Middle School Students’ Knowledge of Autism

Authors examined 1,015 middle school students’ knowledge of autism using a single item of prior awareness and a 10-item Knowledge of Autism (KOA) scale. The KOA scale was designed to assess students’ knowledge of the course, etiology, and symptoms associated with autism. Less than half of students (46.1%) reported having heard of autism; however, most students correctly responded that autism was a chronic condition that was not communicable. Students reporting prior awareness of autism scored higher on 9 of 10 KOA scale items when compared to their naïve counterparts. Prior awareness of autism and KOA scores also differed across schools. A more detailed understanding of developmental changes in students’ knowledge of autism should improve peer educational interventions.     

Effects of Recovery High School Attendance on Students’ Mental Health Symptoms

International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction - Recovery high schools are one form of continuing care support for adolescents with substance use or other co-occurring disorders. Using a...     

Teaching Behavior and Positive and Negative Affect in High School Students: Does Students’ Race Matter?

There are clear, empirical associations between teaching behaviors and students’ affect. Yet no study to date has investigated whether teaching behaviors (i.e., instructional, organizational, socio-emotional, and negative) impact students’ affect differently based on race/ethnicity. This gap in the literature is concerning given the substantial academic and mental health disparities between African American (AA) and European American (EA) students. Thus, the present study examined whether differences exist in the associations between teaching behaviors and affect in AA and EA high school students. Participating AA and EA high school students (N = 968; 60.2% EA) completed the Teaching Behavior Questionnaire and the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale for Children. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we found a positive association between instructional teaching behavior and positive affect in EA but not AA students; this association was significantly stronger in EA than in AA students (p < .05). There was a positive association between socio-emotional teaching behavior and positive affect (p < .05) for AA and EA students; race did not moderate this finding (p > .05). Finally, there was a negative association between negative teaching behavior and positive affect in EA but not AA students; race did not moderate this finding (p > .05). Regarding negative affect, socio-emotional and negative teaching behavior were positively associated with negative affect (p < .05) in EA and AA students, respectively. Race did not moderate these associations (p > .05). The implications and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Brief Report: Reliability and Validity of the Shared Activities Questionnaire as a Measure of Middle School Students’ Attitudes toward Autism

The Shared Activities Questionnaire (SAQ) is a self-report measure of children's behavioral intentions towards peers with disabilities. The SAQ has been validated as a measure of elementary school students' attitudes towards peers with disabilities. In the present study, psychometric properties of the SAQ as a measure of middle school students' attitudes toward autism were examined in a sample of 1,007 students (M age = 12.95 years). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor structure found for elementary school students. Internal consistency reliability was excellent. Criterion-related validity was established by demonstrating strong and positive relationships with a measure of cognitive attitudes. The SAQ is a reliable and valid measure of middle school students' behavioral intentions towards autism.     

School and Business Partnerships to Support Job Training for Students with Developmental and Other Disabilities: Employers’ Perspectives

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - This study examines partnerships between schools and businesses that are intended to foster training and employment opportunities for secondary...     

Parents’ Perspectives of Collaboration with School Professionals: Barriers and Facilitators to Successful Partnerships in Planning for Students with ASD

Both parents and school professionals (e.g. teachers, administrators, related service providers) are stakeholders in the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) process. Despite the fact that the inclusion of parents as full members in the process has been mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act since it was originally passed in as PL 94-142 in 1975, parents continue to report encountering barriers to equitable participation. To probe the barriers and facilitators to full team membership, we administered a mixed-methods survey study to parents of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (n = 135) exploring the nature of their perceptions of collaboration. Common barriers to collaboration included opportunities to provide input, communication difficulties with school teams, and negative perceptions of school professionals. School administrator actions identified as facilitators of collaboration included attendance at IEP meetings, quick response to phone calls, and assistance with acquiring resources. Parents reported low levels of perceived disability-specific staff knowledge regarding ASD. Quantitative findings from this survey sample indicate that a large number of parents of children with ASD reported experiencing difficulty and/or were not included in the special education collaborative process. Implications and recommendations for school administrators and teams are discussed.     

High School Teachers’ Openness to Adopting New Practices: The Role of Personal Resources and Organizational Climate

Although evidence-based practices for students’ social, emotional, and behavioral health are readily available, their adoption and quality implementation in schools are of increasing concern. Teachers are vital to implementation; yet, there is limited research on teachers’ openness to adopting new practices, which may be essential to successful program adoption and implementation. The current study explored how perceptions of principal support, teacher affiliation, teacher efficacy, and burnout relate to teachers’ openness to new practices. Data came from 2133 teachers across 51 high schools. Structural equation modeling assessed how organizational climate (i.e., principal support and teacher affiliation) related to teachers’ openness directly and indirectly via teacher resources (i.e., efficacy and burnout). Teachers with more favorable perceptions of both principal support and teacher affiliation reported greater efficacy, and, in turn, more openness; however, burnout was not significantly associated with openness. Post hoc analyses indicated that among teachers with high levels of burnout, only principal support related to greater efficacy, and in turn, higher openness. Implications for promoting teachers’ openness to new program adoption are discussed.     

Perceptions of Teachers’ Interpersonal Styles and Well-Being and Ill-Being in Secondary School Physical Education Students: The Role of Need Satisfaction and Need Frustration

This study examined the associations among physical education students’ perceptions of their teachers’ autonomy-supportive and controlling interpersonal styles, need satisfaction and need frustration, and indices of psychological well-being (subjective vitality) and ill-being (negative affect). The results from 591 Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong indicated that the relationship between students’ perceptions of autonomy-supportive teaching behaviors and subjective vitality was primarily mediated by need satisfaction, whereas the relationship between perceived controlling teaching behaviors and negative affect was primarily mediated by need frustration. The results obtained from the multi-group structural equation model also suggested that these relationships were invariant across sex.     

Promoting Children’s Prosocial Behaviors in School: Impact of the “Roots of Empathy” Program on the Social and Emotional Competence of School-Aged Children

This study examines the effects of the Roots of Empathy (ROE) program on children’s social-emotional competence. ROE is a theoretically derived universal preventive program that focuses on decreasing children’s aggression and facilitating the development of their social-emotional understanding and prosocial behaviors. The program has as its cornerstone monthly visits by an infant and his/her parent(s) that serve as a springboard for lessons on emotion understanding, perspective taking, caring for others, and infant development. The study included a quasi-experimental control-group pretest–posttest, multi-informant design with 585 4th- to 7th-grade children from 28 classrooms. Outcome measures included self-reports of understanding of infant distress, empathy, and perspective taking, and peer and teacher reports of prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Measures assessing implementation were also included. Children in the ROE intervention classrooms showed significant improvement across several of the domains assessed: self-reports of causes for infant crying, peer nominations of prosocial behaviors, and teacher reports of proactive and relational aggression. Self-reported empathy and perspective taking showed no significant changes. According to ROE instructors’ diaries assessing implementation, students in the experimental condition were exposed to all or most of the ROE curriculum. These findings support and extend recent research examining the positive impacts of classroom-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs on children’s social development and behavioral adjustment.     

Editorial Perspective: The new Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice—an opportunity for school mental health services?

The 2014 English Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice, a policy framework for delivery of a range of services including Schools Mental Health Services (SMHS), is considered in the context of international research on the delivery of mental health services in schools. Effective interventions have been reported in poor and middle‐income countries, whereas there is less information about routine services in high‐income societies, and what they report are equivocal outcomes. In England and the United States, problems with acceptability of routine mental health assessment, together with conflict over resource allocation significantly impede both effectiveness and acceptability. The new Code has been specifically written to support better engagement between Education and Mental Health, but piloting suggests that this has not yet happened. Proactive multiagency planning within the framework of the Code, linked to explicit work on organizational transformation, could provide an effective and acceptable Schools Mental Health Service, with legal protection from subsequent deleterious policy and funding changes. Explicit recommendations for using the Code are appended.     

Clinimetric validity of the Trail Making Test Czech version in Parkinson’s disease and normative data for older adults

Abstract

Objective: The influence of demographic variables on the Trail Making Test (TMT) performance in older individuals and empirical findings on clinical validity in predementia states, such as Parkinson’s disease mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI), are limited. The principal aim of this study was to add normative data for the Czech population of older adults and explore the clinimetric properties between PD-MCI and PD patients with normal cognition (PD-NC). Method: The study included 125 PD patients classified as 77 PD-MCI and 48 PD-NC and 528 older individuals (60–74 years, further subdivided for normative tables into 60–64, 65–69 and 70–74 age groups) and very old individuals (aged 75–96, further subdivided into 75–79, 80–84, 85–96) cognitively intact Czech adults. Results: Mostly age, to a lesser extent education but not gender, was associated with most TMT basic and derived indices (TMT-B – A). However, the ratio of TMT-B/TMT-A was independent of both age and education. We provide corresponding T-scores that minimize the effect of demographic variables. The results showed a high discriminative validity of TMT basic and derived indices for the differentiation of PD-MCI from PD-NC (all p < .05). The classification accuracy for the differentiation of PD-MCI from controls was optimal for the TMT-B only (80% area under the curve) based on norm adjusted scores. The classification accuracy of the TMT for PD-MCI vs. PD-NC was suboptimal. Conclusions: The cut-offs and normative standards are useful in clinical practice for those working with PD patients and very old adults.     

“It’s Like Stealing What Should be Theirs.” An Exploration of the Experiences and Perspectives of Parents and Educational Practitioners on Hebrew–English Bilingualism for Jewish Autistic Children

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Parents of autistic children are routinely advised to raise them monolingually, despite potential negative effects of monolingualism and no evidence...     

Brief Report: Parents’ Declarative Use of Deictic Gestures Predict Vocabulary Development in Infants at High and Low Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - We examined the communicative intentions behind parents’ deictic gesture use with high-risk infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum...     

Does the use of Health Care and Special School Services, Prior to Admission for Psychiatric Inpatient Treatment, Differ Between Adolescents Housed by Child Welfare Services and Those Living with Their Biological Parent(s)?

We examined whether the use of health care and special school services, prior to admission for psychiatric inpatient treatment, differed between adolescents from child welfare units and those living at their parental home. 208 boys and 300 girls aged 12–17 years were admitted for psychiatric hospital between 2001 and 2006. Child welfare adolescents had used more health services/treatments prior to psychiatric hospital admission than adolescents living with their biological family. The best discriminating factors between study groups for both genders, were previous psychiatric hospitalizations, unemployed parents, use of special school services and self-perceived serious anxiety/tension or trouble controlling violent behavior. Repeated school grades and previous use of psychotropic medications were discriminating factors only in girls. Adolescents in child welfare deserve adequate mental health evaluations at an early stage, with referral to appropriate adolescent psychiatric services if required. Appropriate service provision and properly planned treatments may reduce the amount of intensive and sometimes unnecessary psychiatric inpatient treatments.