Judith Lunn

The Effectiveness of Interventions for Drug-Using Offenders in the Courts, Secure Establishments and the Community: A Systematic Review

Interventions for drug-using offenders are employed internationally to reduce subsequent drug use and criminal behavior. This paper provides information from a systematic review of 24 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted between 1980 and 2004. Thirteen of the 24 trials were included in a series of meta-analyses, and tentative conclusions are drawn on the basis of the evidence. Pretrial release with drugs testing and intensive supervision were shown to have limited success when compared to routine parole and probation, with effect sizes favoring routine parole and probation. Therapeutic community interventions showed promising results when compared to dispensation of treatment to individuals as usual, reducing risk of future offending behavior. A few studies evaluated the effectiveness of assertive case management and other community-based programs, but due to the paucity of information few inferences could be drawn from these studies. Little is known about the cost and cost effectiveness of such interventions, and the development of established protocols is required.

Social cognition in children with epilepsy in mainstream education

To establish whether deficits in social cognition are present in children with generalized or focal epilepsy in mainstream education, and whether any relation exists between social cognition, communication, and behaviour measures.

Saccadic eye movement abnormalities in children with epilepsy

Childhood onset epilepsy is associated with disrupted developmental integration of sensorimotor and cognitive functions that contribute to persistent neurobehavioural comorbidities. The role of epilepsy and its treatment on the development of functional integration of motor and cognitive domains is unclear. Oculomotor tasks can probe neurophysiological and neurocognitive mechanisms vulnerable to developmental disruptions by epilepsy-related factors. The study involved 26 patients and 48 typically developing children aged 8–18 years old who performed a prosaccade and an antisaccade task. Analyses compared medicated chronic epilepsy patients and unmedicated controlled epilepsy patients to healthy control children on saccade latency, accuracy and dynamics, errors and correction rate, and express saccades. Patients with medicated chronic epilepsy had impaired and more variable processing speed, reduced accuracy, increased peak velocity and a greater number of inhibitory errors, younger unmedicated patients also showed deficits in error monitoring. Deficits were related to reported behavioural problems in patients. Epilepsy factors were significant predictors of oculomotor functions. An earlier age at onset predicted reduced latency of prosaccades and increased express saccades, and the typical relationship between express saccades and inhibitory errors was absent in chronic patients, indicating a persistent reduction in tonic cortical inhibition and aberrant cortical connectivity. In contrast, onset in later childhood predicted altered antisaccade dynamics indicating disrupted neurotransmission in frontoparietal and oculomotor networks with greater demand on inhibitory control. The observed saccadic abnormalities are consistent with a dysmaturation of subcortical-cortical functional connectivity and aberrant neurotransmission. Eye movements could be used to monitor the impact of epilepsy on neurocognitive development and help assess the risk for poor neurobehavioural outcomes.

Links between action perception and action production in 10-week-old infants

ABSTRACT In order to understand how experience of an action alters functional brain responses to visual information, we examined the effects of reflex walking on how 10‐week‐old infants processed biological motion. We gave experience of the reflex walk to half the participants, and did not give this experience to the other half of the sample. The participants electrical brain activity in response to viewing upright and inverted walking and crawling movements indicated the detection of biological motion only for that group which experience the reflex walk, as evidenced by parietal electrode greater positivity for the upright than the inverted condition. This effect was observed only for the walking stimuli. This study suggests that parietal regions are associated with the perception of biological motion even at 9–11 weeks. Further, this result strongly suggests that experience refines the perception of biological motion and that at 10 weeks of age, the link between action perception and action production is tightly woven. HighlightsProcessing biological motion induces positive amplitude ERPs at 10 weeks of age.Experience of reflex walking altered the perception of biological motion.Action perception and action production are linked at a fundamental level.

Social attention in children with epilepsy

HighlightsPatients with epilepsy show aberrant social attention, particularly in response to fear.Epilepsy developmental and neurobehavioural factors independently predict social attention.Social attention deficits are linked to attention and anxiety problems in patients.Atypical social attention is not limited to patients with chronic epilepsy, lower IQ or reported behavioural problems. Abstract Children with epilepsy may be vulnerable to impaired social attention given the increased risk of neurobehavioural comorbidities. Social attentional orienting and the potential modulatory role of attentional control on the perceptual processing of gaze and emotion cues have not been examined in childhood onset epilepsies. Social attention mechanisms were investigated in patients with epilepsy (n = 25) aged 8–18 years old and performance compared to healthy controls (n = 30). Dynamic gaze and emotion facial stimuli were integrated into an antisaccade eye‐tracking paradigm. The time to orient attention and execute a horizontal saccade toward (prosaccade) or away (antisaccade) from a peripheral target measured processing speed of social signals under conditions of low or high attentional control. Patients with epilepsy had impaired processing speed compared to healthy controls under conditions of high attentional control only when gaze and emotions were combined meaningfully to signal motivational intent of approach (happy or anger with a direct gaze) or avoidance (fear or sad with an averted gaze). Group differences were larger in older adolescent patients. Analyses of the discrete gaze emotion combinations found independent effects of epilepsy‐related, cognitive and behavioural problems. A delayed disengagement from fearful gaze was also found under low attentional control that was linked to epilepsy developmental factors and was similarly observed in patients with higher reported anxiety problems. Overall, findings indicate increased perceptual processing of developmentally relevant social motivations during increased cognitive control, and the possibility of a persistent fear‐related attentional bias. This was not limited to patients with chronic epilepsy, lower IQ or reported behavioural problems and has implications for social and emotional development in individuals with childhood onset epilepsies beyond remission.