Cognitive-Behavioral Analysis of Stress and Coping in Parents at Risk of Abusing

Critical incidents of parent coping with their provocative children were observed over eight interviews with 27 at-risk parents whose demographic profiles typically matched that associated with the so-called "feminization of poverty". Following the Lazarus stress-appraisal-to-coping paradigm, relationships between child provocativeness and parent cognitive appraisal of the situation were analyzed, and the relationship of each of these respective social and psychological levels of stress to actual coping behavior studied. The role of anger--an emotion often associated with abuse--was also examined in relation to these stress and coping variables. And, finally, the temporal order of these components of the coping process was analyzed. Adaptiveness of parent cognition and coping behavior varied with the stressfulness of the situation when this was defined as child provocativeness. There were indications that the positive aspects of child provocativeness, parent cognition, and parent coping behavior went together, with child provocativeness being dependent on parent cognition and behavior rather than the other way around. Thus, it was concluded that abuse should be viewed as a transactional encounter which, while immediately triggered by provocative child behavior, is also dependent on preceding parent behavior, and parent cognitions. The implications were for prevention and intervention efforts which foster more adaptive levels of both cognition and behavior in parents. While all relationships were not statistically significant, support was found for the primacy of cognition in coping: the temporal order which Lazarus posits, i.e., that cognition precedes emotion which precedes actual coping behavior, was supported. It was recommended that findings be interpreted cautiously, with consideration of the small size and heavily minority makeup of the sample. It was also recommended that additional sources of stress in the parent-child relationship, and related parent cognitions and coping responses be identified in research. The PCE study design and instruments were seen as appropriate models for such expanded study. It was emphasized that in follow up studies involving similar minority samples, increased consideration be given to measurement and interpretation in light of cultural reality. The correspondence of cognitive perspectives with social work values, goals, and daily work at the interface of person and environment was noted, and recommendations were made for helping students and practitioners make the needed cognitive shift toward integrating such perspectives in practice

On the role of segmental contrasts in the acquisition of clusters

The acquisition of an underlying contrast between /l/ and /r/ has been claimed to be a necessary prerequisite to the acquisition of clusters (Archibald 1998). To evaluate this claim, an archival database including more than a hundred children with phonological delays, ages 3;0 to 8;6, was consulted. A number of apparent counterexamples were identified. All problematic cases reliably produced consonant + /l/ clusters but lacked an underlying contrast between /l/ and /r/. In an effort to reconcile these (apparent) counterexamples with the many compliant cases, these data were further reanalyzed within optimality theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995). The analyses revealed that the apparent clusters were more properly understood as complex segments similar to affricates. Thus, while such cases do not contradict Archibald's proposal, they do provide a richer account of the development of clusters. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of OT accounts for the learnability of structure and for clinical treatment.National Institutes of Health DC00433, RR7031K, DC00076, DC001694 (PI: Gierut

Disability Studies Pedagogy: Engaging Dissonance and Meaning Making

Student responses to disability studies pedagogy are influenced by the context in which they learn. This study examined student responses in two disability studies initiatives: one within a teacher preparation program that included American Indian students, the other within a stand alone, interdisciplinary course taken primarily by Americans of European descent. Course dialogue and students' written assignments were used to identify and categorize their responses. While some students readily engaged in critique of disability as culturally constructed, experiences of significant resistance related to positivist filters, adherence to individualism, and defense of identity-related norms. These responses are discussed as considerations for more effective pedagogy in this relatively new field

A play ground: Supporting interactions of children with autism through music therapy groups in a special education classroom

Children with autism face significant obstacles to social interaction and learning. This qualitative, exploratory study of student music therapy practice in a special education Unit, focused on supporting interactions of children with autism through music therapy groups integrated into the school programme. Clinical work took place over ten months, and the research employed secondary analysis of three data sources: clinical records, notes from supervision and staff meetings, and a reflective research journal. Two complementary forms of music therapy groups, on the same day and with the same children, were developed: an established morning structured music therapy group, and at the end of the day, a free form music therapy group more like a typical playground. Findings suggest that the work of adults to engage the children, music play which attended to sensory sensitivities, promoting calm, giving new experiences and giving structured interaction opportunities contributed to an increase in the children’s interactive behaviors in music therapy groups. When adults provided a free play community experience, the children showed an increase in initiating interactions and more expressive communications. Eliciting emotional responsivity and giving patterned interactive experiences, through both improvisation and familiar music, seemed to build bridges with the children’s communications and support motivation to interact

Almost perfect nonlinear power functions with exponents expressed as fractions

Let $F$ be a finite field, let $f$ be a function from $F$ to $F$, and let $a$ be a nonzero element of $F$. The discrete derivative of $f$ in direction $a$ is $\Delta_a f \colon F \to F$ with $(\Delta_a f)(x)=f(x+a)-f(x)$. The differential spectrum of $f$ is the multiset of cardinalities of all the fibers of all the derivatives $\Delta_a f$ as $a$ runs through $F^*$. The function $f$ is almost perfect nonlinear (APN) if the largest cardinality in the differential spectrum is $2$. Almost perfect nonlinear functions are of interest as cryptographic primitives. If $d$ is a positive integer, the power function over $F$ with exponent $d$ is the function $f \colon F \to F$ with $f(x)=x^d$ for every $x \in F$. There is a small number of known infinite families of APN power functions. In this paper, we re-express the exponents for one such family in a more convenient form. This enables us to give the differential spectrum and, even more, to determine the sizes of individual fibers of derivatives.Comment: 30 page

Risks and Outcomes Associated with Disorganized/Controlling Patterns of Attachment at Age Three in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development

Disorganized/controlling attachment in preschool has been found to be associated with maternal and child maladjustment, making it of keen interest in the study of psychopathology. Additional work is needed, however, to better understand disorganized/controlling attachment occurring as early as age three. The primary aims of this study were to evaluate risk factors and outcomes associated with disorganized/controlling behavior at age three and to evaluate the risk factors and outcomes differentiating the four subtypes of disorganized/controlling attachment. Analyses were conducted with the first two phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a prospective study of 1,364 children from birth. At 36 months of age, across the attachment-relevant domains of maternal well-being, mother-child interactions, and child social adaptation, the disorganized/controlling group evidenced the most maladaptive patterns in comparison to both secure and insecure-organized groups. At 54 months of age, the disorganized/controlling group displayed the highest levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, as rated by mothers and teachers, and the lowest quality relationships with teachers. Significant differences found among the disorganized/controlling subtypes indicated that the behaviorally disorganized and controlling-punitive subtypes had more maladaptive patterns across variables than did the controlling-caregiving and controlling-mixed subtypes

Cardiac Segmentation using Transfer Learning under Respiratory Motion Artifacts

Methods that are resilient to artifacts in the cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) while performing ventricle segmentation, are crucial for ensuring quality in structural and functional analysis of those tissues. While there has been significant efforts on improving the quality of the algorithms, few works have tackled the harm that the artifacts generate in the predictions. In this work, we study fine tuning of pretrained networks to improve the resilience of previous methods to these artifacts. In our proposed method, we adopted the extensive usage of data augmentations that mimic those artifacts. The results significantly improved the baseline segmentations (up to 0.06 Dice score, and 4mm Hausdorff distance improvement).Comment: accepted for the STACOM2022 workshop @ MICCAI202

Using atmospheric trajectories to model the isotopic composition of rainfall in central Kenya

Publisher’s version made available under a Creative Commons license.The isotopic composition of rainfall (δ2H and δ18O) is an important tracer in studies of the ecohydrology, plant physiology, climate and biogeochemistry of past and present ecosystems. The overall continental and global patterns in precipitation isotopic composition are fairly well described by condensation temperature and Rayleigh fractionation during rainout. However, these processes do not fully explain the isotopic variability in the tropics, where intra-storm and meso-scale dynamics may dominate. Here we explore the use of atmospheric back-trajectory modeling and associated meteorological variables to explain the large variability observed in the isotopic composition of individual rain events at the study site in central Kenya. Individual rain event samples collected at the study site (n = 41) range from −51‰ to 31‰ for δ2H and the corresponding monthly values (rain volume-weighted) range from −15‰ to 15‰. Using the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model, we map back-trajectories for all individual rain hours occurring at a research station in central Kenya from March 2010 through February 2012 (n = 544). A multiple linear regression analysis demonstrates that a large amount of variation in the isotopic composition of rainfall can be explained by two variables readily obtained from the HYSPLIT model: (1) solar radiation along the trajectory for 48 hours prior to the event, and (2) distance covered over land. We compare the measurements and regression model results to the isotopic composition expected from simple Rayleigh distillation along each trajectory. The empirical relationship described here has applications across temporal scales. For example, it could be used to help predict short-term changes in the isotopic composition of plant-available water in the absence of event-scale sampling. One can also reconstruct monthly, seasonal and annual weighted mean precipitation isotope signatures for a single location based only on hourly rainfall data and HYSPLIT model results. At the study site in East Africa, the annual weighted mean δ2H from measured and modeled values are −7.6‰ and −7.4‰, respectively, compared to −18‰ predicted for the study site by the Online Isotopes in Precipitation Calculator