Effect of a positive emotional state on interpretation bias for threat in children with anxiety disorders.

The authors examined the effect of a positive emotional state on interpretation bias for threat in children with anxiety disorders. Participants were 34 children with anxiety disorders and 34 children without any psychological disorders who were randomly assigned to either a positive or neutral emotion induction condition. Consistent with the broaden-and-build theory, children with anxiety disorders exhibited an interpretation bias for threat, but not when they were in a positive emotional state. Furthermore, results indicated that positive emotional state made a unique prediction of interpretation bias score, whereas state anxiety did not. Findings are discussed with reference to theory, clinical implications, and suggestions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional and cognitive adjustment in abused children

Research on the impact of maltreatment on children has increased in the last years, as there is a need to design appropriate treatment strategies. Social, cognitive, and emotional areas may be affected in these children. This research is aimed to study the psychological functioning of child victims, particularly in their emotional and cognitive adjustment. Nineteen children (10.3 years old) with case histories of at least 2 years of physical and emotional parental abuse and a group of 26 nonmaltreated children (9.4 years old) matched in socio-economic characteristics and coming from the same community area were compared in depressive symptomatology and attributional style by using the standardized measures from Kovacs' Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and Kaslow's Children Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ). General and detailed statistical analyses on the emotional and cognitive areas assessed showed significant differences between groups. Child victims showed greater feelings of sadness, lower self-esteem and self-worth, and they perceived the aversive events in their lives as unpredictable which generated helplessness. This is a result of their lack of control of those aversive events. Results are contrasted with those obtained by other researchers who used similar methodology and are discussed in terms of the learned helplessness' model proposed and developed by Seligman, Kaslow, Alloy, Peterson, Tanenbaum, and Abramson (1984). Implications for the child abuse victims' emotional and cognitive rehabilitation are also analyzed and discussed.     

Embryo donation families: A follow-up in middle childhood.

Couples who conceive using donated embryos rear a child to whom they are genetically unrelated. It has been suggested that this may have negative consequences for parenting and child development. Findings are presented of the 2nd phase of an exploratory study of families with a child conceived through embryo donation. Seventeen embryo donation families with a 5- to 9-year-old child were compared with 24 adoptive families and 28 in vitro fertilization families. The quality of the mother's parenting and the child's social and emotional development were assessed using standardized interviews and questionnaires administered to mothers and teachers. Embryo donation children were not at increased risk of psychological problems during middle childhood, and the families were generally functioning well. However, higher emotional overinvolvement of embryo donation parents was found, along with more reluctance to disclose the method of family creation. These preliminary findings are discussed in terms of implications regarding the importance of genetic and gestational relationships between parents and children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's strategy use in computational estimation.

Examined strategic aspects of children's performance in computational estimation. 23 5th-grade children (aged 10 yrs old) were asked to provide estimates of 48 3- by 3-digit addition problems. After each problem, Ss were asked to say how they found the solution. Verbal protocols, speed, and accuracy were collected for each problem so as to identify which computational estimation strategy is used on each trial, and how each strategy is used, selected, and executed. The results show that children used 4 strategies: rounding with decomposition, rounding without decomposition, truncation, and compensation. Strategies appeared to differ in frequency and effectiveness. Finally, children chose strategies in an adaptive way so as to obtain fast and accurate performance. Implications of these findings for understanding children's computational estimation performance and strategies in numerical cognition in general are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making psychology a household word--Just for kids.

Forums where children and preteens are engaged in a discussion with a psychologist can convey that psychologists understand emotions and behavior and empathically respond to human experiences. KidTalk With Dr. Mary--The Call-In Talk Show Just for Kids is one such medium created to promote emotional awareness and social competency in young people. The potential for the format of the talk show to be used in community-based preemptive intervention programs is discussed in various contexts. Anecdotal material is provided to illustrate ways in which the program has led children and preteens to link the need for assistance, catharsis, objectivity, and a corrective emotional experience with a query to a psychologist, thus making psychology a household word--just for kids. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of situational information to infer emotion: Understanding emotionally equivocal situations.

Children's recognition of individual differences in people's emotional reactions to situations was investigated. Children in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades heard scenarios in which a child experienced an emotionally equivocal or unequivocal event. Children were asked several questions to assess their ability to discriminate between the equivocal and unequivocal situations. Results indicated that school-age children are aware that almost everyone feels the same about unequivocal situations but that there are individual differences in reactions to equivocal situations. Yet these children often fail to consider that a particular individual might feel 1 of 2 different emotions in an equivocal situation. The ability to consider more than one emotional possibility for an individual increases with age. Two follow-up studies helped to clarify the meaning of these findings. Implications for children's social sensitivity are discussed. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

La compréhension des contes entre 5 et 7 ans: Quelle représentation des informations émotionnelles?

Orally presented tales comprehension was studied in 5-to-7-year-old children using a sentence verification task. The sentences to be judged by children concerned the emotional dimension of the described situations, but also their spatial, temporal, and causal dimensions, as well as the characters involved. In addition to observing a better tales comprehension with increasing age, we found that the emotional dimension was represented with less precision than the causal or spatial dimensions. A deeper examination of the emotional dimension representation revealed that the precision of the representation depends on the type of emotional information that is presented, (i.e., the emotion is designed, the behavioral expression of an emotion is described, an event that generates the emotion is mentioned), but it also depends on the gender and age. The diverse implications of this study are discussed in the light of data coming from the literature on comprehension skills in children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies.

This article describes the development and validation of a new self-report instrument, the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory, which is designed to assess adolescent and adult readers' metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies while reading academic or school-related materials. There were 3 strategy subscales or factors: Global Reading Strategies, Problem-Solving Strategies, and Support Reading Strategies. The reliability and factorial validity of the scale were demonstrated. After a brief review of the literature, the development and validation of the instrument are described, and its psychometric properties are discussed. In addition, directions for administering and scoring the instrument are provided, and suggestions for interpreting the results obtained are offered. Finally, the scales' implications for reading research and instruction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counting the stitches that count: preventive intervention promises and public health

Continued public support for the design, implementation, and dissemination of preventive interventions depends on achievement of four major criteria: (a) Reductions in the incidence or prevalence rates of diagnosable emotional and behavioral disorders, (b) reductions in the need for mental health services through effective primary and secondary interventions, (c) enhancement of the effectiveness of obtained services as screening and early detection efforts are implemented, and (d) reductions in the nation's health care costs associated with emotional and behavioral dysfunctions. Strategies including risk reduction, risk avoidance, health promotion, empowerment, and resource development are preventive insofar as they contribute to achievement of the aforementioned outcomes.     

Prevention and the clinical encounter

Development of an intervention to prevent depression in children of parents with severe affective disorder is described, along with the risk and resilience factors incorporated from prospective longitudinal studies of parents and children at risk. Strategies helpful in bridging the gap between clinical practice and prevention are discussed, and the differences in orientation necessary to include prevention in clinical practice are explored.     

Selective attention to facial emotion in physically abused children.

The ability to allocate attention to emotional cues in the enviromnent is an important feature of adaptive self-regulation. Existing data suggest that physically abused children overattend to angry expressions, but the attentional mechanisms underlying such behavior are unknown. The authors tested 8-11-year-old physically abused children to determine whether they displayed specific information-processing problems in a selective attention paradigm using emotional faces as cues. Physically abused children demonstrated delayed disengagement when angry faces served as invalid cues. Abused children also demonstrated increased attentional benefits on valid angry trials. Results are discussed in terms of the influence of early adverse experience on children's selective attention to threat-related signals as a mechanism in the development of psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of social problem solving during the first year after traumatic brain injury in children.

Effects of pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) on social problem-solving were examined in a longitudinal study of 103 children with moderate-to-severe TBI (n = 52) or orthopedic injury (OI; n = 51) using the Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies task (INS). Children solved age-appropriate hypothetical social conflicts, with responses for four problem-solving steps scored by developmental level. The OI group performed better than the TBI group, but rate of change in performance over time did not differ between groups, suggesting improvement in children with TBI was not due to recovery from injury. Strong relations between INS performance and memory and language skills emerged, but emotional processing was only weakly related to INS performance. Frontal focal lesions influenced INS performance in younger (but not older) children with TBI. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), revealed strong relationships between the INS and increased apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measures indexing connectivity in the dorsolateral and cingulate regions in both TBI and OI groups, and in the temporal and parietal regions in the TBI group. These findings inform studies of social problem-solving skills during the first year post TBI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognizing emotion in faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect.

The contributions to the recognition of emotional signals of (a) experience and learning versus (b) internal predispositions are difficult to investigate because children are virtually always exposed to complex emotional experiences from birth. The recognition of emotion among physically abused and physically neglected preschoolers was assessed in order to examine the effects of atypical experience on emotional development. In Experiment 1, children matched a facial expression to an emotional situation. Neglected children had more difficulty discriminating emotional expressions than did control or physically abused children. Physically abused children displayed a response bias for angry facial expressions. In Experiment 2, children rated the similarity of facial expressions. Control children viewed discrete emotions as dissimilar, neglected children saw fewer distinctions between emotions, and physically abused children showed the most variance across emotions. These results suggest that to the extent that children's experience with the world varies, so too will their interpretation and understanding of emotional signals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The origins and ends of giftedness.

Five issues about giftedness are discussed. First, the origins of giftedness are explored. The view that giftedness is entirely a product of training is critiqued. There is indirect evidence for atypical brain organization and innate talent in gifted children: Many gifted children and savants have enhanced right-hemisphere development, language-related difficulties, and autoimmune disorders. Second, the intense motivation of gifted children is discussed. Third, it is argued that gifted children have social and emotional difficulties that set them apart. Fourth, evidence for the often uneven cognitive profiles of such children is presented. Finally, the relationship between childhood giftedness and "domain" creativity in adulthood is discussed. Few gifted children go on to become adult creators because the skills and personality factors required to be a creator are very different from those typical of even the most highly gifted children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pediatric psychopharmacology: A review of new developments and recent research.

Advances in psychopharmacology have revolutionalized the management of emotional and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents. Recent developments in pediatric psychopharmacology and the prevalence of pharmacotherapy for various psychological disorders in children are examined, and clinical updates for classes of psychotropics are provided. Issues including monitoring and assessing drug effects, acceptability and satisfaction, and the social, political, and cultural issues surrounding the use of psychotropics in children are discussed. The authors conclude that the current clinical use of psychotropics in children exceeds extant efficacy and safety data. The involvement of practicing psychologists in pediatric psychopharmacology and the need for a firm empirical foundation for pediatric psychopharmacology are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resistance to fracture of three all-ceramic systems

This paper explores the notion of emotional competence for professional practitioners and the impact of different levels of emotional competence on communication in mental health nursing practice. It comments on available approaches to assessing competence in this area and on factors that obstruct and impair such assessment. Practitioner awareness of both the concept of emotional competence and its assessment is examined at a professional and personal level. Strategies for the achievement and maintenance of effective communication and emotionally competent professional practice are proposed.     

"I'd rather not talk about it": Emotion parenting in families of children with an anxiety disorder.

This study examined emotion socialization practices in families of children with an anxiety disorder (AD; n = 28) and of children who had no diagnoses (ND; n = 28) and considered gender differences. Youth (aged 8-13) and both parents discussed times when the child felt anxious, angry, and happy, for 5 min each. Fathers of AD children engaged in less explanatory discussion of emotion overall and exhibited less positive affect and more negative affect when interacting with sons than did fathers of ND children. Similar patterns emerged for mothers, although specific results varied by emotion type and child gender. Children with an AD demonstrated less positive affect overall and engaged in fewer problem-solving emotion regulation strategies when discussing anxious and angry situations than did children in the ND group. In both AD and ND groups, fathers appeared to have greater involvement in emotion-related discussions with sons versus daughters. The results highlight parents' contributions to the emotional development of their children, the ways in which socialization may go awry in families of AD children, and the implications for children's emotional functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Initial impact of the fast track prevention trial for conduct problems: II. Classroom effects.

This study examined the effectiveness of the universal component of the Fast Track prevention model: the PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) curriculum and teacher consultation. This randomized clinical trial involved 198 intervention and 180 comparison classrooms from neighborhoods with greater than average crime in 4 U.S. locations. In the intervention schools, Grade 1 teachers delivered a 57-lesson social competence intervention focused on self-control, emotional awareness, peer relations, and problem solving. Findings indicated significant effects on peer ratings of aggression and hyperactive-disruptive behavior and observer ratings of classroom atmosphere. Quality of implementation predicted variation in assessments of classroom functioning. The results are discussed in terms of both the efficacy of universal, school-based prevention models and the need to examine comprehensive, multiyear programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of mastectomy on the lives of women.

Maintains that professional and lay approaches toward breast cancer patients often focus on describing ways in which women should respond and adjust to the disease and its treatments. Because these attitudes tend to stress either the tremendous emotional effects that women should experience or the ways in which women should cope, adopting either approach to excess is considered a disservice to women. It is suggested that psychologists be aware of both the common reactions to the stresses of mastectomy and the abilities of women to cope with these stresses. Strategies that promote increased sense of self-control for the patient are advocated. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children experiencing social difficulties: Sociometric neglect reconsidered.

Evaluates an oft-used sociometric procedure, the peer nomination technique. Examination of the data reveals support for the assumption that some rejected children are aggressive; however, the data concerning the behavioral characteristics of neglected children are equivocal. Data revealed that neglected children could not be distinguished from their average counterparts on any dependent measure. Rejected children were found to be more unpopular, aggressive, as well as withdrawn than the other sociometric groups. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the use of sociometry to identify children "at risk" for social and emotional difficulties. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)