Research Findings: The present study aimed to investigate whether the trial-to-trial intraindividual reaction time variability (IIV), which reflects prefrontal cortex activity related to attentional and cognitive control, mediated the longitudinal effects of earlier harsh discipline on children's later externalizing problems. The study involved…

Change-point analysis (CPA) is a method for detecting abrupt changes in parameter(s) underlying a sequence of random variables. It has been applied to detect examinees' aberrant test-taking behavior by identifying abrupt test performance change. Previous studies utilized maximum likelihood estimations of ability parameters, focusing on detecting…

Several mental health programs have been developed in clinics and transported into schools, which has great potential for increasing access to intervention for students who may not be otherwise served. However, such programs may lack consideration of the complexity and constraints of schools, including the diversity of student needs and…

Several mental health programs have been developed in clinics and transported into schools, which has great potential for increasing access to intervention for students who may not be otherwise served. However, such programs may lack consideration of the complexity and constraints of schools, including the diversity of student needs and…

Several theories of aggression agree that aggression may be a part of a decision-making process, influenced by current internal states and environmental influences. With more than one-quarter of preschool-age children living in single-parent households, we sought to understand how these children might differ from their peers regarding specific…

This case study analyzed the cognitive strategies of Ethan, a gifted youth, when performing a Stop Signal Task assessing cognitive control processes including response inhibition as well as proactive and reactive adjustments of response. In the case of Ethan, the response inhibition score was biased, revealing that Ethan did not follow the…

Repetitive behavior is a key characteristic of autism spectrum disorders. Our aim was to investigate the hypothesis that this abnormal behavioral repetition results from a tendency to over-rely on habits at the expense of flexible, goal-directed action. Twenty-four children with autism spectrum disorders and 24 age- and gender-matched controls…

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are faced with many challenging behaviors that could impede their learning. One commonly reported problem behavior is noncompliance, which is often defined as a delay in response (latency), decrease in rate of responding (fluency), or failure to complete a task. This failure to comply in an appropriate…

Twenty male adults with ADHD, 16 dyslexic adults, 15 comorbid adults, and 16 normal controls were compared on performance and underlying brain responses, during a cued Continuous Performance Test (O-X CPT), with the aim of discovering features of information processing differentiating between the groups. The study evaluated both cue- and…

Dependent variables in research on problem behavior typically are based on measures of response repetition, but these measures may be problematic when behavior poses high risk or when its occurrence terminates a session. We examined response latency as the index of behavior during assessment. In Experiment 1, we compared response rate and latency…

Two experiments were conducted to examine (a) the relationship between the structural characteristics (i.e., bout duration, inter-response time [IRT], pitch, and energy) and overall duration of vocal stereotypy, and (b) the effects of auditory stimulation on the duration and temporal structure of the behavior. In the first experiment, we measured…

Previous research has demonstrated that factors such as reinforcer frequency, amount, and delay have similar effects on resistance to change and preference. In the present study, 4 boys with autism made choices between a constant reinforcer (one that was the same food item every trial) and a varied food reinforcer (one that varied randomly between…

This article describes the development and utility of the Abel-Blasingame Assessment System for "individuals with intellectual disabilities" (ABID) for assessment of sexual interest and problematic sexual behaviors. The study examined the preliminary psychometric properties and evaluated the clinical utility of the ABID based on a sample…

We investigated the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in local contextual processing using a combined event-related potentials and lesion approach. Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. Targets were preceded by either randomized sequences of standards…

The current study investigates two recently identified threats to the construct validity of behavioral inhibition as a core deficit of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based on the stop-signal task: calculation of mean reaction time from go-trials presented adjacent to intermittent stop-trials, and non-reporting of the stop-signal…