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Objectives: Functional retentive overflow incontinence (retentive FI) is the most common cause of fecal soiling in children. Based on the clinical experiences, the treatment of retentive FI in patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders was accelerated when Risperidone was used as treatment for their psychiatric comorbidities; therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of risperidone in the treatment of retentive FI in children and adolescents., Methods: In this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 140 patients aged 4-16 years eligible for the study were randomized into two groups, receiving either 0.25-0.5 mg of Risperidone syrup (n = 70) or maltodextrin syrup (placebo group, n = 70) every 12 h daily for 12 weeks. Sociodemographic data, including age, sex, weight, height, BMI, BMI z-score, and socioeconomic status, was recorded, and the number of nocturnal FI, diurnal FI, and painful defecations was measured., Results: 136 participants (69 on Risperidone and 67 on placebo) were included in the study. Mean age of participants in the intervention and placebo groups were 7.2 ± 2.4 years and 8.0 ± 3.1 years, respectively. The mean number of nocturnal FI (P trend =0.39) and diurnal FI (P trend =0.48) in patients without psychiatric comorbidities, and the number of painful defecations for participants with and without psychiatric comorbidities (P = 0.49, P = 0.47, respectively) were not significantly different between the groups, but a significant effect was observed in diurnal FI after Risperidone treatment in patients with psychiatric comorbidities (P < 0.001)., Conclusion: Risperidone, when used along with other non-pharmacological interventions, may be helpful in treating FI in pediatric patients with psychiatric comorbidities., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Constructivist approaches to learning focus on learning environments in which students have the opportunity to construct knowledge themselves, and negotiate this knowledge with others. Discovery learning and collaborative learning are examples of learning contexts that cater for knowledge construction processes. We introduce a computer-based learning environment in which the two forms of learning are implemented simultaneously. We focus on the interaction between discovery learning and collaborative learning., Aim: We aim to investigate which communicative activities are frequently used in the discovery learning process and which communicative and discovery activities co-occur., Sample: The study involved 21 pairs of 10th-grade students enrolled in pre-university education, ranging from 15 to 17 years of age., Method: Participants worked in dyads on separate screens in a shared discovery learning environment. They communicated using a chat box. In order to find a possible relationship between communicative activities and discovery learning processes, correlational analysis and principal component analysis were performed., Result: Significant relationships were found between communicative and discovery activities, as well as five factors combining the communicative process and the discovery learning processes. Communicative activities are performed most frequently during the activities in generating hypotheses, experimental design, and conclusion construction. Argumentation occurs less than expected, and is associated with the construction of conclusions, rather than generating hypotheses., Conclusion: Communicative activities co-occur with discovery activities most of the time, as we expected. Further research should concentrate on means to augment communicative and discovery activities that are related to positive learning outcomes.

Background: Previous studies on instructional importance show that individual students and their teachers differ in the topics that they consider important in the context of an upcoming teacher-made test., Aims: This study aimed to examine whether such differences between students' test expectations and teachers' intended task demands can be explained by the actual test content., Samples: Participants were history teachers (N=19) and their 11th-grade students (N=388)., Method: Teachers and students rated the importance of text sections that would be tested in the near future. By means of multilevel analysis, ratings were compared with the occurrence of sections in the tests., Results: Although teachers considered a majority of sections as important and tested only a minority of the sections, their tests still included sections rated as unimportant. The number of such discrepancies, however, was relatively small. Sections the teachers rated important had a much higher probability of being included in the test than sections rated unimportant. For students, a similar but lower degree of correspondence between ratings and test content was found. Interestingly, for sections that teachers considered important, students more often gave a higher rating when these sections appeared in the test than when they did not. The same holds for sections that teachers considered unimportant., Conclusions: For both teachers and students there is a limited correspondence between perceived task demands and test content. Furthermore, students' perceptions of task demands show a compensation for some of the differences between their teachers' intended task demands and the test demands.