7～11岁儿童失言理解及与母亲教养方式的关系

采用失言任务和改编后的教养方式问卷探讨7~11岁儿童心理理论的发展及其与母亲教养方式的相关。结果表明,在学龄期,儿童在不同层面上对失言的理解能力仍在提高,高年级时已超出单一维度。7岁儿童对包含意图的信念理解与母亲的"过度偏爱"显著负相关;8岁儿童对包含意图的信念理解与母亲的"惩罚和严厉"显著负相关。结果提示在某些年龄阶段,儿童心理理论的发展可能与母亲特定的教养方式有关。     

Changes in Children's Episodic Narratives Through Long-Term Repeated Recall: Longitudinal Case Studies1

This study aimed to investigate whether a child's narrative of a particular past episode would change in repeated reporting over the long term, and if so, how it would change. To answer these questions, I conducted longitudinal case studies of episodic reports by children every 2–6 months, from their early childhood to the age of 10–15 years. Criteria for inclusion were set in advance; seven episodic narratives meeting these criteria were analyzed. Two types of changes in the narratives were observed, as expected: that of including other information, and that of an event suddenly being reported after no recall for several years. Information from the children's surroundings seemed to be substantially involved in these changes in their episodic narratives. The present results also indicate that mothers' episodic memories are not always reliable and that the schema children have can influence their episodic memories.     

Treating Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder With Virtual Environments and Serious Games: A Randomized Trial

Disseminating efficacious psychological treatments remains a challenge for researchers and clinicians. In the case of social anxiety disorder (SAD), Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) has been demonstrated as an efficacious intervention, but elements of the protocol, such as peer generalization sessions, remain challenging to conduct in typical clinical settings. To address this need, we developed an artificially intelligent, web-based application, Pegasys-VR™, designed to replace peer generalization sessions and enhance homework compliance. The feasibility of Pegasys-VR™ was tested in a randomized controlled trial in comparison to SET-C. The results indicated that both programs were equally efficacious in decreasing anxiety and improving social skill in social encounters. Sixty-three percent (63%) of children treated with SET-C and 60% treated with Pegasys-VR™ did not meet diagnostic criteria for SAD at posttreatment. Pegasys-VR™ is a feasible, efficacious, and dissemination-friendly element of a comprehensive treatment program for social anxiety disorder in children.     

Real and virtual classrooms can trigger the same levels of stuttering severity ratings and anxiety in school-age children and adolescents who stutter

PurposeMany school-age children and adolescents who stutter experience the fear of public speaking. Treatment implications include the need to address this problem. However, it is not always possible to train repeatedly in front of a real audience. The present study aimed to assess the relevance of using a virtual classroom in clinical practice with school-age children and adolescents who stutter.MethodsTen children and adolescents who stutter (aged 9–17 years old) had to speak in three different situations: in front of a real audience, in front of a virtual class and in an empty virtual apartment using a head-mounted display. We aimed to assess whether the self-rated levels of anxiety while speaking in front of a virtual audience reflect the levels of anxiety reported while speaking in front of a live audience, and if the stuttering level while speaking to a virtual class reflects the stuttering level while speaking in real conditions.ResultsResults show that the real audience creates higher anticipatory anxiety than the virtual class. However, both the self-reported anxiety levels and the stuttering severity ratings when talking in front of a virtual class did not differ from those observed when talking to a real audience, and were significantly higher than when talking in an empty virtual apartment.ConclusionOur results support the feasibility and relevance of using a virtual classroom to expose school-age children and adolescents who stutter to a feared situation during cognitive behavioral therapy targeting the fear of public speaking.     

Enhancing the care of children with chronic diseases through the narratives of patient,physician, nurse and carer

We tested the hypothesis that a narrative approach may enhance a bio‐psycho‐social model (BPS) in caring for chronically ill children. Forty‐eight narratives were collected from 12 children with six different medical conditions, their mothers, physicians, and nurses. By a textual analysis, narratives were classified on their predominant focus as disease (biological focus), illness (psychologic focus), or sickness (social focus). Sixty‐one percent of narrative’ text were classified as illness, 28% as disease and 11% as sickness. All narratives had a degree of illness focus. Narratives by patients and physicians on the one hand, and nurses’ and mothers’ on the other were disease focused. Narratives were also evaluated with respect to the type of medical condition: Illness was largely prevalent in all but Crohn’s disease and HIV infection, the latter having a predominance of sickness most probably related to stigma. Narrative exploration proved a valuable tool for understanding and addressing the needs of children with complex conditions. Narrative approaches allow identification of the major needs of different patients according to health conditions and story tellers. In the narratives, we found a greater illness and disease focus and surprisingly a low sickness focus, except with HIV stories. Narrative medicine provides a tool to strengthen the BPS model in health care.     

States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children

Curiosity – broadly defined as the desire to acquire new information – enhances learning and memory in adults. In addition, interest in the information (i.e., when the information is processed) can also facilitate later memory. To date, it is not known how states of pre‐information curiosity and post‐information interest enhance memory in childhood and adolescence. We used a trivia paradigm in which children and adolescents (N = 60, 10–14 years) encoded trivia questions and answers associated with high or low curiosity. States of high pre‐answer curiosity enhanced later memory for trivia answers in both children and adolescents. However, higher positive post‐answer interest enhanced memory for trivia answers beyond the effects of curiosity more strongly in adolescents than in children. These results suggest that curiosity and interest have positive effects on learning and memory in childhood and adolescence, but might need to be harnessed in differential ways across child development to optimize learning.     

Parenting Sensitivity,Parental Depression and Child Health: The Mediational Role of Parental Self-Efficacy

This paper discusses the theoretical role of parental self-efficacy, or parents' beliefs in their competence and effectiveness in the parental role, as a mediator of relations between parent–child risk and parental sensitivity. Evidence is marshalled from studies of parenting in the contexts of maternal depression and child health risk to support the premise that parent–child characteristics affect parental sensitivity indirectly via their more direct impact on parental feelings of efficacy, and that parenting efficacy represents the ‘final common pathway’ in the prediction of parenting sensitivity. Also considered in this working model are specific social-contextual factors as independent contributors to parenting efficacy and as possible moderators of relations between parent–child characteristics and self-efficacy. Implications for intervention are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of skill-building and desensitization strategies for intervention with aggressive children

Social skills training and desensitization interventions were conducted with 41 institutionalized aggressive children aged 7–13. Subjects were randomly assigned after blocking by aggression and cooperative play to either of the treatments. Dependent measures were direct observations of playground play and teacher ratings. Subjects in the social skills program mastered the basic cognitive skills presented to them. Observational data indicated that both groups experienced marked reduction in aggressive behavior and increases in cooperative play. The social skills training intervention engendered incremental improvement in aggression in comparison to the desensitization condition. However, none of the behavioral changes evident in the observations were reflected in teacher ratings.     

The academic outcomes of working memory and metacognitive strategy training in children: A double‐blind randomized controlled trial

Working memory training has been shown to improve performance on untrained working memory tasks in typically developing children, at least when compared to non‐adaptive training; however, there is little evidence that it improves academic outcomes. The lack of transfer to academic outcomes may be because children are only learning skills and strategies in a very narrow context, which they are unable to apply to other tasks. Metacognitive strategy interventions, which promote metacognitive awareness and teach children general strategies that can be used on a variety of tasks, may be a crucial missing link in this regard. In this double‐blind randomized controlled trial, 95 typically developing children aged 9–14 years were allocated to three cognitive training programmes that were conducted daily after‐school. One group received Cogmed working memory training, another group received concurrent Cogmed and metacognitive strategy training, and the control group received adaptive visual search training, which better controls for expectancy and motivation than non‐adaptive training. Children were assessed on four working memory tasks, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning before, immediately after, and 3 months after training. Working memory training improved working memory and mathematical reasoning relative to the control group. The improvements in working memory were maintained 3 months later, and these were significantly greater for the group that received metacognitive strategy training, compared to working memory training alone. Working memory training is a potentially effective educational intervention when provided in addition to school; however, future research will need to investigate ways to maintain academic improvements long term and to optimize metacognitive strategy training to promote far‐transfer. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/-7MML48ZFgw     

非正式学习环境中幼儿的自发数量聚焦

大量从“能力”角度来探讨个体早期数学发展的研究仅专注于儿童早期的数学知识和技能, 而忽略了可能与儿童早期数学能力相关的方面。近年来, 数学认知发展研究者逐渐开始关注自发数量聚焦(Spontaneous focusing on numerosity, SFON), 即个体对环境中数量相关信息自发注意的认知倾向。SFON被视为其他数学聚焦倾向概念的基础, 但与自发数字聚焦(SAN)、自发阿拉伯数字聚焦(SFONS)和自发数量关系聚焦(SFOR)之间的联系仍需进一步明晰。作为数学表现的领域特异预测因子, 个体SFON的发展轨迹和作用机制是当前研究的重点所在。未来可从数学动机、数学焦虑等角度进一步探讨SFON的作用机制, 改良与创新SFON测量工具, 同时需深入推进家庭和学校场合的SFON干预研究。