Family Beginnings

The South African government has undertaken to expand universal access to Early Childhood Development (ECD) with a particular focus on children from socially disadvantaged communities and with disabilities. This requires training and support of ECD practitioners, such that they are equipped 399with the necessary knowledge and competencies to implement effective teaching and learning approaches at ECD level. This research explored an innovative, inclusive approach to ECD practitioner development in which both Deaf and hearing students were enrolled in an ECD practitioner training program facilitated jointly by New Beginnings (an ECD non-profit training organization) and the Deaf Federation of South Africa (DeafSA). The research scrutinized key aspects of the training program, including how it extended students content knowledge on ECD, their pedagogical knowledge; as well as epistemological access for Deaf students. The findings and conclusions have important implications not only for equipping ECD practitioners with knowledge and skills, but also demonstrates how practitioner training itself can be effectively structured to cater for diversity among trainees.

Reward and punishment learning are critical across multiple clinical populations. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is frequently used to assess these constructs and multiple forms of psychopathology are associated with IGT performance. However, it is not clear whether alterations in IGT performance are general to psychopathology or specific to different forms of psychopathology. Thus, we examined whether IGT performance was uniquely predicted by anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder. We tested a sample of adults (N = 293) on the play-or-pass version of the IGT. We characterized behavior using a hierarchical Bayesian computational model, formalizing parameters underlying task behavior. With the model, we examined unique associations between IGT performance and lifetime diagnostic history of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder. Anxiety, but not depression or substance use, was associated with higher punishment learning rates, posterior mean β = 0.15, 95% CI [0.01, 0.28]. In addition, women showed lower punishment learning rates, posterior mean β = − 0.17, 95% CI [− 0.3, − 0.03], and lower response bias, posterior mean β = − 0.3, 95% CI [− 0.56, − 0.05]. The relation between punishment learning rates and history of anxiety was small; however, our findings were consistent with established findings in anxiety derived from self-report. In addition, only main effects of diagnostic status were examined; thus, future research should examine comorbidity between diagnoses on IGT performance. Overall, our findings are consistent with research showing that anxiety is associated with punishment avoidance. In addition, our behavioral findings with respect to gender are also consistent with previous research employing the IGT.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13415-025-01331-y.

The purpose of this study was to assess the use of an adapted picture description task described by Eisenberg and Guo to explore the morphosyntactic error patterns of English–Spanish preschool simultaneous bilingual learners. Language samples were collected from 28 bilingual preschool children aged 3 to 5 years. Language samples were elicited in both English and Spanish using a series of pictures and elicitation questions/prompts. Twenty-one participants produced a language sample in only one language (16 in English and 5 in Spanish) and seven participants produced language samples in both languages. Language samples were analyzed for grammaticality and error types. There were a higher number of fragments, tense marker, and grammatical morphemes errors in English. In Spanish, the children demonstrated more argument structure and pronominal form errors than in English. The adapted picture description task demonstrated sensitivity to common errors in English and Spanish and shows promise for use with bilingual populations.

This technology review, written by a small group of pharmaceutical microbiologists experienced in cell therapies, discussed a risk-based approach to microbiological contamination detection and control during gene and cell therapy production. Topics discussed include a brief overview of cell therapies, a risk analysis related to donor selection, cell collection and infectious agent testing, cell transformation and expansion, packaging, storage, and administration, and cell therapy microbial contamination testing and release.

Over the past half century, applied anthropology has evolved as part of the global process through which human society has been transformed. Several levels of sociocultural integration have been transcended. Applied efforts at parallel interventions have shifted from the bounded and orderly little community through the teeming chaos of the developing city to the boundless and amorphous world of the postnational map and the human ethnoscape which occupies it. We will affirm the continuing relevance today of elements of the work we have performed at each of these levels. But we will also argue that contemporary applied anthropology must refocus its concepts and methods on research and experiments that will guide the policy agendas and the resulting ameliorative interventions of both national and international agencies. The task before us is immense. Time is short. Resources are limited. But, You CAN do something!

A retrospective, inception cohort, nonrandomized control design was employed to evaluate the effects of daily vs twice daily dosing of methadone on opiate/cocaine use, and noncompliance with urine toxicology requests in methadone-maintained pregnant women, n = 45. Earlier program entry was associated with decreased opiate and cocaine use and increased compliance with urinalysis requests. The single dose and split-dose groups differed in urine toxicology compliance rates, 23.8 vs 0.5%, as well as percentages of urines positive for cocaine, 15.3 vs 0.3%, only in Trimester III.