Child Psychology Commons^™

Birth Order And Its Effect On Depression In Adults, Sambul Zaidi

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to find the relationship between birth order and depression. It hypothesized that first-borns are more susceptible to depression than laterborns. Subjects were male and female undergraduate students from Rowan University. These students were over the age of 18 and were kept anonymous. The study collected data from fifteen participants by using a Birth Order survey which included questions about personality traits that pertain to a certain birth order position. Each subject was asked to indicate the exact birth order rank and if they have experienced depression or signs of depression. Results showed that differences …

Cognitive-Behavioral Group Treatment For A Sexually Abused Child And A Nonoffending Caregiver: Case Study And Discussion, Grace S. Hubel, Rosalita C. Maldonado, Poonam Tavkar, David J. Hansen, Mary Fran Flood

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This study presents the case of 11-year-old Amanda and her mother (Ms. Jones) who completed Project SAFE (Sexual Abuse Family Education), a manualized group treatment for sexually abused children and their nonoffending caregivers. Amanda experienced sexual abuse by her stepfather on multiple occasions over a 4-year period. Prior to treatment, Amanda reported symptoms of anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and fear related to victimization. Ms. Jones also reported clinically significant internalizing problems for Amanda. Ms. Jones presented with stress related to parenting as well as depression and anxiety. Both Amanda and Ms. Jones completed the entire 12-session protocol. Amanda and Ms. Jones’s …

The Loss Of Neighborhood Secondary Schools: How The Distance A Student Lives From Their School Can Affect Their Academic Achievement, Gillian Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the distance a student lives from their school influences their academic achievement. In detail, this study has correlated the distance in miles a student lives from his or her school with their grade point average at the end of their freshman and junior years. Data has been collected from 100 participants at two private high schools in southern New Jersey, Our Lady of Mercy Academy and Saint Augustine College Prepatory School. Both schools are grades ninth through twelfth. Both schools are Catholic schools but you do not have to be Catholic …

Increasing Students Self-Esteem Through The Implementation Of The Bucket Filler Lesson Plans, Jenna Norton

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which positive psychology can impact the educational system. Twenty-three second grade students enrolled in Berlin Community School, located in Berlin New Jersey participated in this study. All students were enrolled in a regular education classroom and assumed to be learning at the appropriate age group level. The Piers-Harris 2 Self-Concept Scale was used to measure student's self-esteem as a pre-test and a post-test assessment. The experimental group received the implementation of the Bucket Filler Lesson plans in hopes that their self-esteem would improve upon completion of the lessons. The …

A Kinder, Gentler Nativism?: Review Of Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Review of Alison Gopnik, The philosophical baby: What children's minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life.

In its historic philosophical and psychological formulations, nativism highlighted innateness. Development was deemed nothingmore than a genetically driven process ofmaturation; learning, in turn, was nothing more than the filling in of superficial content. In this determinist view, neither development nor learning could be deemed active, creative, or constructive processes, and nothing genuinely new could result.

The nativists who have increasingly populated the literature of developmental psychology since the 1980s, however, are neonativists. Neonativists fully accept modern views of immature organisms …

Integrating The Development Of Children And Gestalt Therapy, Jennifer J. Thompson

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

There are many theories that have contributed to what we know about the development of children; for instance, theoretical diversity supports the complexities of human nature. A child's developmental level will impact his ability to relate. Gestalt theory supports the child's phenomenological view by focusing on the here-and-now of what is happening in the therapeutic environment. Most of what a child will do is in response to a need or want. The child will work toward fulfilling that need. The child may develop maladaptive ways to fulfill his needs based on the environment in which he lives. Gestalt play therapy …

Minority Disproportionality In New Jersey, Shannon Kemp

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to examine whether New Jersey districts exhibited minority disproportionality, or the overrepresentation of minority students in special education eligibility categories and placements. A dataset with a random sample of 200 school districts was compiled with special education data from the New Jersey Department of Education. Through analyses of four ethnicities, White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, it was discovered that Black and Hispanic students were significantly more likely to be placed in special education as compared to their peers. Asian students were significantly less likely to be represented in special education in comparison to their non-Asian counterparts. Black …

An Exploratory Investigation Of Family Structure And Adult Attachment Orientation, Alison Rossi

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the possible role family structure plays on adult attachment orientation. Eighty-six students enrolled in introductory level psychology courses at Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey, participated in this study. Indicated in previous studies as valid to measure experiences in romantic relationships, the personality traits of attachment-related Anxiety and attachment-related Avoidance were analyzed by the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire (ECR-R). Independent t-Tests were used to determine if differences exist in young-adult participants of both the intact-families (n=66) or divorced-families (n=20) groups, as particularly measured by the attachment-related Anxiety and attachment-related Avoidance scales of …

The Fairy Tale Test: Evaluating Personality Characteristics Of Children Across Cultures And Languages, Carina Coulacaglou, Elena Savina, Kimberly Brown, Glena Andrews

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

No abstract provided.

School Refusal Behavior: A Phenomenological Study Of Latino/A Children's Experiences, Mary Ashley Angelo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

School refusal behavior (SRB) is a subset of absenteeism in which children either altogether refuse to attend school or experience great difficulty remaining in class for the duration of the school day. Child motivated SRB is a growing problem that now affects between 5% and 28% of children and adolescents at some point during their lives. The effects of SRB can extend well beyond the classroom. Long-term, SRB can lead to delinquency and psychiatric, occupational, and marital problems in adulthood. Additionally, children who consistently exhibit SRB are more likely to drop out of school, thereby limiting their career choices and …

Parent Efficacy And Parent Involvement In Parents Of Preschool Children, Jennifer Murkli

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the relationship between parent involvement and parent efficacy in parents of preschool children. Twenty parents from a suburban, a predominantly White private preschool participated in the study. Parent self-reports of involvement and efficacy beliefs as they pertain to their preschooler's learning and development were assessed. On average, parents reported medium parent efficacy and medium parent involvement. Results of the study demonstrated a significant relationship between parent involvement and parent efficacy. The relationship was moderate with a positive direction. Thus, the relationship demonstrated to a modest degree that greater parent efficacy is related to greater parent involvement, …

A Moderational Model Investigating Child Temperament, Executive Functioning, And Contextual Predictors Of Externalizing Behaviors In Preschoolers, Ferne Arlene Pinard

Dissertations

Child externalizing behavioral problems (e.g., ADHD symptoms and aggressive behaviors) often appear early in life, are relatively stable, and are associated with maladaptive outcomes in many domains of functioning. Research has shown that, for a subset of children who demonstrate these early behavioral patterns, the course is often more pervasive and persistent. Consequently, a better understanding of externalizing behavioral problems during the preschool period is essential. The current study examined whether biologically-based correlates (i.e., child temperament and executive functioning/neurocognitive attention; EF/Attention) would moderate the relation between the contextual correlates (i.e., socioeconomic status and parenting practices) and externalizing behaviors (i.e., ADHD …

The Family Environment And Children With An Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Longitudinal Examination Of The Relation Between Parental Expressed Emotion And Child Externalizing Behaviors, Stephanie Bader

Dissertations

The current study, a longitudinal study using Bader (2009) as Time 1 data, used questionnaire data to explore the longitudinal relation between parental expressed emotion, a well-established predictor of symptom relapse in various other disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar, and behavior disorders), with change in externalizing behaviors in 84 children, ages 8 to 18, with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both components of expressed emotion, criticism/hostility and overinvolvement, were explored, though hypotheses were only made in regard to criticism/hostility. It was found that high levels of parental criticism/hostility, not parental overinvolvement, at Time 2 uniquely related to higher levels of externalizing …

The Relationship Of Ethnicity And Familial Factors In The Expression Of School Refusal Behavior In Clinical And Community Samples, Courtney Marie Haight

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Failure to attend school can have a devastating impact on a child’s social, emotional, academic, and later career development. Psychologists, educators, and researchers from other disciplines have produced large bodies of literature regarding problematic absenteeism. This has led to varying terminology, divergent approaches, assessment, and treatment of nonattendance. Additional research on contextual, proximal, and distal variables, such as culture and family, has been encouraged. The present study involved contextual variables related to school refusal behavior and contained a more representative sample of youth with attendance difficulties than previous studies. Contextual variables included youth and parent ethnic identity, family environment, school …

The Effect Of Endpoint Knowledge On Dot Enumeration, Alex Michael Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study attempts to extend the principle tenets of the Overlapping Waves Theory (Siegler, 1996), a framework designed to explain the progression of trends in cognitive development, to adult participants’ performance in a dot enumeration task. Literature in the 0-100 number line estimation task (Siegler & Booth, 2004, Ashcraft & Moore, 2011) has revealed a pervasive trend in child estimation such that young children (especially those in kindergarten) respond with a logarithmic line of best fit, while children at the third grade and above overwhelmingly respond with linear estimates to this same range of numbers. A similar developmental trend is …

The Relationship Between Nighttime Reading With Children By Their Caregivers And Reading Achievement, Ashley Williams

Theses and Dissertations

The hypothesis of this research project was to determine if there was a significant relationship between children who were read to by their caregivers in previous years and children who were not read to by their caregivers in previous years. The relationship between reading achievement and gender was also examined in this research study. Twelve fourth grade students (six male, six female) were asked to complete a questionnaire about their reading practices and take a brief two part reading assessment, consisting of word recognition and reading comprehension. A two way between groups ANOVA revealed that there was not a significant …

The Importance Of Cultural Competence When Evaluating Bilingual Students, Maria-Ines Castro

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of language and culture on Hispanic student test taking performance. Specifically, the researcher hypothesized that Hispanic students' test taking performance would be impacted by the language used on the assessment given, and the test administrator's awareness, knowledge, and skills related to cultural competence. Twelve bilingual-Hispanic students from Rowan University-Camden completed a Nelson-Denny Reading Test for the purpose of this research project. The same test was presented to all students in an English version and a Spanish version. A Mixed Design with repeated measures indicated that there was no significant difference …

Suicide Risk At Young Adulthood: Continuities And Discontinuities From Adolescence, Carole Hooven, Karen A. Snedker, Elaine Adams Thompson

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Young adult suicide is an important social problem, yet little is known about how risk for young adult suicide develops from earlier life stages. In this study the authors report on 759 young adults who were potential high school dropouts as youth. At both adolescence and young adulthood, measures of suicide risk status and related suicide risk factors are collected. With a two-by-two classification on the basis of suicide risk status at both adolescence and young adulthood, the authors distinguish four mutually exclusive groups reflecting suicide risk at two life stages. Using ANOVA and logistic regression, both adolescent and young …

Abnormal Eating Patterns And The Relationship To Dissociative Experiences, Gionna Botto

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if a relationship exist between abnormal eating patterns and dissociative experiences, as well as if a relationship exist between bulimia nervosa and food preoccupation symptomatologies. This study used a non-clinical non-diagnosed population of university students (n=100) to determine results. The participants were given two self-report scales, the Eating Attitudes Test and the Scale of Dissociative Activities in order to provide data to the researcher. The data was correlated, using Pearson's Correlation to determine results. The results in this study indicated that there is a statistically significant relationship between dissociative experiences and abnormal …

Vision Accuracy: Comparisons, Mark Roman

Theses and Dissertations

Solomon Asch conducted a Line Judgment Task in the 1950s that led researchers to believe that conformity can be assessed through experimentation. The purpose of this study was to modify that of Asch's experiment and to assess the answers that college undergraduate students would give. Twelve trials of line comparison tasks were utilized as well as answers from five confederates. It was hypothesized that out of the 47 participants, more of them would answer incorrectly to the incorrectly answered trials of the confederates than those to those trials that the confederates answered correctly. There were a total of five incorrect …