No abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of fixed-time (FT) schedules to maintain behavior. Two children who had been diagnosed with autism were taught a functional task. Subsequently, three different FT schedules (i.e., yoked, thin, dense) were compared to determine their capacity to maintain task responding. Results suggested that FT schedules may be used to maintain previously acquired behavior.

The focus of this study was to try to establish key component, or element skills, and their underlying tool skills to improve functional gross motor skills to fluent levels for individuals who had suffered brain injuries. Four participants using the key component Big 6 skills of reach, point, touch, grasp, place, and release were studied to determine whether building these skills to a high rate could increase the functional motor skills in the impaired hand or in the non-impaired, non-dominant hand. The study indicates that increasing these skills to fluent levels increases the functional use in the participant's gross motor skill impaired hand and the non-impaired, non-dominant hand.

Use of the different direct-observation methods to identify reinforcers for reductive and skill acquisition programming would likely be a useful addition to rehabilitation settings.

INTRODUCTION: Patients and their families struggle with accepting changes in personality after traumatic brain injury (TBI). A neuroanatomic understanding may assist with this process. OBJECTIVES: We briefly review the history of the Western conceptualization of the Self, and discuss how neuroscience and changes in personality wrought by brain injuries modify and enrich our understanding of our selves and our patients. CONCLUSION: The sense of self, while conflated with the concept of a "soul" in Western thinking, is more rationally considered a construct derived from neurophysiologic structures. The self or personality therefore often changes when the brain changes. A neuroanatomic perspective can help patients, families, and clinicians accept and cope with the sequellae of TBI. bases of affect, morality, empathy, and sense of self. We discuss embodiment theory and briefly describe an exocentric model as one possible way to reframe our understanding of "mind" and "body". Rethinking these issues -modifying and expanding one's "philosophy of mind" -can help patients, family members, and clinicians accept and more effectively respond to brain injury. A brief historical review of the early western theory of mind: The struggle toward a physical systemAs stated in one text on Philosophy of Mind, this branch of philosophy explores the relationship between mind, brain, and body and between the mental and the physical (Chalmers, 2002, p. xi). Philosophers attempt