Two times three little pigs: Dysfluency, cognitive complexity and autism

This paper presents an analysis of dysfluencies in two oral tellings of a familiar children's story by a young boy with autism. Thurber & Tager-Flusberg (1993) postulate a lower degree of cognitive and communicative investment to explain a lower frequency of non-grammatical pauses observed in elicited narratives of children with autism in comparison to typically developing and intellectually disabled controls. we also found a very low frequency of non-grammatical pauses in our data, but indications of high engagement and cognitive and communicative investment. We point to a wider range of disfluencies as indicators of cognitive load, and show that the kind and location of dysfluencies produced may reveal which aspects of the narrative task are creating the greatest cognitive demand: here, mental state ascription, perspectivization, and adherence to story schema. This paper thus generates analytical options and hypotheses that can be explored further in a larger population of children with autism and typically developing controls.

Bringing Us Home: Cohousing and the Environmental Possibilities of Reuniting People with Neighbourhoods

Cohousing is a form of intentional community which has made a significant contribution to urban environmentalism by recreating the neighbourhood as the setting for engagement with the world beyond the front door.

Kosovo and international society

This book explains the international engagement with the Kosovo conflict from the dissolution of Yugoslavia to Operation Allied Force. It shows how Kosovo was deliberately excluded from the search for peace in Yugoslavia before going on to demonstrate how a shaky international consensus was forged to support air strikes in 1999. In doing so, it exposes many of the myths and conspiracy theories that have developed about the war and explains the dilemmas facing actors in this unfolding drama.

Effects of memory load and distraction on performance and event-related slow potentials in a visuospatial working memory task

Brain electrical activity related to working memory was recorded at 15 scalp electrodes during a visuospatial delayed response task. Participants (N = 18) touched the remembered position of a target on a computer screen after either a 1 or 8 sec delay. These memory trials were compared to sensory trials in which the target remained present throughout the delay and response periods. Distracter stimuli identical to the target were briefly presented during the delay on 30% of trials. Responses were less accurate in memory than sensory trials, especially after the long delay. During the delay slow potentials developed that were significantly more negative in memory than sensory trials. The difference between memory and sensory trials was greater at anterior than posterior electrodes. On trials with distracters, the slow potentials generated by memory trials showed further enhancement of negativity whereas there were minimal effects on accuracy of performance. The results provide evidence that engagement of visuospatial working memory generates slow wave negativity with a timing and distribution consistent with frontal activation. Enhanced brain activity associated with working memory is required to maintain performance in the presence of distraction. © 1997 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Book review of Mark McGillivray and Gary Smith's (eds.) "Australia and Asia", Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997. vii + 248 pp

The political capital invested in Australia's engagement with Asia over the past decade has sparked a lively discussion in the Australian academic community. The back cover of the book under review suggests that there are 'few bigger contemporary issues facing Australia than its relationship with Asia'. If the volume of scholarly material being produced on this issue is any indication, they are right. Like a number of similar works covering the shift in Australian foreign, defence, and trade policies towards Asia over the last decade, this book acknowledges a particular debt of gratitude to the Keating government for establishing regional engagement at the forefront of our national consciousness. Unlike some others however, this book seeks to place Australia's more recent 'discovery' of Asia into a broader historical framework.

Identification and dimensionality of difficult situations at work

Attempts to understand why people with adequate communication skills do not always perform well have focused on personality or personal style variables. This research focuses on the situational context and the difficulty inherent in particular encounters. This paper reports two studies concerned with what makes difficult face-to-face communication in work settings difficult or demanding. The first study (Study 1) identifies the types of face-to-face communication encounters that people find difficult to manage in the workplace. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered to define 41 difficult communication situations representing situations difficult for superiors, colleagues and subordinates, as well as generically difficult situations. In Study 2, quantitative data were analysed using multidimensional scaling techniques to reveal the underlying structure of the situations. Four dimensions were identified: protection/approach, vulnerability, self-management, and involvement/engagement. The results provide insight into the ways in which people construe these types of situations and also provide a taxonomy of difficult communication situations in the workplace. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Boys performing English

This article explores the gender dynamics of boys' responses to one Particular aspect of English teaching. oral performance work. It focuses on the possibility that the requirement to perform publicly in dramatic and other oral tasks may be an important factor in the rejection of English by many boys, and may contribute to boys' relatively poor achievement in English. The article provides a study of boys' engagement in English oral activities in two classrooms, and identifies a number of factors influencing boys' English learning. In particular, it shows that there is no simple relation between the performance requirements of English learning activities and boys' disengagement with English.

Teen Triple P: A universal approach to reducing risk factors for behavioural and emotional problems in adolescents at the transition to high school

Teen Triple P is a multilevel system of intervention that is designed to provide parents with specific strategies to promote the positive development of their teenage children as they make the transition into high school and through puberty. The program is based on a combination of education about the developmental needs of adolescents, skills training to improve communication and problem-solving, plus specific modules to deal with common problems encountered by parents and adolescents that can escalate into major conflict and violence. It is designed to increase the engagement of parents of adolescent and pre-adolescent children by providing them with easy access to evidencebased parenting advice and support. This paper presents data collected as part of a survey of over 1400 students in first year high school at 9 Brisbane schools. The survey instrument was constructed to obtain students' reports about behaviour which is known to be associated with their health and wellbeing, and also on the extent to which their parents promoted or discouraged such behaviour at home, at school, and in their social and recreational activities in the wider community. Selected data from the survey were extracted and presented to parents at a series of parenting seminars held at the schools to promote appropriate parenting of teenagers. The objectives were to provide parents with accurate data about teenagers' behaviour, and about teenagers' reports of how they perceived their parents' behaviour. Normative data on parent and teenager behaviour will be presented from the survey as well as psychometric data relating to the reliability and validity of this new measure. Implications of this strategy for increasing parent engagement in parenting programs that aim to reduce behavioural and emotional problems in adolescents will be discussed.

Activation of NK cell cytotoxicity

Natural killer (NK) cells are innate effector lymphocytes necessary for defence against stressed, microbe-infected, or malignant cells. NK cells kill target cells by either of two major mechanisms that require direct contact between NK cells and target cells. In the first pathway, cytoplasmic granule toxins, predominantly a membrane-disrupting protein known as perforin, and a family of structurally related serine C, proteases (granzymes) with various substrate specificities, are secreted by exocytosis and together induce apoptosis of the target cell. The granule-exocytosis pathway potently activates cell-death mechanisms that operate through the activation of apoptotic cysteine proteases (caspases), but can also cause cell death in the absence of activated caspases. The second pathway involves the engagement of death receptors (e.g. Fas/CD95) on target cells by their cognate ligands (e.g. FasL on NK cells, resulting in classical caspase-dependent apoptosis. The comparative role of these pathways in the pathophysiology of many diseases is being dissected by analyses of gene-targeted mice that lack these molecules, and humans who have genetic mutations affecting these pathways. We are also now learning that the effector function of NK cells is controlled by interactions involving specific NK cell receptors and their cognate ligands, either on target cells, or other cells of the immune system. This review will discuss the functional importance of NK cell cytotoxicity and the receptor/ligand interactions that control these processes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adaptation on the commons

This paper seeks to understand how software systems and organisations co-evolve in practice and how order emerges in the overall environment. Using a metaphor of timetable as a commons, we analyse the introduction of a novel academic scheduling system to demonstrate how Complex Adaptive Systems theory provides insight into the adaptive behaviour of the various actors and how their action is both a response to and a driver of co-evolution within the engagement.