Assessing Child Compliance-Noncompliance

This article presents normative data on boys' noncompliance and illustrates an easily adaptable technique for assessing that noncompliance. Mothers and sons were videotaped in a structured task situation. The mothers elicited their sons' noncompIiance by interrupting their building a Tinkertoy model with fourteen separate requests. The sons' average latency of initiation (19.6 seconds) and completion (30.01 seconds) were greater than the arbitrary times usually chosen as cutoff points between compliance and noncompliance and the latencies increased from the first seven to the latter seven tasks. The article discusses the implications of this normative data on the clinical assessment of noncompliance.     

Assessing White Racial Consciousness and Perceived Comfort with Black Individuals: A Preliminary Study

This research examined the relationship between White racial consciousness development and perceived comfort with Black individuals. Participants were 339 White undergraduate students from a large southeastern state university who were asked to complete a two-part inventory: part one measuring White racial consciousness development (a five-stage scale) and part two measuring perceived comfort in situations involving Black individuals. An eta coefficient was calculated, providing evidence for the existence of a strong curvilinear relationship between White racial consciousness and perceived comfort with Black individuals η =.23 at p<.0001. These findings suggest that Whites who are completely foreclosed (stage one) or who are well acquainted with Blacks (stage five) are more comfortable in situations with Blacks than Whites who had a moderate amount of contact with them (stages two, three, and four).     

Relationships Between Parent and Child Emotion Regulation Strategy Use: A Brief Report

We examined the direct relationships between parent and child emotion regulation (ER) strategy use during the transitionary and understudied developmental periods of middle childhood through to adolescence. Three hundred and seventy-nine participants aged between 9 and 19 years, completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents. In addition, 358 of their mothers and 207 of their fathers completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Providing partial support for the hypothesis, maternal use of the ER Expressive Suppression strategy was significantly predictive of their child’s use of Suppression. However, paternal ER strategy use was unrelated to their child’s ER strategy use. Child age did not moderate the relationships investigated. These findings suggest that children’s ER during middle childhood and adolescence is more closely related to the ER of their mother than their father. It is proposed that this may be accounted for by emotion socialization processes.     

Assessing Child and Adolescent Pragmatic Language Competencies: Toward Evidence-Based Assessments

Using language appropriately and effectively in social contexts requires pragmatic language competencies (PLCs). Increasingly, deficits in PLCs are linked to child and adolescent disorders, including autism spectrum, externalizing, and internalizing disorders. As the role of PLCs expands in diagnosis and treatment of developmental psychopathology, psychologists and educators will need to appraise and select clinical and research PLC instruments for use in assessments and/or studies. To assist in this appraisal, 24 PLC instruments, containing 1,082 items, are assessed by addressing four questions: (1) Can PLC domains targeted by assessment items be reliably identified?, (2) What are the core PLC domains that emerge across the 24 instruments?, (3) Do PLC questionnaires and tests assess similar PLC domains?, and (4) Do the instruments achieve content, structural, diagnostic, and ecological validity? Results indicate that test and questionnaire items can be reliably categorized into PLC domains, that PLC domains featured in questionnaires and tests significantly differ, and that PLC instruments need empirical confirmation of their dimensional structure, content validity across all developmental age bands, and ecological validity. Progress in building a better evidence base for PLC assessments should be a priority in future research.     

小儿重症肺炎的诊治策略

肺炎是儿童常见的呼吸道疾病,小儿重症肺炎及其导致的并发症特别全身炎症反应综合征和多脏器功能衰竭是严重威胁儿童健康和生命的重要原因。随着基础医学和临床医学的发展,人们的认识逐渐深入,防治水平也取得重要进展。但病原学的变迁,不恰当的临床监测和干预仍然影响着人们对该病的正确认识和处理。运用哲学的辩证思维来探讨小儿重症肺炎诊治中的若干问题,将为儿科临床工作提供新的指导。     

小儿重症肺炎的诊治策略

肺炎是儿童常见的呼吸道疾病,小儿重症肺炎及其导致的并发症特别全身炎症反应综合征和多脏器功能衰竭是严重威胁儿童健康和生命的重要原因.随着基础医学和临床医学的发展,人们的认识逐渐深入,防治水平也取得重要进展.但病原学的变迁,不恰当的临床监测和干预仍然影响着人们对该病的正确认识和处理.运用哲学的辩证思维来探讨小儿重症肺炎诊治中的若干问题,将为儿科临床工作提供新的指导.     

The Child Development Specialist: A Prevention Program

The Child Development Specialist Program makes use of a new professional specialist and is designed to provide intervention before the child develops personal or learning problems.     

A Pilot Study Assessing the Relationship Between Child Harming Thoughts and Postpartum Depression

This pilot study explored relationships between postpartum mood and child harming thoughts. Fifty mothers from an outpatient pediatric office completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Postpartum Depression Predictors Inventory-Revised (PDPI-R), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Participants also completed the Child Thoughts Inventory (CTI), a modified version of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (Y-BOCS) and Florida Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (FOCI). Results indicated significant positive correlations between postpartum depression and anxiety and frequency and intensity of child harming thoughts. In addition, having a poor self-view was significantly correlated with intensity of child harming thoughts and previous anxiety was correlated with both frequency and intensity of child harming thoughts. Despite the fact that mothers experiencing postpartum mood disturbances rarely harm their infants the findings of this pilot study suggest that these women may have frequent and intense ego-dystonic thoughts about harming their children. Results also suggest that postpartum depression and anxiety may share similar cognitive processes.     

Inside the Black Box: Assessing and Improving Quality in Youth Programs

Over the past decade, structured programming for children and youth during the non-school hours has expanded exponentially. A confluence of recent research studies and program evaluations backs the publicly perceived notion that after-school programs can positively influence important developmental and learning outcomes. The rapid expansion of the field and the potential of programs to contribute to child and youth development have made defining what high quality programs look like and learning how to improve program quality key challenges facing the field. This paper describes what is known about the relation between youth program quality and youth developmental outcomes, summarizes different quality assessment tools being used in the field, and discusses how such tools are being used to drive systemic quality improvement efforts.     

童心——起初的热心和爱心

寒流突袭,冬雪飘飘,玩冬雪,是童心初绽的好方式。 同时,也唤起年轻人甚至老年人的童心。 我们都有这样的经历,都有这样的灵性光景:当我们对某事某物有看法,对自己的灵命状态有怀疑,我们都会想,某事某物当初是怎么样,我们当初的热心和爱心跑到哪去了?接下来的,便是一阵痛心的责问:事情何致于此呢?     

Assessing Psychosocial Impairment in the Pediatric Emergency Department: Child/Caregiver Concordance

The objective of this study was to examine the level of agreement between child- and caregiver-reports of the child’s psychosocial problems presenting to a Pediatric Emergency Department (PED) using a validated screening tool. This was an anonymous, prospective, cross-sectional, multi-informant (child and caregiver) study assessing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems and physical complaints in children and adolescents presenting to a PED. Three-hundred and fifty-eight children and adolescents (8–18 years old) and their caregivers participated. Children completed the Youth-Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC-Y), while their caregivers completed the Pediatric Symptom Checklist–35 (PSC-35) to measure psychosocial impairment. The child’s physical complaints (e.g., chief complaint, chronicity, other medical problems, medications) and demographic information were assessed using an investigator-developed patient background questionnaire completed by the caregivers. Physical complaints (e.g., chief complaint, chronicity, other medical problems, medications) were assessed using an investigator-developed patient background questionnaire. Agreement between child- and caregiver- reports was analyzed using Cohen’s kappa coefficient. Differences between child and caregiver-reported scores were determined by t-tests. Poor to moderate agreement was found between child- and caregiver-reports of attention problems (κ = .355), externalizing problems (κ = .340), internalizing problems (κ = .065), and total PSC score (κ = .410). Both children and caregivers should complete the psychosocial screener to maximize the accuracy of assessment and the identification of impairment.     

Assessing the Problem-solving Appraisal of Black South African Students

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability of the Problem Solving Inventory (PSI) as used with black South African students. Furthermore the construct validity of the PSI was assessed by comparing self-appraised effective and ineffective problem-solvers in terms of dispositional characteristics and psychological health. Subjects (N=212) were undergraduate psychology students at a South African University. The results indicated that: (1) the PSI was a reliable instrument for use with Black South African students, and (2) that self-appraised ineffective problem-solvers reported lower self-esteem and personal competence, and higher levels of depression and anxiety than self-appraised effective problem-solvers.     

Assessing Nigrescence Beyond the United States: Black Racial Identity Attitudes in Jamaica

In the current study, we examined scores on an adapted version of the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS) in a sample of 348 Jamaican college students. Our goal was to assess whether nigrescence attitudes as operationalized by adapted Cross Racial Identity Scale scores (J-CRIS) would be internally consistent and structurally valid in a context outside the United States. Nigrescence theory was conceptualized in the context of discrimination in a country where individuals of African descent are a minority, whereas Jamaica is a country that is more than 90% Black. Results indicated that scores on the J-CRIS were internally consistent and confirmatory factor analyses supported the structural validity of the scores in Jamaica. Correlations of J-CRIS scores with ethnic identity and collective self-esteem scores provided some evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. The results of the study suggest that nigrescence attitudes can be measured with integrity in Jamaicans, although future research will be needed to understand whether the subscales have the same meaning in this context.