Viewing preferences, symptoms of psychological trauma, and violent behaviors among children who watch television

OBJECTIVE: To examine the extent to which children's television-viewing practices are associated with symptoms of psychological trauma and aggressive behaviors. The following three hypotheses were tested: (1) children who report watching greater amounts of television per day will report higher levels of trauma symptoms than children who report lesser amounts of television viewing; (2) children who report watching greater amounts of television per day will report higher levels of violent behaviors than children who report watching lesser amounts of television per day; and (3) children who report a preference for action and fighting programs will report higher levels of violent behaviors than children who report a preference for other types of television programs. METHOD: The study used a survey design in which an anonymous self-report questionnaire was administered to students in grades 3 through 8 in 11 Ohio public schools during the 1995-1996 school year (N = 2,245). RESULTS: All three hypotheses were supported. CONCLUSION: Heavy television viewing by children may indicate the presence of problems such as depression, anxiety, and violent behaviors; such viewing should be screened for by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals working with children.     

Playground behaviors of school-age children in relation to nutrition, schooling, and family characteristics.

Food intake measured over the course of a year, duration of schooling, and family SES were related to playground behaviors in a sample of 111 Kenyan school-age children. Better nourished children were more active, happy, and showed more leadership behavior, whereas poorly nourished children appeared more anxious on the school playground. Children who had attended less school were more solitary and inactive than children with more school experience. Aggression on the playground was related only to family background. The relations between food intake and activity level persisted even when family education, SES, and school participation were considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An exploratory study of child-centered play therapy with aggressive children.

Children exhibiting aggressive problem behaviors typically reach a peak of aggressive acts at an early age, providing evidence that early intervention for aggression is needed. Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) is 1 intervention that offers the child an environment in which aggression can be expressed and empathically responded to by a play therapist. Forty-one elementary school age children were assigned to a CCPT condition or a wait-list control group condition. Children who participated in 14 sessions of CCPT showed a moderate decrease in aggressive behaviors over children in the control group, according to effect sizes as reported by parents (N = 32). Teachers reported that both groups significantly improved over time (N = 41). Post hoc analysis revealed that children assigned to CCPT decreased aggressive behaviors statistically significantly and children assigned to control group demonstrated no statistically significant difference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of attention problems on depression: Developmental, academic, and cognitive pathways.

The present study investigated developmental pathways between inattention and depression, particularly the roles of school maladjustment and child cognitions. Additionally, a measure of conduct problems was included in all analyses to test competing theories about the emergence of depressive symptoms. Results supported the hypothesized path models from inattention to depression for younger and older children. Consistent with developmental theories, only an environmental variable, school maladjustment, was needed to explain the relationship between inattention and depression for the younger group (under 8 years old). For children in the middle group (8-9 years old), school maladjustment continued to uniquely account for part of the path to child depressive symptoms, but a cognitive variable, control-related beliefs, emerged as a significant mediator as well. For older children (10 years and older), control-related beliefs fully mediated the effects of school maladjustment on depressive symptoms. The hypothesized paths from conduct problems to depression, however, were not supported. Implications for designing interventions and prevention strategies for children with inattention and conduct problems are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narrative Development in Bilingual Kindergarteners: Can Arthur Help?

This study examined the effects of the children's TV program Arthur on the development of narrative skills over an academic year for Spanish-speaking English-language learners. In October, February, and June of their kindergarten year, children were asked to tell a story, in English, prompted by 3 pictures. Before the 2nd and 3rd assessments, half of the 108 children were randomly assigned to view Arthur 3 times a week during school hours, and the other half, which formed the control group, viewed the children's program Between the Lions on the same schedule. Individual growth modeling analysis showed that children who viewed Arthur had steeper growth trajectories than those who viewed Between the Lions. Boys displayed better English narrative skills than girls but no difference in narrative growth rate. The results suggest that certain educational TV programs can assist in some aspects of the language development of bilingual children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal outcomes of young high-risk adolescents with imaginary companions.

The creation and cultivation of an imaginary companion is considered to be a healthy form of pretend play in early childhood, but there tends to be a less positive view of older children who have them. To test the extent that having an imaginary companion in middle school is associated with positive or negative outcomes, an ethnically diverse sample of 152 middle school children at high risk for developing problem behaviors were interviewed about imaginary companions, coping styles, and problem behaviors. Although having a current imaginary companion (n = 13) was associated with using more positive coping strategies, peer nomination data indicated that these children had low social preference with peers. In addition, our data indicated that these children were perceived by their parents as having more problem behaviors compared with young adolescents who never had imaginary companions (n = 108) or children who had imaginary companions in the past (n = 31). However, a longitudinal follow-up at the end of high school indicated that the children who had imaginary companions in middle school showed greater positive adjustment on a multiple-indicator adjustment construct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stable transduction of recombinant adeno-associated virus into hematopoietic stem cells from normal and sickle cell patients

The effectiveness of a health education programme for prevention of alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking among adolescents was assessed by an intervention study with a non-randomized control group. The study was carried out among 7th-9th grade school students in a Local Health Unit of the Brescia province, North Italy. Students were enrolled in either the intervention or the control group, based on the participation of their teachers to the educational programme. A total of 428 students were involved in the programme representing the intervention group, and 658 students not involved in the programme formed the control group. The health education programme included the prevention of alcohol abuse in the first school year (1989-90) and the prevention of tobacco smoking in the second year (1990-91). Each part of the programme included a series of lessons taken by the teachers for about 20 hours. Alcohol use and smoking habits, knowledge about, and attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use of the students have been assessed by anonymous questionnaires. The questionnaires have been administered during school time at the beginning and the end of each school year, giving a total of 6 questionnaires, from Q1 to Q6. All the questionnaires included the same questions on alcohol and tobacco use, knowledge and attitudes. Of the 1086 students who attended the 7th grade in the year 1989-90, 428 were enrolled as intervention group and 658 as control group. As regards alcohol, the following findings were observed: 1. no difference was found in the percentages of students drinking at least one glass of wine or beer daily between the 2 groups at Q6; 2. no substantial change in the percentage of students aware of the health risks of alcohol abuse from Q1 to Q6 was observed. As regards tobacco smoking, the results of the study showed: 1. no difference between the 2 groups was found at Q6 as regards the proportion of students who smoked one or more cigarettes a month; 2. the percentages of students planning to smoke in the future were similar in the 2 groups in Q6; 3.the percentage of students with a high score on the health consequences of smoking was higher in the intervention than the control group at Q4, but again no difference between the groups was evident at Q6. In conclusion, the health education programme seemed to be unsuccessful in modifying behaviors and attitudes regarding alcohol and tobacco use during the 3-year follow-up.     

Impact of child-centered play therapy on the self-esteem, locus of control, and anxiety of at-risk 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students.

Addresses the impact of child-centered play therapy on the self-esteem, locus of control, and anxiety level of at-risk 4th, 5th, and 6th grade children. The two groups of students, those who participated in play therapy and those who did not participate in play therapy, were administered the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale—Revised, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. While the results indicate that children participating in play therapy did not change, the students not participating in play therapy demonstrated a decrease in both self-esteem and locus of control over the course of the school year. These findings indicate that an intervention, such as play therapy, may be needed to prevent at-risk children from developing lower self esteem and from reducing their sense of responsibility for their academic successes and failures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of task-avoidant and task-focused behaviors in the development of reading and mathematical skills during the first school year: A cross-lagged longitudinal study.

The aim of the study was to examine whether children's achievement strategies would prospectively predict their improvement in reading and mathematical skills during the 1st school year, or whether it is rather the skills that predict the change in their achievement strategies. One hundred five 6- to 7-year-old children were investigated 3 times during the 1st school year. Each time, their reading and mathematical skills were tested, and their task-avoidant versus task-focused behaviors were rated by their classroom teacher. In addition, their overall cognitive competence was measured before entry into school. The maladaptive strategies children deployed in the classroom and their reading skills formed a cumulative developmental cycle. On the one hand, task-avoidant behaviors decreased subsequent improvement in reading skills, and on the other hand, a low level of reading skills increased subsequent task-avoidant behaviors. Although a low level of mathematical skills increased subsequent task avoidance, the mathematical skills were not influenced by it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short-term group play therapy with Chinese earthquake victims: Effects on anxiety, depression and adjustment.

Investigated the effectiveness of short-term child-centered group play therapy in elementary school settings with Chinese children in Taiwan who experienced an earthquake in 1999. 65 children (aged 8-12 yrs) were screened. Children in the experimental group scored significantly lower on anxiety level and suicide risk after play therapy than did children in the control group. The effects of the treatment support previous studies of play therapy with American children. These findings reveal the possibility of disaster intervention services adopting Western helping techniques with school children of non-Western cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' scaffolding of children's problem solving: Establishing a foundation of academic self-regulatory competence.

The study examined relations between dimensions of mothers' scaffolding and children's academic self-regulatory behaviors in school. Mothers and their preschool children (68 dyads) were visited in their homes the summer before the child entered kindergarten. Mothers' metacognitive content and manner of instruction, emotional support, and transfer of responsibility were coded as mothers provided assistance to their children during 4 problem-solving tasks. Children's self-regulatory behaviors were assessed the following school year. Metacognitive content and manner of instruction were predictors of child behaviors related to cognitive awareness and management: metacognitive talk, monitoring, and help seeking. Emotional support and transfer of responsibility were related to children's task persistence and behavior control in school. Mothers' scaffolding appears to lay the foundation for children's subsequent academic self-regulatory competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic consequences and longitudinal stability of behavioral subtypes of learning disabled children.

47 school-identified learning disabled (LD) students (aged 6 and 7 yrs at the beginning of the study) who had been classified into 6 behavioral subtypes by a technique of hierarchical cluster analysis were followed longitudinally for 3 yrs to determine their educational outcomes and examine the stability of subtype membership. Classroom and special-education teachers rated children each year on measures of independence–dependence, task orientation–distractibility, extraversion–introversion, and considerateness–hostility. Measures of reading and mathematics achievement were taken each year. Ss with attention problems and those who presented problem behaviors in the classroom during the 1st and 2nd grades showed poorer achievement outcomes in later grades, compared with those who did not present atypical behaviors and those who presented a withdrawn pattern of behavior. Although children tended to switch subtype membership over 3 yrs, the proportion of LD children in adaptive and maladaptive subtypes was similar at Years 1 and 3, as determined by classroom teachers' ratings in subsequent years. Developmental changes in subtype membership are discussed with respect to the effects of special-education services and the social-emotional sequelae that have been associated with school failure. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prediction of children's academic competence from their effortful control, relationships, and classroom participation.

The authors examined the relations among children's effortful control, school relationships, classroom participation, and academic competence with a sample of 7- to 12-year-old children (N = 264). Parents and children reported on children's effortful control, and teachers and children reported on children's school relationships and classroom participation. Children's grade point averages (GPAs) and absences were obtained from school-issued report cards. Significant positive correlations existed between effortful control, school relationships, classroom participation, and academic competence. Consistent with expectations, the teacher-child relationship, social competence, and classroom participation partially mediated the relation between effortful control and change in GPA from the beginning to the end of the school year. The teacher-child relationship and classroom participation also partially mediated the relation between effortful control and change in school absences across the year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness in children: A longitudinal study of depression, achievement, and explanatory style.

Assessed the depressive symptoms, life events, and explanatory styles of 168 8–11 yr olds 5 times over a 1-yr period to test the prediction that the maladaptive explanatory style would be associated with higher levels of depression, lower school achievement, and higher incidences of helpless behaviors in the classroom. Ss completed the Children's Depression Inventory, the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire, and a life events questionnaire. Measures of school achievement (the California Achievement Tests) were obtained once during the year. Depressive symptoms and explanatory styles were found to be stable over the year. As predicted by the reformulated learned helplessness theory, explanatory style both correlated with concurrent levels of depression and school achievement and predicted later changes in depression during the year. Depression also predicted later explanatory styles. Implications for intervention with children with depressive symptoms or school achievement problems are discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early childhood education: A meta-analytic affirmation of the short- and long-term benefits of educational opportunity.

Reviewed the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early childhood educational programs. Drawing upon the theory that intelligence and related complex human behaviors are probably always determined by myriad complex interactions of genes and environments, this meta-analytic study is based on the assumption that such behaviors can be both highly heritable and highly malleable. Integrating results across 35 preschool experiments and quasi-experiments, the primary findings were: (a) preschool effects on standardized measures of intelligence and academic achievement were statistically significant, positive, and large; (b) cognitive effects of relatively intense educational interventions were significant and very large, even after 5–10 years, and 7–8 of every 10 preschool children did better than the average child in a control or comparison group; and (c) cumulative incidences of an array of personal and social problems were statistically, significantly, and substantially lower over a 10- to 25- year period for those who had attended preschool (e.g., school drop out, welfare dependence, unemployment, poverty, criminal behavior). The need for a very large, well-controlled, national experiment to either confirm or refute these provocative, review-generated findings is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Medulloblastoma: factors influencing the educational potential of surviving children

Twenty-five children with a histological diagnosis of medulloblastoma operated upon in our unit and who had then been treated with identical radiotherapy regimes were studied in an attempt to determine the academic potential of children who survive for more than two years following their initial presentation. Fourteen children were attending a mainstream school at which they required no special help or remedial classes and were in the appropriate year for their age while eleven required special help with their schooling. Seven of these attended a mainstream school, but required remedial classes for help with reading, writing and arithmetic while two were in a class a year below what would have normally been expected for their age group. Two children attended a special school for children with learning difficulties. These differences in academic potential can be related to the age of the child at presentation and the presence or absence of postoperative complications.     

Self-other differences in children's perceptions about the causes of important events.

Three studies examined differences between children"s (ages 8–15) beliefs about the effectiveness of multiple internal and external causes for producing outcomes in their own lives versus in those of their peers. Differences specific to the school domain were found: Starting at age 11 or 12, children perceived internal causes as more important for others than for themselves; and only beliefs about the self related to perceived control. More strikingly, a sample of gifted children, who presumably receive social feedback that they are different from their peers, reported that (a) they exerted more control and possessed more ability than their peers and (b) other children knew less about the causes of school performance and had to rely more on effort and powerful others; only beliefs about the self correlated to cognitive performance. These results suggest that self–other differences are produced by both developmental change and environmental opportunities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does Head Start work? A 1-year follow-up comparison of disadvantaged children attending Head Start, no preschool, and other preschool programs.

This article examines how successful Project Head Start has been as a preschool program for economically disadvantaged children. Most Head Start evaluations have not controlled for initial differences between Head Start and comparison groups. They have also limited comparisons to those with no preschool experience, rather than considering other preschools as an alternative comparison group. Subjects were 969 disadvantaged children attending Head Start, other preschool, or no preschool in 1969–1970, longitudinally evaluated on a variety of cognitive measures. Large initial group differences were observed between Head Start children and both comparison groups, with those in Head Start at a disadvantage on nearly every demographic and cognitive measure. Adjusting for initial background and cognitive differences, Head Start children showed significantly larger gains on the Preschool Inventory and Motor Inhibition tests than either comparison group, with Black children in Head Start (especially those of below-average initial ability) gaining the most. However, despite substantial gains, Head Start children were still behind their peers in terms of absolute cognitive levels after a year in the program. Head Start proved an impressive instrument of short-term change, even compared with other preschool experience. Gains in behaviors other than intelligence suggest that the effects may not be limited to the cognitive domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alpha-linolenic acid in rapeseed oil partly compensates for the effect of fish restriction on plasma long chain n-3 fatty acids

Injuries sustained in schools account for 20-30% of all accident and emergency attendances in school age children. Little information has been available on the epidemiology of school accidents in the United Kingdom. Two years of routine school incident reports were analysed from Renfrew Sub-Region, an area with a school roll of 55,521 children attending 135 schools. Schools returned 1,660 report forms in the two year period, of which 1,440 referred to injuries to school children. The peak incidence of injuries was in the 10-12 year age group. The male:female ratio was 1.37:1. Cuts/ laceration and fractures were the commonest diagnoses reported for both Primary and Secondary Schools. Injuries to face and features were commonest in Primary, and upper limb injuries in Secondary Schools. Uncontrolled areas, e.g. playgrounds, stairways and corridors were the most frequent places of occurrence in Primary Schools (Relative Risk 5.24, 95% C.I. 3.28-8.35). Report accuracy was assessed by comparing one year of school reports in a Local Government District to records in the local District General Hospital. This identified 156 children who had attended hospital as the result of a school accident. Schools overestimated the number of fractures by 27%, but where schools had not provided a diagnosis, 15.4% were identified as fractures in hospital records. Each child seen at the hospital received an average of 2.1 X-rays. Nine children underwent manipulations under general anaesthetic. Seventeen children were admitted to hospital, and the group required 103 outpatient follow-up appointments.     

Managed care--an example for future structural developments in health care. Reflections on a informational visit on direction and administration of medical centers in east USA

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a controlled group outcome investigation of the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral treatment for school phobia. METHOD: Fifty-six children with school phobia were randomly assigned to 12 weeks of cognitive-behavioral therapy or an attention-placebo control condition. Pre- and posttreatment school attendance, self-reported anxiety and depression, and diagnostic status were compared. RESULTS: Both the experimental and control treatments were equally effective at returning children to school. Both treatments also were effective in reducing children's anxiety and depressive symptoms. Follow-up revealed no differences between groups when the children reentered school the next school year. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, results suggest that psychosocial treatments are effective at returning school-phobic children to school and that the highly structured cognitive-behavioral approach may not be superior to more traditional educational and supportive treatment methods.