Task-switching deficits and repetitive behaviour in genetic neurodevelopmental disorders: Data from children with Prader-Willi syndrome chromosome 15 q11-q13 deletion and boys with Fragile X syndrome

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and Fragile X syndrome (FraX) are associated with distinctive cognitive and behavioural profiles. We examined whether repetitive behaviours in the two syndromes were associated with deficits in specific executive functions. PWS, FraX, and typically developing (TD) children were assessed for executive functioning using the Test of Everyday Attention for Children and an adapted Simon spatial interference task. Relative to the TD children, children with PWS and FraX showed greater costs of attention switching on the Simon task, but after controlling for intellectual ability, these switching deficits were only significant in the PWS group. Children with PWS and FraX also showed significantly increased preference for routine and differing profiles of other specific types of repetitive behaviours. A measure of switch cost from the Simon task was positively correlated to scores on preference for routine questionnaire items and was strongly associated with scores on other items relating to a preference for predictability. It is proposed that a deficit in attention switching is a component of the endophenotypes of both PWS and FraX and is associated with specific behaviours. This proposal is discussed in the context of neurocognitive pathways between genes and behaviour.

Encouraging children to think counterfactually enhances blocking in a causal learning task

According to a higher order reasoning account, inferential reasoning processes underpin the widely observed cue competition effect of blocking in causal learning. The inference required for blocking has been described as modus tollens (if p then q, not q therefore not p). Young children are known to have difficulties with this type of inference, but research with adults suggests that this inference is easier if participants think counterfactually. In this study, 100 children (51 five-year-olds and 49 six- to seven-year-olds) were assigned to two types of pretraining groups. The counterfactual group observed demonstrations of cues paired with outcomes and answered questions about what the outcome would have been if the causal status of cues had been different, whereas the factual group answered factual questions about the same demonstrations. Children then completed a causal learning task. Counterfactual pretraining enhanced levels of blocking as well as modus tollens reasoning but only for the younger children. These findings provide new evidence for an important role for inferential reasoning in causal learning.

TProf: An energy profiler for task-parallel programs

We present TProf, an energy profiling tool for OpenMP-like task-parallel programs. To compute the energy consumed by each task in a parallel application, TProf dynamically traces the parallel execution and uses a novel technique to estimate the per-task energy consumption. To achieve this estimation, TProf apportions the total processor energy among cores and overcomes the limitation of current works which would otherwise make parallel accounting impossible to achieve. We demonstrate the value of TProf by characterizing a set of task parallel programs, where we find that data locality, memory access patterns and task working sets are responsible for significant variance in energy consumption between seemingly homogeneous tasks. In addition, we identify opportunities for fine-grain energy optimization by applying per-task Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS).

Instructional Methods For Optimal Learning For An Aerospace Assembly Task: digital animation v pictogram-based instructions

Previous studies on work instruction delivery for complex assembly tasks have shown that the mode and delivery method for the instructions in an engineering context can influence both build time and product quality. The benefits of digital, animated instructional formats when compared to static pictures and text only formats have already been demonstrated. Although pictograms have found applications for relatively straight forward operations and activities, their applicability to relatively complex assembly tasks has yet to be demonstrated. This study compares animated instructions and pictograms for the assembly of an aircraft panel. Based around a series of build experiments, the work records build time as well as the number of media references to measure and compare build efficiency. The number of build errors and the time required to correct them is also recorded. The experiments included five participants completing five builds over five consecutive days for each media type. Results showed that on average the total build time was 13.1% lower for the group using animated instructions. The benefit of animated instructions on build time was most prominent in the first three builds, by build four this benefit had disappeared. There were a similar number of instructional references for the two groups over the five builds but the pictogram users required a lot more references during build 1. There were more errors among the group using pictograms requiring more time for corrections during the build.

Using Brain Data for Sentiment Analysis

We present the results of exploratory experiments using lexical valence extracted from brain using electroencephalography (EEG) for sentiment analysis. We selected 78 English words (36 for training and 42 for testing), presented as stimuli to 3 English native speakers. EEG signals were recorded from the subjects while they performed a mental imaging task for each word stimulus. Wavelet decomposition was employed to extract EEG features from the time-frequency domain. The extracted features were used as inputs to a sparse multinomial logistic regression (SMLR) classifier for valence classification, after univariate ANOVA feature selection. After mapping EEG signals to sentiment valences, we exploited the lexical polarity extracted from brain data for the prediction of the valence of 12 sentences taken from the SemEval-2007 shared task, and compared it against existing lexical resources.

Efficiently Scheduling Task Dataflow Parallelism: A Comparison Between Swan and QUARK

Increased system variability and irregularity of parallelism in applications put increasing demands on the ef- ficiency of dynamic task schedulers. This paper presents a new design for a work-stealing scheduler supporting both Cilk- style recursively parallel code and parallelism deduced from dataflow dependences. Initial evaluation on a set of linear algebra kernels demonstrates that our scheduler outperforms PLASMA’s QUARK scheduler by up to 12% on a 16-thread Intel Xeon and by up to 50% on a 32-thread AMD Bulldozer.

Olefin / Paraffin separation using Task-Specific Materials based on Ionic Liquids: Advances in Gas Processing

In this work, 1-hexene was extracted from its mixtures with n-hexane in varying ratios using a task specific ionic liquid. Herein, the ionic liquid (IL) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium nitrate, [BMIM][NO3], was used and examined with and without the addition of a metal salt. The impact of water on both selectivity and distribution coefficient was also tested. Four potential metal salts were investigated, the results of which demonstrate that the dissolution of transition-metal salts in the IL improves the separation of 1-hexene from n-hexane through metal-olefin complexation. Additionally, the presence of water in IL solutions containing metal salt enhances this selectivity. Finally, UNIFAC was used to correlate the experimental LLE data with good accuracy.

Reviewing the Literature on the Breakdown of Foster Care Placements for Young People: Complexity and the Social Work Task

Young people in long-term foster care are at risk of experiencing poor social, emotional, behavioural and educational outcomes. Moreover, these placements have a significantly greater chance of breaking down compared to those involving children. This article critically evaluates the factors associated with this particular outcome. It was carried out through a literature review conducted by a social work practitioner in one Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland. The findings evidenced that, apart from overriding safety concerns, placement breakdown was not a one-off event but rather a complex process involving the interplay between a range of dynamic risk and protective factors over time, operating in the wider context of the young person’s history and life experiences. The significance of these findings for social work practitioners is finally considered by identifying key theories to inform understanding and intervention.