Innovating With the Model of Human Occupation in Mental Health

This article describes a new approach in a group of National Health Service trusts in the United Kingdom. The assessment and intervention were focused on using the Model of Human Occupation in Mental Health services. An occupation focused assessment and intervention protocol were developed based on the Model of Human Occupation Screening Tool Single-Observation Form (MOHOST-SOF). The aim was to develop a guide to treatment and monitoring to support efficient practice while maintaining an occupation and client-centered focus. Implementation has been successful to date.     

En experimentell prövning av aktivt lyssnande som tröst för sm[acaron] barn som gr[acaron]ter

The procedural validity of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview - short form (CIDISF) administered via an Internet web-page was examined and compared with an in-person interview (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders, research version; SCID) for 7 DSM-IV mental disorders: major depression, generalized anxiety, specific phobia, social phobia, agoraphobia, panic attack and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The 53 participants completed a computerized interview (CIDI-SF) via a web page 2 days before the scheduled in-person interview (SCID). The agreement between CIDI-SF and SCID was generally low (Cohens Kappa <0.40). However, if the panic disorder module from the long version of CIDI is used instead, the Kappa is fair (K = 0.48) with an agreement of 75%. Practical applications and future directions are discussed.     

The utility and accuracy of oral reading fluency score types in predicting reading comprehension

This study used data from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2002) oral reading fluency (ORF) probes to examine variation among different ORF score types (i.e., the median of three passages, the mean of all three passages, the mean of passages 2 and 3, and the score from passage 3) in predicting reading comprehension as a function of student reading fluency level and to compare the screening accuracy of these score types in predicting student reading comprehension. The results revealed that the relation between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension varied as a function of students' oral reading fluency and that different score types had varying predictive validity for year-end reading comprehension. The mean of all three passages demonstrated a marginally better balance in screening efficiency from September to December of grade one (especially for low-performing students), whereas in grades two and three, the median score was the best predictor. Furthermore, across all grades, increasing reading rates were observed for the three administered passages within an assessment period. The observed patterns mimicked previous experimental studies (Francis et al., 2008; Jenkins, Graff, & Miglioretti, 2009), suggesting that practice effects are an important consideration in the administration of multiple passages assessing oral reading fluency.     

Singaporean kindergartners' phonological awareness and English writing skills

This article describes the phonological awareness and English writing skills among a sample of 297 Singaporean kindergarten children, stratified by ethnicity (Chinese, Malay, and Indian), and examines the relationship between oral language and writing skills in this multilingual population. Overall, Singaporean kindergartners, nearly all of whom were bilingual, scored higher on English writing but lower on English oral language skills than U.S. norms. Despite literacy instruction that emphasized whole-word memorization, phonological awareness statistically significantly predicted English writing scores, controlling for English vocabulary, ethnicity, sex, and an interaction between English vocabulary and sex. The current study's findings highlight the possibility of developing high literacy skills among bilingual learners with low oral language skills. In addition, the study demonstrates children's development of phonological awareness in the absence of phonological awareness or phonics instruction and supports the theory that both alphabetic (phonological) processes and logographic (whole-word) processes contribute to successful English literacy achievement.     

Preschool classroom conversations as long-term resources for second language and literacy acquisition

This study investigated relations between preschool talk exposure and immigrant first graders' second language literacy and oral skills outcomes. Participants in the study were 25 children with Turkish as their first language and Norwegian as their second, attending various multilingual and ethnically diverse preschool classrooms in Norway and videotaped during preschool group conversations. Group conversations were coded for vocabulary richness, discourse complexity and emergent phonics talk. Relations between the qualities of the preschool group conversations that the children participated in and their second language vocabulary, listening comprehension and code related skills outcomes 1 year later in first grade were examined. Preschool classroom vocabulary richness and discourse complexity predicted first grade vocabulary (receptive vocabulary and word definition skills), but not listening comprehension. No associations were found between preschool classroom emergent phonics talk and first grade code-related skills. The findings have implications for early interventions addressing reading comprehension.     

Faustlos: Evaluation of a curriculum to prevent violence in elementary schools

The “Faustlos”¹ curriculum, an adaptation of the American Second Step program, for the prevention of aggressive behaviors of elementary school children was evaluated in a 3-year control group study (30 classes served as an experimental group, 14 classes as a control group). The results show significant changes in the emotional competences and prosocial developments of children aged 6–9 years. Children who participated in the “Faustlos” lessons showed significantly reduced anxiety and internalizing behaviors compared with the control group. The parents’ ratings of their children's behavior (according to the Child Behavior Checklist) provided clear evidence of improved social behavior outside the school environment.     

Psychometric Status and Clinical Utility of the MAYSI-2 with Girls and Boys in Juvenile Detention

This study replicates and extends studies of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument, Version 2 (MAYSI-2) in a sample of 479 urban, rural, and suburban 12–16 year old youths (68% boys; 41% African American, 23% Latino) consecutively admitted to juvenile detention centers. Six principal components replicated the MAYSI-2 factor-analytically-derived subscales except for Depression/Anxiety, and suggested modifications of specific items in each sub-scale. Findings supported the internal consistency and validity of the modified MAYSI-2 sub-scales. Few gender differences emerged, except that girls reported higher levels of hopelessness and trauma than boys. Five sub-groups were identified based on component profiles: (1) non-clinical, (2) addiction, somatic problems, and suicidality, (3) anger problems, (4) thought disturbance, and (5) addiction and traumatic stress. The findings support the validity of the MAYSI-2 for juvenile justice mental health screening while highlighting possible refinements in scoring in order to identify delinquent youths with distinctive psychosocial risks and needs.     

Persistent stress 'deafness': the case of French learners of Spanish

Previous research by Dupoux et al. [Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastián, N., & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing "deafness" in French? Journal of Memory Language 36, 406-421; Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S., & Sebastián-Gallés (2001). A robust method to study stress' deafness. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 110, 1608-1618.] found that French speakers, as opposed to Spanish ones, are impaired in discrimination tasks with stimuli that vary only in the position of stress. However, what was called stress 'deafness' was only found in tasks that used high phonetic variability and memory load, not in cognitively less demanding tasks such as single token AX discrimination. This raised the possibility that instead of a perceptual problem, monolingual French speakers might simply lack a metalinguistic representation of contrastive stress, which would impair them in memory tasks. We examined a sample of 39 native speakers of French who underwent formal teaching of Spanish after age 10, and varied in degree of practice in this language. Using a sequence recall task, we observed in all our groups of late learners of Spanish the same impairment in short-term memory encoding of stress contrasts that was previously found in French monolinguals. Furthermore, using a speeded lexical decision task with word-nonword minimal pairs that differ only in the position of stress, we found that all late learners had much difficulty in the use of stress to access the lexicon. Our results show that stress 'deafness' is better interpreted as a lasting processing problem resulting from the impossibility for French speakers to encode contrastive stress in their phonological representations. This affects their memory encoding as well as their lexical access in on-line tasks. The generality of such a persistent suprasegmental 'deafness' is discussed in relation to current findings and models on the perception of non-native phonological contrasts.     

Discrimination of coronal stops by bilingual adults: the timing and nature of language interaction

The current study was designed to investigate the timing and nature of interaction between the two languages of bilinguals. For this purpose, we compared discrimination of Canadian French and Canadian English coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual, monolingual and advanced early L2 learners of French and English. French /d/ is phonetically described as dental whereas English /d/ is described as alveolar. Using a categorial AXB task, the performance of all four groups was compared to chance and to the performance of native Hindi listeners. Hindi listeners performed well above chance in discriminating French and English /d/-initial syllables. The discrimination performance of advanced early L2 learners, but not simultaneous bilinguals, was consistent with one merged category for coronal stops in the two languages. The data provide evidence for interaction in L2 learners as well as simultaneous bilinguals; however, the nature of the interaction is different in the two groups.