Functional Taxonomy Research Articles

Faster native vowel discrimination learning in musicians is mediated by an optimization of mnemonic functions.

The ability to discriminate phonemes varying in spectral and temporal attributes constitutes one of the most basic intrinsic elements underlying language learning mechanisms. Since previous work has consistently shown that professional musicians are characterized by perceptual and cognitive advantages in a variety of language-related tasks, and since vowels can be considered musical sounds within the domain of speech, here we investigated the behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of native vowel discrimination learning in a sample of professional musicians and non-musicians. We evaluated the contribution of both the neurophysiological underpinnings of perceptual (i.e., N1/P2 complex) and mnemonic functions (i.e., N400 and P600 responses) while the participants were instructed to judge whether pairs of native consonant-vowel (CV) syllables manipulated in the first formant transition of the vowel (i.e., from /tu/ to /to/) were identical or not. Results clearly demonstrated faster learning in musicians, compared to non-musicians, as reflected by shorter reaction times and higher accuracy. Most notably, in terms of morphology, time course, and voltage strength, this steeper learning curve was accompanied by distinctive N400 and P600 manifestations between the two groups. In contrast, we did not reveal any group differences during the early stages of auditory processing (i.e., N1/P2 complex), suggesting that faster learning was mediated by an optimization of mnemonic but not perceptual functions. Based on a clear taxonomy of the mnemonic functions involved in the task, results are interpreted as pointing to a relationship between faster learning mechanisms in musicians and an optimization of echoic (i.e., N400 component) and working memory (i.e., P600 component) functions.

Smart Manufacturing Systems based on Cyber-physical Manufacturing Services (CPMS)

Future manufacturing is becoming “smart” - capable of agilely adapting to a wide variety of changing conditions. This requires production plants, supply chains and logistic systems to be flexible in design and reconfigurable “on the fly” to respond quickly to customer needs, production uncertainties, and market changes. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a promising platform to achieve such manufacturing agility. It has proven effective for business process adaptation. When combined with the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology and the concept of cyber-physical production systems, it is expected to similarly revolutionize real-time manufacturing systems. This paper proposes a new concept of cyber-physical manufacturing services (CPMS) for service-oriented smart manufacturing systems. In addition, we propose a modeling framework that provides appropriate conceptual models for developing and describing CPMS and enabling their composition. Specifically, the modeling framework separates service provision models from service request models and proposes the use of standardized functional taxonomies and a reference ontology to facilitate the mediation between service requests and service consumptions. A 3D-printing use case serves as an example implementation of an SOA-based smart manufacturing system based on our proposed modeling framework.

Complementarity As Generative Principle: A Thought Pattern for Aesthetic Appreciations and Cognitive Appraisals in General.

In experimental aesthetics the relationship between the arts and cognitive neuroscience has gained particular interest in recent years. But has cognitive neuroscience indeed something to offer when studying the arts? Here we present a theoretical frame within which the concept of complementarity as a generative or creative principle is proposed; neurocognitive processes are characterized by the duality of complementary activities like bottom-up and top-down control, or logistical functions like temporal control and content functions like perceptions in the neural machinery. On that basis a thought pattern is suggested for aesthetic appreciations and cognitive appraisals in general. This thought pattern is deeply rooted in the history of philosophy and art theory since antiquity; and complementarity also characterizes neural operations as basis for cognitive processes. We then discuss some challenges one is confronted with in experimental aesthetics; in our opinion, one serious problem is the lack of a taxonomy of functions in psychology and neuroscience which is generally accepted. This deficit makes it next to impossible to develop acceptable models which are similar to what has to be modeled. Another problem is the severe language bias in this field of research as knowledge gained in many languages over the ages remains inaccessible to most scientists. Thus, an inspection of research results or theoretical concepts is necessarily too narrow. In spite of these limitations we provide a selective summary of some results and viewpoints with a focus on visual art and its appreciation. It is described how questions of art and aesthetic appreciations using behavioral methods and in particular brain-imaging techniques are analyzed and evaluated focusing on such issues like the representation of artwork or affective experiences. Finally, we emphasize complementarity as a generative principle on a practical level when artists and scientists work directly together which can lead to new insights and broader perspectives on both sides.

Enabling Evolving Practice for Healthcare Professionals: A Regulator's Journey.

The inherent risk involved in the provision of healthcare services leads to the inevitable requirement of health human resource oversight to protect the public from harm (Bayne 2012). As healthcare systems evolve, so do theoretical models for, and practical applications of, health human resource oversight policy and processes. The College of Medical Laboratory Technologists of Ontario (CMLTO), as one of 26 health regulatory bodies in Ontario, implements programs or processes to enact and support changes in the knowledge, skill and judgment of their members. Determining what healthcare trends are affecting different healthcare professions and professionals, and how a regulatory institution, with a very specific mandate prescribed by government legislation, can enable necessary changes is explored in this paper through a case study of the CMLTO's journey to redefine "professionalism" and enable evolving practices of medical laboratory technologists (MLTs). A brief overview of health professional regulation, explored through a functional taxonomy, provides a contextual foundation to the CMLTO's journey to redefine professionalism. This approach also enables a discussion of the "sharpening" of certain regulatory approaches, that is, that opportunities to improve regulatory approaches are revealed via public feedback and modifications are made to rectify the historic experiences of the public. As the role of regulatory institutions continues to evolve to include a more prominent focus on proactive approaches to regulation, the ability to enable and support healthcare practitioners to respond to changes in the healthcare system becomes increasingly important. The case of the CMLTO's journey to redefine professionalism highlights an opportunity for a profession, and indeed its professionals, to evolve their culture to contribute their unique value to the healthcare system in response to system-level trends.

Undesirable Consequences and Social Contexts of Technology Use: A Micro-analysis of Embodied User Interaction

Abstract The focus of this paper is on the unexpected and undesirable consequences of social interaction with technological innovations, which we analyse with the support of two frameworks to better comprehend their social implications. The first, techno-social framework, consists of Allenby and Sarewitz's taxonomy of technological social function. In the second, cognitive, framework, we introduce concepts from dual-systems theory. The frameworks provide a lens through which to view techno-cultural examples. This sets the stage for our case study in which we investigate an interactive game installation. Using data analytics, we uncover hidden effects due to the social interactions between the players and to their physical attributes. We conclude that there is a pressing need for innovators to broaden the scope of their evaluations to not just evaluate innovative technologies at the initial engineering/design phase but also to conduct evaluations at later phases of adoption and appropriation that focus on social contexts-of-use.

Affordances of outdoor settings for children in preschool: revisiting heft’s functional taxonomy

Heft’s functional taxonomy for children’s outdoor environment based on the concept of affordances was applied and investigated in a Danish preschool context. Affordances here refer to the meaningful action possibilities of the environment. Two groups of children (3–6 years) enrolled in preschool were observed during times for ‘free play’ in their usual outdoor settings: traditional playground and forest (12 visits, respectively). Modified classes of outdoor features are suggested along with new practical class names: open ground, sloping terrain, shielded places, rigid fixtures, moving fixtures, loose objects, loose material, water, creatures and fire. Each class is specified by distinctive and attractive key activities found by observation. Examining each class indicated that important characteristics apart from availability were variation, sizes and change. The concept of affordances emphasises the ongoing user–environment–activity relationship important for planning with children in mind, but clarification is needed when using the term.

Utility function design for strategic radio resource management games: An overview, taxonomy, and research challenges

AbstractRadio resource management is important for wireless communication networks. Game theory has been extensively used to model, analyze, and design interactive behaviors and the strategic decision‐making for radio resource management. It is known that utility function is one of the critical elements in a game, which characterizes the preferred relationship of the rational players and is a function of the action of players and their opponents. We first overview the basics of game theory and utility functions. We then present a taxonomy of utility functions with respect to different types of players, the nature of actions, and preferences in terms of the fairness, quality of service, and quality of experience. We provide some insights based on the taxonomy of utility functions, which provides the readers with a comprehensive view. Following that, we also discuss other types of traffic‐aware utility functions with different fairness and the potential and super modular game‐theoretic utility functions. In addition, we summarize the desired properties and observations for the design of suitable utility functions. Finally, we investigate impacts of the pricing in utility functions. This article ends with the conclusions and a promising view on open problems and challenges with possible future research directions.

Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 3: The Technical Solutions of Controlling N Compounds, Organic Matter, P Compounds, Metals, Temperature and Preventing Disease

This is the third part of the taxonomy of technical solutions and treatment functions in aquaculture. This article builds on the premiss that the aquaculture production system can be viewed as a transformation process with three sets of functions, input, treatment and output. This work creates an overview of all of the technical solutions of treatment functions for the purpose of both design and further research. This is done with a comprehensive literature review where all technical solutions are identified and then categorized into a taxonomy. The result is a visual taxonomy of the treatment functions controlling N compounds, organic matter, P compounds, metals, temperature and preventing disease. A total taxonomy is finally presented where the results from Part 2 and Part 3 (this part) have been combined.

A Bibliographic Tribute to Jack Michael.

"In the late 1950's, Jack Michael, a bright but irritating young psychology instructor, moved from the Universities of Kansas to Houston to Arizona State. Along the way he befriended two nontraditional students, protected them through their Ph.D. programs, and turned them loose on the world: Teodoro Ayllon…and Montrose Wolf…" (Risley, 2001, p. 267). So begins Risley's chapter on the origins of applied behavior analysis. For almost 50 years, Jack Michael provided a model for us to "talk like Skinner" and to analyze behavior as Skinner would. For this, he has been widely respected and revered. The purpose of this bibliography is to explain to new and familiar readers alike Jack's contributions to the field of behavior analysis in areas of his primary focus: (a) behavioral function taxonomy, (b) motivation, (c) reinforcement, (d) response topographies, (e) multiple control, (f) duplic and codic verbal behavior, and (g) teaching. Throughout, we weave his role in the field's history and his leadership in its expansion, as these have been additional areas of significant contributions. Above all, we wish to highlight Jack's work, in bibliographic and narrative form, in a way that expresses a heartfelt tribute on behalf of his students and others whom he influenced to learn about psychology as a natural science and to think and talk like Skinner.

Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 2: The Technical Solutions of Controlling Solids, Dissolved Gasses and pH

In engineering design, knowing the relationship between the means (technique) and the end (desired function or outcome) is essential. The means in Aquaculture are technical solutions like airlifts that are used to achive desired functionality (an end) like controlling dissolved gasses. In previous work, the authors identified possible functions by viewing aquaculture production systems as transformation processes in which inputs are transformed by treatment techniques (means) and produce outputs (ends). The current work creates an overview of technical solutions of treatment functions for both design and research purposes. A comprehensive literature review of all areas of technical solutions is identified and categorized into a visual taxonomy of the treatment functions for controlling solids, controlling dissolved gasses and controlling pH alkalinity and hardness. This article is the second in a sequence of four and partly presents the treatments functions in the taxonomy. The other articles in this series present complementary aspects of this research: Part 1, A transformational view on aquaculture and functions divided into input, treatment and output functions; Part 2, The current taxonomy paper; Part 3, The second part of the taxonomy; and Part 4, Mapping of the means (techniques) for multiple treatment functions.

Eliciting the Functional Taxonomy from protein annotations and taxa.

The advances of omics technologies have triggered the production of an enormous volume of data coming from thousands of species. Meanwhile, joint international efforts like the Gene Ontology (GO) consortium have worked to provide functional information for a vast amount of proteins. With these data available, we have developed FunTaxIS, a tool that is the first attempt to infer functional taxonomy (i.e. how functions are distributed over taxa) combining functional and taxonomic information. FunTaxIS is able to define a taxon specific functional space by exploiting annotation frequencies in order to establish if a function can or cannot be used to annotate a certain species. The tool generates constraints between GO terms and taxa and then propagates these relations over the taxonomic tree and the GO graph. Since these constraints nearly cover the whole taxonomy, it is possible to obtain the mapping of a function over the taxonomy. FunTaxIS can be used to make functional comparative analyses among taxa, to detect improper associations between taxa and functions, and to discover how functional knowledge is either distributed or missing. A benchmark test set based on six different model species has been devised to get useful insights on the generated taxonomic rules.

Interpreting “I don’t know” use by persons living with dementia in Mini-Mental State Examinations

ObjectiveWe investigate dementia patients’ use of “I don’t know” (IDK) in Mini-Mental State Exams (MMSEs) using objective linguistic indicators to differentiate IDK signalling lack of knowledge (LOK) from IDK used to hedge responses, affect exam progression etc. We hypothesize that increased proportional use of LOK-IDK correlates with worsening dementia severity. Methods189 IDK tokens were extracted from 72 MMSE interactions and coded for linguistic/social characteristics. A data-driven, discourse position/relation-based functional taxonomy for IDK in MMSE was developed and the resulting functional distribution was subjected to multiple logistic regression. ResultsUse of LOK-IDK (vs. non-LOK-IDK) is significantly correlated (p=0.01) with clinicians’ subjective ratings of patients’ dementia as ‘severe’ vs. ‘mild’/’moderate’, indicating that objective sociolinguistic criteria approximate physician judgments. 92% of ‘severe’ patients’ IDKs signalled LOK, compared to only 68% of ‘mild’ patients’, suggesting that uncritical interpretation of IDK as signalling LOK would result in 8–32% of IDK responses being mis-scored. ConclusionLOK and non-LOK uses distinguished on the basis of reliable, objective usage patterns are differentially distributed among dementia severity groups. Practice implicationsLOK-IDK serves as a supplemental indicator of dementia severity. Correct interpretation may improve diagnostic accuracy and allow clinicians to respond supportively during cognitive assessment.

An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek: Analysis of Prepositions, Adverbs, Particles, Relative Pronouns, and Conjunctions by G. K. Beale, D. J. Brendsel, and W. A. Ross

This booklet forms an invaluable link in the grammatical-exegetical studies of NT Greek. The purpose of this book is not merely to list various links between statements, but to trace and set out the various logical relationships between statements or propositions (i.e., any clause consisting of subject and predicate) in the NT in order to enhance exegesis. The booklet is thus a taxonomy of functions performed by key Greek connecting words, particles, and other markers (6). It examines and categorises such key words that identify the logical relationships between clauses.

Abstract B9: A phosphoproteomic portrait of triple - negative breast cancer: functional taxonomy

Abstract BACKGROUND: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype that is not defined by targetable molecular markers. Since all the aberrations that exist and ultimately contribute to the tumor phenotype converge, from a functional point of view, in the final status of the phosphorylation of the proteome in a given moment, we sought to interrogate the phosphoproteome with two aims: 1) establish a taxonomy of TNBC based on measurable markers that predict clinical course; 2) reduce the phosphoproteome that characterizes the bad- from good-prognosis cases to its targetable, driving kinases, in order to define rational therapeutic approaches in TNBC. We chose mass spectrometry as a discovery approach, because of its coverage, sensitivity, dynamic range and specificity. Here we report the part of phosphoproteomic analysis used for establishing a new taxonomy of TNBC. METHODS: We performed quantitative phosphoproteomics from a discovery set of 34 frozen tumor samples divided in two sets paired by classic prognosis factors: 1, with 13 patients relapsed in less than 3 years; 2, 21 patients, no relapse in 10 years follow up. Raw data were processed with Maxquant and cases clustered using a supervised hierarchical approach. Kinases (predicted with linear domain consensus analysis tools using a PHOSIDA) and phospho-sites discriminating the set 1 from 2 were validated by immunohistochemistry in 113 consecutive TNBC cases, spotted in TMAs, with 14 years follow up. RESULTS: Overall, 15000 unique phosphopeptides were identified. Supervised clustering of subset 1 vs. 2 showed that 161 and 541 peptides were significantly more phosphorylated in the subset 1 and 2, respectively (FDR<0.15). Consensus domain analysis predicted kinases CDK1,2,4,6, CLK1, DAPK3/ZIPK, PAK2, RSK1, p70S6K, AKT, PKCEpsilon and PIM1 were driving the profile of subset 1. Those kinases, plus 9 phosphosites against which antibodies were available, were interrogated in the validation set. Kinase validation was performed directing an antibody against the active kinase form, if available; if not, against the total levels. The staining of kinases and the candidate phosphosites was analyzed with an Ariol, scored with a continue value from 0 to 3, and divided in quartiles for each staining probe. So far, 12 probes have been quantified. The prognosis of patients with upper quartile staining vs. the remainder was analyzed with the log-rank test and cox proportionate hazards model for each probe. Five of them showed statistically significant association with relapse (pSTAT3Tyr705, 6.1 vs. 10.1 years, p = 0.024; CYCB1, 7 vs. 10.3 years, p = 0.027; CDK6, 7 vs. 10.3 years, p = 0.013; pp70S6KThr389, 7.2 vs. 10 years, p = 0.042 and PRKCEpsilon, 7.1 vs. 10.2 years, p = 0.021). A combined variable integrating upper-quartile staining from either of those 5 probes occurring in 67.4% patients, identified almost all patients that experienced relapse: 48.3% of them relapsed (median time 7.6 years) vs. the reminder 32.6% of which only 13.8% relapsed (median time 11.9 years), log rank p = 0.001 INTERPRETATION: High-throughput mass-spectrometry is a powerful tool for generating a disease taxonomy, and can be translated to routine techniques like IHC. The signature constituted by pSTAT3Tyr705, CYCB1, CDK6, pp70S6K and PRKCEpsilon constitutes the most parsimonious signature to date able to detect all the early TNBC patients that relapse in the long term. Citation Format: Ivana Zagorac, Tamara Mondejar Tevar, Jesús Sánchez Ruíz, Albert Heck, Maarten Altelaar, Renske Penning, Harm Post, Gonzalo Gómez López, David Pisano, Javier Muñoz Peralta, Javier Muñoz Peralta, Manuel Morente, Luis Manso, Miguel Quintela-Fandiño. A phosphoproteomic portrait of triple - negative breast cancer: functional taxonomy. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2015 Nov 5-9; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2015;14(12 Suppl 2):Abstract nr B9.

Knowledge Database for Functional Design of Mechanical Products

Different works on the functional design and functional vocabularies area have been accomplished. The function has become the key element of the design process of a product and many researchers have focussed their work on developing functional taxonomies which can be used as a basis for functional design. One of the main disadvantages on the research performed in this domain is that a clear correlation between proposed functions and a product part or structure cannot be shown. This paper presents a new configuration of a functional taxonomy which can be easier correlated with the structure of the product, as an input of a knowledge database for supporting engineering design activity, as well a structure of the database system and a preview of its content.

English

It is widely claimed that many university students were found to be unprepared for the reading demands placed upon them. To provide students with an understanding of the features of the discourses they may encounter, this study investigates lexical bundles (LBs) used in the reading passages of Malaysian University English Test (MUET), a compulsory entrance examination for tertiary education. More specifically it aims to compare and contrast the functional types of LBs found in arts and science-based reading passages. A specialised corpus of MUET test papers made up of only the reading passages categorised into two main traditional disciplines; arts and science was built using WordSmith Tools Version 5. The lists of LBs of the identified disciplines were generated using WordSmith Tools Version 5. The generated data was then analysed qualitatively based on Hyland’s (2008) Functional Taxonomy. Findings revealed that although the number of LBs in both disciplines shows significant difference, many similar LBs are found. Science-based passages employ more research-based LBs whereas arts-based texts employ more participant-oriented LBs. These findings seemed to confirm that the functions of LBs are specific to particular disciplines. Hence, explicit teaching of LBs should be considered in schools and two separate sets of MUET reading tests where the first comprises of texts adopted from the scientific and technological context while the other made up of texts from the social sciences should be designed to accommodate both arts and science stream pre-university students. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2015-1501-05

A contextualistic approach to antisocial personality

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a contextualistic account of antisocial responding, with the addition of recent developments on the study of personality. Design/methodology/approach – A behavioural and contextualistic view point is developed to account for antisocial personality and related topics, inasmuch as traditional definitions of antisocial personality disorder as provided on formal diagnostic manuals derive on several and not always coherent classifications of antisocial behaviours. Some of these classifications centre on issues like guilt, impulsivity or aggressiveness for establishing different types of offending and antisocial patterns. This paper focuses on functional personal backgrounds. Findings – A total of five types of “potentiated contingencies” are described as being the main underpinnings involved in antisocial patterns. An analysis of the transformation of aversive functions of antisocial behaviours, leads to specify a distinctive rule-following behaviour that is concerned with that responding. Finally, the exposition of the four verbal clinical contexts that behaviour analysis highlights as taking place at therapeutic settings, serves to propose a fitter contextualistic intervention for antisocial personality patterns. Research limitations/implications – Novel investigations should contrast the functional classification of antisocial responding. Those studies should experimentally demonstrate the way in which the different instances of transformation of antisocial functions the author has described are prompted. Practical implications – The analysis also allows for the anticipation of the behaviour of individuals fitting to every category of antisocial avoidance. And as the functional analysis of “antisocial avoidance” uncovers specific relations between environmental stimuli as they are produced and established in the history of interactions of individuals, a more fitting intervention based upon those relations is feasible. Originality/value – An exhaustive functional taxonomy of antisocial personalities and delinquent behaviours has never been presented before elsewhere. Besides the author reinterprets from a contextualist position traditional empirical studies.

Pragmatic borrowing

Previous research on linguistic borrowing has predominantly been concerned with lexis and terminology. This paper explores the notion of pragmatic borrowing, that is, the incorporation of pragmatic and discourse features of a source language into a recipient language. It is argued that a comprehensive account of pragmatic borrowing requires a careful inspection of individual forms through comparative studies of their discourse-pragmatic functions in both the source and recipient language. Although the primary focus of interest is the influence of English on Norwegian pragmatics, the paper fleshes out pragmatic borrowing in more general terms with reference to previous studies of other language pairs. It proposes a functional taxonomy that includes the direct and indirect borrowing of interjections, discourse markers, expletives, vocatives, general extenders, tags, focus constructions, intonation and paralinguistic phenomena. The study illustrates how pragmatic functions are transferred cross-linguistically, through notions such as functional stability, adaptation, narrowing, broadening and shift. It also illustrates the degree to which fixed phrases and collostructions are borrowed, focussing especially on English-based expletives, interjections and discourse markers that have recently emerged in Norwegian.

Recurrent phrases in Turkish EFL learners’ spoken interlanguage: A corpus-driven structural and functional analysis

Various studies contrasting learner language with native speaker (NS) performance have shown that recurrent multiword expressions that come so naturally to the NSs pose difficulty for the non-native (NNS) speakers and hinder their language production although usually easy to understand. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the structural and functional properties of the recurrent phrases in the spoken English of the Turkish learners of English and the native speakers to find out whether these word combinations also cause difficulty for the learners under investigation. The study adopts “the corpus driven ‘recurrent word combination’ method” (De Cock, 2004, p. 227) within the framework of the Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) (Granger, 1998). The corpora drawn on in the study are the native speaker corpus, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation (LOCNEC), and the subcorpora of the non-native speaker corpus LINDSEI (the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage), which contains speech produced by advanced Turkish learners of English. Two taxonomies were used to analyze the recurrent phrases: the structural taxonomy and the functional taxonomy. The study confirms that the recurrent language characterizes both native and nonnative speech despite marked variations in terms of underuse and overuse phenomena in the learner data. The significance of difference as to the structural and functional variations that particular word combinations display in the nonnative corpus as compared to the native speaker corpus is discussed and pedagogical implications are shared.

Fit for Purpose: A Form and Function-Based Taxonomy for Prevention is Arguably More Refined, Accurate, and Predictive

I am grateful for the opportunity to reflect and respond to the commentaries of Drs. Burkhart and Biglan. I am in agreement with most of what they say, particularly, the point that environment is a key determinant of health risk behavior and as such, should be a main focus for prevention action. Dr. Burkhart makes a number of points (Burkhart 2013), and I’d like to respond to the two that I find the most significant and challenging to the ideas in my article (Foxcroft 2013). Gregor argues that environmental prevention should be considered a form of prevention rather than a function, based on the idea that environmental prevention is about changing the context for behavior, and sits alongside the three other forms, universal, selective, and indicated, which rely on persuasion to achieve prevention. However, my argument is that the grouping together of different contexts for behavior within a broad “environmental prevention” category is not sufficiently refined. For example, family norms and socialization are defined by Gregor as environmental prevention; but family norms and socialization do not provide a direct context for behavior; rather, they provide an indirect context via the internalization of norms, values, and habits over months and years of parenting. This, in turn, puts young people onto different developmental trajectories where the norms, values, and behavioral skills they hold lead to different adaptive or maladaptive behaviors. Moreover, I am not convinced that the distinction between context (environmental) and persuasion (universal, selective, indicated) is sufficiently robust. Taking the above example, a prevention intervention that influences family norms and socialization in a higher-risk family target group clearly and accurately fits the concept of selective prevention as proposed by Gordon (1983) and endorsed by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2009). I’m afraid I do not agree with the idea that we should change this system and label such interventions as “environmental prevention.” In my proposal, such a prevention intervention would be classified as developmental and selective, which I suggest is both more refined and more accurate. Dr. Biglan raises two issues (Biglan 2014); the first concerns the precision of the taxonomy and the second, its predictive utility. The taxonomy is, as yet, untested beyond the case study reported in the article, so reliable coding of the proposed functional types is not yet available. There is precedent for reliable coding of the content of complex interventions in the assessment of behavior change techniques (Abraham andMichie 2008), and this approach offers promise for the coding and assessment of the content and efficacy of the different functional types of prevention. Alongside this approach, I would also venture that the predictive utility of the functional taxonomy could be informed by a re-appraisal of the major theories underlying many prevention interventions. In a separate article (Foxcroft in press), I have argued that a theoretical perspective that deserves much more attention within the prevention science community is the idea that objects in the environment largely trigger behavior, and that cognitive aspects (e.g., attitudes/intentions) are mostly secondary to behavior that emerges from the transaction between an individual and their environment. Simply put, the 1In his insightful and detailed commentary, Dr Burkhart makes a number of helpful suggestions for attributes that could possibly have been considered within the scope of the new taxonomy.Many of these have indeed been thought about, but were not included in the paper for the sake of brevity and clarity. In this response, I have not written about these sins of omission, but instead I have focused on the possible sins of commission pointed out by Gregor, i.e., more fundamental challenges to the proposed form and function taxonomy.