Optimistic Teaching: Improving the Capacity for Teachers to Reduce Young Children’s Challenging Behavior

This pilot study compared the differential impact of two professional development interventions to improve preschool teachers’ use of positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and decrease young children’s social emotional difficulties. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two coaching interventions conducted over the course of one academic year. Teachers received either Optimistic Teaching, an approach combining traditional coaching in PBIS with a cognitive-behavioral component to address teachers’ self-efficacy, or traditional PBIS coaching. Teachers in the Optimistic Teaching condition implemented significantly more PBIS skills related to teaching children social skills and involving families in their children’s social emotional development when compared to teachers who were exposed to traditional PBIS coaching alone. Teachers in the Optimistic Teaching condition reported significantly fewer children with serious social emotional difficulties post-intervention. Teachers’ experience and self-reported self-efficacy were analyzed for their influence on teachers’ post-intervention use of PBIS skills. The results are discussed in light of how future professional development efforts might address preschool teachers’ motivation to adopt new practices such as PBIS.     

Agreement Between Parents and Teachers on Preschool Children’s Behavior in a Clinical Sample with Externalizing Behavioral Problems

An accurate interpretation of information obtained from multiple assessors is indispensible when complex diagnoses of behavioral problems in children need to be confirmed. The present study examined the similarity of parents and kindergarten teachers ratings on children’s behavior in a sample of 160 preschool children (a clinical group including 80 children with externalizing behavioral problems and a matched control group including 80 children). Behavioral problems were assessed using the SDQ, and the DISYPS-II questionnaires for ADHD and conduct disorders. The results revealed low levels of parent–teacher agreement for their ratings on the children’s behavior in both groups with the highest correlations in the non-clinical sample. Parent–teacher agreement did not differ significantly across the samples. Parent and teacher ratings correlated with the prevalence of externalizing disorders and were found to be almost independent of each other. The results highlight the importance of multiple informants and their independent influence within the diagnostic process.     

Heavy Metal in Children’s Tooth Enamel: Related to Autism and Disruptive Behaviors?

To examine possible links between neurotoxicant exposure and neuropsychological disorders and child behavior, relative concentrations of lead, mercury, and manganese were examined in prenatal and postnatal enamel regions of deciduous teeth from children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), high levels of disruptive behavior (HDB), and typically developing (TD) children. Using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, we found no significant differences in levels of these neurotoxicants for children with ASDs compared with TD children, but there was marginal significance indicating that children with ASDs have lower manganese levels. No significant differences emerged between children with HDB and TD children. The current findings challenge the notion that perinatal heavy metal exposure is a major contributor to the development of ASDs and HDB.     

Characterizing Aggressive and Noncompliant Behaviors in a Children’s Psychiatric Inpatient Setting

This study was conducted to evaluate aggression and noncompliance among child psychiatric inpatients in relation to demographic, clinical, and hospitalization characteristics, including the use of restraints and seclusion. Eighty six children (10.8±2.4 years old, 67% male) consecutively admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit were rated weekly using the Modified Overt Aggression Scale (MOAS) and the Disruptive Behavior Rating Scale (DBRS) between November 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003. Moderate to high correlations were observed between the four types of aggression (verbal, and physical against self, others, or objects) and noncompliant behavior. In hierarchical regression analyses, only mental retardation emerged as a significant predictor of aggression and noncompliance. Aggression and noncompliance were associated with different characteristics of inpatient treatment. Aggressive behavior was significantly associated with the use of restraints and seclusion, and noncompliant behavior with length of hospitalization and number of psychiatric medications at time of discharge. Modifying milieu interventions for youths with mental retardation, and adapting behavioral interventions empirically proven to target noncompliance may be effective loci for reducing aggression in child psychiatric inpatient units.     

Maternal Anxiety,Behaviors, and Expectations During a Behavioral Task: Relation to Children’s Self-Evaluations

This study examined the associations between maternal anxiety, behaviors, and expectations and children’s self-evaluations of distress, coping, and performance during a stressful performance evaluation task. Seventy-five mothers (38 clinically anxious and 37 nonanxious) along with one of their children aged 6–14 (52.0% female; 78.7% Caucasian) were videotaped while preparing the child to deliver a speech about themselves. Child and parent assessments were obtained before and after the speech, and independent coders rated maternal behavior during the speech preparation. Maternal anxiety and behaviors accounted for a greater proportion of variance in children’s self-evaluations than did maternal expectations, such that children of mothers who reported higher task anxiety and demonstrated more overcontrol and anxious behavior during the task evaluated themselves more negatively. These findings extend the literature by providing information about the relative associations between maternal factors and children’s self-evaluations within the context of an in vivo stressful situation.     

Mothers’ Temperament and Personality: Their Relationship to Parenting Behaviors,Locus of Control,and Young Children’s Functioning

There appears to be a lack of construct clarity and a dearth of studies that have examined both mothers’ temperament and personality in conjunction with parenting behaviors when predicting young children’s functioning. As a result, this study examined these constructs jointly so that a further understanding of how mothers’ temperament and personality may work together to predict young children’s functioning could be gained. As part of this study, 214 diverse mothers with young children who ranged in age from 2- to 6-years rated their own temperament and personality, their parenting characteristics, and their young children’s functioning (i.e., temperament and emotional and behavioral functioning). Based on the findings of hierarchical regression analyses completed in this study, both mothers’ temperament and personality may be important individual predictors of young children’s temperament but may be important joint predictors, along with parenting behaviors, of young children’s behavior problems. Consequently, future research should examine the role that mothers’ temperament and personality characteristics may play in conjunction with their parenting behaviors when trying to understand young children’s functioning. These findings will be particularly helpful for professionals providing parenting interventions to families with young children who have difficult temperament styles and/or emotional and behavioral problems.     

Eye-Hand Coordination in Children with High Functioning Autism and Asperger’s Disorder Using a Gap-Overlap Paradigm

We investigated eye-hand coordination in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in comparison with age-matched normally developing peers. The eye-hand correlation was measured by putting fixation latencies in relation with pointing and key pressing responses in visual detection tasks where a gap-overlap paradigm was used and compared to fixation latencies in absence of manual response. ASD patients showed less efficient eye-hand coordination, which was particularly evident when pointing towards a target was being fixated. The data of normally developing participants confirmed that manual gap effects are more likely for more complex hand movements. An important discrepancy was discovered in participants with ASD: beside normal eye gap effects, they showed no concurrent hand gap effects when pointing to targets. This result has been interpreted as a further sign of inefficient eye-hand coordination in this patient population.     

Skin Conductance Responses to Another Person’s Gaze in Children with Autism

The effects of another person’s gaze on physiological arousal were investigated by measuring skin conductance responses (SCR). Twelve able children with autism and 12 control children were shown face stimuli with straight gaze (eye contact) or averted gaze on a computer monitor. In children with autism, the responses to straight gaze were stronger than responses to averted gaze, whereas there was no difference in the responses to these gaze conditions in normally developing children. Thus, these results showed that eye gaze elicited differential pattern of SCR in normally developing children and in children with autism. It is possible that the enhanced arousal to eye contact may contribute to the abnormal gaze behaviour frequently reported in the context of autism.     

Relationship Between Children’s Sleep and Mental Health in Mothers of Children with and Without Autism

The study employed 90 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) who were matched to 90 typically developing children on age, gender, and ethnicity. Using structural equation modeling, maternal sleep and maternal stress mediated the relationship between children’s sleep and mothers’ mental health for mothers of children with and without ASDs. Mothers of children with ASDs reported more problems related to children’s sleep, their own sleep, greater stress, and poorer mental health; however, children’s sleep and maternal sleep were more closely related to maternal stress for mothers of typically developing children. Implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.     

Using advances in neuroimaging to detect,understand, and monitor disease progression in Huntington’s disease

Trangenic mouse models and other screens are being used to identify potential therapeutic agents for use in clinical trials in Huntington’s disease (HD). The development of surrogate markers that can be used in clinical therapeutics is an active area of research. Because HD is relatively uncommon and only a portion of available subjects meet inclusion and exclusion criteria, therapeutic trials are limited by the availability of potential subjects as well as the relative insensitivity of the clinical measures used. Neuroimaging methods offer the potential to provide noninvasive, reproducible, and objective methods not only to better understand the disease process but also to follow in clinical studies to determine if a drug is effective in slowing down disease progression or perhaps even in delaying onset. Following is a review of the literature, which highlights the studies that have been published to date.     

High Stakes: Children’s Exposure to Gambling and Gambling Marketing Using Wearable Cameras

International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction - Concerns continue to be raised about the ‘normalising’ influence of gambling and its marketing on children. This study sought to...     

Using Peer-Mediated LEGO® Play Intervention to Improve Social Interactions for Chinese Children with Autism in an Inclusive Setting

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a peer-mediated LEGO® play intervention on improving social skills for children with ASD in an inclusive preschool in China. Three boys with ASD and 13 typically developing children participated in this study. A multiple-probe across participants design was used. The intervention consisted of LEGO® construction activities incorporated with peer-mediated strategies for one child with ASD and two typically developing peers. The intervention sessions were conducted two sessions per week with a total of 28–31 sessions for each participant. Results indicated that all three children with ASD increased their social initiations and responses following the completion of the intervention. Social validity was also obtained.     

Atypical Behaviors and Comorbid Externalizing Symptoms Equally Predict Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder’s Social Functioning

The goal of the current study was to determine within a clinical sample what differentiates children with ADHD who experience social functioning difficulties from those who appear to have healthy social functioning. Participants for this study included 62 children (mean age = 11.3 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD confirmed by a comprehensive clinical diagnostic assessment. Multiple indicators of children’s social functioning were collected via parent report including: social skills, social adaptability, peer difficulties, and social quality of life. Parent reports of children’s externalizing, internalizing, and atypical behaviors were also collected. Results indicated that both externalizing symptoms and atypical behaviors predicted children with ADHD’s social functioning, even after controlling for ADHD symptoms severity. No association was found between internalizing symptoms and social functioning. The current study provides initial data suggesting that atypical behaviors found in children with ADHD are as powerful as comorbid externalizing symptoms in predicting social functioning difficulties. Due to the shared variance from relying solely on parent report, it will be critical for future research to replicate our findings using multi-informant data such as peer and teacher reports which provide unique information on children’s social functioning.     

Using a Theory-Guided Learning Collaborative Model to Improve Implementation of EBPs in a State Children’s Mental Health System: A Pilot Study

Learning collaboratives (LCs) are used widely to promote implementation of evidence-based practices. However, there has been limited research on the effectiveness of LCs and models vary widely in their structure, focus and components. The goal of the present study was to develop and field test a theory-based LC model to augment a state-led, evidence-based training program for clinicians providing mental health services to children. Analysis of implementation outcomes contrasted LC sites to matched comparison sites that participated in the clinical training program alone. Results suggested that clinicians from sites participating in the LC were more highly engaged in the state-led clinical training program and were more likely to complete program requirements.     

Early Life Characteristics and Neurodevelopmental Phenotypes in the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center

Neurodevelopmental outcomes including behavior, executive functioning, and IQ exhibit complex correlational structures, although they are often treated as independent in etiologic studies. We performed a principal components analysis of the behavioral assessment system for children, the behavior rating inventory of executive functioning, and the Wechsler scales of intelligence in a prospective birth cohort, and estimated associations with early life characteristics. We identified seven factors: (1) impulsivity and externalizing, (2) executive functioning, (3) internalizing, (4) perceptual reasoning, (5) adaptability, (6) processing speed, and (7) verbal intelligence. Prenatal fish consumption, maternal education, preterm birth, and the home environment were important predictors of various neurodevelopmental factors. Although maternal smoking was associated with more adverse externalizing, executive functioning, and adaptive composite scores in our sample, of the orthogonally-rotated factors, smoking was only associated with the impulsivity and externalizing factor (\(\hat{\beta}\) ? 0.82, 95% CI ??1.42, ??0.23). These differences may be due to correlations among outcomes that were accounted for by using a phenotypic approach. Dimension reduction may improve upon traditional approaches by accounting for correlations among neurodevelopmental traits.     

Children’s Compliance with American Academy of Pediatrics’ Well-Child Care Visit Guidelines and the Early Detection of Autism

This study estimated compliance with American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for well-child care and the association between compliance and age at diagnosis in a national sample of Medicaid-enrolled children with autism (N = 1,475). Mixed effects linear regression was used to assess the relationship between compliance and age at diagnosis. Mean age at diagnosis was 37.4 (SD 8.4) months, and mean compliance was 55 % (SD 33 %). Children whose care was compliant with AAP guidelines were diagnosed 1.6 months earlier than children who received no well-child care. Findings support that the timely receipt of well-child care may contribute to earlier detection. Additional research on the contribution of compliance, well-child visit components and provider characteristics on the timely diagnosis of autism is needed.