This study contributes to the existing literature on treatment integrity (TI) by presenting TI findings across interventions aimed at the development of social emotional skills in learners with emotional and behavioural disorders. Social and emotional skills were selected as the target for our investigation given the significance of these skills in relation to the academic and behavioural success of learners and the challenges most often faced in these skill areas by students with emotional and behaviour disorders (E/BD). The study analysed single-subject experimental studies from 2000 to 2009 in two leading journals in the field of emotional and behaviour disorders: Behavior Disorders and The Journal of Emotional Behavioral Disorders. The degree to which studies operationally defined independent variables and evaluated and reported measures of treatment integrity and associated risk factors is reported. Thirty-three studies met the inclusion criteria for the present study and TI was evaluated across six variables (1) year published, (2) dependent variable(s), (3) independent variables(s), (4) participant characteristics, (5) treatment agent and (6) assessment of TI. Results indicated that approximately 49% of the studies monitored and reported TI, meaning that they provided a description of the TI procedure and resultant data. Findings from the study point to the need for attention to TI both in the description of methods used and in the reporting of TI data.

Active student responding increases student academic outcome and on-task behavior. Response cards are an effective and efficient strategy for increasing active student responding. This study examined the effects of response cards on student disruptive behavior, percentage of questions answered, and accuracy of questions answered while alternating the number of teacher-directed questions across sessions. An alternating treatments design was used with 5 teacher-nominated students. During baseline (BL), the teacher used her standard lecture format, having students raise their hand when responding to a question. During the response card (RC) intervention, the teacher asked students to write responses on their white boards. Following BL, 3 conditions were rapidly alternated across sessions. Conditions included BL, RC in which the teacher asked 6 questions, and RC in which the teacher asked 12 questions. During the RC conditions, there was a decrease in disruptive behavior and an increase in the percentage and accuracy of responding.

Previous research has shown that children with multiple disabilities have been able to learn to make choices. Practising choice making is a good way to introduce an intervention using Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). Choice making with objects should then be trainded before choice making with pictures. The present study is a single subject experimental design and was accomplished at a center for children with disabilities in Tanzania during 12 weeks. The primary purpose was to examine if the number of choices made by two boys with cerebral palsy increased after communicationintervention with objects and pictures. The participants were trained to make choices over two intervention phases and the staff were given lectures on two occasions and through tuitions. The number of choices made by the participants as well as the choices offered by the staff, were measured continuously at predetermined activities. The results show that the number of choices with objects and pictures increased in both participants. It was also observed that the interaction between the children and the staff increased. Aspects that are discussed are whether the staff’s ability to offer choices affects the result and that the factors which separate what a “none-choice” is could be defined more clearly.

Abstract Background: Individuals with nonfluent aphasia may have significant difficulties with functional spoken communication tasks in their daily life. Aphasia treatment held in a group setting may provide an enriched communicative context wherein the requirements of spoken language are similar to those within functional day-to-day communicative situations. Thus engaging in a spoken language activity in a group setting may directly target generalization of trained skills to those required in real-life, social communication situations. The present study is concerned with an aphasia group treatment that requires focused practice of spoken language during a social-functional communication task. Intensive Language Action Therapy (ILAT) has demonstrated positive communication outcomes in some individuals with chronic aphasia. However, it remains to be seen which clinical measures best index outcomes for ILAT. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effectiveness of ILAT in individuals with nonfluent aphasia by exploring multiple, potential ILAT outcomes. The outcomes included change in performance on assessments of directly trained spoken social-functional communication abilities (proximal outcomes), untrained social-functional communication abilities and language abilities (primary outcomes), and cognitive-communication abilities (secondary outcome). Additionally, the project aimed to explore the participants' perceptions of ILAT (secondary outcome). Methods and Procedures: ILAT was implemented with four individuals with nonfluent aphasia, using a single-subject multiple baseline design. The treatment was conducted daily for 10 consecutive week days, totaling 25 hours of treatment. Treatment probes (i.e., using trained and untrained picture cards and an unrelated control-task of nonword repetition), a pre/post assessment battery, and a post-treatment survey/interview were administered to assess performance on the treatment task, generalization to other potential ILAT outcomes, and participants' perceptions. Outcomes & Results: Increased accuracy was observed for trained and untrained items. However, two of the four participants were not able to reach a criteria determined a priori for treatment performance. Performance on items that were untrained resulted in some improvements in performance for all participants. Three of the four participants demonstrated small effect sizes in response to ILAT. One participant who demonstrated a medium effect size in response to ILAT also demonstrated a clinical significant change in discourse abilities, a measure of spoken social-functional communication abilities. All participants demonstrated improvements on at least one primary outcomes measure. Two participants, however, demonstrated a decline. All participants, however, perceived a positive experience with ILAT on a qualitative posttreatment survey/interview. Conclusions: Patterns were found between skills directly trained during ILAT, proximal outcomes, and performance on primary and secondary outcome measures of language, social-functional communication, and cognitive-communication, meant to assess generalization of trained skills to similar or potentially related untrained skills. A substantial amount of change (e.g., at least a medium effect size) on proximal outcome measures may be required in order for improvements to occur in primary and secondary outcome measures. Participants' perceptions of a positive treatment experience associated with the ILAT program further supports the value of the treatment. Future research should aim to further examine the influence of ILAT treatment components and participants' characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a computer program for students with emotional behavioral disorder (EBD) on behavior and academics. This concurrent, multiple baseline study investigated the use of Brainology with three upper elementary students diagnosed with EBD. Evaluations across behavior, academics, and behavioral academic indicators resulted in indications of possible effectiveness with one fourth grade student and limited to no effects with the other two students. There was a lack of multiple demonstration of intervention effect in this study across the baseline for behavior. Overall, student effort appeared to increase using this intervention, which is an important finding given the problems with disengagement that students with EBD experience (Wagner et al., 2004. Despite the limited results of this study, Brainology appears to hold some promise for students with EBD and it is hoped that further research will explore this possibility further. The teachers and students indicated that the treatment had strong to moderate validity on validity measures. Implications for Brainology and students with EBD are presented. Study limitations and directions for future research and practice are discussed. / text

Fractions are an essential skill for students to master, and one students struggling in mathematics face particular difficulty with (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008; Mazzocco & Devlin, 2008). This study employed the multi-probe multiple baseline design to examine the effectiveness of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) approach and explicit teaching practices to teach fraction equivalence to students struggling in mathematics. The study was conducted across four students, and replicated simultaneously across four more. The CRA approach included concrete aids such as fraction circles and fraction strips, representations such as pictures of fraction circles and polygons, and algorithms. Explicit teaching involved following a model-lead-test sequence and included an advanced organizer, corrective feedback and cumulative reviews. Results of this study indicated that the intervention program was effective to improve students‟ performances in fraction equivalence tasks. In particular, the use of vii representations was seen to impact performance and concrete aids alone may not be sufficient to improve performance. With regards types of representational and concrete aids employed, results of this study tended to favor the use of linear versus circular aids. Results indicated that students whose performances tend to vary may not benefit to the same extent as those who have stable profiles. Students who demonstrate variable profiles may require additional practice to master skills being taught. This study also examined transfer of skills to word problems and, results demonstrated that the CRA and explicit teaching approaches were beneficial in helping aiding transfer. Several aspects of the program may have contributed to aiding transfer including, minimal exposure to word problems during intervention, drawing connections between representations and abstract information, and incorporating the fair sharing understanding or quotient interpretation of fractions. This program concluded that students were able to maintain performances over time, and that representations in particular appeared to aid conceptual understanding and promote maintenance of skills. / text

xiii, 117 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Students who struggle academically frequently lack or are unable to apply cognitive-motivational processes imperative for self-regulated learning. It is increasingly evident that deficits in self-regulation are a shared characteristic across students who qualify for special education. For example, impaired executive functions, or the cognitive processes responsible for managing and directing goal-directed activity, is a prevalent symptom domain across students with diverse special education identifications. Higher-order cognitive deficits become increasingly relevant as students progress to the secondary level as this transition necessitates the use of more complex organizational schemes to manage increased academic workload. Assignment management is a particularly challenging task for these students as poor organizational skills and lack of strategic approach translate to excessive time spent on assignments, lost materials, and negative attitude toward academic work. There is a growing body of research suggesting interventions targeting self-regulation have potential to improve performance on complex academic tasks such as assignment completion. Broadly speaking, these interventions are referred to as "self-management" strategies and are intended to help students actively reflect on their own cognitive and learning processes while engaged in academic tasks. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of self-management strategy instruction on student "Assignment Attack" and related academic, behavioral, and cognitive variables. This study extended a line of inquiry examining implementation and efficacy of interventions targeting organized, independent student completion of assignments in resource contexts for adolescents who qualify for special education. Utilizing a multiple baseline, across participants research design, this study revealed positive effects of a Self-Regulated Assignment Attack Strategy (SAAS) on assignment attack and teacher-reported student behavior during assignment completion. The results indicated the effect was domain specific with minimal generalized improvement to the other academic, behavioral, or cognitive outcome measures. A discussion of the results is provided focused on the implications of improved assignment attack, generalization, and measurement challenges. Suggestions for further research in this area are provided. / Committee in charge: McKay Sohlberg, Chairperson, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Robert Horner, Member, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Richard Albin, Member, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Bonnie Todis, Member, Not from U of 0; Thomas Dishion, Outside Member, Psychology

The aim of my diploma thesis is to compare the current state of gymnastics education in field Physical education at public sport universities in the Czech Republic. The thesis has an analytical part describing the representation of gymnastics in the study of physical education. The analytical part also contains syllabus data of individual subjects. In the synthetic part is the comparison of the hour rates of gymnastic subjects at the sports universities.

Background: Transcriptome analytic tools are commonly used across patient cohorts to develop drugs and predict clinical outcomes. However, as precision medicine pursues more accurate and individualized treatment decisions, these methods are not designed to address single-patient transcriptome analyses. We previously developed and validated the N-of-1-pathways framework using two methods, Wilcoxon and Mahalanobis Distance (MD), for personal transcriptome analysis derived from a pair of samples of a single patient. Although, both methods uncover concordantly dysregulated pathways, they are not designed to detect dysregulated pathways with up- and down-regulated genes (bidirectional dysregulation) that are ubiquitous in biological systems. Results: We developed N-of-1-pathways MixEnrich, a mixture model followed by a gene set enrichment test, to uncover bidirectional and concordantly dysregulated pathways one patient at a time. We assess its accuracy in a comprehensive simulation study and in a RNA-Seq data analysis of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs). In presence of bidirectionally dysregulated genes in the pathway or in presence of high background noise, MixEnrich substantially outperforms previous single-subject transcriptome analysis methods, both in the simulation study and the HNSCCs data analysis (ROC Curves; higher true positive rates; lower false positive rates). Bidirectional and concordant dysregulated pathways uncovered by MixEnrich in each patient largely overlapped with the quasi-gold standard compared to other single-subject and cohort-based transcriptome analyses. Conclusion: The greater performance of MixEnrich presents an advantage over previous methods to meet the promise of providing accurate personal transcriptome analysis to support precision medicine at point of care.

This study investigated the effects of a standing desk on academically engaged time during instruction. The study was conducted with two male students with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The first participant was in first grade and the second was in eighth grade. The target behaviors for these participants were on-task engagement with academic content during instructional periods in the classroom. The intervention took place in the students’ general education classrooms by introducing a standing desk into the classroom. A traditional ABAB reversal intervention design was used for the first grader, while the eighth grade participant had an alternating treatments design. The results of the study show the standing desk had a mild effect for the first grade student while it had a more positive effect on the eight grade student. Social Validity indicates that the intervention was well received by teachers but slightly less by students