Developmental Psychology Commons^™

The Nebraska Covid-19 Early Care And Education Provider Survey Ii: Experiences, Economic Impact, And Ongoing Needs, Alexandra Daro, Kathleen Gallagher

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

The Nebraska COVID-19 Early Care and Education Provider Survey II, released in early August 2020, is a second survey following The Nebraska COVID-19 Early Care and Education Provider Survey that was conducted in March 2020. Both surveys were conducted by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska. Results from the March 2020 survey suggested that the coronavirus was negatively impacting early care and education professionals in Nebraska. Imminent threats of illness and directives for enhanced cleaning and precautionary methods (e.g., social distancing) were causing child care providers to experience high levels of stress. They were struggling to …

Cultural Socialization And Ethnic Racial Identity: Testing Conversations About Race As Mediators Among Diverse College Students, Sabrina Hawa, Maria De Jesus Cisneros, Eryn Delaney, Chloe Walker, Chelsea Williams Phd, The Spit For Science Working Group, Danielle Dick Phd

IRBEH/Spit for Science Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Stay And Play With Mickey Mouse: Familiar Characters Increase Children’S Exploratory Play, Haley A. Waite, Megan N. Norris, Allison J. Williams, Judith H. Danovitch Ph.D

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

When children are introduced to a novel toy, they explore to discover how the toy works, but do not always discover all of the functions (Bonawitz et al., 2011). Research has shown that children prefer objects with a familiar character on them (Danovitch & Mills, 2014). This study investigates whether the presence of a familiar character’s image on a novel toy encourages exploratory play. Four- and 5-year-olds (n = 40) were presented with a novel toy, containing 5 different functions, that either displayed an image of their favorite familiar character or an image of that character’s color scheme. Children were …

That's Irrelephant: Children's Judgments Of Relevant And Irrelevant Animal Observations, Rebekah C Cook, Alexandra Ducloux, Allison Williams, Judith Danovitch

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

Abstract:

The ability to make judgments about different kinds of evidence is an important skill for learning about science. This study investigated if children recognize how helpful relevant and irrelevant information is for evaluating biological explanations, and whether their judgments change with age. Participants were 24 7- and 8-year-olds and 26 9- and 10-year-olds. Children heard a statement about an animal's behavior. Then children heard an explanation for that behavior followed by 2 different observations. One observation was about the same animal but was irrelevant to the explanation. The other observation was about a different animal, but was relevant to …

Needs Assessment Of Parent Training Programs For Parents Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Using A Phenomenological Approach, Caitlyn Bailey Gumaer

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often associated with high stress, depression, anxiety, and reduced quality of life due to the ongoing nature of care (Seltzer, Krauss, Orsmond & Vestal, 2001; Evans, 2010). To remediate the difficulties that parents of children with ASD experience, parent training programs have become an integral and necessary component in the treatment of ASD. The most common type of parent training programs is behavioral parent training, based on the principles of ABA (Najdowski & Gould, 2014). Despite its advantages, researchers have found parent involvement in behavioral parent training to be more burdensome …

Finding Strength In Vulnerability: Ethical Approaches When Conducting Research With Vulnerable Populations, Elizabeth Mollard, Holly Hatton-Bowers, Julie A. Tippens

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Researchers who desire to make positive changes for vulnerable populations often conduct problem-focused studies. Although problem focused research is important, when such studies are not carefully designed, their results can contribute to a deficit discourse. A deficit discourse is a narrative that describes the person through a myopic lens of negativity characterized only by illness, death, depression, failure, or the like. Deficit discourse negatively affects how health care providers and society interact with vulnerable people. This article discusses deficit discourse in health care and strengths-based research: an ethical approach to working with vulnerable individuals in research settings and a strategy …

Preventing Teen Relationship Abuse And Sexual Assault Through Bystander Training: Intervention Outcomes For School Personnel, Katie M. Edwards, Stephanie N. Sessarego, Kimberly J. Mitchell, Hong Chang, Emily A. Waterman, Victoria L. Banyard

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

The purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of exposure to Bringing in the Bystander—High School Curriculum (BITB-HSC) on school personnel, which included a seven session classroom curriculum for ninth through twelfth graders (student curriculum), a bystander training workshop for school personnel (school personnel workshop), and reading materials (handout). We examined how exposure to these various BITB-HSC intervention components was associated with school personnel’s knowledge and bystander efficacy, intentions, and barriers specific to student relationship abuse (RA) and sexual assault (SA). Participants were 488 school personnel from 12 high schools in upper New England who completed the …

Are All Perspective Taking Tasks Created Equal? The Relationship Between Performance On Perspective Taking Tasks In Children, Pearl Christine Mcgee, Melissa Anne Czarnogursky, Yingying Jennifer Yang

Student Research Symposium

Spatial abilities assist in manipulating, constructing, and navigating the physical world (Newcombe & Shipley, 1992; Montello, 2001). In this study, a variety of tasks were utilized to measure various constructs of spatial abilities. One of the constructs measured was perspective taking which consists of the ability to understand and recognize situations at different points of view. This allows individuals to relate to others, understand spatial relations, and view objects in different spaces (Newcombe & Huttenlocker, 1992). Two tasks were employed to measure perspective taking: Piaget’s Three Mountains task and a task modeled after a study by Newcombe and Huttenlocher (1992). …

Shadow Women: Wives Betrayed By Sex Buyers, Ingeborg Kraus

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Shadow women are women whose husbands betray them by using prostituted women. Until now, there has been almost no attention paid to the harm to the wives or partners of men who use prostituted women. In this interview, Dr. Ingeborg Kraus talks to the former wife of a sex buyer. She describes the impact of her husband’s betrayal on her and her family. This type of harm needs to be taken seriously and more research done on it.

Teaching Texting On A Smart Phone To Children And Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd), Jenna Gilder

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Children and adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in social communication ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -5th edition, APA, 2013). These deficits are significantly pronounced when individuals with ASD attempt to engage in conversations. Due to advances in technology, children and adolescents are now conversing through computer mediated communication (CMC; Pew, 2015, 2018). Texting in particular is one popular form of CMC that may mitigate the non-verbal social skill deficits seen in individuals with ASD, such as eye contact and tone of voice. Despite the potential of texting and its' popularity as a CMC …

Stability Of The Learning Behaviors Scale, Nikki Davidson

Masters Theses

Learning behaviors are observable actions, habits, and manifestations of attitudes that facilitate learning, such as persevering at difficult tasks, showing interest in academic subjects, demonstrating care and concern about classwork, and graciously accepting feedback (Buchanan, McDermott, & Schaefer, 1998). Assessment of these learning behaviors is an essential first step to effective intervention. It is important to know which learning behaviors to target and the degree of deficit in order to remediate learning problems. The present study examined the medium length (two-month) stability of scores obtained from the Learning Behaviors Scale (McDermott, Green, Francis, & Stott, 1999). Fifty K-8 teacher rater …

Credit The Parents? The Impact Of Racial Socialization On African American Students’ Stress-Related Coping And College Adjustment, Briana Bouldin

Theses and Dissertations

Many new stressors emerge in college and have a significant impact on college adjustment. However, little is known about common stressors, their causes, and impact on college adjustment for students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This project investigated the extent to which different college stressors impact sleep-related college adjustment, and whether racial socialization and emotion regulation strategies serve as coping strategies that moderate this relationship for HBCU students. The theoretical framework for the study was an adapted version of the Integrative Conceptual Model of Adaptive Socialization (ICMAS; Dunbar et al., 2017). Data were collected via an online survey …

The Effects Of Parental Factors And Personal Attributes On Birth Control Use Under The Genetic Influences Of 5-Httlpr Among Adolescents, Hyun-Jin Cho

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was (a) to examine relationships between parental influences and personal attributes on birth control use and (b) to identify genetic influences on such relationships by comparing the frequencies of common genetic variants—short allele vs. long allele—in 5-HTTLPR among adolescents (N = 5,852). Data from the Wave 1 and Wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to examine the birth control use of adolescents who were in 7th through 12th grade in 1994–1995. Multi-group Structural Equation Modeling analyses were used to identify the relationship among factors. Results did not find significant …

The Lived Experiences Of Caregivers Of Children With Reactive Attachment Disorder, Abby Baumgart

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) encounter challenges in parenting and parent-child relationship development that are not typical to most parental situations. The purpose of the qualitative study was to explore the lived experiences of caregivers of children with RAD, to identify current met and unmet needs, to explore the experiences the caregivers of children with RAD have and the resources available to them. The study included a hermeneutic phenomenological foundation and incorporated the conceptual frameworks of family systems theory and attachment theory. A nonprobability, self-selection sampling strategy was utilized with recruitment through Facebook support groups. Methods included …

Pathways For Integration And Growth: Exploring Love, Passion, And Peak Experience, Monica N. Montijo

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Love, passion and peak experiences are connected to flourishing as generally positive, energizing and intense experiences that make life worth living. Although they share theoretical overlaps as potent sources of integration and growth (Mouton & Montijo, 2017), love, passion, and peak experience have rarely been examined together or across cultures. The purpose of this study was to (a) explore how, if at all, subjective accounts of love, passion, and peak experience increase organization of the self through integration and differentiation by satisfying basic psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and helping to develop psychological complexity (Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde, 1998), and …

The Days Take Care Of Themselves: Early Head Start Teacher Interactions With Children In Association With Factors Affecting Environmental Quality, Britta Karin Shine

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to propose a new framework for the assessment of environmental quality in infant-toddler classrooms in Early Head Start (EHS), in which sequential observational scores across the morning on the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT; Atkins-Burnett et al., 2015) were re-framed as a micro-time-series. The purpose of these analyses was to assess within-person differences across a typical morning in EHS in teacher responsiveness and sensitivity to children’s social and emotional cues, their capacity for building relationships with children, and their support for children’s peer interaction and play. During hypothesis testing, interaction …

An Enhanced Ebook Facilitates Parent-Child Talk During Shared Reading By Families Of Low Socioeconomic Status, Georgene Troseth, Gabrielle Strouse, Israel Flores, Zachary Stuckelman, Colleen Russo Johnson

School of Education Faculty Publications

Language input plays a key role in children’s language development, but children from families of low socioeconomic status often get much less input compared to more advantaged peers. In “dialogic reading” (Whitehurst et al., 1988), parents are trained to ask children open-ended questions while reading, which effectively builds expressive vocabulary in at-risk children. In the research reported here, a dialogic questioning character in a narrated eBook provided effortless support for parents to ask questions while reading. Parents of lower socioeconomic status talked more than three times as much with their children using significantly more utterances and unique words when using …

Sibling Mediated Play Intervention Of Joint Engagement And Symbolic Play In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Catherine Callaci

CMC Senior Theses

The study will utilize a multiple baseline design to assess a sibling mediated play intervention using Behavior Skills Training (BST) to increase joint engagement (JE) and symbolic play (SP) behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). JE will be operationalized as turn-taking, imitation, or following through on verbal commands to play. SP will be operationalized as play actions with objects for imaginative uses, without the actual objects present, or labeling abstract properties of the object. Six siblings of children with ASD will be taught BST during playtime. JE and SP occurrences will be scored via a 15 second partial …

Women With High Functioning Asd: Relationships And Sexual Health, Isabelle Taylor

CMC Senior Theses

Women with high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are disproportionately less represented in research in comparison to their male counterparts. Some propose that this is as a result of more men having ASD and therefore the diagnostic criteria being further indicative of their gender, but regardless, it remains apparent that the need for supporting women with Autism Spectrum Disorder is just as crucial (Kreiser & White, 2014). For both genders, though, deficits in social skills and the presence of repetitive and restrictive behaviors often lend themselves to conduct seen as inappropriate or awkward within the neurotypical dating world (Hodges et …

Moving Beyond Executive Functions: Challenge Preference As A Predictor Of Academic Achievement In Elementary School, Michael J. Sulik, Jenna E. Finch, Jelena Obradović

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Intrinsic motivation and executive functions (EFs) have been independently studied as predictors of academic achievement in elementary school. The goal of this investigation was to understand how students’ challenge preference (CP), an aspect of intrinsic motivation, is related to academic achievement while accounting for EFs as a confounding variable. Using data from a longitudinal study of 569 third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders (50% female), we tested students’ self-reported CP as a predictor of mathematics and English language arts (ELA) achievement in multilevel models that controlled for school fixed effects and student demographic characteristics. CP was positively associated with mathematics and ELA …