An examination of perseverative errors and cognitive flexibility in autism

Perseveration is a well-replicated finding in autism. The aim of this study was to examine how the context of the task influences performance with respect to this phenomenon. We randomly assigned 137 children aged 6–12 with and without autism to complete a modified card-sorting task under one of two conditions: Children were either told the sorting rules on each trial (Explicit), or were given feedback to formulate the rules themselves (Implicit). While performance was enhanced on the Explicit condition for participants without autism, the participants with autism were disadvantaged by this manipulation. In contrast, there were few differences in performance between groups on the Implicit condition. Exploratory analyses were used to examine this unexpected result; increased autism symptomology was associated with poorer performance.

Sentences of аlternative motivation in Russian and English

The present paper is devoted to the sentences of alternative motivation in Russian and English. They are constructions with the conjunctions а то, а не то, иначе and their English equivalents otherwise, or, or else. The direct object of the study is those structures in which there is a verb-predicate in the Subjunctive mood in the second clause. The following thesis has been proved: such structures contain a compressed unreal-conditional sentence so that they represent three-part formations: an indicative part, an unreal implicit condition represented by a conjunction and a non-indicative part expressing the result of the condition. Denotative-semantic criterion has helped to state that a semantic space of the sentences of alternative motivation consists of at least three individual meanings: proof by contradiction, causal explanation and teleological (purposive) explanation. The first two senses come from an unreal-conditional sentence and the third one is a specific one only for the sentences of alternative motivation. The formulas of interpretation allowing determining these senses have been developed; their surface indicators in both languages have been defined: markers of negation (explicit and implicit), the mode of appraisive forming of an indicative part, etc. The examples of the corpus have been borrowed from English literature of different epochs in comparison with their literary translation.

Justifying New Rights: Affectedness, Vulnerability, and the Rights of Peasants

Over the last decades, various groups seeking international legal recognition of new human rights claims have succeeded in their endeavors. Some movements have crafted such convincing demands that their participation has even become an implicit condition of the legitimacy of the resulting human rights documents. But what are the bases of claims for new human rights, and how do they help to confront the argument that human rights’ expansion also entails their dilution? This Article explores narratives based on two different concepts, namely the political-science concept of affectedness and the legal-ethical concept of vulnerability. It does so by drawing on the process for the recognition of peasant human rights at the United Nations. The Article explores what it understands as the peasant critique of existing human rights by looking at the differences and interrelations between affectedness and vulnerability-based argumentation. It argues that an approach premised purely on affectedness, and thus focused on participation, is less empowering than one that includes a regard for vulnerability, which serves as a heuristic device for identifying and challenging inequalities, demands substantive outcomes, and can serve to craft a convincing theoretical account of human rights protections.

Difficulties in spontaneously performing level 2 perspective-taking skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate why children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to respond to tasks from their own perspective. The authors investigated the effects of explicitness of viewpoint on performance of spontaneous level 2 perspective-taking skills in six- to eight-year-old children with ASD. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted visual perspective-taking tasks with explicit and implicit instructions about the viewpoint to be used. Participants operated a toy car on a map while listening to the experimenter’s instructions. In the implicit condition, when the experimenter said “Turn right/left” at each intersection, the participants moved the car accordingly. Subsequently, in the explicit condition, the experimenter said “Look from the driver’s viewpoint and turn right/left” at each intersection. Findings In the implicit condition, the authors did not observe a clear developmental change in performance between six- and eight-year-old children in the ASD group. In contrast, performance in the ASD group improved under the explicit condition relative to that under the implicit condition. Originality/value The results suggest six- to eight-year-old children with ASD tend not to spontaneously use level 2 perspective-taking skills. Therefore, viewpoints should be explicitly instructed to children with ASD. In addition, it is also important to implement training to encourage spontaneous transitions from self-perspective to other-perspective under the implicit condition.

Two fixed point theorems in generalized metric spaces

<p>In this paper, we prove there exists a coupled fixed point for a set- valued contraction mapping defined on X× X , where X is incomplete ordered G-metric. Also, we prove the existence of a unique fixed point for single valued mapping with respect to implicit condition defined on a complete G- metric.</p>

Implicit and explicit instruction

This study examined the influence of implicit and explicit instruction for the acquisition of two types of Dutch spelling rules: a morphological and a phonological rule. A sample of 193 first grade, low- and high skilled spellers was assigned to an implicit-instruction, explicit-instruction, or control-group condition. The results showed that for both rules, students in the explicit condition made more progress than students in the control condition. For the morphological rule, students in the explicit condition had higher posttest scores on pseudo-words than students in the implicit condition. The effects of the three conditions were the same for low- and high-skilled spellers. Both low- and high-skilled spellers in the implicit and explicit condition did not fully generalize their knowledge of both rules to new and pseudo-words.

Recent Advances in Efficient and Robust Two-Way Coupling Between FEA and CFD

The established FEA and CFD codes ANSYS and CFX have been coupled to support transient and strongly coupled interaction between structures and fluids analyses. The presentation will outline the technical approaches used for the communications technology, data interpolation, non-linear convergence of the implicit condition, and the mesh morphing problem. For the communications a TCP/IP socket communication system has been used that is very efficient and very portable, including within parallelized simulations. The data interpolation issue is addressed to ensure full conservation of forces and energy flow. For stability under highly interacting or non-linear conditions, the fully coupled implicit problem must be solved, or converged, at each time step. The algorithm that manages this iteration and data exchange is explained. Finally, some of the approaches used to smoothly morph the moving mesh are detailed. These capabilities are all supported in the ANSYS 10.0 software release (summer 2005).

Use of Conjunctions in Expository Texts by Skilled and Less Skilled Readers

The present study was designed to shed light on whether some of the problems that average and below average readers have in comprehending expository texts stem primarily from lack of familiarity with conjunctions or a tendency to ignore these markers. On the basis of Gates-MacGinitie reading comprehension scores, 93 students in grades 5 and 7 were classified into high, medium, and low reading levels. All students read short expository texts under four conjunction manipulation conditions and answered comprehension questions. The conjunction manipulations within the texts were designed for examination of the roles of analyzed linguistic knowledge and cognitive control in comprehension. Analyses indicated that all groups benefited from the highlighting of explicit conjunctions. The comprehension of interpropositional relationships by average and below average readers was enhanced when explicit conjunctions were available, relative to an implicit condition. Furthermore, the deep processing manipulation (conjunction multiple-choice cloze) actually hindered, rather than facilitated, comprehension for all students. Data on appropriate selection of conjunctions in this condition revealed less knowledge of these important cohesive indicators among average and below average readers than above average readers. Together with the comprehension findings, we conclude that average and below average readers exhibit problems with both knowledge of conjunctions and control over their use in comprehending expository text.