Psychodynamic Therapy and Intellectual Disabilities: Dealing with challenging behaviour

One of the most serious problems facing families and care staff concerns the treatment of extremely behaviourally disturbed individuals with an intellectual disability. Frequently these people are termed "dual-diagnosed" or with "challenging behaviour." The kinds of behaviour which present in this group can be broadly described as extremely aggressive either in their environment, to others (parents, staff, and other residents), to themselves (self-injurious behaviour which in its extreme forms are life threatening), or who are so withdrawn that living with others is unbearable. Treatment is often only possible in closed facilities and with special medication, as the prognosis for community living and social acceptance is extremely poor. In this article some theoretical material on a psychodynamic orientation concerning the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in this group is presented. Four cases concerning long term treatment are then described--an extremely aggressive young man with a mild intellectual disability, a young man with multiple disabilities whose behaviour is destructive, a very withdrawn young woman with life threatening self-destructive behaviour, and a young autistic man with a broad spectrum of extremely uncontrollable behaviour. Finally, the success and limitations of the approach are discussed.     

Social mapping and environmental education: dialogues from participatory mapping in the Pantanal,Mato Grosso,Brazil

Abstract

This article illustrates the steps taken to enact a new methodology for participatory social mapping by the Environmental Education, Communications and the Arts (GPEA) Research Group of the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT). The aim of Social Mapping is to record the identities, territories and socio-environmental conflicts experienced by social groups, based on their own namings and narratives, rather than relying on those more typically generated or provided by researchers or theorists. As such, it offers an important dialogical pathway for environmental education practices, in that it highlights the intrinsic relationship between culture and nature, and reinforces the understanding that the loss of one implies the disappearance of the other.     

Video-based training to improve perceptual-cognitive decision-making performance of Australian football umpires

Decision-making is a central component of the in-game performance of Australian football umpires; however, current umpire training focuses largely on physiological development with decision-making skills development conducted via explicit lecture-style meetings with limited practice devoted to making actual decisions. Therefore, this study investigated the efficacy of a video-based training programme, aimed to provide a greater amount of contextualised visual experiences without explicit instruction, to improve decision-making skills of umpires. Australian football umpires (n = 52) were recruited from metropolitan and regional Division 1 competitions. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group and classified according to previous umpire game experience (i.e., experienced; less experienced). The intervention group completed a 12-week video-based decision-making training programme, with decision-making performance assessed at pre-training, and 1-week retention and 3-week retention periods. The control group did not complete any video-based training. Results indicated a significant Group (intervention; Control) × Test interaction (F(1, 100) = 3.98; P = 0.02, partial ?² = 0.074), with follow-up pairwise comparisons indicating significant within-group differences over time for the intervention group. In addition, decision-making performance of the less experienced umpires in the intervention group significantly improved (F(2, 40) = 5.03, P = 0.01, partial ?² = 0.201). Thus, video-based training programmes may be a viable adjunct to current training programmes to hasten decision-making development, especially for less experienced umpires.     

Investigating pupils' images of mathematicians

This paper describes a research project that had two goals: (1) to design and develop a tool with which to investigate pupils' images of mathematicians; and (2) to use the device to compare those images held by lower secondary pupils (ages 12–13) in five countries. We report that with small cultural differences certain stereotypical images of mathematicians are common to pupils in all of these countries and these images indicate that for pupils of this age mathematicians and the work that they do are, for all practical purposes, invisible. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Improved Query Matching Using kd-Trees: A Latent Semantic Indexing Enhancement

Efficient information searching and retrieval methods are needed to navigate the ever increasing volumes of digital information. Traditional lexical information retrieval methods can be inefficient and often return inaccurate results. To overcome problems such as polysemy and synonymy, concept-based retrieval methods have been developed. One such method is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), a vector-space model, which uses the singular value decomposition (SVD) of a term-by-document matrix to represent terms and documents in k-dimensional space. As with other vector-space models, LSI is an attempt to exploit the underlying semantic structure of word usage in documents. During the query matching phase of LSI, a user's query is first projected into the term-document space, and then compared to all terms and documents represented in the vector space. Using some similarity measure, the nearest (most relevant) terms and documents are identified and returned to the user. The current LSI query matching method requires that the similarity measure be computed between the query and every term and document in the vector space. In this paper, the kd-tree searching algorithm is used within a recent LSI implementation to reduce the time and computational complexity of query matching. The kd-tree data structure stores the term and document vectors in such a way that only those terms and documents that are most likely to qualify as nearest neighbors to the query will be examined and retrieved.     

School behavior and attendance during the first year of treatment for childhood cancer

The school behavior of children with cancer and hemophilia is a relatively new area of interest and investigation. Children with cancer have been described as having increased school absenteeism and a self-protecting posture. The school behavior and achievement of children with cancer and hemophilia were rated by their teachers before and after first being seen in a large pediatric center. No pre-vs-post diagnosis differences were noted on academic and behavior ratings with either the cancer or hemophilia children. School absenteeism for the children with cancer was four times greater than that of healthy children, and absenteeism of children with hemophilia was twice normal. A substantial percentage of children with cancer was rated as having academic performance affected to at least a moderate degree. The school performance and behavior of children with cancer and hemophilia need to be monitored and appropriate educational adjustment made to accommodate the limitations imposed by these medical conditions.     

Can we Speak of Alternative Frameworks and Conceptual Change in Mechanics?

This paper discusses the various conflicting trends in mechanics education that have appeared over the past two decades, and proposes the theory of schemata as a means to resolve the conflict that exists within the literature. The conflict has two causes: the prevailing relativism that exists within science education, and the mistaken view that student alternative ideas are concepts that are well defined. We argue that student alternative ideas can be best understood in terms of schema theory, and that schema theory can offer support to the Vygotskian idea of the teacher facilitating the construction of the Newtonian system within the students zone of proximal development. Within the context of schema theory we propose the category of idealised abstraction that has as its starting point the logical structure of Newtonian mechanics rather than the cognitive state of uninstructed students.     

The Impact of Gymnastics on Children’s Physical Self-Concept and Movement Skill Development in Primary Schools

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week gymnastics curriculum on children’s movement competence and their physical self-concept. There were 113 children (46% girls, 49% intervention) with a mean age of 9.4 years (SD = 1.8) that participated. Intervention children underwent 8 weeks of gymnastics and the comparison group continued with their standard curriculum. Age was a significant co-variate, a separate analysis was conducted on the lower (grades 2 and 4) and upper (grade 6) groups. The lower age group showed significant improvement in favor of the gymnastic group in fundamental movement skills. The upper age group showed a significant improvement for the control group in general body coordination and fundamental movement skills. For all grades, the physical self-concept showed a significant main effect in favor of the gymnastics group. The gymnastics intervention was found to be of particular benefit for developing children’s movement competence and physical self-concept in younger children.