Research project on advocacy and autism

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research project about the difficulties in accessing advocacy faced by adults labelled as having autism and Asperger's Syndrome in the Northwest of England. It is also an example of partnership working between three organisations. The article examines both the process of team-led (emancipatory) research and the project findings. Seven main themes emerged throughout the research: late diagnosis and lack of service support; bad experiences with systems of care; feelings of 'not belonging' (identity issues); barriers around communication and sensitivity towards individuals; lack of awareness and access to advocacy and rights; difficulties of 'fitting into' what is already available; and interest in developing knowledge around advocacy. Examination of the main themes pointed to a disturbing link between poor service response, episodes of crisis and mental ill health. The Carlisle People First Research Team is made up of 6 researchers who are labelled as having 'learning difficulties' who work in partnership with one other researcher.     

The Effect of Learning Experiences and Context on Infant Imitation and Generalization

Over the first years of life, infants gradually develop the ability to retrieve their memories across cue and contextual changes. Whereas maturational factors drive some of these developments in memory ability, experiences occurring within the learning event may also impact infants' ability to retrieve memories in new situations. In 2 experiments we examined whether it was possible to facilitate 12‐month‐old infants' generalization of learning in the deferred imitation paradigm by varying experiences before or during the demonstration session, or during the retention interval. In Experiment 1, altering the length, timing, or variability of training had no impact on generalization; infants showed a low, but consistent level of memory retrieval. In Experiment 2, infants who experienced a unique context for encoding and retrieval exhibited generalization; infants who experienced the context prior to the demonstration session, or during the retention interval, did not. Specificity is a robust feature of infant memory and is not substantially altered by encoding experiences in an observational learning paradigm. Previous history with a learning environment can, however, impact the flexibility of memory retrieval.     

Spaces of Participation in Pre‐School: Arenas for Establishing Power Orders?

This article reports an ethnographic study of pre‐school children's social knowledge domains. Results show how the children's shared knowledge concerning social status and social differentiation in the group was strengthened and confirmed during a traditional teacher‐led ring game, where they were supposed to choose a friend. We suggest that from the perspective of the children, the game situation may be understood as, at the same time, a space of participation and an arena for establishing the power order. From the perspective of the teacher, pedagogical intentions may be challenged as they encounter and are mediated and interpreted by children's peer‐cultures.     

Trait Expressiveness and Marital Satisfaction: The Role of Idealization Processes

This study examined the processes that underlie the association between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction. A total of 168 newlywed couples participated in a four‐wave, 13‐year longitudinal study of marriage. Cross‐sectional and longitudinal path analyses suggested that expressiveness promotes satisfaction by leading spouses to engage in affectionate behavior and by leading them to idealize their partner. Expressive people formed idealized images of their partner because they brought out the best in their partner's behavior and because they interpreted their partner's behavior in a favorable light. The study extends previous research by showing that the benefits of trait expressiveness extend into the second decade of marriage and by providing a plausible explanation of the connections between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction.     

Using Probabilistic Terrorism Risk Modeling for Regulatory Benefit-Cost Analysis: Application to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative in the Land Environment

This article presents a framework for using probabilistic terrorism risk modeling in regulatory analysis. We demonstrate the framework with an example application involving a regulation under consideration, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative for the Land Environment, (WHTI‐L). First, we estimate annualized loss from terrorist attacks with the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) Probabilistic Terrorism Model. We then estimate the critical risk reduction, which is the risk‐reducing effectiveness of WHTI‐L needed for its benefit, in terms of reduced terrorism loss in the United States, to exceed its cost. Our analysis indicates that the critical risk reduction depends strongly not only on uncertainties in the terrorism risk level, but also on uncertainty in the cost of regulation and how casualties are monetized. For a terrorism risk level based on the RMS standard risk estimate, the baseline regulatory cost estimate for WHTI‐L, and a range of casualty cost estimates based on the willingness‐to‐pay approach, our estimate for the expected annualized loss from terrorism ranges from $2.7 billion to $5.2 billion. For this range in annualized loss, the critical risk reduction for WHTI‐L ranges from 7% to 13%. Basing results on a lower risk level that results in halving the annualized terrorism loss would double the critical risk reduction (14–26%), and basing the results on a higher risk level that results in a doubling of the annualized terrorism loss would cut the critical risk reduction in half (3.5–6.6%). Ideally, decisions about terrorism security regulations and policies would be informed by true benefit‐cost analyses in which the estimated benefits are compared to costs. Such analyses for terrorism security efforts face substantial impediments stemming from the great uncertainty in the terrorist threat and the very low recurrence interval for large attacks. Several approaches can be used to estimate how a terrorism security program or regulation reduces the distribution of risks it is intended to manage. But, continued research to develop additional tools and data is necessary to support application of these approaches. These include refinement of models and simulations, engagement of subject matter experts, implementation of program evaluation, and estimating the costs of casualties from terrorism events.     

A Quantitative Assessment of the Risks from Illegally Imported Meat Contaminated with Foot and Mouth Disease Virus to Great Britain

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is considered by many as the most important animal disease in the world. FMD is highly contagious and outbreaks incur significant costs as affected countries are severely limited in their ability to trade. A number of trade commodities may be contaminated with FMD virus (FMDV) including animal products, for example, meat. As a member of the European Union, Great Britain (GB) has put in place a number of regulations to prevent the importation of pathogens in imported meat products. However, the illegal importation of meat provides a route by which safety controls may be circumvented and meat from FMD affected areas may be imported. This study assesses the FMD infection risk posed to the livestock population of GB from the illegal importation of meat, and estimates the major contributors to this overall risk, through the development of a quantitative risk assessment model. From model results, the total amount of illegal meat entering GB each year is estimated on average to be 11,875 tonnes. with 90% certainty that this is between 4,398 and 28,626 tonnes per year; of which between 64.5 and 565 kg are contaminated with FMDV. This flow of illegal meat results in an estimate of a frequency of FMD infection in GB livestock of 0.015 cases of infected animals per year, with 90% certainty it is between 0.0017 and 0.053. Imports from the region Near and Middle East account for 47% of this risk, and 68% of the risk is attributed to bone-in and dried de-boned products.     

Bootstrap Estimation of Benchmark Doses and Confidence Limits with Clustered Quantal Data

The benchmark dose (BMD) is an exposure level that would induce a small risk increase (BMR level) above the background. The BMD approach to deriving a reference dose for risk assessment of noncancer effects is advantageous in that the estimate of BMD is not restricted to experimental doses and utilizes most available dose-response information. To quantify statistical uncertainty of a BMD estimate, we often calculate and report its lower confidence limit (i.e., BMDL), and may even consider it as a more conservative alternative to BMD itself. Computation of BMDL may involve normal confidence limits to BMD in conjunction with the delta method. Therefore, factors, such as small sample size and nonlinearity in model parameters, can affect the performance of the delta method BMDL, and alternative methods are useful. In this article, we propose a bootstrap method to estimate BMDL utilizing a scheme that consists of a resampling of residuals after model fitting and a one-step formula for parameter estimation. We illustrate the method with clustered binary data from developmental toxicity experiments. Our analysis shows that with moderately elevated dose-response data, the distribution of BMD estimator tends to be left-skewed and bootstrap BMDL s are smaller than the delta method BMDL s on average, hence quantifying risk more conservatively. Statistically, the bootstrap BMDL quantifies the uncertainty of the true BMD more honestly than the delta method BMDL as its coverage probability is closer to the nominal level than that of delta method BMDL. We find that BMD and BMDL estimates are generally insensitive to model choices provided that the models fit the data comparably well near the region of BMD. Our analysis also suggests that, in the presence of a significant and moderately strong dose-response relationship, the developmental toxicity experiments under the standard protocol support dose-response assessment at 5% BMR for BMD and 95% confidence level for BMDL.