Do autistic adults spontaneously reason about belief? A detailed exploration of alternative explanations

Background: Some autistic individuals with good compensatory skills may circumvent diagnosis, but still struggle with mentalizing. This missed or delayed identification can deprive them of the opportunity to receive necessary support and interventions. Thus, more sensitive assessment techniques are needed that are not susceptible to compensation. One such promising assessment, Southgate et al. (2007)'s anticipatory looking paradigm, has presented exciting yet inconclusive evidence surrounding spontaneous mentalizing in autism. The present study therefore aimed to advance this paradigm by addressing some alternative explanations and scrutinizing the claims that have been made in the literature, through implementing a multi-trial design with shorter trials, matched true-belief conditions, and both high and low inhibitory demand false-belief conditions. We also sought to inspect if any group differences were related to group-specific patterns of attention on key events. Methods: Seventeen autistic adults were compared with nineteen neurotypical adults on an adapted implicit mentalizing task and a well-established explicit mentalizing task. One-sample t -tests were used to compare performance to chance on the implicit task, a mixed-design ANOVA was conducted to examine main effects of group, time and belief and their interactions, and t -tests were used to further explore gaze patterns. Results: The two groups were comparable in the explicit mentalizing task, indicating sophisticated mentalistic reasoning; however, the autism group did not show anticipatory looking behaviour in the implicit mentalizing task, indicating that they struggled to mentalize the protagonist's beliefs. Surprisingly, there was no group difference in attention distribution during any of the key event. Limitations: Our true-belief conditions may also trigger mentalizing; future studies should therefore create a mentalizing-free baseline matched with the false-belief scenario. Conclusions: Our findings further document that although many autistic individuals perform well in explicit tasks, they struggle to spontaneously mentalize in implicit tasks, consistent with their everyday social difficulties. We ruled out some alternative theoretical explanations for this pattern of performance, leading to a better understanding of mentalizing difficulties. We also presented evidence that autistic adults may process information from social cues in the same way as neurotypical adults, but this information is not then used to update mental representations.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPENSATORY SKILLS OF VISUALLY IMPAIRED FOR THE CREATIVE WORK OF A MUSICIAN

The article focuses on questions related to the general characteristics of music making for the visually impaired in the field of culture and skills. The system of skin-motor sensations gives diverse information to the person, it becomes the most important organ of interaction of a blind musician with the surrounding world. Sensations are characterized as the simplest mental process, as a reflection of individual qualities or properties of objects and phenomena directly affecting the sensitive organs at a given moment. In this case the sensation depends on the acting analyzer, which has a three-part structure: receptors, nerve ways, the corresponding sections of the brain. Great significance is attached to the principles of the internal and external motivation, which among blind students consists in an interest to improve professional skill and increase the general culture of the musician. The use of different methods in the formation of musical interest is considered, as well as the methods that actively influence the musical creativity of the blind. The article also examines the components of a person's creativity in the context of musical skill — musical experience, along with artistic imagery as a subjective phenomenon. The author reveals the range of creative activities of a visually impaired musician, defines such forms of musical activity as perception while listening to music, performance and creativity, as well as musical and educational activities. Creative activity is distinguished by its interpretative nature. Special role in the learning process is assigned to community relations — communication, patience, tolerance.

Impact of enucleation on adult retinoblastoma survivors’ quality of life: A qualitative study of survivors' perspectives

ObjectivesRetinoblastoma is the most common primary intraocular tumor of childhood with >95% survival rates in the US. Traditional therapy for retinoblastoma often included enucleation (removal of the eye). While much is known about the visual, physical, and cognitive ramifications of enucleation, data are lacking about survivors' perception of how this treatment impacts overall quality of life.MethodsQualitative analysis of an open-ended response describing how much the removal of an eye had affected retinoblastoma survivors' lives and in what ways in free text, narrative form.ResultsFour hundred and four retinoblastoma survivors who had undergone enucleation (bilateral disease = 214; 52% female; mean age = 44, SD = 11) completed the survey. Survivors reported physical problems (n = 205, 50.7%), intrapersonal problems (n = 77, 19.1%), social and relational problems (n = 98, 24.3%), and affective problems (n = 34, 8.4%) at a mean of 42 years after diagnosis. Three key themes emerged from survivors' responses; specifically, they (1) continue to report physical and intrapersonal struggles with appearance and related self-consciousness due to appearance; (2) have multiple social and relational problems, with teasing and bullying being prominent problems; and (3) reported utilization of active coping strategies, including developing more acceptance and learning compensatory skills around activities of daily living.Significance of resultsThis study suggests that adult retinoblastoma survivors treated with enucleation continue to struggle with a unique set of psychosocial problems. Future interventions can be designed to teach survivors more active coping skills (e.g., for appearance-related issues, vision-related issues, and teasing/bullying) to optimize survivors' long-term quality of life.

Formation of concepts in teaching students with clip thinking

The article is devoted to a description of the formation of concepts in teaching students with clip thinking. The concept is defined as a culturally significant unit of the mental level, reflecting nationally specific information. In the concept, the word, language and non-verbal behavior are combined into an inextricable whole. It was found that concepts in the educational process can be used as a unit of training, selection, and organization of language (lexical) material. When forming concepts, a student with clip thinking will be able to realize the ability to find the necessary information in its most diverse sources and at the same time to master the ability to systematize, explain, and also understand the features of the use and compatibility of certain language units in the Ukrainian language, while expanding knowledge about the Ukrainian language picture of the world, to form their own “secondary language personality”. The work on the formation of conceptual and artistic concepts can help students with a prevailing clip type of thinking learn a new language, increase motivation, learn to better understand and feel both the cultural traditions of the speakers of the studied language and their own. Using the formation of concepts during training develops the students' ability to select, classify, systematize the necessary language material depending on the purpose and situation of communication; to improve and implement the compensatory skills of students; teach them how to build coherent discourse and select the right language strategies for its implementation. All this contributes to a clear organization of the educational process, ensures the effective formation of the intercultural competence of students.

The Participants’ Perspective on a Cognitive Rehabilitation Program Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Given the recommendations for evidence-based treatment practice, rehabilitation programs are typically evaluated using standardized objective measures of pre- and post-treatment performance. However, the potentially informative opinions and perspectives of the participants themselves are not reported. This paper sought to redress this imbalance by using a semi-structured telephone interview to gather feedback from 19 participants who had undergone a group-based eight-week cognitive rehabilitation program to improve attentional impairment following traumatic brain injury (TBI). The program incorporated cognitive training using an action video game and psycho-education, including a workbook for developing compensatory skills. Findings indicated that the majority of participants found the program to be a positive experience, resulting in self-perceived skill development that generalized beyond the training context. Participants particularly valued the social aspects of the rehabilitation program and reported benefiting from their interactions with the other group members. Most enjoyed the action video game playing, although for some, the opportunity to select between a set of different games rather than playing the single game that featured in the program would have been more appropriate. The majority of participants also found the workbook helpful. Other useful suggestions included extending the program to 10-12 weeks, increasing group size, developing more of a ‘take away’ aspect of the program to be administered at home, and formalizing the ‘mentoring’ roles that emerged in the group.

PECULIARITIES OF COPING WITH PROBLEM SITUATION OF STUDENTS OF FORM 4 DURING THE LEARNING PROCESS

The Aim of the study is the peculiarities of coping with stress situations of students of Form 4 during the learning process. In many studies it is emphasised that the learning environment causes strong stress for a large number of children, which in its turn causes behaviour, emotional and mental problems. The present study analyses the most frequent stress situations, how children cope with them and how the types of coping with stress situations impact the learning results.The results of empirical study demonstrate that 52% of children are of the opinion that the causes for disturbances of mental balance are various physical traumas; problems in learning take up the second place, then follow strained relationships with peers and parents and various emotional experiences related to the situation caused by loss and fear.The strategy of adaptive coping has a positive correlation with the learning result. The strategy of passive behaviour has a negative correlation with the learning success. The correlations obtained in the study confirm also the findings made in other studies that if children don’t know how to use the strategies of adaptive behaviour or compensatory skills which help to solve problem situations, they have lower learning results, which can cause various emotional problems.

Psychiatric rehabilitation: general issues

SummaryRehabilitation aims at avoiding unfavourable consequences of a disorder and its care and at training and improving impaired and compensatory skills. The needs of the main diagnostic groups with resulting cognitive or social impairments, namely mental retardation, infantile autism, chronic depression, severe psychoneurosis, substance abuse, schizophrenia, and dementia in old age, have specific aspects. An increased need for rehabilitation was prompted by the worldwide movement of deinstitutionalisation, which hit above all the socially most vulnerable schizophrenics. The instruments and methods of rehabilitation for the socially disabled mentally ill go far beyond the sphere of psychiatry. Individualised rehabilitation must be in mutual interaction with the social and occupational environment. The socially disabled individual is, for example, dependent upon awareness and acceptance in the community, upon financial and social support or upon the availability of a job. In the case of persisting deficits, supportive measures at different levels are needed to compensate or to minimize severe consequences of impairments. Their approach is by the social environment with the objective to grant the optimum quality of life combined with a minimum loss of independence. The great variety of measures often required at the same time must be based on a network of services and their purposeful coordination. Psychiatric rehabilitation requires a functioning social system and, in times of scarce resources, political priorities.