Influence of discrimination awareness on the occupational interests of African American children

This study examined the influence of discrimination awareness on children's occupational interests. Participants included 46 African American children aged 10 to 13. Children completed pretest measures of perceptions of occupational racial discrimination, discrimination-related self-efficacy beliefs, occupational outcome expectations, and the perceived status of their aspired-to and expected occupations. Participants were then randomly assigned to a bias resistance condition or a control condition. After participating in workshops that either did or did not address bias resistance, children completed posttest measures identical to pretest measures. At pretest, the gap in status of children's aspired-to and expected occupations was positively correlated to their perceptions of occupational racial discrimination, and this relation was mediated by occupational outcome expectations. At posttest, children in the bias resistance condition had higher-status occupational expectations than children in the control condition, and this difference was due to improved occupational outcome expectations in the bias resistance condition.     

A cross-cultural comparison of personality: English and Austrian children

The Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was given to 457 boys and 431 girls in Austria. Factor comparisons indicated that the dimensions of psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and social desirability were identical in Austria and in England. Minimal item changes were required to produce a viable Austrian scoring key with satisfactorily high reliabilities for all dimensions except in the case of P for girls, which was somewhat weaker. Austrian norms indicated that boys score higher than girls on P and E but lower on N and L. Direct cross-cultural comparisons revealed few marked personality differences between Austrian and English children, there being a slight tendency for the former to score higher on psychoticism, extraversion and the lie scale but slightly lower on neuroticism.     

Integrating vocational interests, competencies, and interpersonal dispositions in middle school children

Vocational interests and interpersonal dispositions have been well researched in adults from the perspectives of Holland's RIASEC (1997) model of interests and the Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC), respectively. Few studies have applied either model to children and no studies have examined their overlap in children. A vector fitting procedure was applied to data from adults to demonstrate the intersection of vocational interests and interpersonal dispositions from the perspective of the IPC. The same procedure was then applied to interests and competencies and interpersonal dispositions in a sample of sixth grade children. Plotting the vocational variables within interpersonal space defined by the IPC showed the specific interpersonal aspects of vocational interests in young adults and interests and competencies in late childhood. Half of the interests had associations with the IPC that were consistent across adults and children, while the remaining interests had associations that were unique to children.     

Differences in personality between American and English children

One thousand and ninety-one children between the ages of 9 and 15 yr from three Tennessee schools completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and an Impulsiveness Inventory. The American children scored significantly higher on the N, P, E and Imp scales and lower on the L scale. Common trends were noted on age and sex between the American personality norms and the English norms. The results were discussed in terms of the differences in crime rate and lifestyle between the two countries. Both questionnaires were seen as useful measures of personality for children in the U.S.     

A comparison of children with serious emotional disturbance served in residential and school settings

The National Adolescent and Child Treatment Study (NACTS) was designed to study children identified and served by the public mental health and special education systems as seriously emotionally disturbed. Children (N=812) and their parents (N=740) participated in the first wave of data collection in this longitudinal study. Subjects lived in six states, with approximately half in psychiatric residential treatment centers and the other half in public school special education programs. A multi-method, multi-source methodology was employed. The sample is characterized by externalizing problems, poor adaptive functioning, and substantial academic deficits. Residential children were more likely to have blended families, were more likely to have previously received residential treatment, and had higher rates of conduct disorder, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder, as measured by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The two groups did not differ on intelligence, age of onset, or rates of schizophrenia or depression. The data suggest the presence of greater at-risk factors in the residential group and different paths of entry into special education and residential treatment programs.     

Cross-cultural comparison of personality in Danish and English children

536 Danish boys and 575 Danish girls between the ages of 7 and 15 years filled out a translation of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnarie (JEPQ). The data were analyzed in terms of 4 scales which measure Psychoticism (P), Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N), and Lying (L). Factor comparison indicated very good agreement between the scales of the Danish and English versions of the JEPQ. Reliabilities of the Danish L and N scales were satisfactory, while those for the P and E scales were lower but acceptable. Danish boys scored higher than Danish girls on P and E scales, but lower on N and L scales, in accordance with the usual sex difference seen in the JEPQ. A cross-cultural comparison of scores obtained by children in Denmark and in England showed that Danish boys scored significantly lower than British boys on N and L scales, while Danish girls scored lower than British girls on all scales, although the difference on the L scale was not statistically significant. The notion that L scale scores are related inversely to the degree of permissiveness of society is considered on the basis of findings obtained in the present and previous studies carried out using the JEPQ in Denmark, England, Hungary and Yugoslavia.     

A comparison of the personal values and operative goals of school psychologists and school superintendents

A survey of 96 school psychologists and 75 school superintendents throughout the state of Ohio showed the two groups to have generally similar personal value systems and to be in overall agreement in their respective rankings of school psychology goals. Both groups held the traditional school psychologist's goal of conducting individual testing to be lower relevance than acting as an internal consultant or resource person. Of those differences identified, superintendents assigned greater relevance to values which were consistent with their administrative concerns, while psychologists held values preferring individualism as more relevant. Superintendents held goals associated with increased learning efficiency and interacting with community agencies as more relevant, while psychologists assigned higher relevance to goals associated with parent-psychologist interactions.     

Brain bases of English morphological processing: A comparison between Chinese-English,Spanish-English bilingual,and English monolingual children

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language-specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and English monolinguals, all raised in the US (N = 152, ages 5–10). Children completed an English morphological word processing task during fNIRS neuroimaging. The findings revealed both language-specific and shared bilingual effects. The language-specific effects were that Chinese and Spanish bilinguals showed principled differences in their neural organization for English lexical morphology. The common bilingual effects shared by the two groups were that in both bilingual groups, increased home language proficiency was associated with stronger left superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation when processing the English word structures that are most dissimilar from the home language. The findings inform theories of language and brain development during the key periods of neural reorganization for learning to read by illuminating experience-based plasticity in linguistically diverse learners.     

Preschool language exposure and use: A comparison study of dual-language learners and English monolingual children

This study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34 hours of recordings collected over 5–8 days for each participating child (M_age = 52 months) in six classrooms. Results showed that, during a typical preschool day, DLLs spoke as much as EMs but received less adult talk overall and had more 5-min segments with zero adult–child conversations than their EM peers. Follow-up analyses revealed that teachers generally talked less when children initiated the conversations than when adults initiated the conversations, and this pattern was particularly evident for DLLs. Study implications and future research are discussed.     

A North American perspective on the psychological maltreatment of children

Psychological maltreatment may be the most common form of abuse suffered by North American children within the family environment. However, little effort has been directed towards eliminating and preventing it. The present article emphasizes the importance of thoroughly understanding the phenomenon so that effective intervention strategies can be developed. North American research studies of child maltreatment are reviewed and discussed with particular emphasis placed upon the manifestations of psychological maltreatment, the scope and the consequences of the problem, and the identification of associated risk factors. The paper identifies several areas for improvement before successful interventions can be conceptualized.     

Influence of the interests of children with autism on everyday learning opportunities

Findings from a pilot study investigating the influence of the interests of young children with autism on parents' provision of everyday informal child learning opportunities are described. 17 children (13 boys, 4 girls) were divided into two groups that received everyday learning opportunities of Low interest and High interest, based on parents' bi-weekly ratings of the interestingness of the opportunities to the children, using an investigator-developed measure. A brief intervention of 12 to 14 weeks showed that the children in the High interest-based group were provided more learning opportunities than were the Low interest-based group, and that the parents indicated that their children benefited more from the learning opportunities. Implications for future research are described.     

A comparison of African American and White American veteran MMPI-2 profiles

The present study compared a matched sample of 180 African American and 180 White American veterans who completed the MMPI-2 as a part of their evaluation while receiving inpatient psychiatric treatment. Findings indicated no significant multivariate or univariate effects associated with race on the basic validity and clinical scales, a significant multivariate effect but no significant univariate effects associated with race across the supplementary scales. Overall the two groups had very similar mean profiles across the basic validity, clinical, and supplementary scales. Comparison of the two groups on the content scales yielded a significant multivariate and significant univariate effects with African Americans scoring higher on the FRS, BIZ, CYN, and ASP scales. Because the two groups differed in terms of frequency and type of drug abuse, follow-up 2 x 2 univariate analyses of variance were conducted for the FRS, BIZ, CYN, and ASP content scales comparing participants classified in terms of presence or absence of a primary or secondary drug abuse diagnosis by race. A significant main effect associated with drug abuse was obtained for ASP. Results are discussed and considered in light of earlier research on the MMPI-2 and race. Content scale differences are also discussed in terms of possible differences in worldview.     

The relationship of participation in school activities to abilities and interests in a high school student sample

Participation in school activities is hypothesized to be related to the multiple abilities and interests of high school students. The Ball Aptitude Battery (yielding 14 ability scores), Holland's Vocational Preference Inventory, and a biographical information blank (to obtain information about participation in 53 extracurricular activities) were administered to over 900 high school seniors of both sexes. Correlational and multiple regression analyses showed different patterns of activity participation to be related to different abilities and interests. The degree of relationship was generally low, generally higher for the males than for the females, and higher for interests than for abilities. Activity correlates of abilities differed for the sexes, but activity correlates of interests tended to be similar. This suggests that the same ability can result from differential participation in activities, but the same interest develops from similar activities.     

Differences in nonfatal suicide behaviors among Mexican and European American middle school children.

This report describes ethnic and gender differences in suicide ideation among two large samples of middle school students in New Mexico (n = 2,140) and Texas (n = 1,302). Students completed a self-administered questionnaire on suicide ideation and psychosocial risk factors. Mexican Americans in both samples reported significantly higher prevalence of suicide ideation than did their European American counterparts. Mexican Americans were 1.8 times more likely to have high suicide ideation than European Americans. The suicide ideation risk for Mexican Americans remained unchanged in both samples after adjusting for gender, age, family structure, depression, low social support, and self-esteem. This study indicates that ethnicity plays an important role in suicidal ideation, but the mechanism remains unclear.     

Relation between perceived scholastic competence and social comparison mechanisms among elementary school children

According to the literature, among social comparison mechanisms, identification with an upward target would be the most frequent mechanism that students report to use. However, it remains unclear how the identification and the contrast mechanisms contribute to the construction of pupils’ scholastic perceived competence. The aim of this study was to test the two following hypotheses: (1) the more pupils report using downward identification and upward contrast, the lower their perceived scholastic competence; (2) the more pupils report using upward identification and downward contrast, the higher their perceived scholastic competence will be. Three hundred and eighty French-speaking pupils (147 fourth graders and 233 fifth graders) from public elementary schools in the district of Grenoble (France) were met in their school. Pupils responded to a standardized mental ability test and to a questionnaire about their perceived scholastic competence and their utilization of social comparison mechanisms: upward and downward identification and upward and downward contrast. Boys and girls differed on some of the social comparison mechanisms. However, the two hypotheses were confirmed and hold true for both boys and girls. Findings show that beyond the contribution of cognitive abilities, pupils’ responsiveness to these mechanisms contributed to the development of their perceived scholastic competence. One educational implication is the usefulness of analyzing the processes of social comparison as strategies to allow pupils to maintain a positive perception of their scholastic competence.     

Family characteristics and school achievements of type A children

We examined the familial characteristics of Type A children and the consequences of Type A behaviors for children's classroom achievements. A maximum of 156 boys and 190 girls enrolled in elementary and middle schools and their parents participated in various aspects of the data collection procedures and analyses reported in this article. Results showed that Type A children were not more likely to have families with a history of cardiovascular-related diseases or families of upper socioeconomic status. Young Type A boys, but not girls, had Type A mothers and fathers, suggesting an early modeling of Type A behaviors by boys. Competitive boys and girls and Type A girls had higher achievement test scores and classroom grades, independent of IQ test scores, than did relatively noncompetitive children and Type B girls, respectively. Thus, the competitive aspect of Type A leads to important early achievements, independent of ability, perhaps because care givers and teachers respond to Type A behaviors of children by encouraging them to continue to strive to achieve. Gender differences in the findings were also discussed and related to the adult literature.