Collecting disability data from parents

This article describes the development and national trial of a methodology for collecting disability data directly from parents, enabling schools and local authorities to meet their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA; 2005) to promote equality of opportunity for all children. It illustrates the complexities around collecting this information and also highlights the dangers of assuming that special educational needs (SENs) equate to disability. The parental survey revealed children with medical and mental health needs, but no SENs, who were unknown to schools. It also revealed children with a recorded SEN whose parents did not consider that they had a disability in line with the DDA definition. It identified a number of children whose disability leads to absences from school, making them vulnerable to underachievement. These findings highlight the importance of having appropriate tools with which to collect these data and developing procedures to support their effective use. We also draw attention to the contextual nature of children’s difficulties and the importance of retaining and respecting the place of subjective information. This is central to adopting a definition of disability that hinges on experience or impact.

Determinants of intention to purchase chicken in Italy: the role of consumer risk perception and trust in different information sources

The article investigates how purchasing intentions among a sample of Italian consumers are influenced by different levels of risk perception and their trust in food-safety information provided by different sources such as the food industry, government agencies, or consumers' associations. The assessment of the determinants of intention to purchase was carried out by estimating a causal model for the chicken case in which attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived risk play a major role in determining buyer's behavior. In particular, the role of trust in influencing risk perception is highlighted either as a general construct or as specific constructs targeting food chain, policy actors, and the media. [EconLit citations: Q130, Q190, D120]. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Reconciling model and information uncertainty in development appraisal

This paper investigates the effect of choices of model structure and scale in development viability appraisal. The paper addresses two questions concerning the application of development appraisal techniques to viability modelling within the UK planning system. The first relates to the extent to which, given intrinsic input uncertainty, the choice of model structure significantly affects model outputs. The second concerns the extent to which, given intrinsic input uncertainty, the level of model complexity significantly affects model outputs. Monte Carlo simulation procedures are applied to a hypothetical development scheme in order to measure the effects of model aggregation and structure on model output variance. It is concluded that, given the particular scheme modelled and unavoidably subjective assumptions of input variance, simple and simplistic models may produce similar outputs to more robust and disaggregated models.

NK1 receptor antagonism and the neural processing of emotional information in healthy volunteers

The neuropeptide substance P and its receptor NK1 have been implicated in emotion, anxiety and stress in preclinical studies. However, the role of NK1 receptors in human brain function is less clear and there have been inconsistent reports of the value of NK1 receptor antagonists in the treatment of clinical depression. The present study therefore aimed to investigate effects of NK1 antagonism on the neural processing of emotional information in healthy volunteers. Twenty-four participants were randomized to receive a single dose of aprepitant (125 mg) or placebo. Approximately 4 h later, neural responses during facial expression processing and an emotional counting Stroop word task were assessed using fMRI. Mood and subjective experience were also measured using self-report scales. As expected a single dose of aprepitant did not affect mood and subjective state in the healthy volunteers. However, NK1 antagonism increased responses specifically during the presentation of happy facial expressions in both the rostral anterior cingulate and the right amygdala. In the emotional counting Stroop task the aprepitant group had increased activation in both the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the precuneus cortex to positive vs. neutral words. These results suggest consistent effects of NK1 antagonism on neural responses to positive affective information in two different paradigms. Such findings confirm animal studies which support a role for NK1 receptors in emotion. Such an approach may be useful in understanding the effects of novel drug treatments prior to full-scale clinical trials.

Memory for medication side effects in younger and older adults: the role of subjective and objective importance

Older adults often experience memory impairments, but can sometimes use selective processing and schematic support to remember important information. The current experiments investigate to what degree younger and healthy older adults remember medication side effects that were subjectively or objectively important to remember. Participants studied a list of common side effects, and rated how negative these effects were if they were to experience them, and were then given a free recall test. In Experiment 1, the severity of the side effects ranged from mild (e.g., itching) to severe (e.g., stroke), and in Experiment 2, certain side effects were indicated as critical to remember (i.e., “contact your doctor if you experience this”). There were no age differences in terms of free recall of the side effects, and older adults remembered more severe side effects relative to mild effects. However, older adults were less likely to recognize critical side effects on a later recognition test, relative to younger adults. The findings suggest that older adults can selectively remember medication side effects, but have difficulty identifying familiar but potentially critical side effects, and this has implications for monitoring medication use in older age.