The Effect of Using the Reinforcement Board on Increasing Attention among Students with Intellectual Disabilities during Performing Writing Tasks

The current study aimed to examine the effect of using the reinforcement board on increasing attention among students with intellectual disabilities while performing writing tasks in the class. A related purpose was to explore students’ ability to maintain and generalize the behavior of attention. The withdrawal design (ABAB), one of the Single Subject Designs, was used. The study sample consisted of 4 students with intellectual disabilities in grade 5 who attend Dhul-Noreen elementary school for boys in Jizan. Results showed that the reinforcement board strategy was effective in improving and developing the attention of students of intellectual disabilities during the performance of written assignments within the classroom with a success rate (100%). In addition, students maintained the behavior that they learned with a rate ranging between (96-100%) and also improved their ability to generalize this behavior in different environments with a success rate ranging between (96-100%). Finally, the results showed the functional relationship between the use of reinforcement board strategy and the improvement of the level of attention of students with intellectual disabilities.

Dynamic brain-to-brain concordance and behavioral mirroring as a mechanism of the patient-clinician interaction

The patient-clinician interaction can powerfully shape treatment outcomes such as pain but is often considered an intangible “art of medicine” and has largely eluded scientific inquiry. Although brain correlates of social processes such as empathy and theory of mind have been studied using single-subject designs, specific behavioral and neural mechanisms underpinning the patient-clinician interaction are unknown. Using a two-person interactive design, we simultaneously recorded functional magnetic resonance imaging (hyperscanning) in patient-clinician dyads, who interacted via live video, while clinicians treated evoked pain in patients with chronic pain. Our results show that patient analgesia is mediated by patient-clinician nonverbal behavioral mirroring and brain-to-brain concordance in circuitry implicated in theory of mind and social mirroring. Dyad-based analyses showed extensive dynamic coupling of these brain nodes with the partners’ brain activity, yet only in dyads with pre-established clinical rapport. These findings introduce a putatively key brain-behavioral mechanism for therapeutic alliance and psychosocial analgesia.

Dynamic brain-to-brain concordance and behavioral mirroring as a mechanism of the patient-clinician interaction

The patient-clinician interaction can powerfully shape treatment outcomes such as pain, but is often considered an intangible “art-of-medicine”, and has largely eluded scientific inquiry. Although brain correlates of social processes such as empathy and theory-of-mind have been studied using single-subject designs, the specific behavioral and neural mechanisms underpinning the patient-clinician interaction are unknown. Using a two-person interactive design, we simultaneously recorded functional MRI (i.e. hyperscanning) in patient-clinician dyads, who interacted via live video while clinicians treated evoked pain in chronic pain patients. Our results show that patient analgesia is mediated by patient-clinician nonverbal behavioral mirroring and brain-to-brain concordance in circuitry implicated in theory-of-mind and social mirroring. Dyad-based analyses showed extensive dynamic coupling of these brain nodes with the partners’ brain activity, yet only in dyads where clinical rapport had been established prior to the interaction. These findings point to a putatively key brain-behavioral mechanism for therapeutic alliance and psychosocial analgesia.

Teaching a Student with Poor Performance in Mathematics to Recall of Multiplication Facts Using Simultaneous Prompting with Systematic Review and Corrective Feedback

In this study, it was aimed to determine the effects of the Simultaneous Prompting (SP) package jointly with the systematic review and corrective feedback in teaching a student with poor performance in mathematics to recall the multiplication facts. One of the single subject designs, the multiple probes design across behaviors (sets) is used in this study. The participant is an 11 years old female student at the 6th grade who has not been diagnosed with any disability but has been getting support because of her poor performance in mathematics than her peers. The dependent variable of this study is the skill of recall multiplication facts with the sets of 3, 5 and 8. The independent variable of the study is the SP package jointly with the systematic review and corrective feedback. Results show that the SP was effective in teaching the student with low mathematical performance to the skill of recall the multiplication facts. The student generalized the learned multiplication facts to another teacher and different setting and maintained her performance on the 15th and 45th days following the systematic reviews. Considering the findings of social validity, it has been determined that the teacher presented positive opinions, as she became happy with that achievement and the method is a way, which can be adopted and implemented by all teachers. These results indicate the acceptability of the SP package and results of the study are highly meaningful. Implications and future research needs are discussed.

Using a Systematic Review to Explore Single-Subject Design Use Within Special Education Over Time

While teachers and researchers of students with disability are commonly interested in individual students and their progress towards individualised goals, traditional approaches to educational research that aim to illustrate generalisation between cause and effect are still commonly used. Traditional approaches, such as group-comparison designs, are used to demonstrate improved performance for the average student; however, they also obscure individual student data. Within special and inclusive education, single-subject designs may provide more appropriate conclusions to particular types of questions than traditional research methods as they allow for the examination of a functional relationship between the dependent and independent variables and rely on the participant serving as their own control. This article provides a summary of the use of single-subject designs within the field of special education over time and the findings of a systematic review conducted according to the PRISMA statement are presented. Through this systematic review, published articles from 7 prominent special education journals that involved intervention for school-aged students with disability were examined. In addition, a sample of exemplar studies that have employed single-subject designs are discussed.

Experimental Phenomenology in Mindfulness Research

The present paper argues that experimental phenomenology has an important role to play in research on mindfulness. Experimental phenomenology is defined as a subcategory of phenomenology (defined as the science of our subjective experience of being in the world), which explores the effects of intentional variations of subjective experiencing (direction of attention and choice of attitude) on subsequent experience. To count as experimental phenomenology, both the independent and dependent variable have to be phenomenological. Because mindfulness involves paying attention to present experience with a specific attitude, it is well suited for experimental-phenomenological research. What makes experimental phenomenology into a scientific endeavor is the intersubjective nature of this kind of study: potential effects described by one person can be subjected to replication both by the same person, and by other persons. Also, conclusions drawn on the basis of this kind of study are hypothetical and provisional, and may be modified or specified on the basis of further study. In this paper, the principles of experimental phenomenology are illustrated by (a) variations of a given mindfulness practice (the body scan), and (b) the construction of a personalized mindfulness practice (mindful driving). Finally, three varieties of experimental phenomenology in research on mindfulness are discussed: (1) the use of qualitative methods to analyze mindfulness practices and their potential effects, (2) idiographic research with the use of single-subject designs and experience sampling, and (3) randomized controlled studies of the effects of mindfulness practices on present experience.