Psychiatric Hospitalization and School and Community Adjustment of Children and Adolescents with Acquired Brain Injury

There is a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents who have acquired brain injury (ABI). We examined the records of 82 students with ABI who were admitted to a community-based school for education and neurorehabilitation over a three-year period to determine how many experienced one or more psychiatric hospitalizations before admission, and whether hospitalization status was related to positive school and community adjustment. Results were that 30.4% of the students had a documented history of one or more psychiatric hospitalizations. Of this group, 60.0% were able to be maintained in the community-based school program and 40.0% were discharged to other settings. When discharged, 70.0% of students entered more restrictive treatment programs (e.g., psychiatric hospital, secure residential facility, residential school). The number of psychiatric hospitalizations did not predict discharge from the community-based school and was unrelated to the type of discharge setting. Clinical and research issues concerning psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents with ABI in relation to post-acute adjustment are discussed.     

Modification of social withdrawal through symbolic modeling

The present experiment was designed to test the efficacy of symbolic modeling as a treatment to enhance social behavior in preschool isolates. Nursery school children who displayed marked social withdrawal were assigned to one of two conditions. One group observed a film depicting increasingly more active social interactions between children with positive consequences ensuing in each scene, while a narrative soundtrack emphasized the appropriate behavior of the models. A control group observed a film that contained no social interaction. Control children displayed no change in withdrawal behavior, whereas those who had the benefit of symbolic modeling increased their level of social interaction to that of non-isolate nursery school children.     

Children's Memory for Locations Visited: Importance of Movement and Choice

In 2 experiments, the effect of active or passive mobility and active or passive choice experiences on children's memory for locations visited while retrieving puzzle pieces hidden in a large room were examined. In the first experiment, fifty-two 6- and 7-year-old children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 training conditions: active choice-active movement, active choice-passive movement, passive choice-active movement, and passive choice-passive movement. After 3 training trials, all children were tested in the active choice-active movement condition. A 2 (movement) x 2 (choice) factorial multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect for movement. Children who had moved actively to find the puzzle pieces in the training trials had (a) a greater percentage correct, (b) more correct visits between errors, and (c) a later visit of first error than children who had been passively pushed in a wheelchair. Making active choices in training did not significantly affect performance. A second experiment used identical procedures but tested 32 children with mobility dif-difficulties who regularly used a wheelchair because of either cerebral palsy or spina bifida. Children from this group who moved actively during training to retrieve the puzzle pieces also performed better on testing. Implications of the results for children with disabilities and for developmental theory are discussed.     

Short-term memory, working memory, and inhibitory control in children with difficulties in arithmetic problem solving

The relations between short-term memory, working memory, inhibitory control, and arithmetic word problem solution were studied in children who were poor in arithmetic problem solving (n = 23). The children were compared with a group of good problem solvers (n = 26), matched for vocabulary, age, and gender. The results corroborate the hypothesis of poor problem solvers' general deficit in inhibitory processes. They had lower scores and made more intrusion errors in a series of working memory tasks requiring inhibition of irrelevant information. The results showed that problem solving performance is related to the ability of reducing the accessibility of nontarget and irrelevant information in memory. Span tasks that imply passive storage of information showed that poor problem solvers were impaired when they have to retain numerical information, but they did not differ from children who did not have difficulty with mathematics when the material included words.     

Children's Acquisition of Arithmetic Principles: The Role of Experience

The current study investigated how young learners' experiences with arithmetic equations can lead to learning of an arithmetic principle. The focus was elementary school children's acquisition of the Relation to Operands principle for subtraction (i.e., for natural numbers, the difference must be less than the minuend). In Experiment 1, children who viewed incorrect, principle-consistent equations and those who viewed a mix of incorrect, principle-consistent and principle-violation equations both showed gains in principle knowledge. However, children who viewed only principle-consistent equations did not. We hypothesized that improvements were due in part to improved encoding of relative magnitudes. In Experiment 2, children who practiced comparing numerical magnitudes increased their knowledge of the principle. Thus, experience that highlights the encoding of relative magnitude facilitates principle learning. This work shows that exposure to certain types of arithmetic equations can facilitate the learning of arithmetic principles, a fundamental aspect of early mathematical development.     

Role playing to train elementary teachers to use a classroom management "skill package"

Two teachers who led regular third-grade classrooms in a suburban elementary school were trained via role-playing to use a broad range of social skills in dealing with group behavioral management in the classroom. Teacher training reduced disruptive student behavior during both seat work and group discussions in both classrooms. A measure of student productivity during arithmetic period in one classroom showed significant gains in arithmetic problems correct per day for the middle and bottom thirds of the class, with the bottom third increasing by 76%.     

Effects of attention state on electrodermal activity during auditory stimulation of children.

During passive and active listening tasks electrodermal activity of 49 healthy school children was studied. The procedure included baseline recording, a passive listening task, instructions, and simple and discriminative active-listening tasks. On the passive task from Trials 1 to 10, habituation of the amplitude of the skin conductance response (SCR) occurred. Habituation of SCR amplitude did not occur during the active tasks. The children seemed to pay more attention during the active tasks than during the passive task, since the need to press the key is apt to require and may even increase general attention. As for temporal variables of SCR, the frequency of spontaneous SCRs showed a significant negative correlation with SCR latency and rise time. Reaction time exhibited a significant negative correlation with age. An increase in reaction time was found during the discriminative active-listening task over that for the simple active-listening task during the course of 10 trials. The younger children (6-8 yr.) seemed to require longer to pay attention than the older ones (10-12 yr.). Children seemed to pay more attention during the discriminative than during the simple active-listening task, since the need to press the key for discrimination should require and is likely to increase general attention.     

Psychophysiological reactions to understimulation and overstimulation

Catecholamine output, heart rate, and performance efficiency were examined in 28 Ss during two contrasting stimulus conditions, one of understimulation, and one of overstimulation. During understimulation the subject spent 3 hr performing a vigilance task, and during overstimulation he was exposed for the same time period to a complex sensorimotor test. Both understimulation and overstimulation produced a significant increase of adrenaline and noradrenaline release as compared with a control condition involving a medium amount of stimulation. Subjects who excreted relatively more adrenaline performed significantly better during understimulation, whereas subjects with relatively lower excretion rates of adrenaline tended to perform better under overstimulation. When performance efficiency was related to heart rate it was shown that high-heart rate subjects performed better during understimulation, while low-heart rate subjects performed better during overstimulation.     

Naturalistic assessment of children's compliance to teachers' requests and consequences for compliance

Naturally occurring levels of teacher commands, child compliance to those commands, and positive and negative teacher feedback were studied in 19 teachers and 130 children in kindergarten through third grade. Seventy-five of the children had been identified as "making a good social adjustment" to school (high-rated) and 55 children were identified as "not making a good social adjustment" to school (low-rated). Results of intensive observation over a 4-wk period showed that: (a) individual teachers differed significantly in their overall use of commands; however, they did not differentially respond to high- versus low-rated children; (b) high-rated children were more likely to comply with commands than were low-rated children; (c) although the overall level of positive social consequences was extremely low, there was some indication that high-rated children were more likely to receive positive feedback for compliance than were low-rated children; (d) low-rated children received significantly more positive feedback than high-rated children for noncompliance; (e) teachers gave negative feedback for noncompliance at an equal level to both groups of children; and (f) although repeated teacher commands following noncompliance were equal across groups, low-rated children were exposed to significantly higher levels of repeated commands following compliance than were high-rated youngsters.     

School adjustment in adolescence for previously rejected,average and popular children

Background: Earlier research shows that peer‐rejected children are at risk of a wide range of subsequent adjustment difficulties in different social contexts, as, for example, in school. Aims: This study investigated the academic performance and school adjustment in adolescence of children with different peer status in middle childhood. Sample: Age 15 boys and girls (N=90), who at age 10 and 11 were sociometrically rejected, popular, or of average popularity in their school class. Methods: School marks, intelligence scales, and self‐reports were used as adjustment measures. School dropout rate for boys was also included. Results: The academic performance and intelligence level of rejected boys and girls were short of the standards of children from the other status groups, while the scores of popular boys and girls were of superior standard. There were some slight indications that rejected girls (but not rejected boys) had negative attitudes towards school and schoolwork, and that popular girls had positive school attitudes. The school dropout rate of rejected boys was much higher than that of other boys. Conclusions: The results show that the rejected children are a risk group for school problems also over a long period of time. Considering the important developmental aspects of the adolescence years, there appear to be good reasons, therefore, to worry about the future adulthood adjustment of peer‐rejected children.     

The effects of universal pre-K on cognitive development

In this study of Oklahoma's universal pre-K program, the authors relied on a strict birthday eligibility criterion to compare "young" kindergarten children who just completed pre-K to "old" pre-K children just beginning pre-K. This regression-discontinuity design reduces the threat of selection bias. Their sample consisted of 1,567 pre-K children and 1,461 kindergarten children who had just completed pre-K. The authors estimated the impact of the pre-K treatment on Woodcock-Johnson Achievement test scores. The authors found test impacts of 3.00 points (0.79 of the standard deviation for the control group) for the Letter-Word Identification score, 1.86 points (0.64 of the standard deviation of the control group) for the Spelling score, and 1.94 points (0.38 of the standard deviation of the control group) for the Applied Problems score. Hispanic, Black, White, and Native American children all benefit from the program, as do children in diverse income brackets, as measured by school lunch eligibility status. The authors conclude that Oklahoma's universal pre-K program has succeeded in enhancing the school readiness of a diverse group of children.     

Recent stressful life events and young children's school adjustment

A group of 211 first-to fourth-grade children who had experienced one or more recent stressful life events were compared to a demographically matched sample of 211 children who had not experienced such events on measures of school adjustment problems and competencies. Stressful life events were found to be associated with the presence of more serious school adjustment problems and fewer competencies. Those associations were strongest for children who had experienced multiple recent stressful events. The importance of preventive interventions for this at-risk group was emphasized and future research steps in the area were considered.     

儿童对所属同伴团体的选择和适应

为探讨儿童所属非正式同伴团体的选择和适应过程,选择469名小3、初1学生参加了为期2年的追踪研究.儿童同伴团体和学校适应(社会行为、社会适应、学习适应)的资料取自包含同伴评定、教师评定和学校记录多种渠道.研究发现,(1)儿童选择与自己在学校适应方面相似的同伴组成同伴团体;(2)同伴团体不仅在成员构成还是在学校适应的团体特征上具有中等程度的稳定性;(3)儿童在初测时所属同伴团体的社会能力越强、社交性越高、学业成绩越优异,则其两年后在这些方面的表现也越好,如果所属同伴团体存在同伴拒绝或学业问题,则儿童在两年后被同伴拒绝和出现学业问题的可能性也越大.     

Corporal punishment and child adjustment

The association between corporal punishment and children's emotional and behavioral functioning was studied in a sample of 98 non-referred children with a mean age of 12.35 (SD=1.72) recruited from two school systems in the southeastern United States. Children were divided into those who had experienced no corporal punishment over approximately a two-week period, those who had experienced mild levels of corporal punishment (i.e., 1 or 2 instances), and those who had experienced high levels of corporal punishment (i.e., 3 or more instances). Results indicated that use of corporal punishment was associated with problems in both emotional and behavioral adjustment. However, these associations were strongest for children who experienced high levels of corporal punishment, for children who were impulsive, and for children who did not experience a warm and supportive family climate.     

Improvement of arithmetic self concept through combined positive reinforcement, peer interaction, and sequential curriculum

This study investigated the development of arithmetic self concept and achievement among seven- to nine-year-old children who had problems or who were at the bottom of the lowest track of a third grade. Ss were two girls and two boys from a class of 24 low track children, who completed a one-dimensional five-point scale for self concept and were administered 20-item tests for achivement in arithmetic repeatedly throughout eight weeks of instruction. Formation of small groups, peer interaction, individual curriculum adjustment, and positive reinforcement both at individual and group level were applied. Effective, correlated results were recorded along both scales for each child, and the gains for the four target children were shown in comparison to the class as a whole.     

Effects of mental workload and caffeine on catecholamines and blood pressure compared to performance variations

Caffeine is characterised as a central nervous system stimulant, also affecting metabolic and cardiovascular functions. A number of studies have demonstrated an effect of caffeine on the excretion of catecholamines and their metabolites. Urinary epinephrine and norepinephrine have been shown to increase after caffeine administration. Similar trends were observed in our study in adrenaline (ADR) and noradrenaline (NORADR) levels and additionally a dose dependent effect of caffeine. The effect of caffeine on cognitive performance, blood pressure, and catecholamines was tested under resting conditions and under mental workload. Each subject performed the test after oral administration of 1 cup and then 3 cups of coffee. Root mean square error (RMSE) for the tracking task was continuously monitored. Blood pressure was also recorded before and after each stage of the experiment. Catecholamines were collected and measured for three different conditions as: at rest, after mental stress alone, after one dose of caffeine under stress, and after triple dose of caffeine under stress. Comparison of the performance of each stage with the resting conditions revealed statistically significant differences between group of smokers/coffee drinkers compared with the other two groups of non-coffee drinkers/non-smokers and non-smokers/coffee drinkers. There was no statistically significant difference between the last two groups. There was an increase of urine adrenaline with 1 cup of coffee and statistically significant increase of urine noradrenaline. Both catecholamines were significantly increased with triple dose of caffeine. Mental workload increased catecholamines. There was a dose dependent effect of caffeine on catecholamines.     

School adjustment, school performance and peer relations among first-graders in a Swedish suburban area

A study of 95 first-graders in one school management area used teacher ratings of problems and sociometric ratings to assess school adjustment and peer relations; 14% of the children had difficulties in reading/writing, motor skill, concentration and psychosocial function. Behavioural problems did not generally coincide with poor scholastic performance, but a small group (6.3%) exhibited problems in both reading/writing, concentration, gross and fine motor skill and psychosocial functions. Sociometric results showed only moderate agreement with teacher ratings. Extremely popular boys had no teacher-rated problems, but children with teacher-rated problems did not to any high degree tend to be isolated. Poor gross motor skill did distinguish isolated boys from others, a relationship that was not evident among the girls. The need to study the validity of teacher ratings as well as the prognostic value of school adjustment in first grade was stressed.     

Adjustment to College and Perceptions of Faculty Incivility

This study assessed the relationships between adjustment and maladjustment to college life and faculty incivility (FI). Two FI constructs were used: Active FI and passive FI. The first includes serious incivilities, such as personal comments or verbal attacks against students; the second pertains to more subtle incivilities, such as inadequate communications and avoidance. Two scales were administered to 744 undergraduate college students: The College Adjustment Test (CAT), and the Perceived Faculty Incivility Scale (PFIS). A paired-samples t-test result showed a significantly higher mean result for the passive FI compared with active FI. In addition path model results showed that those who reported higher levels of uncivil encounters in the classroom have also reported an increase in their negative emotional level of adjustment to college life; whereas decreased levels of FI incivility encounters were associated with increased perceptions of adjustment to college. An additional path analysis result has associated maladjustment with passive FI only. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

CROSS-AGE TUTORING: FIFTH GRADERS AS ARITHMETIC TUTORS FOR KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN1

Five fifth-grade students tutored five kindergarten children in basic arithmetic skills for 7.5 weeks. A control group consisted of five kindergarten children who received no tutoring and were matched with the experimental group in arithmetic ability. Pre-, mid-, and posttesting was done using a skills-based arithmetic test. Results showed that the experimental group made far greater gains than the control group on a post-test comparison (matched pairs signed ranks test p = 0.062). In addition, a subanalysis of specific arithmetic skills showed they were improved only when tutoring for that skill was carried out. Systematic observations made of the tutor-student interactions indicated wide tutor-to-tutor variability in the percentage of student responses praised, and very little use of negative, disapproving statements. It was concluded that trained fifth-grade students can effectively teach basic arithmetic skills to kindergarteners.