Relation of attention control and school performance in normal children

This study examined the relation of attention control and school performance in a sample of 113 school children (51 boys, 62 girls), ages 9 to 12 years (M = 10.86, SD = 0.91). Children and parents completed the Attention Control Scale for Children, which measures children's ability to focus and shift attention, and also a scale for assessing symptoms of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Teachers provided a global rating of children's school performance. Analysis indicated that attention control correlated positively with school performance.     

Two types of behavioral inhibition: Relations to effortful control and attention in school children

This study aimed to examine the relationship of two types of behavioral inhibition, social inhibition and nonsocial inhibition, to effortful control and attention in 7–9-year olds. Social and nonsocial inhibition and effortful control were assessed by questionnaires. The child version of the Attention Network Task was used to measure attention including alerting, orienting and executive attention. Results indicated that in girls, social inhibition was negatively related to effortful control and alerting, while nonsocial inhibition was positively related to orienting; there was an interaction between social and nonsocial inhibition in predicting executive attention in boys. Thus, it is of great significance to differentiate social and nonsocial inhibition when examining the association between behavioral inhibition and effortful control and attention in school-age children.     

Scope of attention, control of attention, and intelligence in children and adults

Recent experimentation has shown that cognitive aptitude measures are predicted by tests of the scope of an individual's attention or capacity in simple working memory tasks and also by the ability to control attention. However, these experiments do not indicate how separate or related the scope and control of attention are. An experiment with 52 children (10 to 11 years old) and 52 college students included measures of the scope and control of attention, as well as verbal and nonverbal aptitude measures. The children showed little evidence of using sophisticated attentional control, but the scope of attention predicted intelligence in that group. In adults, both the scope and control of attention varied among individuals and accounted for considerable individual variance in intelligence. About one third that variance was shared between scope an d control, and the rest was unique to one or the other.Scope and control of attention appear to be related but distinct contributors to intelligence.     

Depression in children: Parent,teacher, and child perspectives

Depressed and nondepressed children were found to differ in the types of behavior problems manifested at home and at school. Children rated as depressed by their parents on the Personality Inventory for Children evidenced significantly more conduct problems, anxiety, impulsive hyperactivity, learning problems, psychosomatic problems, perfectionism, and muscular tension at home than children rated as nondepressed. Depressed children were rated by their teachers as displaying more inattentionpassivity than nondepressed children. A significant but modest relationship was found between parent report and child selfreport of the child's depression. Depressed children attributed positive events to external causes and negative events to internal causes significantly more than did nondepressed children. The specificity of these results to depression was also examined;the particular features of childhood depression are compared to the features of adult depression. The investigators would like to thank Jim McFerren and Ralph Zalazar for their work as research assistants and David Watson for his help with the statistical analyses. The helpful comments of Eric Klinger and Auke Tellegen are gratefully acknowledged. The cooperation of Dr. Loren Benson, director of personnel services of the Hopkins School District #274; Mr. Edward Ryshavy, principal of Glen Lake Elementary School; and the teachers of that school is greatly appreciated.     

The validity of vigilance tasks in differential diagnosis of children referred for attention and learning problems

This study was conducted to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of vigilance measures of attention and impulsivity in children. One hundred children referred for evaluation of attention and learning problems were administered a battery of tests including two vigilance tasks, other laboratory measures of inattention and impulsivity, and parent and teacher ratings. It was predicted that vigilance task performance would correlate with teacher ratings and laboratory measures of inattention while correlations with ratings of aggressive behavior were predicted to be lower. Moderate correlations were obtained between the vigilance task scores and other laboratory measures of inattention and impulsivity. However, the vigilance scores did not correlate with teacher or parent ratings of behavior. A factor analysis, conducted to identify underlying dimensions of attention in the battery of tests, revealed strong source effects. The implications for use of vigilance measures in diagnosis are discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the 1990 Learning Disabilities Association of America International Conference, Anaheim, California.     

Violent children and youth: A call for attention

Journal of Behavioral Education -     

Intrinsic,identified, and controlled types of motivation for school subjects in young elementary school children

Background. There are two approaches to the differential examination of school motivation. The first is to examine motivation towards specific school subjects (between school subject differentiation). The second is to examine school motivation as a multidimensional concept that varies in terms of not only intensity but also quality (within school subject differentiation). These two differential approaches have led to important discoveries and provided a better understanding of student motivational dynamics. However, little research has combined these two approaches. Aims. This study examines young elementary students' motivations across school subjects (writing, reading, and maths) from the stance of self‐determination theory. First, we tested whether children self‐report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation towards specific school subjects. Second, we verified whether children self‐report differentiated types of motivation across school subjects. Sample. Participants were 425 French‐Canadian children (225 girls, 200 boys) from three elementary schools. Children were in Grades 1 (N=121), 2 (N=126), and 3 (N=178). Results. Results show that, for a given school subject, young elementary students self‐report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation. Results also indicate that children self‐report different levels of motivation types across school subjects. Our findings also show that most differentiation effects increase across grades. Some gender effects were also observed. Conclusion. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing among types of school motivation towards specific school subjects in the early elementary years.     

Advances in psychotherapy for children and adolescents: Interrelations of adjustment,development, and intervention

The present article discusses advances in psychotherapy research with children and adolescents. Effective intervention extends beyond identifying treatment techniques. Understanding the scope of dysfunctions and threats to adjustment and the course of development are central. Three central themes are highlighted. First, the scope of clinical dysfunctions, at-risk behavior, and conditions to which children are exposed are discussed. Second, the role of development in adjustment is illustrated by examples of research on negative affect, social behavior, and empathy. Finally, advances in psychotherapy outcome research are described with illustrations of treatment applications in the schools. The importance of treatment informed by developmental theory and the role of the school in identifying dysfunction and intervening are discussed in light of current advances in research.     

Plasticity in attention: implications for stress response in children

Attention bias has been suggested as an etiological and maintaining factor in anxiety. However, empirical evidence establishing this causal association is scarce and has been provided only in adults. In this preliminary study, we tested whether an induction of attentional bias can cause changes in vulnerability to stress in children reporting normal anxiety levels. Twenty-six 7-12 year-old children were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was exposed to a training condition designed to induce an attentional bias away from threat. The other group was exposed to a training condition designed to induce an attentional bias toward threat. Children who were trained to attend to threat developed attentional vigilance to threat-related information. The training procedure was ineffective with children who were trained to avoid threat, and their attention remained unbiased. Children from both training groups reported elevated depression scores following stress-induction. However, only the children who were trained to attend to threat subsequently reported elevations in anxiety. The findings suggest that biased attentional responses to threat, among children, can exert a specific influence on the tendency to experience anxiety in the face of stress.     

Social attention in keas, dogs, and human children

Understanding animals’ abilities to cooperate with and learn from each other has been an active field of research in recent years. One important basis for all types of social interactions is the disposition of animals to pay attention to each other—a factor often neglected in discussions and experiments. Since attention differs between species as well as between individuals, it is likely to influence the amount and type of information different species and/or observers may extract from conspecifics in any given situation. Here, we carried out a standardized comparative study on attention towards a model demonstrating food-related behavior in keas, dogs and children. In a series of experimental sessions, individuals watched different conspecific models while searching, manipulating and feeding. Visual access to the demonstration was provided by two observation holes, which allowed us to determine exactly how often and for how long observers watched the model. We found profound differences in the factors that influence attention within as well as between the tested species. This study suggests that attention should be incorporated as an important variable when testing species in social situations.     

Intelligence and dyslexia: Implications for diagnosis and intervention

In this paper we critically examine theoretical issues and practical consequences of including IQ in the definition of dyslexia. According to the discrepancy criterion individuals are classified as dyslexic if their reading skills are below what would be expected from their IQ scores. However, we argue that intelligence is a fuzzy concept and that there is no clear causal relationship between intelligence level and word decoding skills. Also, high and low IQ poor readers show the same reading performance patterns, indicating that both groups might benefit from the same remedial activities. Evidence for the critical role of phonological skills in dyslexia is presented and a more recent definition of dyslexia is discussed in relation to these findings. Finally, two alternative, more outcome-based classifications of poor readers are suggested and some critical consequences for individual interventions are outlined.     

Optimal experience and self-determination at school: Joining perspectives

This study aimed at investigating optimal experience during schoolwork in relation to SDT concepts of autonomy and locus of causality. Data were gathered from 268 high-school students using Experience Sampling Method for 1?week. Three levels of self-determination were identified: high (corresponding to autonomous regulation), moderate (mixed autonomous and controlled regulation), and low (controlled regulation). Consistently with the literature, the relationship between participants?? challenges and skills values was used to recognize occasions for optimal experience, and multilevel modeling was applied in data analysis. Findings showed that during schoolwork as optimal activity (high challenges and high skills) students mostly reported low levels of self-determination. However, the quality of their experience was better in situations of high and moderate self-determination. At the theoretical level, findings allow for a more articulated understanding of the characteristics of optimal experience in academic activities. Practical implications are discussed for enhancing well-being and committed learning at school.     

Violent children: bridging development,intervention, and public policy

Childhood violence is a major public health and social policy concern in the United States. Scientists and policymakers alike have increasingly turned their attention to the causes of childhood violence and the extent to which its course can be modified through well-planned preventive interventions. However, it is not apparent that policymakers draw upon basic research findings in formulating their priorities and policies, nor is it apparent that developmental scientists incorporate policy considerations and prevention findings into their research frameworks and designs. The goal of this special issue on violent children is to begin to bridge the gaps among basic developmental science, prevention science, and public policy.     

Thirty-something categorization results explained: selective attention, eyetracking, and models of category learning

An eyetracking study testing D. L. Medin and M. M. Schaffer's (1978) 5-4 category structure was conducted. Over 30 studies have shown that the exemplar-based generalized context model (GCM) usually provides a better quantitative account of 5-4 learning data as compared with the prototype model. However, J. D. Smith and J. P. Minda (2000) argued that the GCM is a psychologically implausible account of 5-4 learning because it implies suboptimal attention weights. To test this claim, the authors recorded undergraduates' eye movements while the students learned the 5-4 category structure. Eye fixations matched the attention weights estimated by the GCM but not those of the prototype model. This result confirms that the GCM is a realistic model of the processes involved in learning the 5-4 structure and that learners do not always optimize attention, as commonly supposed. The conditions under which learners are likely to optimize attention during category learning are discussed.     

Maternal coping strategies and emotional distress: results of an early intervention program for low birth weight young children

Several questions were examined with Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) data (N = 843). Are effects of intervention services found for maternal emotional distress and coping strategies, and are these effects different for different groups of mothers? Do maternal distress, coping, and life events moderate (or mediate) the intervention effects reported earlier for children's test scores and behavior problems (IHDP, 1990)? The intervention reduced maternal distress, especially for women with less than a high school education. Maternal distress did not moderate or mediate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Maternal coping was not influenced by the intervention and did not moderate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Life events moderated the influence of the intervention on children's test scores; the intervention was more effective for children whose mothers had fewer life events.