal have extended these early observations to a broad range of species and tasks (Kirschbaum et al., 1996; McGaugh, 1989). In recent years much work has been directed at understanding the neurobiological basis of the modulation of memory by behavioral state. In this chapter, we will present our work on the behavioral and hormonal modulation of the hippocampus, a temporal lobe structure necessary for learning and memory (Zola-Morgan and Squire, 1990). Our studies indicate that psychological stress exerts a transient impairment of hippocampal function, which is revealed both behaviorally as retrograde amnesia and physiologically as a blockade of synaptic plasticity

Predator Exposure Produces Retrograde Amnesia and Blocks Synaptic Plasticity: Progress toward Understanding how the Hippocampus is Affected by Stress

A vast amount of research has been devoted to understanding the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory. Damage to the hippocampus results in severe cognitive impairments in a broad range of species, including humans and rats. Complementary work has shown that chronic stress, which can result in hippocampal cell death, impairs hippocampal‐specific learning and memory. For example, spatial learning, which is impaired in animals with lesions of the hippocampus, is impaired in chronically stressed animals. Moreover, acute stress also impairs hippocampal‐dependent learning and memory. This chapter reviews our studies on the effects of acute stress on hippocampal‐dependent memory and synaptic plasticity. Our recent findings indicate that exposing rats to a predator, which is an intense stressor, impairs cognitive and electrophysiological measures of hippocampal functioning

Exposing Rats to a Predator Blocks Primed Burst Potentiation in the Hippocampus in Vitro

This study evaluated the effects of acute psychological stress (cat exposure) in adult male rats on electrophysiological plasticity subsequently assessed in the hippocampus in vitro. Two physiological models of memory were studied in CA1 in each recording session: (1) primed burst potentiation (PBP), a lowthreshold form of plasticity produced by a total of five physiologically patterned pulses; and (2) long-term potentiation (LTP), a suprathreshold form of plasticity produced by a train of 100 pulses. Three groups of rats were studied: (1) undisturbed rats in their home cage (home cage); (2) rats placed in a chamber for 75 min (chamber); and (3) rats placed in a chamber for 75 min in close proximity to a cat (chamber/stress). At the end of the chamber exposure period, blood samples were obtained, and the hippocampus was prepared for in vitro recordings. Only the chamber/stress group had elevated (stress) levels of corticosterone. The major finding was that PBP, but not LTP, was blocked in the chamber/stress group. Thus, the psychological stress experienced by the rats in response to cat exposure resulted in an inhibition of plasticity, which was localized to the intrinsic circuitry of the hippocampus. This work provides novel observations on the effects of an ethologically relevant stressor on PBP in vitro and of the relative insensitivity of LTP to being modulated by psychological stress. We discuss the relevance of these electrophysiological findings to our behavioral work showing that predator stress impairs spatial memory