Child Psychology Commons^™

Exploring The Relationship Between Physical Activity And Executive Function In Early Childhood Populations: An Investigation Of Maternal Encouragement Of Activity, Lauren P. Driggers-Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have found positive associations between physical activity and executive function in adolescence and adulthood. However, research in early childhood has revealed only negative relationships. In the present study, I explored whether maternal encouragement of physical activity might moderate this relationship in very young children. Using video recordings from an archival dataset, eight maternal encouragement measures were derived from mother-child free play sessions. Although it was expected that maternal encouragement of child activity would broadly play a moderating role in the relationship between children’s physical activity and their executive function, only maternal questions seemed to moderate this relationship. One explanation …

General And Emotion-Specific Alterations To Cognitive Control In Women With A History Of Childhood Abuse, Kristen L. Mackiewicz Seghete, Roselinde H. Kaiser, Anne P. Deprince, Marie T. Banich

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Although limited, the literature suggests alterations in activation of cognitive control regions in adults and adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. The current study examined whether such alterations are increased in the face of emotionally-distracting as compared to emotionally neutral information, and whether such alterations occur in brain regions that exert cognitive control in a more top-down sustained manner or a more bottom-up transient manner.

Methods

Participants were young adult women (ages 23–30): one group with a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse (N = 15) and one with no trauma exposure (N = 17), as assessed …

Design And Evaluation Of A Problem-Based Learning Environment For Teacher Training, Laura Hemker, Claudia Prescher, Susanne Narciss

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning can have a great impact on the acquisition of practical knowledge, which is a central learning aim in the field of teacher education. Therefore, we implemented a problem-based learning approach in four seminars on educational assessment. In this paper, we outline our didactic design and discuss the results of the first evaluations, which explored acceptance of the approach, learning results, and expected applicability of the acquired knowledge.

The results show benefits of the problem-based learning approach, but also room for improvement. Specifically, the use of problems from multiple contexts (theoretical foundations and direct practical application) and the flexible …

Longitudinal Predictors Of Parental Sensitivity: The Role Of Parent Personality And Infant Temperament Across Early Infancy, Lauren Grace Bailes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Parents play a critical role in their infants’ social and emotional development (Zeifman, 2003). High parental sensitivity contributes to greater infant attachment security (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997), as well as better compliance later in life (van Berkel et al., 2015). Personality influences how parents respond to their infants, such that parents higher in neuroticism are more controlling and less stimulating (Clark, Kochanska, & Ready, 2000), and less responsive (Kochanska, Friesenborg, Lange, & Martel, 2004). However, previous studies have found mixed results with parent extraversion. Some studies found that high parental extraversion could lead to more parent responsiveness (Clark …

Data Sets For “Pubh-D-17-00335r2 Effects Of Selected Socio-Demographic Characteristics On Nutrition Knowledge And Eating Behavior Of Elementary Students In Two Provinces In China”, Ling Qian, Fan Zhang, Ian Newman, Duane F. Shell, Weijing Du

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The 2 attached digital files are placed in UNL Digital Commons for access by readers of open access journal BMC Public Health < https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/ >. The data set supports the analysis reported in the study “PUBH-D-17-00335R2 Effects of Selected Socio-demographic Characteristics on Nutrition Knowledge and Eating Behavior of Elementary Students in Two Provinces in China” by Ling Qian, MD PhD; Fan Zhang, MD PhD; Ian M. Newman, PhD; Duane F. Shell, PhD; Weijing Du, MD PhD.

The paper has been accepted by BMC Public Health. It is the journal’s policy that the data on which the conclusions are based are …

How Social Reactions To Alcohol-Related Facial Flushing Are Affected By Gender, Relationship, And Drinking Purposes: Implications For Education To Reduce Aerodigestive Cancer Risks, Ian Newman, Lanyan Ding, Duane F. Shell, Lida Lin

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Alcohol-related facial flushing is a sign of compromised alcohol metabolism and increased risk of certain cancers. This project examined how facial flushing might be used to reduce alcohol use to lower cancer risks. Interviews with Chinese university students identified gender, friendship, and drinking purpose as important variables related to whether someone would encourage a person who flushes when drinking alcohol to stop or reduce their drinking. A questionnaire was developed that incorporated these variables into 24 drinking scenarios in which someone flushed while drinking. Students responded whether they would (a) encourage the flusher to stop or drink less; (b) do …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

An Evaluation And Revision Of The Children’S Behavior Questionnaire Effortful Control Scales, Scott R. Frohn

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001) is a popular parent report measure of children’s temperament. Effortful control, which refers to processes involved in regulating reactivity to internal and external stimuli, is one factor of temperament measured by the CBQ using five scales tapping multiple dimensions. Numerous studies examining the psychometric properties of the CBQ have shown some problems with the scales, including inconsistent factor structures and measurement noninvariance. Furthermore, the way effortful control is typically defined in the literature, and even according to the CBQ’s authors, is inconsistent with how it is actually measured with …

Alcohol Flushing Social Reactions Survey Data 2011, Ian Newman, Lanyan Ding, Duane F. Shell, Lida Lin

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Format: XLSX file

Brief description of the data set:

Tab 1 of the Excel file contains the variable codes.

Tab 2 of the Excel file contains the de-identified survey responses from 2912 undergraduate students attending universities in southwestern, central, and northeastern China (People’s Republic of China). The survey was conducted in the spring university term of 2011.

Spreadsheet data file is attached below as an "Additional file".

(The "Download button retrieves a copy of this metadata.)

Reconstruction Of The Destroyed Sinjali Secondary School, Isabella Kaganowski

Sustainability and Social Justice

This practitioner paper chronicles my involvement of the grant writing proposal that was designed on behalf of a non-for-profit organization, the Association of Dalit Women’s Advancement of Nepal (ADWAN), in order to secure funding and donations for the reconstruction of the destroyed Sinjali Secondary School in Gorkha district, Taklung village, after a 2015 earthquake struck Nepal. The proposal was guided by and collaborated with Professor Jude Fernando of Clark University, as Professor Fernando was able to visit Taklung village and gather information about the needs in the educational sector damaged by the earthquake. Literature review and research was gathered to …

A Retro Development In Education: Evaluating The Feasibility Of Integrating Place-Based Education Into Mississippi Curriculum Standards, Colby K. Mcclain

Honors Theses

This thesis evaluates the feasibility of integrating place-based environmental education activities from Think Green, Take Action: Books and Activities for Kids into the Mississippi Department of Education’s (MDE) Frameworks for Science and Social Studies for K-5. As children develop and experience the world, their ability to understand and interpret the surrounding environments expand; however, Mississippi schools are not focused on experiential environmental education, even though experiencing and understanding the surrounding environment is vital in fostering eagerness to learn. Due to a growing disconnect between humans and the natural world, this thesis examined 37 place- and environment-based activities for children, sixteen …

Odd Symptom Network During Preschool, Tess E. Smith, Christine A. Lee, Michelle M. Martel, Marni E. Axelrad

Psychology Faculty Publications

Several different conceptualizations of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) symptoms have been proposed, including one undivided set of symptoms (DSM-IV-TR; APA 2000); two domains of symptoms subdivided into affective and behavioral; and three domains of symptoms subdivided as angry/irritable, argumentative/defiant, and spiteful. The current study utilizes a novel approach to examining the division of ODD symptoms through use of network analysis. Participants were 109 preschoolers (64 male) between the ages of three and six (M = 4.34 years, SD = 1.08) and their parents and teachers/caregivers, who provided ratings of ODD symptoms. Results are consistent with one-, two-, and three- …

An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Examination Of Empathy And Multiple Intelligences Among Youth Involved In Bullying, Heather Schwartz

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Bullying is a significant issue among school-aged youth, and it is important to examine the underlying mechanisms of these behaviors. Studies have shown that one characteristic found among some children who bully is a lack of empathy. Previous literature examining empathy and bullying has typically relied on the use of self-report data. Few studies have included other ways of evaluating empathy. Self-report data can be limiting, particularly for individuals who possess strengths other than verbal/linguistic. Drawings have been found to reveal insight into children’s emotions and may be more suited to assessing empathy. Studying children’s drawings of bullying, and their …

The Effects Of Familiarity On Visual Search Performance Of Typically Developing Toddlers And Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Laura Keegan

Honors College Theses

Visual Search is an attention task that measures how efficiently a person is able to find a target among distractors. It has been found before that children diagnosed with ASD can perform better at visual search when compared to age-matched typically developing children (Kaldy et al., 2011, 2013). Our team conducted a follow-up study with slightly different stimulus parameters (Smith et al., 2015) and two different potential target objects (in this task, an apple vs. a carrot). The results showed that the identity of the target object influenced toddlers’ search performance: they were slightly faster at finding the target when …

Monolingual And Bilingual Children's Language-Based Social Preferences In A Predominantly Monolingual Environment, Rachel Marie Stevens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Monolingual children consistently display Social preferences for individuals who speak their native language with a native accent compared to individuals who speak a foreign language or speak their native language with a foreign accent. Two explanations have been proposed for these language-based preferences. The first explanation is that language cues a child to in-group membership and children prefer to affiliate with individuals who are members of the same in-group. The second explanation is that children display preferences for their native language and accent because that is what they are most familiar with, and children prefer familiarity over the unknown. The …

Within-Session Progressive Gestural-Prompt Delay To Teach Receptive Identification, Breanne Stiemsma

Honors Theses

Receptive identification skills are important for any child to learn. Without these skills, various aspects of development can become impaired. There are many ways to teach receptive identification. This project pulled ideas from previous studies on within-session progressive gestural-prompt delays as well as the different methods of teaching receptive identification skills, simple-conditional method and the condition-only method. The student was not acquiring receptive identification skills with the traditional methods used in the classroom. Within-session progressive gestural-prompt delay was used in this project to teach receptive identification of objects. An AB single-subject design was used in this project. The student responded …

Explicit Programming For Icon Rings: Visual-Based Discrimination, Samantha Borowski

Honors Theses

Instructional icons are helpful as basic direction following is the basis for complex skills needed later in life. These instructions should have a good training so that children can get the basic skills and can move on to the complex skills. The goal of the project was to increase the correct responses to instructional icons. Visuals are a good tool for learning because it attaches a picture with the event that is happening or will happen. Children with autism sometimes struggle when they are introduced to a new environment so having a system in place to help make instruction following …

Teaching Two Children Diagnosed With Autism To Tolerate Physical Contact, Kelsey Webster

Honors Theses

It was hypothesized that the fading in of a prompt hierarchy coinciding with the delivery of tangibles, edibles, and attention or praise reinforcers would decrease problem behavior and noncompliance in two male children with autism who displayed problem behavior and resistance while being physically prompted. A single-subject research design was used to present the prompt hierarchy across various conditions in a school setting. Both participants initially engaged in problem behavior on 100% of the trials but quickly reduced in intensity of problem behaviors by the end of the intervention. There is no current research conducted on how to decrease problem …

Toilet-Training A Child With Autism In A School Setting, Kristianna Ferrier

Honors Theses

Children with autism and developmental disabilities typically take longer to learn skills. Specific training that requires more repetition to obtain mastery should be used to teach specific tasks (MacDuff, Kratz, & McClannahan, 2001). Toilet training is no exception and must be directly taught to children with Autism. Toilet training is a fundamental skill for independent living and greatly reduces the work load of care givers (Chung, 2007). The child in this study was chosen based on a toilet training readiness checklist. The present study is a combination of the scheduled sitting protocol by Azrin and Foxx (1971) with the omission …

Increasing Shared Attention In Children With Developmental Delays, Shelby Esman

Honors Theses

Joint attention behaviors may be essential to the development of language and social interaction skills (Whalen and Schreibman, 2003). Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often lack these behaviors which may explain the difficulty many of them have communicating appropriately with others (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Previous research has shown that prompting procedures and social reinforcement have been successful in teaching children with ASD to shift their eye gaze between an adult and the object of interest when prompted to do so (Taylor and Hoch, 2008). This present study set out to create and test a procedure designed to teach …

David And Goliath, Jacob Thorpe

Marriott Student Review

Book review of David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.

The Efficacy Of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation In The Home Setting: Outcomes And Mechanisms In Rural Communities, Susan M. Sheridan, Amanda Witte, Shannon R. Holmes, Chaorong Wu

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

This study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial examining the effect of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC), a family-school partnership intervention, on children’s behaviors, parents’ skills, and parent-teacher relationships in rural community and town settings. Participants were 267 children, 267 parents, and 152 teachers in 45 Midwestern schools. Using an Intent to Treat approach and data analyzed within a multilevel modeling framework, CBC yielded promising results for some but not all outcomes. Specifically, children participating in CBC experienced decreases in daily reports of aggressiveness, noncompliance, and temper tantrums; and increases in parent-reported adaptive skills and social skills at a …

Black Girlhood: Reshaping The Identity And Improving The Well-Being Of African American Girls, Karla La'toya Sapp Ed.D

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The identity and overall well-being of African American girls tends to be influenced, both positively and negatively, by the following factors: mass media, gender roles, and environmental factors. Black Girlhood examines the identity development of African American girls utilizing the relational developmental systems theory framework. Black Girlhood also explores the role that mass media, gender roles, and environmental factors shape how African American girls view themselves, while providing interventions that can allow the reshaping of their identity and improvement in their overall well-being.

Adults’ Knowledge Of Child Development And Child Guidance, Daniela Perez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Decades of research studies suggest that the quality of parenting skills and parenting knowledge about children’s development have profound effects on children’s development. Studies to date show that most adults lack knowledge of child development and developmentally-appropriate child guidance. These studies, however have focused on white, middle-class, well-educated women and are limited in the range of issues addressed. The purpose of this study was to gain a more accurate understanding about adults’ knowledge of child development and child guidance by assessing female and male adults using an ethnically diverse population. Data from 705 adult participants showed that adults knew more …

‘Mixed Blessings’: Parental Religiousness, Parenting, And Child Adjustment In Global Perspective, Marc H. Bornstein, Diane L. Putnick, Jennifer E. Lansford, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Anna Silvia Bombi, Lei Chang, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Arnaldo Zelli, Liane Peña Alampay

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

Background

Most studies of the effects of parental religiousness on parenting and child development focus on a particular religion or cultural group, which limits generalizations that can be made about the effects of parental religiousness on family life.

Methods

We assessed the associations among parental religiousness, parenting, and children's adjustment in a 3‐year longitudinal investigation of 1,198 families from nine countries. We included four religions (Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and Islam) plus unaffiliated parents, two positive (efficacy and warmth) and two negative (control and rejection) parenting practices, and two positive (social competence and school performance) and two negative (internalizing and externalizing) …

Around The World, Adolescence Is A Time Of Heightened Sensation Seeking And Immature Self-Regulation, Laurence Steinberg, Grace Icenogle, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Kaitlyn Breiner, Jason Chein, Dario Bacchini, Lei Chang, Nandita Chaudhary, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Kostas A. Fanti, Jennifer E. Lansford, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Hanan M S Takash

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

The dual systems model of adolescent risk‐taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still‐maturing self‐regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi‐method test battery that includes both self‐report and performance‐based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late …

The Fantastic Manifesto: Monstrosity Of Memory And Epiphany Of Selfhood In The Spirit Of The Beehive (1973), Layla Blodgett Carrillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish culture of storytelling suffered under the nearly forty-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The government-regulated cinema welcomed propaganda and melodrama, and denied the fantastic, the legendary, and the magical. These carefully manipulated histories, which served to romanticize the ideologies of the regime, also served to eulogize the delinquent and the depraved. In the early 1970s, at the heels of the collapse of Franco’s reign, the people of Spain bore witness to a new national cinema. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), the feature debut from Victor Erice, exists at the threshold between a storied history of Spanish dictatorship and …

Adhd And Theory Of Mind In School-Age Children: Exploring The Cognitive Nature Of Social Interactions In Children With Adhd, Rachel Feigenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience significant difficulties with social skills (Barkley, 2006; DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Stormont, 2001). The inhibitory deficit associated with ADHD is typically identified as the cause of these impaired social skills (Barkley, 2006). Additionally, some researchers have suggested that theory of mind (ToM), which is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, may be involved, but the research on ToM deficits in children with ADHD is limited and the findings are mixed. A key methodological issue in this literature is the use of traditional but problematic measures of advanced …

Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how …

Evaluation Of A Community-Based Positive Youth Development Program For Adolescents With Greater Psychosocial Needs: Views Of The Program Participants, Daniel T. L. Shek, Cecilia M. S. Ma, Moon Y. M. Law, Zoe Zhao

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

The present study attempted to investigate the perceptions of Chinese secondary school students with greater psychosocial needs of the Tier 2 Program in the community-based phase of P.A.T.H.S. Project in Hong Kong (n=4245). Using a subjective outcome evaluation tool (Form C), the results revealed that a great majority of the students held positive attitudes toward the program, implementers and the effectiveness of the program. Also, the three domains of the program (“program quality”, “implementer quality” and “program effectiveness”) were significantly associated with each other. In line with previous findings, both program content and program implementer quality were significant predictors of …