Background: The theoretical understanding of firesetting behaviour has predominantly been developed with men in prisons or psychiatric hospitals without neurodevelopmental disabilities. Consequently, there is a lack of evidence regarding the validity of current theory when applied to adults with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. Method:…

This study used a mixed methods design to examine the characteristics--including competencies (i.e., knowledge and skills), and personal attributes--of successful teachers of students with E/BD. The characteristics were examined through the perceptions of teachers of students with E/BD (teachers who are expert in E/BD, n = 14, MEd Graduates…

Philosophical and psychological opinion is divided over whether moral sensitivity, understood as the ability to pick out a situation's morally salient features, necessarily involves emotional engagement. This paper seeks to offer insight into this question. It reasons that if moral sensitivity does draw significantly on affective capacities of…

A fundamental problem that organisms face in a changing environment is how to regulate dynamically the balance between stable maintenance and flexible switching of goals and cognitive sets. The authors show that positive affect plays an important role in the regulation of this stability-flexibility balance. In a cognitive set-switching paradigm,…

Suicide is analyzed as a motivation to escape from adversive self-awareness. The causal chain is traced from initial failures that are attributed internally because of a cognitively deconstructed state. (SLD)

Three possibilities for the pathogenesis of childhood autism are considered. Little evidence exists for autism as a basic affective disorder, as proposed by R. P. Hobson, but growing evidence supports childhood autism as a basic cognitive disorder, as the author argues. The author's original theoretical perspectives are revised. (SLD)