Teachers’ Knowledge of Evidence-Based Interventions and Available School Resources for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Problems

School professionals need to be prepared to support children with emotional and behavioral problems. Teachers in particular should be aware of the resources provided by their school as well as the evidence-based practices available to support children with behavioral problems. This study explored general education teachers’ knowledge of 10 evidence-based interventions as well as resources and data collected at their schools to support children with mental health problems. Participants included 239 general educators from 5 school districts. Overall, most teachers had not heard of 9 out of 10 of the evidence-based programs presented. Teachers were also not sure whether their schools provided specific assessments and interventions to support children. One particularly noteworthy finding was that 57% of teachers were not sure whether their schools provided functional behavioral assessment and intervention planning. Findings illuminate a need for continued work in this area.     

Anxiety Symptoms in African American Children: Relations with Ethnic Pride,Anxiety Sensitivity,and Parenting

This cross-sectional study examined the relations among children’s ethnic pride, perceived parenting behavior (i.e., parental control, parental acceptance), anxiety sensitivity, and child anxiety symptoms (i.e., physical symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, separation anxiety symptoms, and harm avoidance symptoms) in 266 African American school children (M = 9.98 years old; 55% girls). Structural equation modeling results indicated that high ethnic pride was associated with high parental acceptance. High perceived parental acceptance, in turn, was related to children reporting low levels of social anxiety symptoms and high levels of harm avoidance. In addition, high parental control was related to high anxiety sensitivity. Anxiety sensitivity partially mediated the relation between parental control and separation anxiety symptoms, such that parental control was both directly and indirectly related to separation anxiety symptoms. Parental control was indirectly related to physical symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and harm avoidance symptoms through its direct link to anxiety sensitivity. The study’s results increment knowledge about factors influencing specific dimensions of anxiety in African American children.     

Factors predicting the use of technology: findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)

The successful adoption of technology is becoming increasingly important to functional independence. The present article reports findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) on the use of technology among community-dwelling adults. The sample included 1,204 individuals ranging in age from 18-91 years. All participants completed a battery that included measures of demographic characteristics, self-rated health, experience with technology, attitudes toward computers, and component cognitive abilities. Findings indicate that the older adults were less likely than younger adults to use technology in general, computers, and the World Wide Web. The results also indicate that computer anxiety, fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence were important predictors of the use of technology. The relationship between age and adoption of technology was mediated by cognitive abilities, computer self-efficacy, and computer anxiety. These findings are discussed in terms of training strategies to promote technology adoption.     

Promoting response variability and stimulus generalization in martial arts training

The effects of reinforcement and extinction on response variability and stimulus generalization in the punching and kicking techniques of 2 martial arts students were evaluated across drill and sparring conditions. During both conditions, the students were asked to demonstrate different techniques in response to an instructor's punching attack. During baseline, the students received no feedback on their responses in either condition. During the intervention phase, the students received differential reinforcement in the form of instructor feedback for each different punching or kicking technique they performed during a session of the drill condition, but no reinforcement was provided for techniques in the sparring condition. Results showed that both students increased the number of different techniques they performed when reinforcement and extinction procedures were conducted during the drill condition, and that this increase in response variability generalized to the sparring condition.     

A posteriori information effects on culpability judgments from a cross-cultural perspective

A posteriori information about the moral attributes of the victim of a crime can affect an observer's judgment on the culpability of the actor of the crime so that negative moral attributes of the victim will lead to a lower judgment of culpability. The authors found this effect of a posteriori information among 118 American and 123 Chinese participants, but the underlying mechanisms were different between the two cultural groups. The Americans considered the psychological state of the actor during the crime, whereas the Chinese considered the morality of the actor during the crime. The authors discussed these results in light of the respondents' implicit theories of morality.     

"The W and M are mixing me up": use of a visual code in verbal short-term memory tasks

When normal participants are presented with written verbal short-term memory tasks (e.g., remembering a set of letters for immediate spoken recall) there is evidence to suggest that the information is re-coded into phonological form. This paper presents a single case study of MJK whose reading follows the pattern of phonological dyslexia. In short-term memory tasks MJK does not phonologically re-code written materials but, it is argued, uses a visual code. There are three main lines of evidence for this, (a) MJK tends to substitute visually similar items for one another, (b) her performance is better with visual than auditory stimuli, and (c) she is able to remember numbers (e.g., 8) better than written words (e.g., eight). Investigation of short-term memory in others with phonological dyslexia is warranted.     

Concept mediation in trilingual translation: Evidence from response time and repetition priming patterns

Translation responses to individual words were elicited from 48 English-Spanish-French trilinguals, who translated in six directions at study and two directions at test. Patterns of translation response times and error rates at study reflected the relative proficiency of the trilinguals in comprehension and production of their three languages. At test, repeated items were translated more quickly than new items, with the strongest priming effects occurring for identical repetitions. Repetition priming was also substantial when only the stimulus language or only the response language matched from study to test, implying that repeated comprehension and production processes contribute to priming in translation. Patterns of response times and repetition priming indicate that translation in all directions involved conceptual access. Additive patterns in response time asymmetries and repetition priming were consistent with the treatment of word comprehension and production processes of translation as independent.     

Initial behavior outcomes for the peacebuilders universal school-based violence prevention program

PeaceBuilders is a universal, elementary-school-based violence prevention program that attempts to alter the climate of a school by teaching students and staff simple rules and activities aimed at improving child social competence and reducing aggressive behavior. Eight matched schools (N > 4,000 students in Grades K-5) were randomly assigned to either immediate postbaseline intervention (PBI) or to a delayed intervention 1 year later (PBD). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze results from assessments in the fall and spring of 2 consecutive school years. In Year 1, significant gains in teacher-rated social competence for students in Grades K-2, in childself-reported peace-building behavior in Grades K-5, and reductions in aggressive behavior in Grades 3-5 were found for PBI but not PBD schools. Differential effects in Year 1 were also observed for aggression and prosocial behavior. Most effects were maintained in Year 2 for PBI schools, including increases in child prosocial behavior in Grades K-2. Implications for early universal school-based prevention and challenges related toevaluating large-scale prevention trials are discussed.     

The natural history of problem gambling from age 18 to 29

Aggregate-level prevalences and individual-level developmental trajectories of untreated problem gambling were examined in an 11-year, 4-wave longitudinal study spanning the adolescent through young adult years. The past-year prevalences, 3-4 year incidences, and lifetime prevalences of problem gambling from adolescence through young adulthood were relatively stable at 2%-3%, 1%-2%, and 3%-5%, respectively. Despite the stability of the prevalences at the aggregate level, problem gambling appeared to be more transitory and episodic than enduring and chronic at the individual level. The present study is consistent with the limited evidence available on the natural history of problem gambling in the community in suggesting that natural recovery may be the rule rather than the exception.