Asessing for Structural Understanding in Childrens' Combinatorial Problem Solving.

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English, Lyn

1999-01-01

Assesses children's structural understanding of combinatorial problems when presented in a variety of task situations. Provides an explanatory model of students' combinatorial understandings that informs teaching and assessment. Addresses several components of children's structural understanding of elementary combinatorial problems. (Contains 50…

Electronic Books: Children's Reading and Comprehension

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Grimshaw, Shirley; Dungworth, Naomi; McKnight, Cliff; Morris, Anne

2007-01-01

This study investigates the differences in children's comprehension and enjoyment of storybooks according to the medium of presentation. Two different storybooks were used and 132 children participated. Of these, 51 children read an extract from "The Magicians of Caprona," about half reading an electronic version with an online dictionary, and the…

Bugs, butterflies, and spiders: children's understandings about insects

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Shepardson, Daniel P.

2002-06-01

This article explores elementary children's ideas about insects. The study involved 20 children from each grade level, kindergarten through fifth-grade, for a total of 120 children. The data collection procedure was designed to investigate what an insect means to children, through the use of three different tasks: draw and explain, interview about instances, and the formulation of a general rule. Considering children's responses to the three tasks, I found that their ideas about insects reflect understandings based on physical characteristics of size and shape, arthropod characteristics, insect characteristics, human-insect interactions, life habits of insects, feeding habits of insects, and means of locomotion. Children's understandings are juxtaposed to that of a scientific perspective, elucidating implications for curriculum development and instructional practice.

The Grieving Process in Children: Strategies for Understanding, Educating, and Reconciling Children's Perceptions of Death.

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Willis, Clarissa A.

2002-01-01

Provides an overview of how young children understand death, and offers concrete strategies for talking to children about death and suggestions for teachers about how to help children of various ages through grief and mourning. Highlights developmental differences in four components of children's understanding of death: irreversibility, finality,…

Posing Problems to Understand Children's Learning of Fractions

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Cheng, Lu Pien

2013-01-01

In this study, ways in which problem posing activities aid our understanding of children's learning of addition of unlike fractions and product of proper fractions was examined. In particular, how a simple problem posing activity helps teachers take a second, deeper look at children's understanding of fraction concepts will be discussed. The…

Emotional Understanding in Quechua Children from an Agro-Pastoralist Village

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Tenenbaum, Harriet R.; Visscher, Paloma; Pons, Francisco; Harris, Paul L.

2004-01-01

Research on children's understanding of emotion has rarely focused on children from nonindustrialised countries, who may develop an understanding at different ages as compared to children reared in industrialised countries. Quechua children from an agro-pastoralist village were given an adapted version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to…

Analogy for Drude's Free Electron Model to Promote Students' Understanding of Electric Circuits in Lower Secondary School

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de Almeida, Maria José B. M.; Salvador, Andreia; Costa, Maria Margarida R. R.

2014-01-01

Aiming at a deep understanding of some basic concepts of electric circuits in lower secondary schools, this work introduces an analogy between the behavior of children playing in a school yard with a central lake, subject to different conditions, rules, and stimuli, and Drude's free electron model of metals. Using this analogy from the first…

Mother-Child Conversation and Children's Social Understanding During Middle Childhood.

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Pearson, RaeAnne M; Pillow, Bradford H

2016-01-01

The authors investigated the relationship between mother-child conversation and children's social understanding during middle childhood. Thirty-eight mother-child pairs participated, including a younger group (5-7 years old) and an older group (8-10 years old). Children completed 2 measures of social understanding and mothers and children discussed 4 stories involving social dilemmas. Results indicated that compared to the younger group, the older group (a) performed better on both measures of social understanding and (b) produced more basic mental talk (i.e., talk about beliefs, emotions, personality traits, and desires), and more advanced mental talk (i.e., talk about contrasting perspectives, recursion and relationship between mental states, and advanced emotions). Mothers of older children also produced more basic and advanced mental talk. Mothers' advanced mental talk predicted both children's social understanding and children's advanced mental talk.

Children's Understanding of the Addition/Subtraction Complement Principle

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Torbeyns, Joke; Peters, Greet; De Smedt, Bert; Ghesquière, Pol; Verschaffel, Lieven

2016-01-01

Background: In the last decades, children's understanding of mathematical principles has become an important research topic. Different from the commutativity and inversion principles, only few studies have focused on children's understanding of the addition/subtraction complement principle (if a - b = c, then c + b = a), mainly relying on verbal…

Bilingualism accentuates children's conversational understanding.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Siegal

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1 significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1 significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1 and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2, these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.

Scaling of theory-of-mind understandings in Chinese children.

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Wellman, Henry M; Fang, Fuxi; Liu, David; Zhu, Liqi; Liu, Guoxiong

2006-12-01

Prior research demonstrates that understanding of theory of mind develops at different paces in children raised in different cultures. Are these differences simply differences in timing, or do they represent different patterns of cultural learning? That is, to what extent are sequences of theory-of-mind understanding universal, and to what extent are they culture-specific? We addressed these questions by using a theory-of-mind scale to examine performance of 140 Chinese children living in Beijing and to compare their performance with that of 135 English-speaking children living in the United States and Australia. Results reveal a common sequence of understanding, as well as sociocultural differences in children's developing theories of mind.

Understanding children's sedentary behaviour: a qualitative study of the family home environment.

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Granich, Joanna; Rosenberg, Michael; Knuiman, Matthew; Timperio, Anna

2010-04-01

Electronic media (EM) (television, electronic games and computer) use has been associated with overweight and obesity among children. Little is known about the time spent in sedentary behaviour (SB) among children within the family context. The aim of this study was to explore how the family home environment may influence children's electronic-based SB. Focus groups and family interviews were conducted with 11- to 12-year old children (n = 54) and their parents (n = 38) using a semi-structured discussion guide. Transcripts were analysed using a thematic content approach. A brief self-completed questionnaire was also used to measure leisure behaviour and electronic devices at home. Children incorporated both sedentary and physical activities into their weekly routine. Factors influencing children's EM use included parent and sibling modelling and reinforcement, personal cognitions, the physical home environment and household EM use rules and restrictions. Participants were not concerned about the excessive time children spent with EM. This under-recognition emerged as a personal influencing factor and was viewed as a major barrier to modifying children's electronic-based SB. Efforts to reduce SB in children should focus on the influencing factors that reciprocally interact within the family home. An emphasis on increasing awareness about the risks associated with spending excessive time in screen-based activities should be a priority when developing intervention strategies aimed at modifying the time children spend in SB.

A guide to help children understand cancer

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... approach will depend on your child's age and maturity. Here is a general guide. CHILDREN AGES 0 ... child understands cancer. www.cancer.net/coping-and-emotions/communicating-loved-ones/how-child-understands-cancer . Updated ...

Helping Elementary Teachers Understand Children and Divorce.

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Hrymak, Marilyn J.; Smart, Laura S.

1984-01-01

Describes a workshop designed to help elementary teachers understand the recent literature on the effects of divorce on children and help the children through the crisis. Indicates that secondary home economics teachers may have to deal with students who have not adjusted to divorce. (JOW)

Children's understanding of yesterday and tomorrow.

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Zhang, Meng; Hudson, Judith A

2018-06-01

A picture-sentence matching task was used to investigate children's understanding of yesterday and tomorrow. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds viewed two pictures of an object with a visible change of state (e.g., a carved pumpkin and an intact pumpkin) while listening to sentences referring to past or future actions ("I carved the pumpkin yesterday" or "I'm gonna carve the pumpkin tomorrow") and selected the matching picture. Children performed better with past tense sentences than with future tense sentences, and including tomorrow in future tense sentences increased accuracy. In the next two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (Experiment 2) and adults (Experiment 3) completed the same task but with sentences containing conflicting temporal information ("I carved the pumpkin tomorrow"). Children tended to select pictures depicting the outcome of actions regardless of tense or temporal adverb, whereas adults' judgments were based on temporal adverbs. In Experiment 4, 3- to 5-year-olds completed tasks requiring either forward or backward temporal reasoning about sentences referring to before, after, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Across sentence types, forward temporal reasoning was easier for children than backward temporal reasoning. Altogether, results indicated that children understand yesterday better than tomorrow due to the increased cognitive demands involved in reasoning about future events. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in children's emotion understanding: Effects of age and language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pons, Francisco; Lawson, J.: Harris, P.; Rosnay, M. de

2003-01-01

Over the last two decades, it has been established that children's emotion understanding changes as they develop. Recent studies have also begun to address individual differences in children's emotion understanding. The first goal of this study was to examine the development of these individual...... differences across a wide age range with a test assessing nine different components of emotion understanding. The second goal was to examine the relation between language ability and individual differences in emotion understanding. Eighty children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years were tested. Children...... displayed a clear improvement with age in both their emotion understanding and language ability. In each age group, there were clear individual differences in emotion understanding and language ability. Age and language ability together explained 72% of emotion understanding variance; 20% of this variance...

Imaginary companions, theory of mind and emotion understanding in young children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Giménez-Dasí, Marta; Pons, Francisco; Bender, Patrick Karl

2016-01-01

The phenomenon of imaginary companions (ICs) has received little attention in developmental psychology, even though it can be observed in approximately 25% of preschool-aged children. Only a few studies have investigated the effect of ICs on children's theory of mind and emotion understanding......, and the results are partial or inconsistent. This study used comprehensive measures to assess emotional understanding and theory of mind in children aged four to six with ICs (N = 24) and compared their performance to that of children without ICs (N = 24). Results showed that children with ICs, regardless of age...... and gender, have a better theory of mind and emotion understanding than children without ICs. The greatest impact of ICs was on girls' emotion understanding. The results are discussed in relation to gender differences....

Do Children Understand Fraction Addition?

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Braithwaite, David W.; Tian, Jing; Siegler, Robert S.

2017-01-01

Many children fail to master fraction arithmetic even after years of instruction. A recent theory of fraction arithmetic (Braithwaite, Pyke, & Siegler, in press) hypothesized that this poor learning of fraction arithmetic procedures reflects poor conceptual understanding of them. To test this hypothesis, we performed three experiments…

The expression and understanding of jealousy in children with autism.

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Bauminger, Nirit

2004-01-01

We investigated the expression and understanding of jealousy in 16 high-functioning children with autism and 17 typically developing children matched for IQ, chronological age, gender, and maternal education. We examined the expression of jealousy via children's behaviors, verbalizations, and affects demonstrated during two jealousy-provoking triadic scenarios (drawing and playing) enacted among the child in the experimental group (autism or typical), that child's main caregiver (mostly mothers), and a familiar peer or sibling. The two scenarios corresponded with the two types of jealousy described in past studies: social-comparison jealousy (drawing scenario) and social-relational jealousy (playing scenario). To tap children's understanding, we asked them to identify jealousy from a picture, to provide examples of times they felt jealous, and to offer suggestions for coping with jealousy. The main results revealed that children with autism expressed jealousy in situations similar to their typical age mates but manifested it in different behaviors. Moreover, children with autism revealed a less coherent understanding of the feeling. We discuss the meaning of the gap between demonstrating and understanding jealousy in light of the two central theoretical views conceptualizing the core emotional deficit in children with autism.

Understanding atypical emotions among children with autism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rieffe, C.J.; Meerum Terwogt, M.; Stockmann, L.

2000-01-01

Children with autism are said to be poor mind readers: They have a limited understanding of the role that mental states play in determining emotions and behavior. In this research, 23 high-functioning children from the autistic spectrum (M age 9 years 3 months), 42 6-year-old controls, and 43

Bilingualism and Conversational Understanding in Young Children

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Siegal, Michael; Iozzi, Laura; Surian, Luca

2009-01-01

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children's conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3-6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation…

Understanding Children's Sedentary Behaviour: A Qualitative Study of the Family Home Environment

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Granich, Joanna; Rosenberg, Michael; Knuiman, Matthew; Timperio, Anna

2010-01-01

Electronic media (EM) (television, electronic games and computer) use has been associated with overweight and obesity among children. Little is known about the time spent in sedentary behaviour (SB) among children within the family context. The aim of this study was to explore how the family home environment may influence children's…

Children's understanding of Aesop's fables: relations to reading comprehension and theory of mind.

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Pelletier, Janette; Beatty, Ruth

2015-01-01

Two studies examined children's developing understanding of Aesop's fables in relation to reading comprehension and to theory of mind. Study 1 included 172 children from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 in a school-wide examination of the relation between reading comprehension skills and understanding of Aesop's fables told orally. Study 2 examined the relation between theory of mind and fables understanding among 186 Junior (4-year-old) and Senior (5-year-old) Kindergarten children. Study 1 results showed a developmental progression in fables understanding with children's responses becoming increasingly decontextualized as they were able to extract the life lesson. After general vocabulary, passage comprehension predicted fables understanding. Study 2 results showed a relation between young children's theory of mind development and their understanding of fables. After general vocabulary, second-order theory of mind predicted children's fables understanding. Findings point to the importance of developing mental state awareness in children's ability to judge characters' intentions and to understand the deeper message embedded in fables.

Do we understand children's restlessness? Constructing ecologically valid understandings through reflexive cooperation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anna Helle-Valle

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD is the most widely used children's mental health diagnosis today, but the validity of the diagnosis is controversial, for instance, because it might conceal relational and ecological dimensions of restlessness. We invited parents and professionals from one local community in western Norway to participate in cooperative group discussions on how to conceptualize and understand children's restlessness. We carried out a thematic and reflexive analysis of the cooperative group discussions on ADHD and children's restlessness, and present findings related to three ecological levels inspired by Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model. At the level of the individual, restlessness was discussed as individual trait, as the expectation to be seen and heard, and as a result of traumatization. At the level of dyad, group or family, restlessness was discussed as a relational phenomenon and as parents' problems. At the level of community, restlessness was discussed as lack of cooperation and lack of structures or resources. Our findings show how contextualized and cooperative reflexivity can contribute to more valid understandings of children's restlessness, and how cooperative inquiry can stimulate reflections about solidarity and sustainability in relation to adult's actions.

Children's emotion understanding: A meta-analysis of training studies.

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Sprung, Manuel; Münch, Hannah M; Harris, Paul L; Ebesutani, Chad; Hofmann, Stefan G

2015-09-01

In the course of development, children show increased insight and understanding of emotions-both of their own emotions and those of others. However, little is known about the efficacy of training programs aimed at improving children's understanding of emotion. To conduct an effect size analysis of trainings aimed at three aspects of emotion understanding: external aspects (i.e., the recognition of emotional expressions, understanding external causes of emotion, understanding the influence of reminders on present emotions); mental aspects (i.e., understanding desire-based emotions, understanding belief-based emotions, understanding hidden emotions); and reflective aspects (i.e., understanding the regulation of an emotion, understanding mixed emotions, understanding moral emotions). A literature search was conducted using PubMed, PsycInfo, the Cochrane Library, and manual searches. The search identified 19 studies or experiments including a total of 749 children with an average age of 86 months ( S.D .=30.71) from seven different countries. Emotion understanding training procedures are effective for improving external (Hedge's g = 0.62), mental (Hedge's g = 0.31), and reflective (Hedge's g = 0.64) aspects of emotion understanding. These effect sizes were robust and generally unrelated to the number and lengths of training sessions, length of the training period, year of publication, and sample type. However, training setting and social setting moderated the effect of emotion understanding training on the understanding of external aspects of emotion. For the length of training session and social setting, we observed significant moderator effects of training on reflective aspects of emotion. Emotion understanding training may be a promising tool for both preventive intervention and the psychotherapeutic process. However, more well-controlled studies are needed.

Understanding of Emotions and False Beliefs among Hearing Children versus Deaf Children

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Ziv, Margalit; Most, Tova; Cohen, Shirit

2013-01-01

Emotion understanding and theory of mind (ToM) are two major aspects of social cognition in which deaf children demonstrate developmental delays. The current study investigated these social cognition aspects in two subgroups of deaf children--those with cochlear implants who communicate orally (speakers) and those who communicate primarily using…

Emotion in Children's Art: Do Young Children Understand the Emotions Expressed in Other Children's Drawings?

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Misailidi, Plousia; Bonoti, Fotini

2008-01-01

This study examined developmental changes in children's ability to understand the emotions expressed in other children's drawings. Eighty participants, at each of four age groups--three, four, five and six years--were presented with a series of child drawings, each expressing a different emotion (happiness, sadness, anger or fear). All drawings…

How early do children understand gesture-speech combinations with iconic gestures?

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Stanfield, Carmen; Williamson, Rebecca; Ozçalişkan, Seyda

2014-03-01

Children understand gesture+speech combinations in which a deictic gesture adds new information to the accompanying speech by age 1;6 (Morford & Goldin-Meadow, 1992; 'push'+point at ball). This study explores how early children understand gesture+speech combinations in which an iconic gesture conveys additional information not found in the accompanying speech (e.g., 'read'+BOOK gesture). Our analysis of two- to four-year-old children's responses in a gesture+speech comprehension task showed that children grasp the meaning of iconic co-speech gestures by age three and continue to improve their understanding with age. Overall, our study highlights the important role gesture plays in language comprehension as children learn to unpack increasingly complex communications addressed to them at the early ages.

Spanish parents' emotion talk and their children's understanding of emotion

OpenAIRE

Aznar, Ana; Tenenbaum, Harriet R.

2013-01-01

Relations between parent-child emotion talk and children's emotion understanding were examined in 63 Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- (M = 53.35 months, SD = 3.86) and 6-year-old (M = 76.62 months, SD = 3.91) children. Parent-child emotion talk was analyzed during two storytelling tasks: a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past experiences). Children's emotion understanding was assessed twice through a standardized test of emotion comprehension...

Emotion Understanding in Preschool Children with Mild-to-Severe Hearing Loss

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Laugen, Nina J.; Jacobsen, Karl H.; Rieffe, Carolien; Wichstrøm, Lars

2017-01-01

Deaf and hard of hearing school-aged children are at risk for delayed development of emotion understanding; however, little is known about this during the preschool years. We compared the level of emotion understanding in a group of 35 4-5-year-old children who use hearing aids to that of 130 children with typical hearing. Moreover, we…

Deaf children's understanding of emotions: desires take precedence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rieffe, C.J.; Meerum Terwogt, M.

2000-01-01

Deaf children frequently have trouble understanding other people's emotions. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind can account for this. This research focused on the spontaneous use of mental states in explaining other people's emotions by 6- and 10-year-old deaf children as compared

A Cultural-Historical Model to Understand and Facilitate Children's Development

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Wong, Pui Ling

2015-01-01

Parents and educators strive to help their children to develop optimally. Given the diversity of values and practices among dynamic modern populations it is important to understand all the dimensions that affect the development of children in their communities. A cultural-historical lens facilitates such a holistic understanding. Taking this lens,…

Developing Children's Understanding of Fractions: An Intervention Study

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Gabriel, Florence; Coche, Frederic; Szucs, Denes; Carette, Vincent; Rey, Bernard; Content, Alain

2012-01-01

Fractions constitute a stumbling block in mathematics education. To improve children's understanding of fractions, we designed an intervention based on learning-by-doing activities, which focused on the representation of the magnitude of fractions. Participants were 292 Grade 4 and 5 children. Half of the classes received experimental instruction,…

Language understanding and vocabulary of early cochlear implanted children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Percy-Smith, L; Busch, GW; Sandahl, M

2013-01-01

The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level.......The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level....

Japanese Children's Understanding of Notational Systems

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Takahashi, Noboru

2012-01-01

This study examined Japanese children's understanding of two Japanese notational systems: "hiragana" and "kanji". In three experiments, 126 3- to 6-year-olds were asked to name words written in hiragana or kanji as they appeared with different pictures. Consistent with Bialystok ("Journal of Experimental Child…

Australian Children's Understanding of Display Rules

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Choy, Grace

2009-01-01

Cultural display rules govern the manifestation of emotional expressions. In compliance with display rules, the facial expressions displayed (i.e. apparent emotion) may be incongruent with the emotion experienced (i.e. real emotion). This study investigates Australian Caucasian children's understanding of display rules. A sample of 80 four year…

Adults' and Children's Understanding of How Expertise Influences Learning.

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Danovitch, Judith H; Shenouda, Christine K

2018-01-01

Adults and children use information about expertise to infer what a person is likely to know, but it is unclear whether they realize that expertise also has implications for learning. We explore adults' and children's understanding that expertise in a particular category supports learning about a closely related category. In four experiments, 5-year-olds and adults (n = 160) judged which of two people would be better at learning about a new category. When faced with an expert and a nonexpert, adults consistently indicated that expertise supports learning in a closely related category; however, children's judgments were inconsistent and were strongly influenced by the description of the nonexpert. The results suggest that although children understand what it means to be an expert, they may judge an individual's learning capacity based on different considerations than adults.

Social understanding of high-ability children in middle and late childhood

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boor-Klip, H.J.; Cillessen, A.H.N.; Hell, J.G. van

2014-01-01

Despite its importance in social development, social understanding has hardly been studied in high-ability children. This study explores differences in social understanding between children in high-ability and regular classrooms, specifically theory of mind (ToM) and perception accuracy, as well as

Emotional Understanding and Color-Emotion Associations in Children Aged 7-8 Years

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Debbie J. Pope

2012-01-01

Full Text Available An understanding of the development of emotional knowledge can help us determine how children perceive and interpret their surroundings and color-emotion associations are one measure of the expression of a child’s emotional interpretations. Emotional understanding and color-emotion associations were examined in a sample of UK school children, aged 7-8 years. Forty primary school children (mean age = 7.38; SD = 0.49 were administered color assessment and emotional understanding tasks, and an expressive vocabulary test. Results identified significant gender differences with girls providing more appropriate and higher quality expressions of emotional understanding than boys. Children were more able to link color to positive rather than negative emotions and significant gender differences in specific color preferences were observed. The implications of adult misinterpretations of color-emotion associations in young children are discussed.

Preschool-Aged Children's Understanding of Gratitude: Relations with Emotion and Mental State Knowledge

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Nelson, Jackie A.; de Lucca Freitas, Lia Beatriz; O'Brien, Marion; Calkins, Susan D.; Leerkes, Esther M.; Marcovitch, Stuart

2013-01-01

Developmental precursors to children's early understanding of gratitude were examined. A diverse group of 263 children was tested for emotion and mental state knowledge at ages 3 and 4, and their understanding of gratitude was measured at age 5. Children varied widely in their understanding of gratitude, but most understood some aspects of…

Emotional Understanding and Color-Emotion Associations in Children Aged 7-8 Years

OpenAIRE

Pope, Debbie J.; Butler, Hannah; Qualter, Pamela

2012-01-01

An understanding of the development of emotional knowledge can help us determine how children perceive and interpret their surroundings and color-emotion associations are one measure of the expression of a child’s emotional interpretations. Emotional understanding and color-emotion associations were examined in a sample of UK school children, aged 7-8 years. Forty primary school children (mean age = 7.38; SD = 0.49) were administered color assessment and emotional understanding tasks, and...

Senior Secondary School Children's Understanding of Plant Nutrition

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Mosothwane, Modise

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to assess children's understanding of plant nutrition. The research was done on a sample of secondary school pupils in the age range of 16 to 19 years in two senior secondary schools in Botswana. The sample contained 137 senior secondary pupils all in their final year of study. These children were above average…

E-learning support for student's understanding of electronics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

May, Michael; Sendrup, Linda; Sparsø, Jens

2008-01-01

To enhance active learning and understanding of analogue and digital electronics the use of e-learning techniques will be investigated. In a redesigned course combining introductory analogue and digital electronics, students will be motivated to prepare for lectures and exercises by providing...... access to interactive simulations. Some exercises will furthermore be carried out first as simulations of electrical circuits and then with physical components, i.e. as design-build exercises. A number of didactic problems in learning electricity and electronics are discussed....

Feasibility of using a handheld electronic device for the collection of patient reported outcomes data from children.

Science.gov (United States)

Vinney, Lisa A; Grade, John D; Connor, Nadine P

2012-01-01

The manner in which a communication disorder affects health-related quality of life (QOL) in children is not known. Unfortunately, collection of quality of life data via traditional paper measures is labor intensive and has several other limitations, which hinder the investigation of pediatric quality of life in children. Currently, there is not sufficient research regarding the use of electronic devices to collect pediatric patient reported outcomes in order to address such limitations. Thus, we used a cross-over design to compare responses to a pediatric health quality of life instrument (PedsQL 4.0) delivered using a handheld electronic device to those from a traditional paper form. Respondents were children with (n=9) and without (n=10) a speech or voice disorder. For paper versus the electronic format, we examined time to completion, number of incomplete or inaccurate question responses, intra-rater reliability, ease of use, and child and parent preference. There were no significant differences between children's scores, time to complete the measure, or ratings related to ease of answering questions. The percentage of children who made answering errors or omissions with paper and pencil was significantly greater than the percentage of children who made such errors using the device. This preliminary study demonstrated that use of an electronic device to collect QOL or patient-reported outcomes (PRO) data from children is more efficient than and just as feasible, reliable, and acceptable as using paper forms. The development of hardware and software applications for the collection of QOL and/or PRO data in children with speech disorders is likely warranted. The reader will be able to understand: (1) The potential benefits of using electronic data capture via handheld devices for collecting pediatric patient reported outcomes; (2) The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 is a measure of the perception of general health quality that has distinguished between

Social Understanding of High-Ability Children in Middle and Late Childhood

Science.gov (United States)

Boor-Klip, Henrike J.; Cillessen, Antonius H. N.; van Hell, Janet G.

2014-01-01

Despite its importance in social development, social understanding has hardly been studied in high-ability children. This study explores differences in social understanding between children in high-ability and regular classrooms, specifically theory of mind (ToM) and perception accuracy, as well as associations between individual characteristics…

Children's Understanding of Self-Focused Humor Styles.

Science.gov (United States)

James, Lucy Amelia; Fox, Claire Louise

2016-08-01

It has been proposed that four main styles of humor exist, two which are thought to be adaptive (affiliative, self-enhancing) and two which are thought to be maladaptive (aggressive, self-defeating). Whilst the existence of these four humor styles has been supported in older children, it is suggested that for younger children, self-enhancing and self-defeating humor may develop at a later point. To investigate this further, the current research involved five semi-structured paired interviews with children aged eight to eleven years to explore the use and understanding of self-enhancing and self-defeating humor in this age group. Findings indicated that use of both self-enhancing and self-defeating humor were apparent in some children, but not all. It therefore seems appropriate that attempts to investigate humor in this age group should aim to include all four styles of humor. The current research also demonstrated the value of paired interviews when carrying out this sort of research with children.

Children's Interpretive Understanding, Moral Judgments, and Emotion Attributions: Relations to Social Behaviour

Science.gov (United States)

Malti, Tina; Gasser, Luciano; Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, Eveline

2010-01-01

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5-year-old, 123 7-year-old, and 130 9-year-old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion…

Sources of Individual Differences in Children's Understanding of Fractions

Science.gov (United States)

Vukovic, Rose K.; Fuchs, Lynn S.; Geary, David C.; Jordan, Nancy C.; Gersten, Russell; Siegler, Robert S.

2014-01-01

Longitudinal associations of domain-general and numerical competencies with individual differences in children's understanding of fractions were investigated. Children (n = 163) were assessed at 6 years of age on domain-general (nonverbal reasoning, language, attentive behavior, executive control, visual-spatial memory) and numerical (number…

Understanding of Epilepsy by Children and Young People with Epilepsy

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Ann; Parsons, Sarah

2008-01-01

There is a striking dearth of studies focusing sensitively and in depth on the mainstream educational experiences of children with epilepsy, as viewed by those children themselves. The one-year project (2006-7) reported here addresses that gap. Children's perceptions about mainstream teachers' understanding of epilepsy and school-based needs are…

Emotion understanding, pictorial representations of friendship and reciprocity in school-aged children.

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Laghi, Fiorenzo; Baiocco, Roberto; Di Norcia, Anna; Cannoni, Eleonora; Baumgartner, Emma; Bombi, Anna Silvia

2014-01-01

This study examined the relationship between emotional understanding, friendship representation and reciprocity in school-aged children. Two hundred and fifty-one Caucasian 6-year-old children (111 males and 140 females) took part in the study. The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) were used. Children having a reciprocal friendship and children having a unilateral friendship with a child named as their "best friend" were compared on the emotional understanding task and on their pictorial representations of friendship. Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not influenced by classroom-level differences. Results showed that children with reciprocal friendships drew themselves as more similar to and more cohesive with their best friends, and they showed better understanding of emotions, than children having a unilateral friendship. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.

Children's and adults' understanding of death: Cognitive, parental, and experiential influences.

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Panagiotaki, Georgia; Hopkins, Michelle; Nobes, Gavin; Ward, Emma; Griffiths, Debra

2018-02-01

This study explored the development of understanding of death in a sample of 4- to 11-year-old British children and adults (N=136). It also investigated four sets of possible influences on this development: parents' religion and spiritual beliefs, cognitive ability, socioeconomic status, and experience of illness and death. Participants were interviewed using the "death concept" interview that explores understanding of the subcomponents of inevitability, universality, irreversibility, cessation, and causality of death. Children understood key aspects of death from as early as 4 or 5years, and with age their explanations of inevitability, universality, and causality became increasingly biological. Understanding of irreversibility and the cessation of mental and physical processes also emerged during early childhood, but by 10years many children's explanations reflected not an improved biological understanding but rather the coexistence of apparently contradictory biological and supernatural ideas-religious, spiritual, or metaphysical. Evidence for these coexistent beliefs was more prevalent in older children than in younger children and was associated with their parents' religious and spiritual beliefs. Socioeconomic status was partly related to children's biological ideas, whereas cognitive ability and experience of illness and death played less important roles. There was no evidence for coexistent thinking among adults, only a clear distinction between biological explanations about death and supernatural explanations about the afterlife. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Developing Thinking and Understanding in Young Children: An Introduction for Students. Second Edition

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Robson, Sue

2012-01-01

Developing "Thinking and Understanding in Young Children" presents a comprehensive and accessible overview of contemporary theory and research about young children's developing thinking and understanding. Throughout this second edition, the ideas and theories presented are enlivened by transcripts of children's activities and conversations taken…

Researching Children's Understanding of Safety: An Auto-Driven Visual Approach

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Agbenyega, Joseph S.

2011-01-01

Safe learning spaces allow children to explore their environment in an open and inquiring way, whereas unsafe spaces constrain, frustrate and disengage children from experiencing the fullness of their learning spaces. This study explores how children make sense of safe and unsafe learning spaces, and how this understanding affects the ways they…

Improving Social Understanding of Preschool Children: Evaluation of a Training Program

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Esteban, Moises; Sidera, Francesc; Serrano, Jessica; Amado, Anna; Rostan, Carles

2010-01-01

Introduction: This study tested the effects of a training program intending to foster social understanding or the capacity which enables them to understand themselves and others in terms of intentions, beliefs, desires, and emotions in children at preschool age. A number of studies have shown that in the context of shared narratives, children are…

Children's understanding of the distinction between intentions and desires.

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Schult, Carolyn A

2002-01-01

Much of the previous research on children's understanding of intentions confounded intentions with desires. Intentions and desires are different, in that a desire can be satisfied in a number of ways, but an intention must be satisfied by carrying out the intended action. Children 3 through 7 years of age and adults were presented with situations in which intentions were satisfied but desires were not, or vice versa, in a story-comprehension task (N = 71) and a target-hitting game (N = 45). Although 3- and 4-year-olds were unable to differentiate desires and intentions consistently, 5- and 7-year-olds often matched the adult pattern. Younger children's difficulties in understanding intentions are discussed in terms of their use of a desire-outcome matching strategy and the representational complexities of intentions.

Classical understanding of electron vortex beams in a uniform magnetic field

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Han, Yeong Deok [Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Woosuk University, Wanju, Cheonbuk, 565-701 (Korea, Republic of); Choi, Taeseung, E-mail: tschoi@swu.ac.kr [Division of Applied Food System, College of Natural Science, Seoul Women' s University, Seoul 139-774 (Korea, Republic of); School of Computational Sciences, Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 130-012 (Korea, Republic of)

2017-04-25

Recently, interesting observations on electron vortex beams have been made. We propose a classical model that shows vortex-like motion due to suitably-synchronized motion of each electron's cyclotron motion in a uniform magnetic field. It is shown that some basic features of electron vortex beams in a uniform magnetic field, such as azimuthal currents, the relation between energy and kinetic angular momentum, and the parallel-axis theorem are understandable by using this classical model. We also show that the time-dependence of kinetic angular momentum of electron vortex beams could be understood as an effect of a specific nonuniform distribution of classical electrons. - Highlights: • A classical model for electron vortex beams is proposed. • The basic features of azimuthal currents could be understood by using this model. • The kinetic angular momentum of electron vortex beams is intuitively understandable.

Children's understanding of television advertising: a revisit in the Chinese context.

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Chan, Kara; McNeal, James U

2004-03-01

The authors conducted a survey of 1,758 elementary school children (6-14 years old) from December 2001, to March 2002, in 3 Chinese cities with different levels of television advertising. The authors used D. R. John's (1999) model of consumer socialization as the theoretical framework for their study. More than half of the children whom the authors interviewed were able to understand that television stations broadcast commercials to earn money. Their understanding of the purposes of television commercials and the persuasive intention of television commercials developed with age. The authors examined the influence of gender, level of advertising, and level of television viewing on children's understanding of television advertising by using 3-way factorial models.

Understanding Early Elementary Children's Conceptual Knowledge of Plant Structure and Function through Drawings

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Anderson, Janice L.; Ellis, Jane P.; Jones, Alan M.

2014-01-01

This study examined children's drawings to explain children's conceptual understanding of plant structure and function. The study explored whether the children's drawings accurately reflect their conceptual understanding about plants in a manner that can be interpreted by others. Drawing, survey, interview, and observational data were collected…

Using digital multimedia to improve parents' and children's understanding of clinical trials.

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Tait, Alan R; Voepel-Lewis, Terri; Levine, Robert

2015-06-01

Data show that many research subjects have difficulty understanding study information using traditional paper consent documents. This study, therefore, was designed to evaluate the effect of an interactive multimedia program on improving parents' and children's understanding of clinical trial concepts and participation. Parents (n=148) and children (n=135) were each randomised to receive information regarding clinical trials using either a traditional paper format (TF) or an interactive iPad program (IP) with inline exercises. Participants' understanding of the information was assessed using semistructured interviews prior to (pretest) and after (post-test) receiving the information. Participants also completed a short survey to assess their perceptions of information delivery and satisfaction with the process. Regardless of the mode of information delivery, all participants demonstrated improved pretest to post-test understanding. While there were no statistical differences in parents' post-test understanding between the TF and IP groups, children in the IP group had significantly greater post-test understanding compared with children in the TF group (11.65 (4.1) vs 8.85 (4.1) (2.8, 1.4, 4.2) 0-18 scale where 18=complete understanding). Furthermore, the IP was found to be significantly 'easier to follow' and 'more effective' in presenting information compared with the TF. Results demonstrated the importance of providing information regarding clinical trial concepts to parents and children. Importantly, the ability of interactive multimedia to improve understanding of clinical trial concepts and satisfaction with information delivery, particularly among children, supports this approach as a novel and effective vehicle for enhancing the informed consent process. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Use of electronic games by young children and fundamental movement skills?

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Barnett, Lisa M; Hinkley, Trina; Okely, Anthony D; Hesketh, Kylie; Salmon, Jo

2012-06-01

This study investigated associations between pre-school children's time spent playing electronic games and their fundamental movement skills. In 2009, 53 children had physical activity (Actigraph accelerometer counts per minute), parent proxy-report of child's time in interactive and non-interactive electronic games (min./week), and movement skill (Test of Gross Motor Development-2) assessed. Hierarchical linear regression, adjusting for age (range = 3-6 years), sex (Step 1), and physical activity (cpm; M=687, SD=175.42; Step 2), examined the relationship between time in (a) non-interactive and (b) interactive electronic games and locomotor and object control skill. More than half (59%, n=31) of the children were female. Adjusted time in interactive game use was associated with object control but not locomotor skill. Adjusted time in non-interactive game use had no association with object control or locomotor skill. Greater time spent playing interactive electronic games is associated with higher object control skill proficiency in these young children. Longitudinal and experimental research is required to determine if playing these games improves object control skills or if children with greater object control skill proficiency prefer and play these games.

Exploring children's understanding of death: through drawings and the Death Concept Questionnaire.

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Bonoti, Fotini; Leondari, Angeliki; Mastora, Adelais

2013-01-01

To investigate whether children's understanding of the concept of death varies as a function of death experience and age, 52 children aged 7, 9, and 11 years (26 had a personal death experience), drew a picture reflecting the meaning of the word death and completed the Death Concept Questionnaire for examination of Human and Animal Death. The results showed that the 2 methodological tools used offered complementary information and that children's understanding of death is related both to age and past experience. Children with death experience seem to have a more realistic understanding of death than their inexperienced age-mates. As regards to the effect of age, our findings support the assumption that the different components of death develop through different processes.

Children's developing understanding of what and how they learn.

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Sobel, David M; Letourneau, Susan M

2015-04-01

What do children know about learning? Children between 4 and 10 years of age were asked what they thought the word learning meant and then engaged in a structured interview about what kinds of things they learned and how they learned those things. Most of the 4- and 5-year-olds' responses to these questions indicated a lack of awareness about the nature of learning or how learning occurs. In contrast, the 8- to 10-year-olds showed a strong understanding of learning as a process and could often generate explicit metacognitive responses indicating that they understood under what circumstances learning would occur. The 6- and 7-year-olds were in a transitional stage between these two levels of understanding. We discuss the implications of this development with children's theory-of-mind development more generally. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Promoting Children's Understanding And Interest In Science Through Informal Science Education

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Bartley, Jessica E.; Mayhew, Laurel M.; Finkelstein, Noah D.

2009-11-01

We present results from the University of Colorado's Partnership for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) in which university participants work in afterschool programs on inquiry-based activities with primary school children from populations typically under represented in science. This university-community partnership is designed to positively impact youth, university students, and the institutions that support them while improving children's attitudes towards and understanding of science. Children worked through circuit activities adapted from the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum and demonstrated increased understanding of content area as well as favorable beliefs about science.

"Children are sexually innocent": Iranian parents' understanding of children's sexuality.

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Merghati-Khoei, Effat; Abolghasemi, Naria; Smith, Thomas G

2014-04-01

Sexuality education (SE) is hotly contested in the West and there is much abstinence-only education; however, it remains controversial in a variety of contexts, including in Iran. The lack of consensus about children's SE in Muslim societies obliges us to explore different aspects of this topic systematically. The qualitative research presented here was about how Iranian parents perceived children's sexuality. Data from parents of 26 children were collected during four focus group sessions. Informants were selected from Area 5 in West Tehran. This area included 72 primary schools for girls and 82 for boys. The sessions were facilitated by using a semi-structured focus group guide. Content analysis was adopted using combined free and analytical coding to reduce data, to extract meanings, and to categorize domains. One of the three main domains identified, family management of child sexuality, is comprised of the following: (1) understanding of child sexuality, (2) family rules, (3) parent-child interactions, and (4) opposite sex interactions. Parental misinformation, accumulated myths, and ignorance about children's sexual development were evident. Strict family rules and a lack of consistent policy and instruction for SE were also identified. Parents said they were neither well-prepared nor competent to educate their children about sexuality. In fact, a majority of mothers raised "incompetence" as an important determinant in their own parent-child interactions. Societal changes as well as children's socialization patterns have forced parents to accept their children's opposite sex friendships as a reality. Results suggest a community need for developing comprehensive and culturally sensitive SE for schools and parental use.

The Electron Runaround: Understanding Electric Circuit Basics Through a Classroom Activity

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Singh, Vandana

2010-05-01

Several misconceptions abound among college students taking their first general physics course, and to some extent pre-engineering physics students, regarding the physics and applications of electric circuits. Analogies used in textbooks, such as those that liken an electric circuit to a piped closed loop of water driven by a water pump, do not completely resolve these misconceptions. Mazur and Knight,2 in particular, separately note that such misconceptions include the notion that electric current on either side of a light bulb in a circuit can be different. Other difficulties and confusions involve understanding why the current in a parallel circuit exceeds the current in a series circuit with the same components, and include the role of the battery (where students may assume wrongly that a dry cell battery is a fixed-current rather than a fixed-voltage device). A simple classroom activity that students can play as a game can resolve these misconceptions, providing an intellectual as well as a hands-on understanding. This paper describes the "Electron Runaround," first developed by the author to teach extremely bright 8-year-old home-schooled children the basics of electric circuits and subsequently altered (according to the required level of instruction) and used for various college physics courses.

Children's aesthetic understanding of photographic art and the quality of art-related parent-child interactions.

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Szechter, Lisa E; Liben, Lynn S

2007-01-01

This research was designed to examine the quality of children's aesthetic understanding of photographs, observe social interactions between parents and children in this aesthetic domain, and study whether qualitatively different dyadic interactions were associated with children's own aesthetic understanding. Parents and children (7-13 years; 40 dyads) individually completed measures of aesthetic understanding and jointly selected photographs for a souvenir scrapbook. Parents' artistic experience varied widely and was associated with their own performance on aesthetic understanding measures. Children's performance on the individual aesthetic tasks was related to age, but not to parents' art experience nor to the qualities of parent-child discussions of aesthetic concepts. Among both parents and children, artistic experience was associated with aesthetic preferences for photographs.

Bernoulli's Principle: The Effects of Instruction on Young Children's Understanding of Flight.

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Fleege, Pamela O.; And Others

This study examined the effects of hands-on instruction on young children's understanding of an aspect of flight, specifically Bernoulli's principle. First, 137 public school children, ages 5 through 8 years, were interviewed about their understanding of how an airplane flies. Two weeks later, the subjects participated in two hands-on…

Understanding Peer Influence in Children and Adolescents

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Prinstein, Mitchell J., Ed.; Dodge, Kenneth A., Ed.

2008-01-01

Scientists, educators, and parents of teens have long recognized the potency of peer influences on children and youth, but until recently, questions of how and why adolescents emulate their peers were largely overlooked. This book presents a framework for understanding the processes by which peers shape each other's attitudes and behavior, and…

Child's understanding of television programmes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martina Peštaj

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In the last decade, we have witnessed an unimaginable progress of the electronic media. The television takes the first place by its availability, importance and popularity, both with adults and with children. It has become the focal point of family interaction and is progressively taking on a key role in the process of children's socialization. Various research has proven that children begin watching television as babies and that toddlers are already accustomed and constant viewers. During their development, they become increasingly competent to understand and to use the television media, while the differences in the perception of television contents are mainly conditioned by the period of early childhood. The process of preschool child's understanding of media information goes from concrete to abstract and on two levels at the same time: understanding of formal features and understanding of content. Both levels have important role in child's understanding of the world, what could be observed in forming of gender stereotypes, where, as researches show, the television has a special influence.

Children's Aesthetic Understanding of Photographic Art and the Quality of Art-Related Parent-Child Interactions

Science.gov (United States)

Szechter, Lisa E.; Liben, Lynn S.

2007-01-01

This research was designed to examine the quality of children's aesthetic understanding of photographs, observe social interactions between parents and children in this aesthetic domain, and study whether qualitatively different dyadic interactions were associated with children's own aesthetic understanding. Parents and children (7-13 years; 40…

Direct observation of children's preferences and activity levels during interactive and online electronic games.

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Sit, Cindy H P; Lam, Jessica W K; McKenzie, Thomas L

2010-07-01

Interactive electronic games have recently been popularized and are believed to help promote children's physical activity (PA). The purpose of the study was to examine preferences and PA levels during interactive and online electronic games among overweight and nonoverweight boys and girls. Using a modification of the SOFIT, we systematically observed 70 Hong Kong Chinese children (35 boys, 35 girls; 50 nonoverweight, 20 overweight), age 9 to 12 years, during 2 60-minute recreation sessions and recorded their game mode choices and PA levels. During Session One children could play either an interactive or an online electronic bowling game and during Session Two they could play an interactive or an online electronic running game. Children chose to play the games during 94% of session time and split this time between interactive (52%) and online (48%) versions. They engaged in significantly more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during interactive games than their online electronic versions (70% vs. 2% of game time). Boys and nonoverweight children expended relatively more energy during the interactive games than girls and overweight children, respectively. New-generation interactive games can facilitate physical activity in children, and given the opportunity children may select them over sedentary versions.

Children's conceptions of physical events: explicit and tacit understanding of horizontal motion.

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Howe, Christine; Taylor Tavares, Joana; Devine, Amy

2014-06-01

The conceptual understanding that children display when predicting physical events has been shown to be inferior to the understanding they display when recognizing whether events proceed naturally. This has often been attributed to differences between the explicit engagement with conceptual knowledge required for prediction and the tacit engagement that suffices for recognition, and contrasting theories have been formulated to characterize the differences. Focusing on a theory that emphasizes omission at the explicit level of conceptual elements that are tacitly understood, the paper reports two studies that attempt clarification. The studies are concerned with 6- to 10-year-old children's understanding of, respectively, the direction (141 children) and speed (132 children) of motion in a horizontal direction. Using computer-presented billiards scenarios, the children predicted how balls would move (prediction task) and judged whether or not simulated motion was correct (recognition task). Results indicate that the conceptions underpinning prediction are sometimes interpretable as partial versions of the conceptions underpinning recognition, as the omission hypothesis would imply. However, there are also qualitative differences, which suggest partial dissociation between explicit and tacit understanding. It is suggested that a theoretical perspective that acknowledges this dissociation would provide the optimal framework for future research. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Nondecomposable idiom understanding in children: recursive theory of mind and working memory.

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Caillies, Stéphanie; Le Sourn-Bissaoui, Sandrine

2013-06-01

Which skills are required to start understanding ambiguous, unfamiliar nondecomposable idioms in context? In this study, we examined the contributions of both second-order false-belief understanding and working memory to the understanding of unfamiliar nondecomposable idioms in children aged 6, 7 and 8 years old. We assumed that, in order to process these idioms, children would have to be able to (a) take a double perspective (Perner & Wimmer, 1985), (b) maintain both literal and figurative meanings as being different from the expression itself, and (c) take the context into account. Six-, 7- and 8-year-old children performed three, second-order false-belief tasks and three working-memory tasks, and listened to 15 nondecomposable idioms inserted into a context, before performing a multiple-choice task. Results indicated that nondecomposable idiom understanding was explained by theory-of-mind skills.

A developmental approach to understanding drawings and narratives from children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

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Looman, Wendy Sue

2006-01-01

Using art as a process to help children externalize complex feelings can add another layer of assessment in the primary care setting. In the face of trauma, drawing may help children gain symbolic control over events that are confusing and frightening. Through examples of children who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, this article describes the use of drawings and narratives to understand children's experiences related to traumatic displacement. Recommendations include using a developmental lens to understanding children's art, asking children to talk about their drawings, and considering the significance of place for children who have been traumatically displaced.

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children.

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Gavazzi, Ilaria Grazzani; Ornaghi, Veronica

2011-11-01

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates whether training preschool children in the active use of emotional state talk plays a significant role in bringing about greater understanding of emotion terms and improved emotion comprehension. Participants were 100 preschool children (M=52 months; SD=9·9; range: 35-70 months), randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. They were pre- and post-tested to assess their language comprehension, metacognitive language comprehension and emotion understanding. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During the intervention phase, the children were read stories enriched with emotional lexicon. After listening to the stories, children in the experimental group took part in conversational language games designed to stimulate use of the selected emotional terms. In contrast, the control group children did not take part in any special linguistic activities after the story readings. Analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the understanding of inner state language and in the comprehension of emotion.

What do children know and understand about universal gravitation? Structural and developmental aspects

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Frappart, S.; Raijmakers, M.; Frède, V.

2014-01-01

Children's understanding of universal gravitation starts at an early age but changes until adulthood, which makes it an interesting topic for studying the development and structure of knowledge. Children's understanding of gravitation was tested for a variety of contexts and across a wide age range

Understanding the Learning Style of Pre-School Children Learning the Violin

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Calissendorff, Maria

2006-01-01

The aim of the study was to acquire a deeper understanding of how small children learn an instrument in the presence of their parents. It is qualitative in nature and concerned six pre-school children (five years old) who were learning the violin together and where their parents were present at the lessons. All the children's homes were visited…

The Deafening Silence: Discussing Children's Drawings for Understanding and Addressing Marginalization

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Angelides, Panayiotis; Michaelidou, Antonia

2009-01-01

Researchers who deal with inclusive education have made great efforts to listen to the voices of children in order to understand marginalization. Despite the fact that these efforts take place, the voices of many children fail to be heard and hence many children continue to be marginalized. In this article we will develop and implement a technique…

Influence of hearing age and understanding verbal instructions in children with cochlear implants

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Đoković Sanja

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Hearing age is defined as a period of using any amplification. Most researches indicate that hearing age influences the developmental rate of auditory and speech-language abilities in deaf children, especially when cochlear implantation was performed before the age of three. This research is aimed at analyzing the influence of hearing age on understanding verbal instructions in children with cochlear implants. The sample consists of 23 children with cochlear implants and 21 children with normal hearing, aged between 4 and 10. Hearing age of children with cochlear implants was between 2 and 7 years. Token Test with toys, adapted for children with hearing impairments, was used to analyze understanding verbal instructions. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences between children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing, aged between 4 and 7, on all subtests and the total score regardless of the hearing age (sub1 p<0.001, sub2 p<0.000, sub3 p<0.001, total score p<0.000. No statistically significant differences were determined on any of the subtests in children aged between 7.1 and 10, regardless of the hearing age. Comparative results analysis within the experimental group of children with different hearing age indicates that the difference in understanding verbal instructions between these two groups is not statistically significant.

Children with Autism Are Impaired in the Understanding of Teaching

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Knutsen, John; Mandell, David S.; Frye, Douglas

2017-01-01

Children learn novel information using various methods, and one of the most common is human pedagogical communication or teaching--the purposeful imparting of information from one person to another. Neuro-typically developing (TD) children gain the ability to recognize and understand teaching as a core method for acquiring knowledge from others.…

Advanced understanding on electronic structure of molecular semiconductors and their interfaces

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Akaike, Kouki

2018-03-01

Understanding the electronic structure of organic semiconductors and their interfaces is critical to optimizing functionalities for electronics applications, by rational chemical design and appropriate combination of device constituents. The unique electronic structure of a molecular solid is characterized as (i) anisotropic electrostatic fields that originate from molecular quadrupoles, (ii) interfacial energy-level lineup governed by simple electrostatics, and (iii) weak intermolecular interactions that make not only structural order but also energy distributions of the frontier orbitals sensitive to atmosphere and interface growth. This article shows an overview on these features with reference to the improved understanding of the orientation-dependent electronic structure, comprehensive mechanisms of molecular doping, and energy-level alignment. Furthermore, the engineering of ionization energy by the control of the electrostatic fields and work function of practical electrodes by contact-induced doping is briefly described for the purpose of highlighting how the electronic structure impacts the performance of organic devices.

When the Happy Victimizer Says Sorry: Children's Understanding of Apology and Emotion

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Smith, Craig E.; Chen, Diyu; Harris, Paul L.

2010-01-01

Previous research suggests that children gradually understand the mitigating effects of apology on damage to a transgressor's reputation. However, little is known about young children's insights into the central emotional implications of apology. In two studies, children ages 4-9 heard stories about moral transgressions in which the wrongdoers…

Statistical Learning as a Basis for Social Understanding in Children

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Ruffman, Ted; Taumoepeau, Mele; Perkins, Chris

2012-01-01

Many authors have argued that infants understand goals, intentions, and beliefs. We posit that infants' success on such tasks might instead reveal an understanding of behaviour, that infants' proficient statistical learning abilities might enable such insights, and that maternal talk scaffolds children's learning about the social world as well. We…

Children's Understanding of Display Rules for Expressive Behavior.

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Saarni, Carolyn

1979-01-01

Examined how children come to understand that internally experienced affect need not be behaviorally expressed and that the emotion that is expressed is not necessarily what is being felt internally. Sixty elementary school students were interviewed about four interpersonal conflict situations presented in comic strip style but using photographs…

Through the eyes of children: Drawings as an evaluation tool for children's understanding about endangered Mexican primates.

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Franquesa-Soler, Montserrat; Serio-Silva, Juan Carlos

2017-12-01

This study seeks to understand children's perceptions and knowledge of endangered Mexican primates. The black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra) is a charismatic species endemic to Southern Mexico, Northern Belize, and Guatemala and is a symbol of the region that fosters a sense of local pride. Therefore, it can be considered a flagship species for the forests of Southern Mexico. We evaluated the perception and knowledge that 297 Mexican elementary school children (8-10 years old) have about black howler monkeys. Specifically, we analyzed and categorized drawings made by these children based on gender, geographic context (rural or urban), and residence within or outside of Protected Areas (PAs). Student drawings were categorized into three levels of knowledge (no familiarity, basic knowledge, and sophisticated knowledge). Common misconceptions and important landscape elements for black howler conservation were gathered from these visual representations. Children were largely unfamiliar with black howlers, despite sharing the same geographical location. Knowledge was affected by context and residence, with students living within PAs more aware of black howlers than students living outside of PAs. However, overall the children showed a deep understanding of the current forest conservation situation in Southern Mexico; meaning they could be presenting a shifting baseline syndrome. The study highlights the value of assessing children's drawings as a tool that can be used to help policy makers and educational practitioners in fine-tuning educational, environmental, and marketing programs. More importantly, it is a methodology that can be applied in future research for understanding children's perceptions and knowledge about endangered species and environmental change in deciding how to improve the effectiveness of conservation messaging. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scientific thinking in elementary school: Children's social cognition and their epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills.

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Osterhaus, Christopher; Koerber, Susanne; Sodian, Beate

2017-03-01

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding the nature of science), and general information-processing skills (inhibition, intelligence, and language abilities) in a whole-class testing procedure. A multiple indicators multiple causes model revealed a significant influence of social cognition (AToM) on epistemological understanding, and a McNemar test suggested that children's development of AToM is an important precursor for the emergence of an advanced, mature epistemological understanding. Children's epistemological understanding, in turn, predicted their experimentation skills. Importantly, this relation was independent of the common influences of general information processing. Significant relations between experimentation skills and inhibition, and between epistemological understanding, intelligence, and language abilities emerged, suggesting that general information processing contributes to the conceptual development that is involved in scientific thinking. The model of scientific thinking that was tested in this study (social cognition and epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills) fitted the data significantly better than 2 alternative models, which assumed nonspecific, equally strong relations between all constructs under investigation. Our results support the conclusion that social cognition plays a foundational role in the emergence of children's epistemological understanding, which in turn is closely related to the development of experimentation skills. Our findings have significant implications for the teaching of scientific thinking in elementary school and they stress the importance of children's epistemological understanding in

Shhh… I Need Quiet! Children's Understanding of American, British, and Japanese-accented English Speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Bent, Tessa; Holt, Rachael Frush

2018-02-01

Children's ability to understand speakers with a wide range of dialects and accents is essential for efficient language development and communication in a global society. Here, the impact of regional dialect and foreign-accent variability on children's speech understanding was evaluated in both quiet and noisy conditions. Five- to seven-year-old children ( n = 90) and adults ( n = 96) repeated sentences produced by three speakers with different accents-American English, British English, and Japanese-accented English-in quiet or noisy conditions. Adults had no difficulty understanding any speaker in quiet conditions. Their performance declined for the nonnative speaker with a moderate amount of noise; their performance only substantially declined for the British English speaker (i.e., below 93% correct) when their understanding of the American English speaker was also impeded. In contrast, although children showed accurate word recognition for the American and British English speakers in quiet conditions, they had difficulty understanding the nonnative speaker even under ideal listening conditions. With a moderate amount of noise, their perception of British English speech declined substantially and their ability to understand the nonnative speaker was particularly poor. These results suggest that although school-aged children can understand unfamiliar native dialects under ideal listening conditions, their ability to recognize words in these dialects may be highly susceptible to the influence of environmental degradation. Fully adult-like word identification for speakers with unfamiliar accents and dialects may exhibit a protracted developmental trajectory.

Analogy for Drude’s free electron model to promote students’ understanding of electric circuits in lower secondary school

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Maria José BM de Almeida

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Aiming at a deep understanding of some basic concepts of electric circuits in lower secondary schools, this work introduces an analogy between the behavior of children playing in a school yard with a central lake, subject to different conditions, rules, and stimuli, and Drude’s free electron model of metals. Using this analogy from the first school contacts with electric phenomena, one can promote students’ understanding of concepts such as electric current, the role of generators, potential difference effects, energy transfer, open and closed circuits, resistances, and their combinations in series and parallel. One believes that through this analogy well-known previous misconceptions of young students about electric circuit behaviors can be overcome. Furthermore, students’ understanding will enable them to predict, and justify with self-constructed arguments, the behavior of different elementary circuits. The students’ predictions can be verified—as a challenge of self-produced understanding schemes—using laboratory experiments. At a preliminary stage, our previsions were confirmed through a pilot study with three classrooms of 9th level Portuguese students.

Mapping Cultural Diversity through Children's Voices: From Confusion to Clear Understandings

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Hajisoteriou, Christina; Karousiou, Christiana; Angelides, Panayiotis

2017-01-01

This research examines children's conceptualisations of cultural diversity. In particular, this project examines the following two research questions: how do children define and understand the concept of cultural diversity; and what do they perceive as the implications of cultural diversity on their daily lives? To this end, interviews were…

Understanding of emotions based on counterfactual reasoning in children with autism spectrum disorders.

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Begeer, Sander; De Rosnay, Marc; Lunenburg, Patty; Stegge, Hedy; Terwogt, Mark Meerum

2014-04-01

The understanding of emotions based on counterfactual reasoning was studied in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (n = 71) and in typically developing children (n = 71), aged 6-12 years. Children were presented with eight stories about two protagonists who experienced the same positive or negative outcome, either due to their own action or by default. Relative to the comparison group, children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder were poor at explaining emotions based on downward counterfactual reasoning (i.e. contentment and relief). There were no group differences in upward counterfactual reasoning (i.e. disappointment and regret). In the comparison group, second-order false-belief reasoning was related to children's understanding of second-order counterfactual emotions (i.e. regret and relief), while children in the high-functioning autism spectrum disorder group relied more on their general intellectual skills. Results are discussed in terms of the different functions of counterfactual reasoning about emotion and the cognitive style of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder.

Understanding electron magnetic circular dichroism in a transition potential approach

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Barthel, J.; Mayer, J.; Rusz, J.; Ho, P.-L.; Zhong, X. Y.; Lentzen, M.; Dunin-Borkowski, R. E.; Urban, K. W.; Brown, H. G.; Findlay, S. D.; Allen, L. J.

2018-04-01

This paper introduces an approach based on transition potentials for inelastic scattering to understand the underlying physics of electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD). The transition potentials are sufficiently localized to permit atomic-scale EMCD. Two-beam and three-beam systematic row cases are discussed in detail in terms of transition potentials for conventional transmission electron microscopy, and the basic symmetries which arise in the three-beam case are confirmed experimentally. Atomic-scale EMCD in scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), using both a standard STEM probe and vortex beams, is discussed.

Maternal Mental State Language and Preschool Children's Attachment Security: Relation to Children's Mental State Language and Expressions of Emotional Understanding

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Mcquaid, Nancy; Bigelow, Ann E.; McLaughlin, Jessica; MacLean, Kim

2008-01-01

Mothers' mental state language in conversation with their preschool children, and children's preschool attachment security were examined for their effects on children's mental state language and expressions of emotional understanding in their conversation. Children discussed an emotionally salient event with their mothers and then relayed the…

Imaginary Companions, Theory of Mind and Emotion Understanding in Young Children

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Giménez-Dasí, Marta; Pons, Francisco; Bender, Patrick K.

2016-01-01

The phenomenon of imaginary companions (ICs) has received little attention in developmental psychology, even though it can be observed in approximately 25% of preschool-aged children. Only a few studies have investigated the effect of ICs on children's theory of mind and emotion understanding, and the results are partial or inconsistent. This…

Theory of mind understanding and empathic behavior in children with autism spectrum disorders.

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Peterson, Candida

2014-12-01

This paper begins with a review of past research on theory of mind and empathy in children with ASD. Using varied operational definitions of empathy ranging from physiological heart rate through story vignettes to reports by privileged observers (e.g., teachers) of children's empathic behavior, results of previous studies are limited and contradictory. Thus new evidence is needed to answer two key questions: Are children with ASD less empathic than typically developing children? Do individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) understanding among children with ASD predict differences in their behavioral empathy? An original empirical study of 76 children aged 3-12 years (37 with ASD; 39 with typical development) addressed these. Results showed that children with ASD were significantly less empathic, according to their teachers, than typically developing children. However, this was not because of their slower ToM development. Findings showed equally clearly that ToM understanding was unrelated to empathy in children with ASD. The same was true for typically developing children once age and verbal maturity were controlled. Indeed, even the subgroup of older children with ASD in the sample who passed false belief tests were significantly less empathic than younger preschoolers who failed them. Copyright © 2014 ISDN. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

From Global Sustainability to Inclusive Education: Understanding urban children's ideas about the food system

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Calabrese Barton, Angela; Koch, Pamela D.; Contento, Isobel R.; Hagiwara, Sumi

2005-08-01

The purpose of this paper is to report our findings from a qualitative study intended to develop our understandings of: what high-poverty urban children understand and believe about food and food systems; and how such children transform and use that knowledge in their everyday lives (i.e. how do they express their scientific literacies including content understandings, process understandings, habits of mind in these content areas). This qualitative study is part of a larger study focused on understanding and developing science and nutritional literacies among high-poverty urban fourth-grade through sixth-grade students and their teachers and caregivers.

Effect of electronic media on children.

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Ray, Munni; Jat, Kana Ram

2010-07-01

Radio, television (TV), movies, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children's daily lives. The media has demonstrated potentially profound effects, both positive and negative, on children's cognitive, social, and behavioral development. Considering the increasing exposure of children to newer forms of media, we decided to review the current literature on the effects of media on child health both in the Western countries and India. It is widely accepted that media has profound influence on child health, including violence, obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviors. Simultaneously, media may have some positive effects on child health. We need to find ways to optimize the role of media in our society, taking advantage of their positive attributes and minimizing their negative ones. We need to understand better how to reverse the negative impact of media and make it more positive.

Development of children's understanding of connections between thinking and feeling.

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Flavell, J H; Flavell, E R; Green, F L

2001-09-01

Two studies assessed the development of children's understanding that thoughts and feelings are closely interlinked. These studies showed that, unlike 8-year-olds and adults, 5-year-olds seldom explained a sudden change in emotion that had no apparent external cause by appeal to the occurrence of a thought. They also tended not to recognize that a person who is feeling sad is probably also thinking sad thoughts, or that people may be able to make themselves feel happy just by thinking of something happy. These results are consistent with evidence that young children tend to be unaware of the stream of consciousness and have poor introspective skills. A possible developmental sequence leading to an understanding of these thought-feeling links is proposed.

Procedural Metacognition and False Belief Understanding in 3- to 5-Year-Old Children.

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Bernard, Stéphane; Proust, Joëlle; Clément, Fabrice

2015-01-01

Some studies, so far limited in number, suggest the existence of procedural metacognition in young children, that is, the practical capacity to monitor and control one's own cognitive activity in a given task. The link between procedural metacognition and false belief understanding is currently under theoretical discussion. If data with primates seem to indicate that procedural metacognition and false belief understanding are not related, no study in developmental psychology has investigated this relation in young children. The present paper aims, first, to supplement the findings concerning young children's abilities to monitor and control their uncertainty (procedural metacognition) and, second, to explore the relation between procedural metacognition and false belief understanding. To examine this, 82 3- to 5-year-old children were presented with an opt-out task and with 3 false belief tasks. Results show that children can rely on procedural metacognition to evaluate their perceptual access to information, and that success in false belief tasks does not seem related to success in the task we used to evaluate procedural metacognition. These results are coherent with a procedural view of metacognition, and are discussed in the light of recent data from primatology and developmental psychology.

Procedural Metacognition and False Belief Understanding in 3- to 5-Year-Old Children.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stéphane Bernard

Full Text Available Some studies, so far limited in number, suggest the existence of procedural metacognition in young children, that is, the practical capacity to monitor and control one's own cognitive activity in a given task. The link between procedural metacognition and false belief understanding is currently under theoretical discussion. If data with primates seem to indicate that procedural metacognition and false belief understanding are not related, no study in developmental psychology has investigated this relation in young children. The present paper aims, first, to supplement the findings concerning young children's abilities to monitor and control their uncertainty (procedural metacognition and, second, to explore the relation between procedural metacognition and false belief understanding. To examine this, 82 3- to 5-year-old children were presented with an opt-out task and with 3 false belief tasks. Results show that children can rely on procedural metacognition to evaluate their perceptual access to information, and that success in false belief tasks does not seem related to success in the task we used to evaluate procedural metacognition. These results are coherent with a procedural view of metacognition, and are discussed in the light of recent data from primatology and developmental psychology.

False belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children.

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Tardif, Twila; Wellman, Henry M; Cheung, Kar Man

2004-11-01

The present study investigates the performance of 96 Cantonese-speaking three- to five-year-old preschoolers on three false belief tasks - a deceptive object, a change of location, and an unexpected contents task encompassing a variety of task factors. Most importantly, the research examines the possibility that false belief performance depends on specific linguistic factors such as the type of verb used in the test question--an explicitly false vs. a neutral belief verb. Cantonese was chosen as particularly useful for examining this question because it explicitly codes belief status as either neutral (nam5) or false (ji5wai4), and because it offers additional linguistic and cultural contrasts to research conducted on false belief with children learning English and other Indo-European languages. As expected, a strong age effect was found, as well as a significant advantage for children who received the explicit false belief (ji5wai4) wording and for those who were asked to explain rather than predict the protagonist's actions. Interestingly, there was also a strong task difference with children performing better on the deceptive object task than on the other two false belief tasks. We argue that these results point both to universal trajectories in theory of mind development and to interesting, but localized, effects of language and culture on children's false belief understanding.

Comic strips help children understand medical research: targeting the informed consent procedure to children's needs.

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Grootens-Wiegers, Petronella; de Vries, Martine C; van Beusekom, Mara M; van Dijck, Laura; van den Broek, Jos M

2015-04-01

Children involved in medical research often fail to comprehend essential research aspects. In order to improve information provision, a participatory approach was used to develop new information material explaining essential concepts of medical research. A draft of a comic strip was developed by a science communicator in collaboration with pediatricians. The draft was presented to children participating in a clinical trial and to two school classes. Children were consulted for further development in surveys and interviews. Subsequently, the material was revised and re-evaluated in four school classes with children of varying ages and educational levels. In the first evaluation, children provided feedback on the storyline, wording and layout. Children thought the comic strip was 'fun' and 'informative'. Understanding of 8 basic research aspects was on average 83% and all above 65%, illustrating that children understood and remembered key messages. A comic strip was developed to support the informed consent process. Children were consulted and provided feedback. The resulting material was well understood and accepted. Involving children in the development of information material can substantially contribute to the quality of the material. Children were excited to participate and to 'be a part of science'. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Brief report: decoding representations: how children with autism understand drawings.

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Allen, Melissa L

2009-03-01

Young typically developing children can reason about abstract depictions if they know the intention of the artist. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are notably impaired in social, 'intention monitoring' domains, may have great difficulty in decoding vague representations. In Experiment 1, children with ASD are unable to use another person's eye gaze as a cue for figuring out what an abstract picture represents. In contrast, when the participants themselves are the artists (Experiment 2), children with ASD are equally proficient as controls at identifying their own perceptually identical pictures (e.g. lollipop and balloon) after a delay, based upon what they intended them to be. Results are discussed in terms of intention and understanding of visual representation in autism.

Mexican American Children's Ethnic Identity, Understanding of Ethnic Prejudice, and Parental Ethnic Socialization.

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Quintana, Stephen M.; Vera, Elizabeth M.

1999-01-01

Interviews with 47 Mexican-American children in grades 2 and 6 and their parents revealed that parental ethnic socialization about ethnic discrimination was associated with children's development of ethnic knowledge. Children's understanding of ethnic prejudice was related to their ethnic knowledge but not their ethnic behaviors. Contains 24…

Asymmetric Dynamic Attunement of Speech and Gestures in the Construction of Children's Understanding.

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De Jonge-Hoekstra, Lisette; Van der Steen, Steffie; Van Geert, Paul; Cox, Ralf F A

2016-01-01

As children learn they use their speech to express words and their hands to gesture. This study investigates the interplay between real-time gestures and speech as children construct cognitive understanding during a hands-on science task. 12 children (M = 6, F = 6) from Kindergarten (n = 5) and first grade (n = 7) participated in this study. Each verbal utterance and gesture during the task were coded, on a complexity scale derived from dynamic skill theory. To explore the interplay between speech and gestures, we applied a cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) to the two coupled time series of the skill levels of verbalizations and gestures. The analysis focused on (1) the temporal relation between gestures and speech, (2) the relative strength and direction of the interaction between gestures and speech, (3) the relative strength and direction between gestures and speech for different levels of understanding, and (4) relations between CRQA measures and other child characteristics. The results show that older and younger children differ in the (temporal) asymmetry in the gestures-speech interaction. For younger children, the balance leans more toward gestures leading speech in time, while the balance leans more toward speech leading gestures for older children. Secondly, at the group level, speech attracts gestures in a more dynamically stable fashion than vice versa, and this asymmetry in gestures and speech extends to lower and higher understanding levels. Yet, for older children, the mutual coupling between gestures and speech is more dynamically stable regarding the higher understanding levels. Gestures and speech are more synchronized in time as children are older. A higher score on schools' language tests is related to speech attracting gestures more rigidly and more asymmetry between gestures and speech, only for the less difficult understanding levels. A higher score on math or past science tasks is related to less asymmetry between gestures and

Looking at the Complexity of Two Young Children's Understanding of Number

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Thom, Jennifer S.; Pirie, Susan E. B.

2006-01-01

This paper presents a qualitative study that investigated two third-grade students' understanding of number. The children were videotaped while they worked to record everything they knew about the number, 72. Their artifacts and conversations were then analyzed using the Pirie-Kieren dynamical theory for the growth of mathematical understanding as…

"Stew without Bread or Bread without Stew": Children's Understandings of Poverty in Ethiopia

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Camfield, Laura

2010-01-01

This paper explores children's understandings of poverty, ill-being and well-being in Ethiopia using data collected through group exercises with children aged 5-6 and 11-13 participating in Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty. In some respects the characteristics of poverty reported by children resemble those reported by…

Modelling and Simulating Electronics Knowledge: Conceptual Understanding and Learning through Active Agency

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Twissell, Adrian

2018-01-01

Abstract electronics concepts are difficult to develop because the phenomena of interest cannot be readily observed. Visualisation skills support learning about electronics and can be applied at different levels of representation and understanding (observable, symbolic and abstract). Providing learners with opportunities to make transitions…

Lie-Telling Behavior in Children with Autism and Its Relation to False-Belief Understanding

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Talwar, Victoria; Zwaigenbaum, Lonnie; Goulden, Keith J.; Manji, Shazeen; Loomes, Carly; Rasmussen, Carmen

2012-01-01

Children's lie-telling behavior and its relation to false-belief understanding was examined in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; n = 26) and a comparison group of typically developing children (n = 27). Participants were assessed using a temptation resistance paradigm, in which children were told not to peek at a forbidden toy while…

Cultural influences on children's understanding of the human body and the concept of life.

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Panagiotaki, Georgia; Nobes, Gavin

2014-09-01

This study aimed to identify the age by which children begin to demonstrate a biological understanding of the human body and the idea that the purpose of body functioning is to maintain life. The study also explored the influence of education, culturally specific experiences and religion on knowledge acquisition in this domain. Children aged between 4 and 7 years from three different cultural backgrounds (White British, British Muslim, and Pakistani Muslim) were interviewed about the human body and its functioning. At least half of the 4- to 5-year-olds in each cultural group, and almost all 6- to 7-year-olds, referred to the maintenance of life when explaining organs' functions and so were classified as 'life theorizers'. Pakistani Muslim children gave fewer biological responses to questions about organs' functions and the purpose of eating and breathing, but referred to life more than their British counterparts. Irrespective of cultural group, older children understood organ location and function better than younger children. These findings support Jaakkola and Slaughter's (2002, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 20, 325) view that children's understanding of the body as a 'life machine' emerges around the ages of 4-5 years. They also suggest that, despite many similarities in children's ideas cross-culturally, different educational input and culturally specific experiences influence aspects of their biological understanding. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Predictors of children's prosocial lie-telling: Motivation, socialization variables, and moral understanding.

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Popliger, Mina; Talwar, Victoria; Crossman, Angela

2011-11-01

Children tell prosocial lies for self- and other-oriented reasons. However, it is unclear how motivational and socialization factors affect their lying. Furthermore, it is unclear whether children's moral understanding and evaluations of prosocial lie scenarios (including perceptions of vignette characters' feelings) predict their actual prosocial behaviors. These were explored in two studies. In Study 1, 72 children (36 second graders and 36 fourth graders) participated in a disappointing gift paradigm in either a high-cost condition (lost a good gift for a disappointing one) or a low-cost condition (received a disappointing gift). More children lied in the low-cost condition (94%) than in the high-cost condition (72%), with no age difference. In Study 2, 117 children (42 preschoolers, 41 early elementary school age, and 34 late elementary school age) participated in either a high- or low-cost disappointing gift paradigm and responded to prosocial vignette scenarios. Parents reported on their parenting practices and family emotional expressivity. Again, more children lied in the low-cost condition (68%) than in the high-cost condition (40%); however, there was an age effect among children in the high-cost condition. Preschoolers were less likely than older children to lie when there was a high personal cost. In addition, compared with truth-tellers, prosocial liars had parents who were more authoritative but expressed less positive emotion within the family. Finally, there was an interaction between children's prosocial lie-telling behavior and their evaluations of the protagonist's and recipient's feelings. Findings contribute to understanding the trajectory of children's prosocial lie-telling, their reasons for telling such lies, and their knowledge about interpersonal communication. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Children's Understanding of Advertising: An Investigation Using Verbal and Pictorially Cued Methods

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Owen, Laura; Auty, Susan; Lewis, Charlie; Berridge, Damon

2007-01-01

Conflicting results on children's understanding of advertising may stem from differences in research methods. Most studies are conducted using interviewing techniques, employing only verbal questioning. In the present study, 136 children of two age groups (7 and 10 years) were first asked what advertising was for and, after responding, shown…

Children's understanding of fraction and decimal symbols and the notation-specific relation to pre-algebra ability.

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Hurst, Michelle A; Cordes, Sara

2018-04-01

Fraction and decimal concepts are notoriously difficult for children to learn yet are a major component of elementary and middle school math curriculum and an important prerequisite for higher order mathematics (i.e., algebra). Thus, recently there has been a push to understand how children think about rational number magnitudes in order to understand how to promote rational number understanding. However, prior work investigating these questions has focused almost exclusively on fraction notation, overlooking the open questions of how children integrate rational number magnitudes presented in distinct notations (i.e., fractions, decimals, and whole numbers) and whether understanding of these distinct notations may independently contribute to pre-algebra ability. In the current study, we investigated rational number magnitude and arithmetic performance in both fraction and decimal notation in fourth- to seventh-grade children. We then explored how these measures of rational number ability predicted pre-algebra ability. Results reveal that children do represent the magnitudes of fractions and decimals as falling within a single numerical continuum and that, despite greater experience with fraction notation, children are more accurate when processing decimal notation than when processing fraction notation. Regression analyses revealed that both magnitude and arithmetic performance predicted pre-algebra ability, but magnitude understanding may be particularly unique and depend on notation. The educational implications of differences between children in the current study and previous work with adults are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Using electronic storybooks to support word learning in children with severe language impairments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Smeets, Daisy J. H.; van Dijken, Marianne J.; Bus, Adriana G

2012-01-01

Novel word learning is reported to be problematic for children with severe language impairments (SLI). In this study, we tested electronic storybooks as a tool to support vocabulary acquisition in SLI children. In Experiment 1, 29 kindergarten SLI children heard four e-books each four times: (a) two

Correlation analysis of electronic products with myopia in preschool and school aged children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Li-Li Sun

2016-02-01

Full Text Available AIM: To explore the influence of electronic products on myopia in preschool and school aged children, and the development regularities of myopia, to formulate reasonable guidelines for using eyes healthily, and lay a solid foundation for the prevention and control work. METHODS: This retrospective analysis enrolled 900 3～12 years old children from outpatients department, and all of them were established individualized archives, recording: uncorrected visual acuity, optometry, slit lamp, ophthalmoscopy, strabismus inspection results; recording eye usage condition on TVs, computers, mobile phones, iPad, homework, extra-curricular books. Statistical analyze the refractive status of each age group, the use of electronic products of different age groups and their correlation with refractive status. RESULTS: The number of preschool children with normal uncorrected visual acuity was more than that of early school-age children, and the difference was statistically significant(PP>0.05; the number of children aged 7～12(early school aged childrenwith myopia was more than that of children aged 3～6(preschool childrenand the difference was statistically significant(PCONCLUSION: For preschool children, it is necessary to conduct early screening, health guidance, the establishment of personalized medical records and one-to-one personalized guidance; it is also needed to avoid the arduous learning task with the stacking usage of eyes, to fight for myopia and to control the development of myopia. Therefore, to reduce the use of electronic products has become a topic worthy of further study.

Post-Institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European Children: Heterogeneity in the Development of Emotion Understanding

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Camras, Linda A.; Perlman, Susan B.; Fries, Alison B. Wismer; Pollak, Seth D.

2006-01-01

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While…

Theory of Mind: Understanding Young Children's Pretence and Mental States

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Saracho, Olivia N.

2014-01-01

For more than two decades, research has focused on the understanding of pretence as an important means for young children to conceptualise the mind. Many use the phrase "mental representation" to a mental model of some entity or concept, which describes what is inside the minds of young children in relation to a real-world situation or…

A Design Study to Develop Young Children's Understanding of Multiplication and Division

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Bicknell, Brenda; Young-Loveridge, Jenny; Nguyen, Nhung

2016-01-01

This design study investigated the use of multiplication and division problems to help 5-year-old children develop an early understanding of multiplication and division. One teacher and her class of 15 5-year-old children were involved in a collaborative partnership with the researchers. The design study was conducted over two 4-week periods in…

Using participatory approaches with children to better understand their physical activity behaviour

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hayball, Felicity Z.L.; Pawlowski, Charlotte Skau

2018-01-01

Aims and objectives: The importance of childhood physical activity is widely recognised. Helping children to articulate their opinions is a crucial factor in improving their health and well-being, yet the field is predominantly focused on adult-led quantitative methods and lacks deeper understand......Aims and objectives: The importance of childhood physical activity is widely recognised. Helping children to articulate their opinions is a crucial factor in improving their health and well-being, yet the field is predominantly focused on adult-led quantitative methods and lacks deeper...... physical activity in these places (n = 25). Results: The benefits and challenges associated with using participatory methods to understand how children perceive the environment in relation to their physical activity behaviour are described. Conclusion: Findings contribute to the literature by suggesting...... that participatory approaches are valuable in capturing children’s perceptions of physical activity behaviour in outdoor environments....

The role of electronic assessment of adherence in the education and counseling of children taking growth hormone: progress and challenges.

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Haverkamp, Fritz; Norgren, Svante; Horne, Rob; Gasteyger, Christoph

There are numerous issues surrounding adherence in children taking recombinant human growth hormone (rh-GH). New technologies capable of accurately recording/monitoring may highlight some of these issues, and have value in optimizing adherence levels through education and counseling. The intention of this review is to guide healthcare professionals (HCPs). PubMed, Google Scholar and citations in published papers were used to substantiate the views expressed by the authors. Both perceptional and practical factors influence the adherence levels of children taking rh-GH. Understanding such factors may help to identify the characteristics of ideal rh-GH devices and their potential impact on adherence. New technologies, such as electronic monitors, may facilitate patient-provider discussions on adherence, and help identify barriers that are amenable to change. Monitoring adherence may also help differentiate nonadherence from biological low response to rh-GH therapy. However, the medical, psychological, social and ethical aspects of electronic assessment require further investigation.

Children's experiences of food insecurity can assist in understanding its effect on their well-being

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An understanding of the experience of food insecurity by children is essential for better measurement and assessment of its effect on children's nutritional, physical, and mental health. Our qualitative study explored children's perceptions of household food insecurity to identify these perceptions ...

Adherence to active play and electronic media guidelines in preschool children: gender and parental education considerations.

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Loprinzi, Paul D; Schary, David P; Cardinal, Bradley J

2013-01-01

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine adherence to current active play and electronic media use guidelines in a sample of US preschool-aged children and to examine whether differences occurred across gender and parental education. 164 parents completed an on-line survey to estimate preschool children's active play and sedentary behaviors. For weekdays, 50% of the sample met the active play guideline with this increasing to 65% during the weekend. With respect to electronic media use, 90% of the sample met guidelines during the week, with the percentage meeting guidelines dropping to 78% during the weekend. A greater percentage of preschool children from high parental education families (83.4 ± 3.3) met electronic media use guidelines on the weekends, compared to preschool children from low parental education families (59.4 ± 8.1) (p = 0.002). Our findings indicate that a substantial portion of preschool children are not meeting active play guidelines and that adherence to active play and electronic media use guidelines may be influenced by parental education.

Children's and Adolescents' Thoughts on Pollution: Cognitive Abilities Required to Understand Environmental Systems

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Rodríguez, Manuel; Kohen, Raquel; Delval, Juan

2015-01-01

Pollution phenomena are complex systems in which different parts are integrated by means of causal and temporal relationships. To understand pollution, children must develop some cognitive abilities related to system thinking and temporal and causal inferential reasoning. These cognitive abilities constrain and guide how children understand…

Beyond Sally's missing marble: further development in children's understanding of mind and emotion in middle childhood.

Science.gov (United States)

Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen; Kramer, Hannah J; Kennedy, Katie; Hjortsvang, Karen; Goldfarb, Deborah; Tashjian, Sarah

2015-01-01

Research on the development of theory of mind (ToM), the understanding of people in relation to mental states and emotions, has been a vibrant area of cognitive development research. Because the dominant focus has been addressing when children acquire a ToM, researchers have concentrated their efforts on studying the emergence of psychological understanding during infancy and early childhood. Here, the benchmark test has been the false-belief task, the awareness that the mind can misrepresent reality. While understanding false belief is a critical milestone achieved by the age of 4 or 5, children make further advances in their knowledge about mental states and emotions during middle childhood and beyond. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of children's sociocognitive abilities in older age groups is necessary to understand more fully the course of ToM development. The aim of this review is to outline continued development in ToM during middle childhood. In particular, we focus on children's understanding of interpretation-that different minds can construct different interpretations of the same reality. Additionally, we consider children's growing understanding of how mental states (thoughts, emotions, decisions) derive from personal experiences, cohere across time, and interconnect (e.g., thoughts shape emotions). We close with a discussion of the surprising paucity of studies investigating individual differences in ToM beyond age 6. Our hope is that this chapter will invigorate empirical interest in moving the pendulum toward the opposite research direction-toward exploring strengths, limitations, variability, and persistent errors in developing theories of mind across the life span. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"No Fair, Copycat!": What Children's Response to Plagiarism Tells Us about Their Understanding of Ideas

Science.gov (United States)

Olson, Kristina R.; Shaw, Alex

2011-01-01

Adults believe that plagiarizing ideas is wrong, which requires an understanding that others can have ideas and that it is wrong to copy them. In order to test when this understanding emerges, we investigated when children begin to think plagiarism is wrong. In Study 1, children aged 7, 9 and 11 years old, as well as adults, disliked someone who…

Motivation to hide emotion and children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotions.

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Gosselin, Pierre; Warren, Madeleine; Diotte, Michèle

2002-12-01

The authors investigated the extent to which children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotions varied according to the motivation to hide emotions. Children, aged 6-7 and 10-11 years, were read stories designed to elicit either prosocial or self-protective motivated display rules and were asked to predict the facial expressions the protagonists would make to hide felt emotions. Children were found to understand the distinction between real and apparent emotions very well, independently of the type of motivation. Contrary to predictions, boys understood this distinction better than did girls when the motivation to hide positive emotions was prosocial. Children perceived neutralization as the most appropriate strategy to hide felt emotions, followed by masking.

75 FR 3154 - Children's Products Containing Lead; Exemptions for Certain Electronic Devices

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-20

... that use solar power or other power sources), such as music players, headphones, some toys and games... basis that replacing or installing parts of a children's electronic device is not a children's activity... are not installed. We decline to revise the rule as suggested by some commenters. We have determined...

Understanding bruxism in children and adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Saulue, Paul; Carra, Maria-Clotilde; Laluque, Jean-François; d'Incau, Emmanuel

2015-12-01

Screening for the various forms of bruxism in children and adolescents requires a sound knowledge of the physiopathology of this parafunction in addition to the etiologic and associated factors and comorbidities. The international literature contains various suggestions for suitable treatment. The optimal therapeutic approach often involves multidisciplinary management of these young patients. Sleep bruxism (SB) is a common sleep disorder which can cause serious problems to the stomatognathic system such as damaged teeth, headaches, muscle pain and TMD. Dental professionals are responsible for the detection and prevention of these harmful impacts on the patient's oral health. However, SB is much more than a question of worn teeth. Patients with SB consult for other medical comorbidities such as nighttime breathing problems, insomnia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, moodiness and gastroesophogeal reflux before any course of treatment is initiated. If a comorbidity is diagnosed, the treatment approach will be aimed in the first instance at the medical disorder, while concurrently managing the repercussions of SB. On the other hand, in as far as the majority of young bruxers cease to grind their teeth before adolescence or adulthood, it is feasible to adopt wait-and-see and non-interventionist strategies for young children. However, it is preferable to have a better understanding of SB, notably on account of its potential association with psychological disorders during childhood. Daytime bruxism is characterized by teeth clenching (TC). First-line treatment involves encouraging patients to monitor their harmful parafunctional behavior and, consequently, change and cease it. This protocol is not always easy to apply, particularly in younger children. In such cases, cognitive-behavioral treatments and biofeedback techniques can also be used in daytime bruxism.

Learning History in Early Childhood: Teaching Methods and Children's Understanding

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Skjaeveland, Yngve

2017-01-01

This article discusses the teaching of history in early childhood education and care centres and children's understanding of history. Based on interviews with eight Norwegian early childhood education and care teachers and on interpretative phenomenological analysis, the article shows how the early childhood education and care centres teach…

Understanding of thought bubbles as mental representations in children with autism: implications for theory of mind.

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Kerr, Sharyn; Durkin, Kevin

2004-12-01

Standard false belief tasks indicate that normally developing children do not fully develop a theory of mind until the age of 4 years and that children with autism have an impaired theory of mind. Recent evidence, however, suggests that children as young as 3 years of age understand that thought bubbles depict mental representations and that these can be false. Twelve normally developing children and 11 children with autism were tested on a standard false belief task and a number of tasks that employed thought bubbles to represent mental states. While the majority of normally developing children and children with autism failed the standard false belief task, they understood that (i) thought bubbles represent thought, (ii) thought bubbles can be used to infer an unknown reality, (iii) thoughts can be different, and (iv) thoughts can be false. These results indicate that autistic children with a relatively low verbal mental age may be capable of understanding mental representations.

Children's understanding of and motivations for toothbrushing: a qualitative study.

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Gill, P; Stewart, K; Chetcuti, D; Chestnutt, I G

2011-02-01

To explore children's understanding of why they do or do not brush their teeth and their motivations for toothbrushing. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 66 children aged 6-7 years and 10-11 years in four purposively selected primary schools in Cardiff, UK. Data were analysed using a constructive process of Thematic Content Analysis and techniques of open and selective coding. While a routine activity, toothbrushing was prompted rather than monitored by parents and easily fell by the wayside because of tiredness, excitement or distraction. Rationalizations for toothbrushing were poorly formed in the children's accounts and related to 'doom scenarios' such as teeth falling out, or to issues of personal grooming and cleanliness rather than caries prevention. Electric (powered) toothbrushes were popular and had engaged the children's interest. Social and domestic circumstances, such as when children stayed with different parents at different times, impacted on toothbrushing routines. This study has revealed information that is of value in directing oral health education messages, oral health promotion programmes and has identified issues that potentially affect compliance with toothbrushing that merit further investigation. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

Is the Earth Flat or Round? Primary School Children's Understandings of the Planet Earth: The Case of Turkish Children

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Özsoy, Sibel

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study is to explore primary school children's understandings about the shape of the Earth. The sample is consisted of 124 first-graders from five primary schools located in an urban city of Turkey. The data of the study were collected through children's drawings and semi-structured interviews. Results obtained from the drawings…

Spanish Parents' Emotion Talk and their Children's Understanding of Emotion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana eAznar

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Relations between parent-child emotion talk and children’s emotion understanding were examined in 63 Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- (M = 53.35 months, SD = 3.86 and 6-year-old (M = 76.62 months, SD = 3.91 children. Parent-child emotion talk was analyzed during two storytelling tasks: a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past experiences. Children’s emotion understanding was assessed twice through a standardized test of emotion comprehension (TEC; Pons, Harris, & de Rosnay, 2004, once before one of the two parent-child storytelling sessions and again six months later. Mothers’ use of emotion labels during the play-related storytelling task predicted children’s emotion understanding after controlling for children’s previous emotion understanding. Whereas fathers’ use of emotion labels during the play-related storytelling task was correlated with children’s emotion understanding, it did not predict children’s emotion understanding after controlling for previous emotion understanding. Implications of these findings for future research on children’s socioemotional development are discussed.  

Sensitivity and Awareness: A Guide for Developing Understanding among Children.

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McPhee, Norma H.; Favazza, Paddy C.; Lewis, Eleanore Grater

This guide is designed specifically as a resource for classroom teachers, librarians, or consultants who are concerned with helping children develop an understanding and an ease with people who are different, especially people with disabilities. The book includes materials to be used in sensitivity and awareness discussion sessions based on 12…

Do Children Understand That People Selectively Conceal or Express Emotion?

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Hayashi, Hajimu; Shiomi, Yuki

2015-01-01

This study examined whether children understand that people selectively conceal or express emotion depending upon the context. We prepared two contexts for a verbal display task for 70 first-graders, 80 third-graders, 64 fifth-graders, and 71 adults. In both contexts, protagonists had negative feelings because of the behavior of the other…

Molecular Understanding of Fullerene - Electron Donor Interactions in Organic Solar Cells

KAUST Repository

Ryno, Sean

2016-09-13

Organic solar cells hold promise of providing low-cost, renewable power generation, with current devices providing up to 13% power conversion efficiency. The rational design of more performant systems requires an in-depth understanding of the interactions between the electron donating and electron accepting materials within the active layers of these devices. Here, we explore works that give insight into the intermolecular interactions between electron donors and electron acceptors, and the impact of molecular orientations and environment on these interactions. We highlight, from a theoretical standpoint, the effects of intermolecular interactions on the stability of charge carriers at the donor/acceptor interface and in the bulk and how these interactions influence the nature of the charge transfer states as wells as the charge separation and charge transport processes. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Understanding the Driver of Energetic Electron Precipitation Using Coordinated Multi-Satellite Measurements

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Capannolo, L.; Li, W.; Ma, Q.

2017-12-01

Electron precipitation into the upper atmosphere is one of the important loss mechanisms in the Earth's inner magnetosphere. Various magnetospheric plasma waves (i.e., chorus, plasmaspheric hiss, electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves, etc.) play an important role in scattering energetic electrons into the loss cone, thus enhance ionization in the upper atmosphere and affect ring current and radiation belt dynamics. The present study evaluates conjunction events where low-earth-orbiting satellites (twin AeroCube-6) and near-equatorial satellites (twin Van Allen Probes) are located roughly along the same magnetic field line. By analyzing electron flux variation at various energies (> 35 keV) measured by AeroCube-6 and wave and electron measurements by Van Allen Probes, together with quasilinear diffusion theory and modeling, we determine the physical process of driving the observed energetic electron precipitation for the identified electron precipitation events. Moreover, the twin AeroCube-6 also helps us understand the spatiotemporal effect and constrain the coherent size of each electron precipitation event.

Children's Understanding of Night and Day: A Research Report Presented at NCSS, 1984.

Science.gov (United States)

Frazee, Bruce M.

What advanced 4- and 5-year-old children know about night and day in relationship to the earth and sun was studied to test the hypothesis that two teaching activities would help children to understand the cause of the phenomenon. Participants were 21 middle to upper class boys and girls enrolled in a part-time early childhood enrichment program…

Characteristics of the Understanding and Expression of Emotional Prosody among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Yoshimatsu, Yasufumi; Umino, Ayumi; Dammeyer, Jesper

2016-01-01

In verbal communication with others, children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) experience difficulties with understanding jokes, irony, and other pragmatic aspects of communication. Difficulties with the understanding and expression of prosody may be one reason. In this study an understanding...

Training parents to mediate sibling disputes affects children's negotiation and conflict understanding.

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Smith, Julie; Ross, Hildy

2007-01-01

The effects of training parents to use formal mediation procedures in sibling disputes were examined in 48 families with 5- to 10-years-old children, randomly assigned to mediation and control conditions. Children whose parents were trained in mediation were compared with those whose parents intervened normally. Parents reported that children used more constructive conflict resolution strategies, compromised more often, and controlled the outcomes of conflicts more often in mediation families than in control families. Observations indicated less negativity in children's independent negotiations of recurrent conflicts, better understanding of the role of interpretation in assessing blame, and better knowledge of their siblings' perspectives in the mediation group. Thus, both social and social-cognitive gains resulted from experience with constructive conflict resolution.

First-hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: evidence from typically hearing and deaf children.

Science.gov (United States)

Schmidt, Ellyn; Pyers, Jennie

2014-11-01

One early-developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first-hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (Mage  = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (Mage  = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the 'seeing' condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the 'hearing' condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first-hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Chinese and Australian Year 3 Children's Conceptual Understanding of Science: A Multiple Comparative Case Study

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Tao, Ying; Oliver, Mary Colette; Venville, Grady Jane

2012-01-01

Children have formal science instruction from kindergarten in Australia and from Year 3 in China. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact that different approaches to primary science curricula in China and Australia have on children's conceptual understanding of science. Participants were Year 3 children from three schools of high,…

Theory of Mind and Children's Understanding of Teaching and Learning during Early Childhood

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Wang, Zhenlin

2015-01-01

How children understand the concepts of teaching and learning is inherently underpinned by their mental state understanding and critical to the successful transition to formal schooling. Knowledge is a private representational mental state; learning is a knowledge change process that can be either intentional or not; and teaching is an intentional…

The understanding and self-reported use of emotional display rules in children with autism spectrum disorders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Begeer, S.M.; Banerjee, R.; Rieffe, C.; Meerum Terwogt, M.; Potharst, E.; Stegge, G.T.M.; Koot, H.M.

2011-01-01

Two studies examined the understanding and self-reported use of rules for the expressive display of emotions in children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) and in typically developing children. In Study 1, children from the two groups reported display rules equally often when

Holistic aspects of children's ways of understanding in making sense of genetics

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Hui-Ju

The study examined the nature of how children make sense of phenomena in the area of genetics and inheritance. I proposed the phrase, way of understanding to capture a unified entity which children use to make sense of phenomena. The methodology was semi-structured probing interviews with six sixth grade students. Seven specific ways of understanding were discussed in the results section. Overall, the study described and discovered children's ways of understanding in terms of five aspects: cognitive aspects, affective aspects, social aspects, playfulness, and mode of awareness. Students' propositional knowledge, a holistic view of looking at how people resemble each other, syntactic knowledge, and an extension of rational explanations belonged to the cognitive aspects. Four categories of affective expressions were: an enjoyment of thinking and learning, a special feeling about the instructional activity, a deep personal involvement, and an anxiety in finding correct answers. Two types of social context were identified, one had somewhat of a connection to the science world, and the other did not have much of an scientific tie. The playfulness and the mode of awareness were two emerging aspects through the study. The playfulness represented the spontaneity, freedom, and sense of fun associated with the social interaction activity, such as the playfulness in expressing ideas to others. The modes of awareness included two types of metacognition, one was a conscious reflection on one's cognitive abilities, and the other was a continuous process of monitoring knowledge. In addition, the importance of considering language aspect in science learning was an emerging issue. Students' talking about genetics was embedded in the larger framework of social relationships and social institutions. Their social identify might influence the development of concepts, ways of talking and science learning. The study reflects the richness of children's sense-making processes

Children's Aural and Kinesthetic Understanding of Rhythm: Developing an Instructional Model

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Foley, Adam D.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of aural and kinesthetic rhythm skill development in elementary school-age children. In this study, I examined my curriculum model for rhythm understanding, which included creating and implementing assessments of movement skills in meter and rhythm. The research questions were: 1.…

Relationship between weak central coherence and mental states understanding in children with Autism and in children with ADHD.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pina Filippello

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The central coherence involves the processes of perceptual coding and attention mechanisms, highly deficient in children with ADHD (Booth & Happé, 2010. According to this theory, also children with autism are overly focused on details to the expense of a global perspective, and this negatively affects their ability to integrate environmental stimuli into a coherent whole (Happé, Booth, Charlton, Hughes, 2006. The aim of this study was to determine differences in central coherence of children with high functioning autism (ASD; n=10, children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; n=10 and typically developing peers (n=10. Individuals with ADHD exhibit significant deficits in perceptual skills and problem solving, failing also in mental states understanding tasks. While the children with autism spectrum disorder show impairments in making pragmatic inferences. Future research should therefore concentrate on the investigation of the cognitive and psychological mechanisms underlying these effects.

Exploring Young Children's Understanding of Risks Associated with Internet Usage and Their Concepts of Management Strategies

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Ey, Lesley-Anne; Cupit, C. Glenn

2011-01-01

The Internet provides remarkable opportunities for children's learning and development. Nevertheless, it is unregulated and hard to control, which potentially places children at risk of exploitation. This study examined five-eight-year-old children's understanding of dangers associated with the Internet, management strategies and sources of their…

Mothers' use of cognitive state verbs in picture-book reading and the development of children's understanding of mind: a longitudinal study.

Science.gov (United States)

Adrián, Juan E; Clemente, Rosa Ana; Villanueva, Lidón

2007-01-01

Mothers read stories to their children (N=41) aged between 3.3 years and 5.11 years old, and children then completed two false-belief tasks. One year later, mothers read a story to 37 of those children who were also given four tasks to assess their advanced understanding of mental states. Mothers' early use of cognitive verbs in picture-book reading correlated with their children's later understanding of mental states. Some pragmatic aspects of maternal input correlated with children's later outcomes. Two different factors in mothers' cognitive discourse were identified, suggesting a zone of proximal development in children's understanding of mental states.

The child as econometrician: a rational model of preference understanding in children.

Science.gov (United States)

Lucas, Christopher G; Griffiths, Thomas L; Xu, Fei; Fawcett, Christine; Gopnik, Alison; Kushnir, Tamar; Markson, Lori; Hu, Jane

2014-01-01

Recent work has shown that young children can learn about preferences by observing the choices and emotional reactions of other people, but there is no unified account of how this learning occurs. We show that a rational model, built on ideas from economics and computer science, explains the behavior of children in several experiments, and offers new predictions as well. First, we demonstrate that when children use statistical information to learn about preferences, their inferences match the predictions of a simple econometric model. Next, we show that this same model can explain children's ability to learn that other people have preferences similar to or different from their own and use that knowledge to reason about the desirability of hidden objects. Finally, we use the model to explain a developmental shift in preference understanding.

Children's Understanding of Communicative Intentions in the Middle of the Second Year of Life

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Aureli, Tiziana; Perucchini, Paola; Genco, Maria

2009-01-01

Two tasks were administered to 40 children aged from 16 to 20 months (mean age = 18;1), to evaluate children's understanding of declarative and informative intention [Behne, T., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2005). One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game. "Developmental Science", 8, 492-499;…

Understanding the structure of nanocatalysts with high resolution scanning/transmission electron microscopy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Francis, L D; Rivas, J; José-Yacamán, M

2014-01-01

Nanomaterials including nanoparticles, nanowires and nanotubes play an important role in heterogeneous catalysis. Thanks to the rapid improvement of the electron microscopic techniques and with the advent of aberration corrected electron microscopy as well as theoretical methodologies, the potential effects induced by nanocatalysts are better understood than before by unravelling their atomic structure. A brief introduction to advanced electron microscopic techniques namely aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (Cs-STEM) is presented and subsequently two examples of nanocatalysts are considered in the present review. The first example will focus on the study of bimetallic/core-shell nanoalloys. In heterogeneous catalysis, catalysts containing two or more metals might show significantly different catalytic properties compared to the parent metals and thus are widely utilized in several catalytic reactions. Atom-by-atom insights of the nanoalloy based catalysts ex: Au-Pd will be described in the present review using a combination of advanced electron microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. A related example on the understanding of bimetallic clusters by HAADF-STEM will also be presented in addition to nanoparticles. In the second case understanding the structure of transition metal chalcogenide based nanocatalysts by HRTEM and aberration corrected STEM, for the case of MoS 2 will be discussed. MoS 2 -based catalysts serve as model catalysts and are employed in the hydrodesulphurisations (HDS) reactions in the removal of sulphur from gasoline and related petrochemical products. They have been studied in various forms including nanowires, nanotubes and nanoplates. Their structure, atomic insights and as a consequence elucidation of their corresponding catalytic activity are thus important

Thinking or feeling? An exploratory study of maternal scaffolding, child mental state talk, and emotion understanding in language-impaired and typically developing school-aged children.

Science.gov (United States)

Yuill, Nicola; Little, Sarah

2018-06-01

Mother-child mental state talk (MST) supports children's developing social-emotional understanding. In typically developing (TD) children, family conversations about emotion, cognition, and causes have been linked to children's emotion understanding. Specific language impairment (SLI) may compromise developing emotion understanding and adjustment. We investigated emotion understanding in children with SLI and TD, in relation to mother-child conversation. Specifically, is cognitive, emotion, or causal MST more important for child emotion understanding and how might maternal scaffolding support this? Nine 5- to 9-year-old children with SLI and nine age-matched typically developing (TD) children, and their mothers. We assessed children's language, emotion understanding and reported behavioural adjustment. Mother-child conversations were coded for MST, including emotion, cognition, and causal talk, and for scaffolding of causal talk. Children with SLI scored lower than TD children on emotion understanding and adjustment. Mothers in each group provided similar amounts of cognitive, emotion, and causal talk, but SLI children used proportionally less cognitive and causal talk than TD children did, and more such child talk predicted better child emotion understanding. Child emotion talk did not differ between groups and did not predict emotion understanding. Both groups participated in maternal-scaffolded causal talk, but causal talk about emotion was more frequent in TD children, and such talk predicted higher emotion understanding. Cognitive and causal language scaffolded by mothers provides tools for articulating increasingly complex ideas about emotion, predicting children's emotion understanding. Our study provides a robust method for studying scaffolding processes for understanding causes of emotion. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Talking theory of mind talk: young school-aged children's everyday conversation and understanding of mind and emotion.

Science.gov (United States)

De Rosnay, Marc; Fink, Elian; Begeer, Sander; Slaughter, Virginia; Peterson, Candida

2014-09-01

Links between young children's everyday use of mindful conversational skills and their success on laboratory tests of theory of mind understanding (ToM) were evaluated. Using published scales, teachers rated the conversational behavior and shyness of 129 children aged 60 to 101 months (M = 78·8 months) who were in their first years of primary school. The children also took batteries of first- and second-order false-belief tests along with tests of emotion understanding and general language ability. Correlational and regression analyses showed that performance on false-belief tests of ToM significantly predicted children's competence at reading others' minds in their everyday conversational interactions. Furthermore, these links transcended individual differences in language ability, shy personality, emotion understanding, and age. These findings augment and extend a growing body of evidence linking performance on laboratory ToM tests to socially competent real-world behavior.

Belief Reasoning and Emotion Understanding in Balanced Bilingual and Language-Dominant Mexican American Young Children.

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Weimer, Amy A; Gasquoine, Philip G

2016-01-01

Belief reasoning and emotion understanding were measured among 102 Mexican American bilingual children ranging from 4 to 7 years old. All children were tested in English and Spanish after ensuring minimum comprehension in each language. Belief reasoning was assessed using 2 false and 1 true belief tasks. Emotion understanding was measured using subtests from the Test for Emotion Comprehension. The influence of family background variables of yearly income, parental education level, and number of siblings on combined Spanish and English vocabulary, belief reasoning, and emotion understanding was assessed by regression analyses. Age and emotion understanding predicted belief reasoning. Vocabulary and belief reasoning predicted emotion understanding. When the sample was divided into language-dominant and balanced bilingual groups on the basis of language proficiency difference scores, there were no significant differences on belief reasoning or emotion understanding. Language groups were demographically similar with regard to child age, parental educational level, and family income. Results suggest Mexican American language-dominant and balanced bilinguals develop belief reasoning and emotion understanding similarly.

The child as econometrician: a rational model of preference understanding in children.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christopher G Lucas

Full Text Available Recent work has shown that young children can learn about preferences by observing the choices and emotional reactions of other people, but there is no unified account of how this learning occurs. We show that a rational model, built on ideas from economics and computer science, explains the behavior of children in several experiments, and offers new predictions as well. First, we demonstrate that when children use statistical information to learn about preferences, their inferences match the predictions of a simple econometric model. Next, we show that this same model can explain children's ability to learn that other people have preferences similar to or different from their own and use that knowledge to reason about the desirability of hidden objects. Finally, we use the model to explain a developmental shift in preference understanding.

[Associated factors to availability and use of electronic media in children from preschool to 4th grade].

Science.gov (United States)

Camargo, Diana Marina; Orozco, Luis Carlos

2013-01-01

The increased availability of electronic media has changed the behavior in children and young people by encouraging sedentary lifestile, with health effects from a very young age. To characterize the availability and use of electronic media and its associated factors in children from preschool through 4 th grade. A cross-sectional study with cluster sampling was carried out. Parents filled out the demographic survey, the availability and use of electronic media at home and in the child´s room. Log-binomial regression models were applied to estimate prevalence ratios adjusted for the sampling. Seven hundred and ten parents answered. The average age of the children was 6.7 years and 49.7% were male. Factors such as the mother working out of the house and family income were positively associated with the availability of electronic media at home and in the child´s room. The availability of a TV, computer and console in the child´s room, contributes to longer use of these electronic media. Both, the male gender and age of the child, were positively associated with the availability and use of electronic media. This is the first study in Colombia that reports the availability and use of electronic media in children. It is clear that modern life encourages sedentary behavior from the earliest years of life, which has been associated with health problems from early childhood. Intervention studies are needed aimed at reducing these behaviors in our context.

Association between electronic equipment in the bedroom and sedentary lifestyle, physical activity, and body mass index of children.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferrari, Gerson Luis de Moraes; Araújo, Timóteo Leandro; Oliveira, Luis Carlos; Matsudo, Victor; Fisberg, Mauro

2015-01-01

To describe the association between electronic devices in the bedroom with sedentary time and physical activity, both assessed by accelerometry, in addition to body mass index in children from São Caetano do Sul. The sample consisted of 441 children. The presence of electronic equipment (television, personal computer, and videogames) in the bedroom was assessed by a questionnaire. For seven consecutive days, children used an accelerometer to objectively monitor the sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Body mass index was categorized as suggested by the World Health Organization. Overall, 73.9%, 54.2% and 42.8% of children had TV, computer, and videogames in the bedroom, respectively, and spent an average of 500.7 and 59.1 min/day of sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Of the children, 45.3% were overweight/obese. Girls with a computer in the bedroom (45 min/day) performed less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than those without it (51.4 min/day). Similar results were observed for body mass index in boys. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was higher and body mass index was lower in children that had no electronic equipment in the bedroom. Presence of a computer (β=-4.798) and the combination TV+computer (β=-3.233) were negatively associated with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Videogames and the combinations with two or three electronic devices were positively associated with body mass index. Sedentary time was not associated with electronic equipment. Electronic equipment in the children's bedroom can negatively affect moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and body mass index regardless of gender, school, and annual family income, which can contribute to physical inactivity and childhood obesity. Copyright © 2015 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

Age-Related Changes in Children's Understanding of Effort and Ability: Implications for Attribution Theory and Motivation

Science.gov (United States)

Folmer, Amy S.; Cole, David A.; Sigal, Amanda B.; Benbow, Lovisa D.; Satterwhite, Lindsay F.; Swygert, Katherine E.; Ciesla, Jeffrey A.

2008-01-01

Building on Nicholls's earlier work, we examined developmental changes in children's understanding of effort and ability when faced with a negative outcome. In a sample of 166 children and adolescents (ages 5-15 years), younger children conflated the meaning of effort and ability, explaining that smart students work hard, whereas older children…

Theory of Mind at Home: Linking Authoritative and Authoritarian Parenting Styles to Children's Social Understanding

Science.gov (United States)

O'Reilly, Jessica; Peterson, Candida C.

2014-01-01

Building on Vinden's pioneering research [(2001). Parenting attitudes and children's understanding of mind: A comparison of Korean American and Anglo-American families. "Cognitive Development", 16, 793-809], we examined how parents' use of authoritative versus authoritarian styles of discipline related to their children's development of…

Complexities in Understanding Attentional Functioning among Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kimberly eLane

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Parental reports of attention problems and clinical symptomatology of ADHD among children with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder (FASD were assessed in relation to performance on standardized subtests of attantional control/shifting and selective attention from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch; Manly et al., 1998. The participants included 14 children with FASD with a mean CA of 11.7 years and a mean MA of 9.7 years, and 14 typically developing (TD children with no reported history of prenatal exposure to alcohol or attention problems with a mean CA of 8.4 years and a mean MA of 9.6 years. The children with FASD were rated by their caregivers as having clinically significant attention difficulties for their developmental age. The reported symptomatology for the majority of the children with FASD were consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD, combined type, and only one child had a score within the average range. These reports are consistent with the finding here that the children with FASD demonstrated difficulties on the Creature Counting subtest of attentional control/shifting, but inconsistent with the finding that they outperformed the TD children on the Map Mission subtest of selective attention. These findings are considered within the context of the complexity in understanding attentional functioning among children with FASD and discrepancies across sources of information and components of attention.

Facilitating Vocabulary Acquisition of Children With Cochlear Implants Using Electronic Storybooks.

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Messier, Jane; Wood, Carla

2015-10-01

The present intervention study explored the word learning of 18 children with cochlear implants in response to E-book instruction. Capitalizing on the multimedia options available in electronic storybooks, the intervention incorporated videos and definitions to provide a vocabulary intervention that includes evidence-based teaching strategies. The extent of the children's word learning was assessed using three assessment tasks: receptive pointing, expressively labeling, and word defining. Children demonstrated greater immediate expressive labeling gains and definition generation gains for words taught in the treatment condition compared to those in the comparison condition. In addition, the children's performance on delayed posttest vocabulary assessments indicated better retention across the expressive vocabulary task for words taught within the treatment condition as compared to the comparison condition. Findings suggest that children with cochlear implants with functional speech perception can benefit from an oral-only multimedia-enhanced intensive vocabulary instruction. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Empowering parents to understand and manage children's behaviour.

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Boot, Ann

2010-01-01

While there are many projects successfully targeting the problems associated with the management of unwanted behaviour in children, this article suggests that all parents would benefit from a greater understanding of how to manage such behaviour. Health visitors and their teams are well placed to help parents to understand what is normal behaviour for different ages and developmental stages and empower them to find solutions for unwanted behaviours. However, current financial constraints which allow health visitors to focus only on specific groups mean that they are not able to provide this help as a universal service. Teaching parents to observe their child and record their findings, an approach used by a health visitor-led programme in Wales, provides an opportunity for significant learning to take place. Through such programmes, parents acquire skills that boost their self-esteem and confidence, which in turn empower them to be proactive in the promotion of their family's health and well-being.

Two Mentalizing Capacities and the Understanding of Two Types of Lie Telling in Children

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Hsu, Yik Kwan; Cheung, Him

2013-01-01

This study examined the interrelationships among second-order belief, interpretive theory of mind, inhibitory control, and the understanding of strategic versus white lies in 54 children approximately 5 years 7 months old. Results showed that second-order belief was associated with strategic-lie understanding, whereas interpretive theory of mind…

The Next Level of Research on Electronic Play: Potential Benefits and Contextual Influences for Children and Adolescents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dorothy E. Salonius-Pasternak

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Most research on electronic play has focused on its possible negative effects for children and adolescents, and contextual factors such as socioeconomic status (SES and culture are rarely considered. This article considers the potential benefits of electronic play from a psychological perspective, as well as individual and contextual factors that may shape the influence of electronic play for children and adolescents. Demographics of players and the games themselves are presented, and recommendations for research and policy are discussed.

Emotional availability, understanding emotions, and recognition of facial emotions in obese mothers with young children.

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Bergmann, Sarah; von Klitzing, Kai; Keitel-Korndörfer, Anja; Wendt, Verena; Grube, Matthias; Herpertz, Sarah; Schütz, Astrid; Klein, Annette M

2016-01-01

Recent research has identified mother-child relationships of low quality as possible risk factors for childhood obesity. However, it remains open how mothers' own obesity influences the quality of mother-child interaction, and particularly emotional availability (EA). Also unclear is the influence of maternal emotional competencies, i.e. understanding emotions and recognizing facial emotions. This study aimed to (1) investigate differences between obese and normal-weight mothers regarding mother-child EA, maternal understanding emotions and recognition of facial emotions, and (2) explore how maternal emotional competencies and maternal weight interact with each other in predicting EA. A better understanding of these associations could inform strategies of obesity prevention especially in children at risk. We assessed EA, understanding emotions and recognition of facial emotions in 73 obese versus 73 normal-weight mothers, and their children aged 6 to 47 months (Mchild age=24.49, 80 females). Obese mothers showed lower EA and understanding emotions. Mothers' normal weight and their ability to understand emotions were positively associated with EA. The ability to recognize facial emotions was positively associated with EA in obese but not in normal-weight mothers. Maternal weight status indirectly influenced EA through its effect on understanding emotions. Maternal emotional competencies may play an important role for establishing high EA in interaction with the child. Children of obese mothers experience lower EA, which may contribute to overweight development. We suggest including elements that aim to improve maternal emotional competencies and mother-child EA in prevention or intervention programmes targeting childhood obesity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

General approach to understanding the electronic structure of graphene on metals

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Voloshina, E N; Dedkov, Yu S

2014-01-01

This manuscript presents the general approach to the understanding of the connection between bonding mechanism and electronic structure of graphene on metals. To demonstrate its validity, two limiting cases of ‘weakly’ and ‘strongly’ bonded graphene on Al(111) and Ni(111) are considered, where the Dirac cone is preserved or fully destroyed, respectively. Furthermore, the electronic structure, i.e. doping level, hybridization effects, as well as a gap formation at the Dirac point of the intermediate system, graphene/Cu(111), is fully understood in the framework of the proposed approach. This work summarises the long-term debates regarding connection of the bonding strength and the valence band modification in the graphene/metal systems and paves a way for the effective control of the electronic states of graphene in the vicinity of the Fermi level. (paper)

The unique and shared contributions of arithmetic operation understanding and numerical magnitude representation to children's mathematics achievement.

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Wong, Terry Tin-Yau

2017-12-01

The current study examined the unique and shared contributions of arithmetic operation understanding and numerical magnitude representation to children's mathematics achievement. A sample of 124 fourth graders was tested on their arithmetic operation understanding (as reflected by their understanding of arithmetic principles and the knowledge about the application of arithmetic operations) and their precision of rational number magnitude representation. They were also tested on their mathematics achievement and arithmetic computation performance as well as the potential confounding factors. The findings suggested that both arithmetic operation understanding and numerical magnitude representation uniquely predicted children's mathematics achievement. The findings highlight the significance of arithmetic operation understanding in mathematics learning. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Association between electronic equipment in the bedroom and sedentary lifestyle, physical activity, and body mass index of children

OpenAIRE

Ferrari, Gerson Luis de Moraes; Araújo, Timóteo Leandro; Oliveira, Luis Carlos; Matsudo, Victor; Fisberg, Mauro

2015-01-01

Objective: To describe the association between electronic devices in the bedroom with sedentary time and physical activity, both assessed by accelerometry, in addition to body mass index in children from São Caetano do Sul. Methods: The sample consisted of 441 children. The presence of electronic equipment (television, personal computer, and videogames) in the bedroom was assessed by a questionnaire. For seven consecutive days, children used an accelerometer to objectively monitor the sede...

Understanding infants' and children's social learning about foods: previous research and new prospects.

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Shutts, Kristin; Kinzler, Katherine D; DeJesus, Jasmine M

2013-03-01

Developmental psychologists have devoted significant attention to investigating how children learn from others' actions, emotions, and testimony. Yet most of this research has examined children's socially guided learning about artifacts. The present article focuses on a domain that has received limited attention from those interested in the development of social cognition: food. We begin by reviewing the available literature on infants' and children's development in the food domain and identify situations in which children evidence both successes and failures in their interactions with foods. We focus specifically on the role that other people play in guiding what children eat and argue that understanding patterns of successes and failures in the food domain requires an appreciation of eating as a social phenomenon. We next propose a series of questions for future research and suggest that examining food selection as a social phenomenon can shed light on mechanisms underlying children's learning from others and provide ideas for promoting healthy social relationships and eating behaviors early in development.

From Fancy to Reason: Scaling Deaf and Hearing Children's Understanding of Theory of Mind and Pretence

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Peterson, Candida C.; Wellman, Henry M.

2009-01-01

We examined deaf and hearing children's progression of steps in theory of mind (ToM) development including their understanding of social pretending. Ninety-three children (33 deaf; 60 hearing) aged 3-13 years were tested on a set of six closely matched ToM tasks. Results showed that deaf children were delayed substantially behind hearing children…

Electronic monitoring of adherence to inhaled corticosteroids: an essential tool in identifying severe asthma in children.

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Jochmann, Anja; Artusio, Luca; Jamalzadeh, Angela; Nagakumar, Prasad; Delgado-Eckert, Edgar; Saglani, Sejal; Bush, Andrew; Frey, Urs; Fleming, Louise J

2017-12-01

International guidelines recommend that severe asthma can only be diagnosed after contributory factors, including adherence, have been addressed. Accurate assessment of adherence is difficult in clinical practice. We hypothesised that electronic monitoring in children would identify nonadherence, thus delineating the small number with true severe asthma.Asthmatic children already prescribed inhaled corticosteroids were prospectively recruited and persistence of adherence assessed using electronic monitoring devices. Spirometry, airway inflammation and asthma control were measured at the start and end of the monitoring period.93 children (62 male; median age 12.4 years) were monitored for a median of 92 days. Median (range) monitored adherence was 74% (21-99%). We identified four groups: 1) good adherence during monitoring with improved control, 24% (likely previous poor adherence); 2) good adherence with poor control, 18% (severe therapy-resistant asthma); 3) poor adherence with good control, 26% (likely overtreated); and 4) poor adherence with poor control, 32%. No clinical parameter prior to monitoring distinguished these groups.Electronic monitoring is a useful tool for identifying children in whom a step up in treatment is indicated. Different approaches are needed in those who are controlled when adherent or who are nonadherent. Electronic monitoring is essential in a paediatric severe asthma clinic. Copyright ©ERS 2017.

Stability and Variability in Young Children's Understanding of Floating and Sinking during One Single-Task Session

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Meindertsma, Heidi B.; van Dijk, Marijn W. G.; Steenbeek, Henderien W.; van Geert, Paul L. C.

2014-01-01

Intraindividual variability is a key component in explaining children's development and learning. Studying this type of variability on the micro-timescale can help us understand real-time constructive processes and the subsequent long-term development. The aim of this article is to study the process of children's understanding of…

Mother- and Father-Reported Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions: Relations to Young Children's Emotional Understanding and Friendship Quality

OpenAIRE

McElwain, Nancy L.; Halberstadt, Amy G.; Volling, Brenda L.

2007-01-01

Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions were examined as correlates of emotional understanding (Study 1, N = 55, 5- to 6-year-olds) and friendship quality (Study 2, N = 49, 3- to 5-year-olds). Mothers' and fathers' supportive reactions together contributed to greater child-friend coordinated play during a sharing task. Further, when one parent reported low support, greater support by the other parent was related to better understanding of emotions and less intens...

False Belief Understanding: Children Catch It from Classmates of Different Ages

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Wang, Yifang; Su, Yanjie

2009-01-01

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with…

Leading Schools with Migrant Children in Shanghai: Understanding Policies and Practices

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Qian, Haiyan; Walker, Allan David

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is threefold: to sketch the current policy context that frames the education of migrant children in Shanghai; to explore the work lives of school leaders in the privately owned but government-supported schools; and to understand the socio-cultural and educational factors that shape the leadership practices in…

Effects of maternal negativity and of early and recent recurrent depressive disorder on children's false belief understanding.

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Rohrer, Lisa M; Cicchetti, Dante; Rogosch, Fred A; Toth, Sheree L; Maughan, Angeline

2011-01-01

Research has shown that children of depressed mothers are at risk for problems in a variety of developmental domains; however, little is known about the effects of maternal depression on children's emerging understanding of false beliefs. In this study, 3 false belief tasks were administered to 5-year-old children whose mothers had either met criteria for major depressive disorder within the first 20 months of the child's life (n = 91) or had never been depressed (n = 50). Significant difficulties in performance were found among the children of depressed mothers, especially those whose mothers had experienced early and recent recurrent depressive disorder. Regardless of diagnostic status, children whose mothers exhibited negativity during problem-solving tasks administered at an earlier developmental period also were less likely to demonstrate false belief understanding. These effects remained even after child verbal ability was controlled.

Children's experiences of food insecurity can assist in understanding its effect on their well-being.

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Connell, Carol L; Lofton, Kristi L; Yadrick, Kathy; Rehner, Timothy A

2005-07-01

An understanding of the experience of food insecurity by children is essential for better measurement and assessment of its effect on children's nutritional, physical, and mental health. Our qualitative study explored children's perceptions of household food insecurity to identify these perceptions and to use them to establish components of children's food insecurity experience. Children (n = 32; 11-16 y old) from after school programs and a middle school in low-income areas participated in individual semistructured in-depth interviews. Children as young as 11 y could describe behaviors associated with food insecurity if they had experienced it directly or indirectly. Using the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis, children's descriptions of behaviors associated with food insecurity were categorized into components of quantity of food, quality of food, psychological aspects, and social aspects described in the household food insecurity literature. Aspects of quantity included eating less than usual and eating more or eating fast when food was available. Aspects of quality included use of a few kinds of low-cost foods. Psychological aspects included worry/anxiety/sadness about the family food supply, feelings of having no choice in the foods eaten, shame/fear of being labeled as poor, and attempts to shield children. Social aspects of food insecurity centered on using social networks to acquire food or money and social exclusion. These results provide valuable information in understanding the effect of food insecurity on children's well-being especially relative to the social and emotional aspects of well-being.

Determining rates of overweight and obese status in children using electronic medical records

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Birken, Catherine S.; Tu, Karen; Oud, William; Carsley, Sarah; Hanna, Miranda; Lebovic, Gerald; Guttmann, Astrid

2017-01-01

Abstract Objective To determine the prevalence of overweight and obese status in children by age, sex, and visit type, using data from EMRALD® (Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database). Design Heights and weights were abstracted for children 0 to 19 years of age who had at least one well-child visit from January 2010 to December 2011. Using the most recent visit, the proportions and 95% CIs of patients defined as overweight and obese were compared by age group, sex, and visit type using the World Health Organization growth reference standards. Setting Ontario. Participants Children 0 to 19 years of age who were rostered to a primary care physician participating in EMRALD and had at least one well-child visit from January 2010 to December 2011. Main outcome measures Proportion and 95% CI of children with overweight and obese status by age group; proportion of children with overweight and obese status by sex (with male sex as the referent) within each age group; and proportion of children with overweight and obese status at the most recent well-child visit type compared with other visit types by age group. Results There were 28 083 well-child visits during this period. For children who attended well-child visits, 84.7% of visits had both a height and weight documented. Obesity rates were significantly higher in 1- to 4-year-olds compared with children younger than 1 (6.1% vs 2.3%; P overweight and obese status were lower using data from well-child visits compared with other visits. Conclusion Electronic medical records might be useful to conduct population-based surveillance of overweight or obese status in children. Methodologic standards, however, should be developed. PMID:28209703

Emotion Understanding, Social Competence and School Achievement in Children from Primary School in Portugal

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Maria da Glória Franco

2017-08-01

Full Text Available This study analyzes the relationship between emotion understanding and school achievement in children of primary school, considering age, gender, fluid intelligence, mother’s educational level and social competence. In this study participated 406 children of primary school. The instruments used were the Test of Emotion Comprehension, Colored Progressive Matrices of Raven, Socially Action and Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale. The structural equation model showed the relationship between the emotion understanding and school performance depends on a mediator variable that in the context of the study was designated social competence. Age appear as an explanatory factor of the differences found, the mother’s educational level only predicts significantly social emotional competence, fluid intelligence is a predictor of emotion understanding, school achievement and social emotional competence. Regarding the influence of sex, emotional understanding does not emerge as a significant predictor of social emotional competence in girls or boys. Multiple relationships between the various factors associated with school achievement and social emotional competence are discussed as well as their implications in promoting child development and school success.

Bullying, Empathic Concern, and Internalization of Rules among Preschool Children: The Role of Emotion Understanding

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Camodeca, Marina; Coppola, Gabrielle

2016-01-01

The present study examined whether bullying, defending, and outsider behaviors in preschool children were associated with two conscience aspects (empathic concern and internalization of rules) and with emotion understanding. We also investigated whether emotion understanding moderated the relationship between these dimensions and bullying roles.…

Increasing the Understanding and Demonstration of Appropriate Affection in Children with Asperger Syndrome: A Pilot Trial

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Kate Sofronoff

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The study was conducted to examine relationships between affectionate behavior in children with Asperger syndrome and variables likely to influence its expression (e.g., tactile sensitivity, social ability. It also evaluated the impact of a cognitive behavioral intervention that aimed to improve a child's understanding and expression of affection. Twenty-one children, aged 7 to 12 years, participated in the trial. The results showed significant correlations between measures of affection and tactile sensitivity and social ability. After attending the 5-week program, parents identified significant increases in the appropriateness of children's affectionate behavior both towards immediate family and people outside the immediate family, despite reporting no significant changes in their child's general difficulties with affectionate behavior. There was a significant improvement in children's understanding of the purpose of affection. The findings are discussed as well as the limitations of the study.

To Lie or Not to Lie? The Influence of Parenting and Theory-of-Mind Understanding on Three-Year-Old Children's Honesty

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Ma, Fengling; Evans, Angela D.; Liu, Ying; Luo, Xianming; Xu, Fen

2015-01-01

Prior studies have demonstrated that social-cognitive factors such as children's false-belief understanding and parenting style are related to children's lie-telling behaviors. The present study aimed to investigate how earlier forms of theory-of-mind understanding contribute to children's lie-telling as well as how parenting practices are related…

How children understand idioms in discourse.

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Cacciari, C; Levorato, M C

1989-06-01

Some studies have shown that children tend to interpret figurative language literally. Our hypothesis is that they can reach an idiomatic competence if idioms are presented within a rich informational environment allowing children to grasp their figurative sense. First and third graders were presented with narratives biased both to the figurative meaning of idioms (experiment 1) and to the literal meaning (experiment 2) and then given a comprehension task. Experiment 3 was designed to investigate children's production of idioms as compared to the comprehension abilities explored in experiments 1 and 2. Results show that informative contexts can improve children's ability to perceive idiomatic meanings even at the age of seven; and that children are less able to produce idioms than to comprehend them. Generally results emphasize that children seem able to perceive that language can be both figurative and literal.

Children's attitudes towards Electronic Gambling Machines: an exploratory qualitative study of children who attend community clubs.

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Bestman, Amy; Thomas, Samantha; Randle, Melanie; Pitt, Hannah

2017-05-08

This research sought to explore whether children's visual and auditory exposure to Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) in community clubs contributed to shaping their attitudes towards these types of potentially harmful gambling products. This research also examined children's knowledge of EGM behaviours in adults within their social networks. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 45 children in a regional area of New South Wales, Australia. All children had attended a club that contained gambling products in the previous 12 months. Face to face, semi-structured interviews explored a range of themes including recall of and attitudes towards EGMs. Data were analysed using thematic techniques. Four social learning theory concepts-attentional, retention, reinforcement and reproduction-were used to explore the range of processes that influenced children's attitudes towards EGMs. In relation to attentional factors, children recalled having seen EGMs in clubs, including where they were located, auditory stimuli and the physical appearance of EGMs. Children also retained information about the behaviours associated with gambling on EGMs, most prominently why adults gamble on these machines. Attitudes towards EGMs were reinforced by the child's knowledge of adults EGM behaviours. Some older children's attitudes were positively reinforced by the perception that profits from the machines would go back to their local sporting teams. Finally, while some children expressed a desire to reproduce EGM behaviours when they were older, others were concerned about the negative consequences of engaging in this type of gambling. Despite policies that try to prevent children's exposure to EGMs in community venues, children have peripheral exposure to EGMs within these environments. This exposure and children's awareness of gambling behaviours of adults appear to play a role in shaping their attitudes towards EGMs. While further research should explore the

Children with Autism Understand Indirect Speech Acts: Evidence from a Semi-Structured Act-Out Task.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mikhail Kissine

Full Text Available Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder are often said to present a global pragmatic impairment. However, there is some observational evidence that context-based comprehension of indirect requests may be preserved in autism. In order to provide experimental confirmation to this hypothesis, indirect speech act comprehension was tested in a group of 15 children with autism between 7 and 12 years and a group of 20 typically developing children between 2:7 and 3:6 years. The aim of the study was to determine whether children with autism can display genuinely contextual understanding of indirect requests. The experiment consisted of a three-pronged semi-structured task involving Mr Potato Head. In the first phase a declarative sentence was uttered by one adult as an instruction to put a garment on a Mr Potato Head toy; in the second the same sentence was uttered as a comment on a picture by another speaker; in the third phase the same sentence was uttered as a comment on a picture by the first speaker. Children with autism complied with the indirect request in the first phase and demonstrated the capacity to inhibit the directive interpretation in phases 2 and 3. TD children had some difficulty in understanding the indirect instruction in phase 1. These results call for a more nuanced view of pragmatic dysfunction in autism.

Understanding the Role of Water on Electron-Initiated Processes and Radical Chemistry

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Garrett, Bruce C [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Colson, Steven D [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Dixon, David A. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Laufer, Allan H [US Department of Energy Office of Science Office of Basic Energy Sciences; Ray, Douglas [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

2003-06-10

On September 26–28, 2002, a workshop entitled “Understanding the Role of Water on Electron-Initiated Processes and Radical Chemistry” was held to assess new research opportunities in electron-driven processes and radical chemistry in aqueous systems. Of particular interest was the unique and complex role that the structure of water plays in influencing these processes. Novel experimental and theoretical approaches to solving long-standing problems in the field were explored. A broad selection of participants from universities and the national laboratories contributed to the workshop, which included scientific and technical presentations and parallel sessions for discussions and report writing.

Evidence-based guidelines for wise use of electronic games by children.

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Straker, Leon; Abbott, Rebecca; Collins, Rachel; Campbell, Amity

2014-01-01

Electronic games (e-games) are widely used by children, often for substantial durations, yet to date there are no evidence-based guidelines regarding their use. The aim of this paper is to present guidelines for the wise use of e-games by children based on a narrative review of the research. This paper proposes a model of factors that influence child-e-games interaction. It summarises the evidence on positive and negative effects of use of e-games on physical activity and sedentary behaviour, cardio-metabolic health, musculoskeletal health, motor coordination, vision, cognitive development and psychosocial health. Available guidelines and the role of guidelines are discussed. Finally, this information is compiled into a clear set of evidence-based guidelines, about wise use of e-games by children, targeting children, parents, professionals and the e-game industry. These guidelines provide an accessible synthesis of available knowledge and pragmatic guidelines based on e-game specific evidence and related research.

Effects of Maternal Negativity and of Early and Recent Recurrent Depressive Disorder on Children's False Belief Understanding

Science.gov (United States)

Rohrer, Lisa M.; Cicchetti, Dante; Rogosch, Fred A.; Toth, Sheree L.; Maughan, Angeline

2011-01-01

Research has shown that children of depressed mothers are at risk for problems in a variety of developmental domains; however, little is known about the effects of maternal depression on children's emerging understanding of false beliefs. In this study, 3 false belief tasks were administered to 5-year-old children whose mothers had either met…

The direct way may not be the best way: Children with ADHD and their understanding of self-presentation in social interactions

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Kloo, Daniela; Kain, Winfried

2016-01-01

Knowledge and use of self-presentational tactics is an important social skill. We examined understanding of the function of three different self-presentational tactics (self-promotion, ingratiation and blasting) in 11 8–12-year-old boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 11 matched comparison children. Children were given six different self-presentation stories, two for each one of the three different tactics. After each story, they were asked to evaluate the effects of the self-presentational tactic used. Children with ADHD rated self-promotion and blasting as more positive and more effective—and ingratiation as less positive and less effective—than children in the control group. This implicates that children with ADHD prefer simple and direct self-presentational strategies (like self-promotion), and, therefore, may not as easily understand more subtle strategies (like ingratiation). They also seem to be more inclined to use negatively connoted strategies (like blasting). We suggest that this limited understanding of self-presentational strategies in children with ADHD may explain some of their problems in social interactions. Therefore, social skill interventions in children with ADHD should incorporate elements focusing on use and understanding of different self-presentational strategies. PMID:27081391

Development of Young Children's Understanding that the Recent Past Is Causally Bound to the Present.

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Povinelli, Daniel J.; Landry, Anita M.; Theall, Laura A.; Clark, Britten R.; Castille, Conni M.

1999-01-01

Six experiments examined young children's understanding that very recent past events determine the present. Found that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, could locate a puppet they had observed being hidden either through a videotape or using a verbal analog of the task. When children observed 2 events in which they participated, only 5-year-olds…

When Injury Clouds Understanding of Others: Theory of Mind after Mild TBI in Preschool Children.

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Bellerose, Jenny; Bernier, Annie; Beaudoin, Cindy; Gravel, Jocelyn; Beauchamp, Miriam H

2015-08-01

There is evidence to suggest that social skills, such as the ability to understand the perspective of others (theory of mind), may be affected by childhood traumatic brain injuries; however, studies to date have only considered moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study aimed to assess theory of mind after early, mild TBI (mTBI). Fifty-one children who sustained mTBI between 18 and 60 months were evaluated 6 months post-injury on emotion and desires reasoning and false-belief understanding tasks. Their results were compared to that of 50 typically developing children. The two groups did not differ on baseline characteristics, except for pre- and post-injury externalizing behavior. The mTBI group obtained poorer scores relative to controls on both the emotion and desires task and the false-belief understanding task, even after controlling for pre-injury externalizing behavior. No correlations were found between TBI injury characteristics and theory of mind. This is the first evidence that mTBI in preschool children is associated with theory of mind difficulties. Reduced perspective taking abilities could be linked with the social impairments that have been shown to arise following TBI.

Understanding the health care utilization of children who require medical technology: A descriptive study of children who require tracheostomies.

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Spratling, Regena

2017-04-01

Children who require medical technology have complex chronic illnesses. This medical technology, including ventilators, oximeters, tracheostomy tubes, and feeding tubes, allows children and their families to live at home; however, the management of the children's care by informal caregivers is complex with the need for intensive, specialized care. The purpose of this study was to examine the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics that affect health care utilization in a population of children who require medical technology. A retrospective electronic health record (EHR) review was completed on the EHR records on 171 children who require medical technology, specifically tracheostomies, at an outpatient technology dependent pulmonary clinic over a three year period (January 2010-December 2012). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, including medical diagnoses, and emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations. Of the 171 children requiring medical technology studied, there were numerous medical diagnoses (n=791), 99% had chronic illnesses affecting two or more body systems, and 88% required two or more technologies, including a tracheostomy and a feeding tube. In addition, 91% of the children had at least one ED visit or hospitalization and were treated in the ED approximately three times over the three year period. The findings from this study noted an increased utilization of health care by these children, and identified common symptoms and medical technologies for which caregivers may need interventions, focusing on education in managing symptoms and medical technology prior to presentation to the ED or hospital. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Looking Behavior and Audiovisual Speech Understanding in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Mild Bilateral or Unilateral Hearing Loss.

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Lewis, Dawna E; Smith, Nicholas A; Spalding, Jody L; Valente, Daniel L

Visual information from talkers facilitates speech intelligibility for listeners when audibility is challenged by environmental noise and hearing loss. Less is known about how listeners actively process and attend to visual information from different talkers in complex multi-talker environments. This study tracked looking behavior in children with normal hearing (NH), mild bilateral hearing loss (MBHL), and unilateral hearing loss (UHL) in a complex multi-talker environment to examine the extent to which children look at talkers and whether looking patterns relate to performance on a speech-understanding task. It was hypothesized that performance would decrease as perceptual complexity increased and that children with hearing loss would perform more poorly than their peers with NH. Children with MBHL or UHL were expected to demonstrate greater attention to individual talkers during multi-talker exchanges, indicating that they were more likely to attempt to use visual information from talkers to assist in speech understanding in adverse acoustics. It also was of interest to examine whether MBHL, versus UHL, would differentially affect performance and looking behavior. Eighteen children with NH, eight children with MBHL, and 10 children with UHL participated (8-12 years). They followed audiovisual instructions for placing objects on a mat under three conditions: a single talker providing instructions via a video monitor, four possible talkers alternately providing instructions on separate monitors in front of the listener, and the same four talkers providing both target and nontarget information. Multi-talker background noise was presented at a 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio during testing. An eye tracker monitored looking behavior while children performed the experimental task. Behavioral task performance was higher for children with NH than for either group of children with hearing loss. There were no differences in performance between children with UHL and children

Pedagogical Cues to an Artist's Intention in Young Children's Understanding of Drawings

Science.gov (United States)

Salsa, Analía M.; Vivaldi, Romina A.

2016-01-01

Three studies investigated the effects of pedagogical cues to an artist's referential intention on 2- and 2.5-year-old children's understanding of drawings in a matching task without verbal labels support. Results showed that pedagogical cues, the combination of the artist's eye gaze while she was creating the drawings (nonlinguistic cues), and…

Mothers' beliefs about emotions, mother-child emotion discourse, and children's emotion understanding in Latino families

OpenAIRE

Perez-Rivera, Marie Belle

2008-01-01

The purpose of this study was to better understand associations between acculturation, parental beliefs, mother-child emotion talk, and emotion understanding in Latino preschool-aged children. Research on Latino families may prove to be important given the little research that has focused on emotion understanding strictly in Latino cultures. Forty Latino mother-child dyads were observed throughout a series of naturalistic observations. Mothers self-reported their acculturation and their belie...

Craniospinal radiotherapy in children: Electron- or photon-based technique of spinal irradiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chojnacka, M.; Skowronska-Gardas, A.; Pedziwiatr, K.; Morawska-Kaczynska, M.; Zygmuntowicz-Pietka, A.; Semaniak, A.

2010-01-01

Background: The prone position and electron-based technique for craniospinal irradiation (CSI) have been standard in our department for many years. But this immobilization is difficult for the anaesthesiologist to gain airway access. The increasing number of children treated under anaesthesia led us to reconsider our technique. Aim: The purpose of this study is to report our new photon-based technique for CSI which could be applied in both the supine and the prone position and to compare this technique with our electron-based technique. Materials and methods: Between November 2007 and May 2008, 11 children with brain tumours were treated in the prone position with CSI. For 9 patients two treatment plans were created: the first one using photons and the second one using electron beams for spinal irradiation. We prepared seven 3D-conformal photon plans and four forward planned segmented field plans. We compared 20 treatment plans in terms of target dose homogeneity and sparing of organs at risk. Results: In segmented field plans better dose homogeneity in the thecal sac volume was achieved than in electron-based plans. Regarding doses in organs at risk, in photon-based plans we obtained a lower dose in the thyroid but a higher one in the heart and liver. Conclusions: Our technique can be applied in both the supine and prone position and it seems to be more feasible and precise than the electron technique. However, more homogeneous target coverage and higher precision of dose delivery for photons are obtained at the cost of slightly higher doses to the heart and liver. (authors)

Using Electronic Health Records to Examine Disease Risk in Small Populations: Obesity Among American Indian Children, Wisconsin, 2007-2012.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomayko, Emily J; Weinert, Bethany A; Godfrey, Liz; Adams, Alexandra K; Hanrahan, Lawrence P

2016-02-25

Tribe-based or reservation-based data consistently show disproportionately high obesity rates among American Indian children, but little is known about the approximately 75% of American Indian children living off-reservation. We examined obesity among American Indian children seeking care off-reservation by using a database of de-identified electronic health records linked to community-level census variables. Data from electronic health records from American Indian children and a reference sample of non-Hispanic white children collected from 2007 through 2012 were abstracted to determine obesity prevalence. Related community-level and individual-level risk factors (eg, economic hardship, demographics) were examined using logistic regression. The obesity rate for American Indian children (n = 1,482) was double the rate among non-Hispanic white children (n = 81,042) (20.0% vs 10.6%, P American Indian children were less likely to have had a well-child visit (55.9% vs 67.1%, P American Indian records (18.3% vs 14.6%, P obesity risk among American Indian children (odds ratio, 1.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.6-2.1) independent of age, sex, economic hardship, insurance status, and geographic designation. An electronic health record data set demonstrated high obesity rates for nonreservation-based American Indian children, rates that had not been previously assessed. This low-cost method may be used for assessing health risk for other understudied populations and to plan and evaluate targeted interventions.

Understanding Transportation Choice of Families with Small Children in Oslo

OpenAIRE

Miller, Scott Thomas

2011-01-01

This qualitative study took place in the Oslo area and focused on the transportation mode choices of parents with children in day care. Understanding why parents choose a certain mode of transport was the main objective of this research. Answers to the question of why were looked at in the context of theories stemming from urban planning, sociology, psychology amongst others. The findings show that while geographical distances did have the largest impact on how people travelled around work h...

Are Prompts Provided by Electronic Books as Effective for Teaching Preschoolers a Biological Concept as Those Provided by Adults?

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Strouse, Gabrielle A.; Ganea, Patricia A.

2016-01-01

Research Findings: Prior research indicates that shared book reading is an effective method for teaching biological concepts to young children. Adult questioning during reading enhances children's comprehension. We investigated whether adult prompting during the reading of an electronic book enhanced children's understanding of a biological…

Strong and strategic conformity understanding by 3- and 5-year-old children.

Science.gov (United States)

Cordonier, Laurent; Nettles, Theresa; Rochat, Philippe

2017-12-18

'Strong conformity' corresponds to the public endorsement of majority opinions that are in blatant contradiction to one's own correct perceptual judgements of the situation. We tested strong conformity inference by 3- and 5-year-old children using a third-person perspective paradigm. Results show that at neither age, children spontaneously expect that an ostracized third-party individual who wants to affiliate with the majority group will show strong conformity. However, when questioned as to what the ostracized individual should do to befriend others, from 5 years of age children explicitly demonstrate that they construe strong conformity as a strategic means of social affiliation. Additional data suggest that strong and strategic conformity understanding from an observer's third-person perspective is linked to the passing of the language-mediated false belief theory of mind task, an index of children's emerging 'meta' ability to construe the mental state of others. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? 'Strong conformity' corresponds to the public endorsement of majority opinions that are in blatant contradiction to one's own correct perceptual judgements of the situation. Asch's (1956, Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70, 1) classic demonstration of strong conformity with adults has been replicated with preschool children: 3- to 4-year-olds manifest signs of strong conformity by reversing about thirty to forty per cent of the time their correct perceptual judgements to fit with contradictory statements held unanimously by other individuals (Corriveau & Harris, 2010, Developmental Psychology, 46, 437; Corriveau et al., 2013, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 13, 367; Haun & Tomasello, 2011, Child Development, 82, 1759). As for adults, strong conformity does not obliterate children's own private, accurate knowledge of the situation. It is in essence a public expression to fit the group and alleviate social dissonance

Mothers' Acculturation and Beliefs about Emotions, Mother-Child Emotion Discourse, and Children's Emotion Understanding in Latino Families

Science.gov (United States)

Perez Rivera, Marie Belle; Dunsmore, Julie C.

2011-01-01

Research Findings: We examined associations among Anglo acculturation, Latino enculturation, maternal beliefs, mother-child emotion talk, and emotion understanding in 40 Latino preschool-age children and their mothers. Mothers self-reported Anglo acculturation, Latino enculturation, and beliefs about the value/danger of children's emotions and…

Children's understanding of the selling versus persuasive intent of junk food advertising: implications for regulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Carter, Owen B J; Patterson, Lisa J; Donovan, Robert J; Ewing, Michael T; Roberts, Clare M

2011-03-01

Evidence suggests that until 8 years of age most children are cognitively incapable of appreciating the commercial purpose of television advertising and are particularly vulnerable to its persuasive techniques. After this age most children begin to describe the 'selling' intent of advertising and it is widely assumed this equips them with sufficient cognitive defences to protect against advertisers' persuasion attempts. However, much of the previous literature has been criticised for failing to differentiate between children's awareness of 'selling' versus 'persuasive' intent, the latter representing a more sophisticated understanding and superior cognitive defence. Unfortunately there is little literature to suggest at what age awareness of 'persuasive intent' emerges; our aim was to address this important issue. Children (n = 594) were recruited from each grade from Pre-primary (4-5 years) to Grade 7 (11-12 years) from ten primary schools in Perth, Western Australia and exposed to a McDonald's television advertisement. Understanding the purpose of television advertising was assessed both nonverbally (picture indication) and verbally (small discussion groups of 3-4), with particular distinction made between selling versus persuasive intent. Consistent with previous literature, a majority of children described the 'selling' intent of television advertising by 7-8 years both nonverbally and verbally, increasing to 90% by 11-12 years. Awareness of 'persuasive' intent emerged slowly as a function of age but even by our oldest age-group was only 40%. Vulnerability to television advertising may persist until children are far older than previously thought. These findings have important implications regarding the debate surrounding regulation of junk food (and other) advertising aimed at children. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The understanding and self-reported use of emotional display rules in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Begeer, Sander; Banerjee, Robin; Rieffe, Carolien; Terwogt, Mark Meerum; Potharst, Eva; Stegge, Hedy; Koot, Hans M

2011-08-01

Two studies examined the understanding and self-reported use of rules for the expressive display of emotions in children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) and in typically developing children. In Study 1, children from the two groups reported display rules equally often when presented with hypothetical situations that provided clear motives for using display rules, although emotion-masking displays were more commonly identified for vignettes with prosocial rather than self-protective motives. In Study 2, children were interviewed about display rule use in real life. Children with HFASD reported display rules less often, included more prototypical examples, and referred less often to prosocial motives than typically developing children. Children with HFASD appear to be aware of display rules, but are less adept at identifying the interpersonal functions of such rules than their typically developing peers.

Testing primary-school children's understanding of the nature of science.

Science.gov (United States)

Koerber, Susanne; Osterhaus, Christopher; Sodian, Beate

2015-03-01

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is a critical aspect of scientific reasoning, yet few studies have investigated its developmental beginnings and initial structure. One contributing reason is the lack of an adequate instrument. Two studies assessed NOS understanding among third graders using a multiple-select (MS) paper-and-pencil test. Study 1 investigated the validity of the MS test by presenting the items to 68 third graders (9-year-olds) and subsequently interviewing them on their underlying NOS conception of the items. All items were significantly related between formats, indicating that the test was valid. Study 2 applied the same instrument to a larger sample of 243 third graders, and their performance was compared to a multiple-choice (MC) version of the test. Although the MC format inflated the guessing probability, there was a significant relation between the two formats. In summary, the MS format was a valid method revealing third graders' NOS understanding, thereby representing an economical test instrument. A latent class analysis identified three groups of children with expertise in qualitatively different aspects of NOS, suggesting that there is not a single common starting point for the development of NOS understanding; instead, multiple developmental pathways may exist. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Graphic Symbols as "The Mind on Paper": Links between Children's Interpretive Theory of Mind and Symbol Understanding

Science.gov (United States)

Myers, Lauren J.; Liben, Lynn S.

2012-01-01

Children gradually develop interpretive theory of mind (iToM)--the understanding that different people may interpret identical events or stimuli differently. The present study tested whether more advanced iToM underlies children's recognition that map symbols' meanings must be communicated to others when symbols are iconic (resemble their…

Children's understanding of idioms and theory of mind development.

Science.gov (United States)

Caillies, Stéphanie; Le Sourn-Bissaoui, Sandrine

2008-09-01

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis according to which theory of mind competence was a prerequisite to ambiguous idioms understanding. We hypothesized that the child needs to understand that the literal interpretation could be a false world representation, a false belief, and that the speaker's intention is to mean something else, to correctly process idiomatic expressions. Two kinds of ambiguous idioms were of interest: decomposable and nondecomposable expressions (Titone & Connine, 1999). An experiment was designed to assess the figurative developmental changes that occur with theory of mind competence. Five-, 6- and 7-year-old children performed five theory of mind tasks (an appearance-reality task, three false-belief tasks and a second-order false-belief task) and listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions inserted in context, before performing a multiple choice task. Results indicated that only nondecomposable idiomatic expression was predicted from the theory of mind scores, and particularly from the second-order competences. Results are discussed with respect to theory of mind and verbal competences.

Preschool Children's Understanding of Pro-Environmental Behaviours: Is It Too Hard for Them?

Science.gov (United States)

Kos, Marjanca; Jerman, Janez; Anžlovar, Urška; Torkar, Gregor

2016-01-01

Early childhood is a period of life in which lifelong attitudes, values and patterns of behaviour regarding nature are shaped. Environmental education is becoming a growing area of interest in early childhood education. The aim of the research study was to identify children's understanding of why and how their pro-environmental behaviours…

Is AIBO Real? Understanding Children's Beliefs about and Behavioral Interactions with Anthropomorphic Toys

Science.gov (United States)

Francis, Andrea; Mishra, Punya

2009-01-01

Interactive toys for children are becoming more popular for both play and educational purposes, yet an understanding of the dependent measures used to study such interactions has not yet been explored. This study takes advantage of the idea that robotic animals exhibit both living and pretend qualities, and are therefore ideal for studying…

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Loukusa Soile

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This study examined the development of social-pragmatic comprehension in 170 Finnish four- to eight-year-old children. The children were asked to respond to socially and contextually demanding questions targeting their social-pragmatic language processing, and to explain their correct answers in order to elicit their awareness of how they had derived the answers from the context. The results showed that the number of correct answers increased especially between the ages of four and seven years. We found that questions demanding contextual processing without mind-reading were the easiest to understand, followed by questions demanding processing of feelings of others and false beliefs. The questions demanding understanding of relevant language use and processing of contextual factors including mental states and intentions were the most challenging for the children. Between four and five years of age there was a remarkable developmental phase in children’s ability to give proper explanations.

The influence of teachers' conceptions on their students' learning: children's understanding of sheet music.

Science.gov (United States)

López-Íñiguez, Guadalupe; Pozo, Juan Ignacio

2014-06-01

Despite increasing interest in teachers' and students' conceptions of learning and teaching, and how they influence their practice, there are few studies testing the influence of teachers' conceptions on their students' learning. This study tests how teaching conception (TC; with a distinction between direct and constructive) influences students' representations regarding sheet music. Sixty students (8-12 years old) from music conservatories: 30 of them took lessons with teachers with a constructive TC and another 30 with teachers shown to have a direct TC. Children were given a musical comprehension task in which they were asked to select and rank the contents they needed to learn. These contents had different levels of processing and complexity: symbolic, analytical, and referential. Three factorial ANOVAs, two-one-way ANOVAs, and four 2 × 3 repeated-measures ANOVAs were used to analyse the effects of and the interaction between the independent variables TC and class, both for/on total cards selected, their ranking, and each sub-category (the three processing levels). ANOVAs on the selection and ranking of these contents showed that teachers' conceptions seem to mediate significantly in the way the students understand the music. Students from constructive teachers have more complex and deep understanding of music. They select more elements for learning scores than those from traditional teachers. Teaching conception also influences the way in which children rank those elements. No difference exists between the way 8- and 12-year-olds learn scores. Children's understanding of the scores is more complex than assumed in other studies. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Understanding the school 'climate': secondary school children and climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kovacs, Susan; Bernier, Sandrine; Blanchet, Aymeric; Derkenne, Chantal; Clement, Florence; Petitjean, Leslie

2012-01-01

This interdisciplinary study analyzes the production, circulation and reception of messages on climate change in secondary schools in France. The objective is to understand how political and educational policy initiatives influence the ways in which schools contribute to creating youngsters' perceptions and opinions about climate change. In order to study the conditions of production and reception of information about climate change, a survey was conducted in four French secondary schools, in the 'Bas Rhin' and 'Nord' departments, and local political actors in each department were interviewed. The cross disciplinary analytical and methodological approach uses the tools of sociological inquiry, information science, and political science: questionnaires and interviews were conducted with members of the educational and governmental communities of each school and department, semiotic and discursive analyses of corpuses of documents were carried out, in order to characterize documents used by students and teachers at school or in more informal contexts; the nature and extent of the relations between the political contexts and school directives and programs were also discussed. This interdisciplinary approach, combining sociological, communicational, and political methods, was chosen in response to the hypothesis that three types of variables (social, communicational and political) contribute to the structuring and production of messages about climate change in schools. This report offers a contextualized overview of activities developed within the four secondary schools to help sensitize children to the risks associated with climate change. A study of the networks of individuals (teachers, staff, members of associations, etc.) created in and around the school environment is presented. The degree of involvement of these actors in climate change programs is analyzed, as it is related to their motives and objectives, to the school discipline taught, and to the position

When this means that: the role of working memory and inhibitory control in children's understanding of representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Astle, Andrea; Kamawar, Deepthi; Vendetti, Corrie; Podjarny, Gal

2013-10-01

We investigated cognitive skills that contribute to 4-year-olds' understanding of representations. In our main task, children used representations on a perspective line drawing to find stickers hidden in a model room. To compare the contributions made by various cognitive skills with children's understanding of different types of representations, we manipulated the resemblance between the representations and their referents. Our results indicate that when representations are iconic (i.e., look like their referents), children have very little difficulty with the task. Controlling for performance on this baseline version of the task, we found that specific cognitive skills are differentially predictive of performance when using arbitrary and conflicting representations (i.e., symbols). When the representation was arbitrarily linked to the sticker, performance was related to phonological and visuospatial working memory. When the representation matched the color of an alternate sticker (thereby conflicting with the desired sticker), performance was related to phonological working memory and inhibitory control. We discuss the role that different cognitive skills play in representational understanding as a function of the nature of the representation-referent relation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The association between body mass index and duration spent on electronic devices in children and adolescents in Western Saudi Arabia.

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Agha, Abdulmoein E; Nizar, F Sarah; Nahhas, Anwar M

2016-04-01

To evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and the duration spent on electronic devices, and to assess the factors that can cause obesity among children. A cross-sectional study including 541 participants. Data was collected from March to June 2015 via ambulatory pediatric clinics in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The BMI standard deviation was calculated based on Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standards. The mean age of the participants was 10.1 years. Children who spent ≥2 hours daily on electronic devices showed an increased BMI, and made up 68.4% of the sample. An increased BMI was more common among children who spent ≥2 hours daily on electronic devices. The relationship between BMI, reduced physical activity, and eating during television viewing was determined.

Prediction of Emotional Understanding and Emotion Regulation Skills of 4-5 Age Group Children with Parent-Child Relations

Science.gov (United States)

Dereli, Esra

2016-01-01

The objective of the present study is to examine whether personal attributes, family characteristics of the child and parent-child relations predict children's emotional understanding and emotion regulation skills. The study was conducted with relational screening model, one of the screening models. Study sample included 423 children between the…

Receptive Language Skills in Slovak-Speaking Children With Intellectual Disability: Understanding Words, Sentences, and Stories.

Science.gov (United States)

Polišenská, Kamila; Kapalková, Svetlana; Novotková, Monika

2018-06-05

The study aims to describe receptive language skills in children with intellectual disability (ID) and to contribute to the debate on deviant versus delayed language development. This is the 1st study of receptive skills in children with ID who speak a Slavic language, providing insight into how language development is affected by disability and also language typology. Twenty-eight Slovak-speaking children participated in the study (14 children with ID and 14 typically developing [TD] children matched on nonverbal reasoning abilities). The children were assessed by receptive language tasks targeting words, sentences, and stories, and the groups were compared quantitatively and qualitatively. The groups showed similar language profiles, with a better understanding of words, followed by sentences, with the poorest comprehension for stories. Nouns were comprehended better than verbs; sentence constructions also showed a qualitatively similar picture, although some dissimilarities emerged. Verb comprehension was strongly related to sentence comprehension in both groups and related to story comprehension in the TD group only. The findings appear to support the view that receptive language skills follow the same developmental route in children with ID as seen in younger TD children, suggesting that language development is a robust process and does not seem to be differentially affected by ID even when delayed.

Seeing What Children See: Enhancing Understanding of Outdoor Learning Experiences through Body-Worn Cameras

Science.gov (United States)

Lloyd, Amanda; Gray, Tonia; Truong, Son

2018-01-01

This study investigates innovative ways that outdoor educators can actively promote young participants' authentic voice in educational research and, in turn, increase our understanding of their worldview through accurately recording what children are seeing, hearing, doing, and touching when they are beyond our researcher's gaze. The study was…

"Girls Can Like Boy Toys": Junior Primary School Children's Understandings of Feminist Picture Books

Science.gov (United States)

Bartholomaeus, Clare

2016-01-01

Few studies have examined children's understandings of feminist picture books, and thus their potential usefulness for disrupting dominant discourses and providing alternate storylines. This article draws on research conducted in Australia with a class of 6- and 7-year-olds, examining students' responses to four feminist picture books. The…

Understanding health-care access and utilization disparities among Latino children in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Langellier, Brent A; Chen, Jie; Vargas-Bustamante, Arturo; Inkelas, Moira; Ortega, Alexander N

2016-06-01

It is important to understand the source of health-care disparities between Latinos and other children in the United States. We examine parent-reported health-care access and utilization among Latino, White, and Black children (≤17 years old) in the United States in the 2006-2011 National Health Interview Survey. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we portion health-care disparities into two parts (1) those attributable to differences in the levels of sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., income) and (2) those attributable to differences in group-specific regression coefficients that measure the health-care 'return' Latino, White, and Black children receive on these characteristics. In the United States, Latino children are less likely than Whites to have a usual source of care, receive at least one preventive care visit, and visit a doctor, and are more likely to have delayed care. The return on sociodemographic characteristics explains 20-30% of the disparity between Latino and White children in the usual source of care, delayed care, and doctor visits and 40-50% of the disparity between Latinos and Blacks in emergency department use and preventive care. Much of the health-care disadvantage experienced by Latino children would persist if Latinos had the sociodemographic characteristics as Whites and Blacks. © The Author(s) 2014.

Determining rates of overweight and obese status in children using electronic medical records: Cross-sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Birken, Catherine S; Tu, Karen; Oud, William; Carsley, Sarah; Hanna, Miranda; Lebovic, Gerald; Guttmann, Astrid

2017-02-01

To determine the prevalence of overweight and obese status in children by age, sex, and visit type, using data from EMRALD ® (Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database). Heights and weights were abstracted for children 0 to 19 years of age who had at least one well-child visit from January 2010 to December 2011. Using the most recent visit, the proportions and 95% CIs of patients defined as overweight and obese were compared by age group, sex, and visit type using the World Health Organization growth reference standards. Ontario. Children 0 to 19 years of age who were rostered to a primary care physician participating in EMRALD and had at least one well-child visit from January 2010 to December 2011. Proportion and 95% CI of children with overweight and obese status by age group; proportion of children with overweight and obese status by sex (with male sex as the referent) within each age group; and proportion of children with overweight and obese status at the most recent well-child visit type compared with other visit types by age group. There were 28 083 well-child visits during this period. For children who attended well-child visits, 84.7% of visits had both a height and weight documented. Obesity rates were significantly higher in 1- to 4-year-olds compared with children younger than 1 (6.1% vs 2.3%; P overweight and obese status were lower using data from well-child visits compared with other visits. Electronic medical records might be useful to conduct population-based surveillance of overweight or obese status in children. Methodologic standards, however, should be developed. Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

[Development of premature children: caregivers' understanding according to the Bioecological Theory].

Science.gov (United States)

Lemos, Rayla Amaral; Veríssimo, Maria de La Ó Ramallo

2015-12-01

Understanding the conceptions of premature children caregivers on child development and associated factors. An exploratory-descriptive qualitative study of 12 families with children under three years of age. Interviews were submitted to thematic content analysis, systematized into the categories of Bioecological Theory of Human Development: Process, Person, Context and Time, and in the Functional Development category. There are concerns about impairment in the current and future development of a Person/child defined as fragile as a result of premature birth (Time dimension), minimized by the scope of observable competencies such as motor skills. The Context, especially family and health services, and Proximal Processes, described as one-way caregiver interactions, are considered determinants of development. Functional Development is considered a natural consequence and result of education. The support network is crucial, supporting or limiting care. Concerns about the development mobilize caregivers to stimulate the premature child/person and requests family and healthcare assistance.

Surrogacy families 10 years on: relationship with the surrogate, decisions over disclosure and children's understanding of their surrogacy origins

Science.gov (United States)

Jadva, V.; Blake, L.; Casey, P.; Golombok, S.

2012-01-01

BACKGROUND This study aimed to prospectively examine families created using surrogacy over a 10-year period in the UK with respect to intending parents' and children's relationship with the surrogate mother, parents' decisions over disclosure and children's understanding of the nature of their conception. METHODS Semi-structured interviews were administered by trained researchers to intending mothers, intending fathers and children on four occasions over a 10-year period. Forty-two families (19 with a genetic surrogate mother) participated when the child was 1-year old and by age 10 years, 33 families remained in the study. Data were collected on the frequency of contact with the surrogate mother, relationship with the surrogate, disclosure of surrogacy to the child and the child's understanding of their surrogacy birth. RESULTS Frequency of contact between surrogacy families and their surrogate mother decreased over time, particularly for families whose surrogate was a previously unknown genetic carrier (P surrogate mother's egg was used to conceive the child). Most families reported harmonious relationships with their surrogate mother. At age 10 years, 19 (90%) children who had been informed of the nature of their conception had a good understanding of this and 13 of the 14 children who were in contact with their surrogate reported that they liked her. CONCLUSIONS Surrogacy families maintained good relationships with the surrogate mother over time. Children felt positive about their surrogate mother and their surrogacy birth. The sample size of this study was small and further, larger investigations are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn. PMID:22814484

The association between body mass index and duration spent on electronic devices in children and adolescents in Western Saudi Arabia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdulmoein E. Al-Agha

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Objectives: To evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI and the duration spent on electronic devices, and to assess the factors that can cause obesity among children. Methods: A cross-sectional study including 541 participants. Data was collected from March to June 2015 via ambulatory pediatric clinics in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The BMI standard deviation was calculated based on Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC standards. Results: The mean age of the participants was 10.1 years. Children who spent ≥2 hours daily on electronic devices showed an increased BMI, and made up 68.4% of the sample. Conclusion: An increased BMI was more common among children who spent ≥2 hours daily on electronic devices. The relationship between BMI, reduced physical activity, and eating during television viewing was determined.

Parental Bereavement in Young Children Living in South Africa and Malawi: Understanding Mental Health Resilience.

Science.gov (United States)

Macedo, A; Sherr, L; Tomlinson, M; Skeen, S; Roberts, K J

2018-04-17

Parental loss is a major stressful event found to increase risk of mental health problems in childhood. Yet, some children show resilient adaptation in the face of adversity across time. This study explores predictors of mental health resilience among parentally bereaved children in South Africa and Malawi, and their cumulative effect. The study also explores whether predictors of resilience differed between orphaned and non-orphaned children. Consecutive attenders of community based organisations (children;4-13 years, and their caregivers) were interviewed at baseline and 15-18 month follow up (n=833). Interviews comprised of inventories on demographic information, family data, child mental health, bereavement experience and community characteristics. Mental health screens were used to operationalise resilience as the absence of symptoms of depression, suicidality, trauma, emotional and behavioural problems. Almost 60% of children experienced parental loss. One quarter of orphaned children showed no mental health problems at either wave and were classified as resilient. There were equal proportions of children classified as resilient within the orphaned (25%) vs. non-orphaned group (22%). Being a quick learner, aiding ill family members, positive caregiving, household employment, higher community support, and lower exposure to domestic violence, physical punishment, or stigma at baseline predicted sustained resilience. There were cumulative influences of resilience predictors among orphaned children. Predictors of resilience did not vary by child age, gender, country of residence or between orphaned and non-orphaned children. This study enhances understanding of resilience in younger children and identifies a number of potential environmental and psychosocial factors for bolstering resilience in orphaned children.

Understanding Electronic Word of Behavior

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kunst, Katrine; Vatrapu, Ravi

2018-01-01

The widespread digitization of consumers’ daily lives entails a plethora of digital traces of consumers’ behaviors. These traces can be turned into meaningful communicative and observable content by the services that possess the trace data. While extant research has empirically showed this to have...... a significant impact on consumer choices we argue that the phenomenon is undertheorized. In this theoretical paper, we conceptualize this kind of observable behavior-based information as ‘Electronic Word of Behavior’ (eWOB) and define it as “published accounts of behavior, based on the unobservable digital...... traces of consumers’ behaviors”. We characterize eWOB as an instantiation of Digital Trace Data and situate it within the established concepts of Social Interactions and Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM). By drawing on extant empirical research and constructs from Digital Trace Data, Social Interactions...

Electronic screens in children's bedrooms and adiposity, physical activity and sleep: do the number and type of electronic devices matter?

Science.gov (United States)

Chaput, Jean-Philippe; Leduc, Geneviève; Boyer, Charles; Bélanger, Priscilla; LeBlanc, Allana G; Borghese, Michael M; Tremblay, Mark S

2014-07-11

To examine whether the number and type of electronic screens available in children's bedrooms matter in their relationship to adiposity, physical activity and sleep. A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 502 children aged 9-11 years from Ottawa, Ontario. The presence (yes/no) of a television (TV), computer or video game system in the child's bedroom was reported by the parents. Percentage body fat was measured using bioelectrical impedance. An accelerometer was worn over seven days to assess moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), total sedentary time, sleep duration and sleep efficiency. Screen time was self-reported by the child. After adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, annual household income and highest level of parental education, children with 2-3 screens in their bedroom had a significantly higher percentage of body fat than children with no screen in their bedroom. However, while children with 2-3 screens in their bedroom engaged in more screen time overall than those with no screen, total sedentary time and MVPA were not significantly different. Sleep duration was not related to the number of screens in the bedroom, but sleep efficiency was significantly lower in children with at least 2 screens in the bedroom. Finally, children having only a TV in their bedroom had significantly higher adiposity than those having no screen at all. In contrast, the presence of a computer in children's bedrooms was not associated with higher adiposity than that of children with no screen. A higher number of screens in a child's bedroom was associated with higher adiposity, more total screen time and lower sleep efficiency. Having a TV in the bedroom appears to be the type of screen presence associated with higher levels of adiposity. Given the popularity of screens among children, these findings are increasingly relevant to health promotion strategies.

[Scanning electron microscopy of peripheral blood erythrocytes in the diagnosis and treatment of hemorrhagic vasculitis in children].

Science.gov (United States)

Nagaeva, T A; Balasheva, I I; Saratikov, A S; Bocharova, M N; Mikhalenko, A N

2001-01-01

Twenty-four children aged 3-15 years were examined, 16 of these with cutaneous and articulo-cutaneous hemorrhagic vasculitis (HV) and 8 normal controls. The patients were divided into 2 groups: 10 patients treated by basic therapy and 6 children whose treatment protocols were supplemented by membranoprotector locheine. The children were repeatedly examined 1 month after discharge from hospital. Scanning electron microscopy of peripheral blood erythrocytes provides valuable diagnostic data on erythrocyte membrane morphology and function in children with HV and can serve as a method for monitoring the efficiency of new approaches to therapy of this disease.

How does the activity level of the parents influence their children's activity? The contemporary life in a world ruled by electronic devices.

Science.gov (United States)

Brzęk, Anna; Strauss, Markus; Przybylek, Bianca; Dworrak, Tarja; Dworrak, Birgit; Leischik, Roman

2018-01-01

Apart from many positive changes associated with technical civilization, there are also - from the health point of view - some threats. The reduction in the level of physical activity is one of them. The aim of the study was to investigate whether there are any relationships between children's physical activity and behaviors, and to assess the impact of the adults' activity on their children's habits. The study involved a group of 340 children aged 7-12 years (mean age: 9.81 ±1.7) and their parents. In order to evaluate children's physical activity and the amount of time that they spend with electronic devices, an original questionnaire and the IPAQ questionnaire were used. Children usually use electronic devices between 2 and 7 days per week (mean: 4.74 ±0.86), regardless of sex ( p > 0.09) and spend between 5 and 1620 min per week (mean: 459.46 ±308.1) with their mobile phone, tablet, PCs and TVs. 67.92% of boys and 69.61% of girls lead an active lifestyle. The children's activity level depends on their parents' level of activity ( p Parents of semi-active children lead a lifestyle with a moderate level of physical activity. The level of physical activity in younger children depends on the children's relationship with their parents and their level of activity. Children spend a lot of free time with their electronic devices. It is necessary to develop and implement activities intended to raise awareness of children and their families about the effects of hypokinesis.

Understanding Death in Children With Epilepsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Donner, Elizabeth J; Camfield, Peter; Brooks, Linda; Buchhalter, Jeffrey; Camfield, Carol; Loddenkemper, Tobias; Wirrell, Elaine

2017-05-01

Death in children with epilepsy is profoundly disturbing, with lasting effects on the family, community, and health care providers. The overall risk of death for children with epilepsy is about ten times that of the general population. However, the risk of premature death for children without associated neurological comorbidities is similar to that of the general population, and most deaths are related to the cause of the epilepsy or associated neurological disability, not seizures. The most common cause of seizure-related death in children with epilepsy is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). SUDEP is relatively uncommon in childhood, but the risk increases if epilepsy persists into adulthood. Although the direct cause of SUDEP remains unknown, most often death follows a generalized convulsive seizure and the risk of SUDEP is strongly related to drug-resistant epilepsy and frequent generalized tonic-clonic seizures. The most effective SUDEP prevention strategy is to reduce the frequency of seizures, although a number of seizure detection devices are under development and in the future may prove to be useful for seizure detection for those at particularly high risk. There are distinct benefits for health care professionals to discuss mortality with the family soon after the diagnosis of epilepsy. An individual approach is appropriate. When a child with epilepsy dies, particularly if the death was unexpected, family grief may be profound. Physicians and other health care professionals have a critical role in supporting families that lose a child to epilepsy. This review will provide health care providers with information needed to discuss the risk of death in children with epilepsy and support families following a loss. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding the Psychology of a Trickster Tale: 5-Year-Old Japanese Kindergarten Children Collaboratively Retelling a "Kitsune" Story

Science.gov (United States)

Oshiro, Aiko; Pihl, Agneta; Peterson, Louise; Pramling, Niklas

2017-01-01

How children understand the psychology of a story (i.e., the intentions and experiences of its characters) is pivotal to comprehending its point. In this study we investigate empirically how 5-year-old children in a Japanese kindergarten manage mental state verbs and adjectives when collaboratively retelling a tale heard. The tale, an example of a…

[Children and adolescents in street situation: contributions to an understanding of vulnerability and disaffiliation].

Science.gov (United States)

Gontijo, Daniela; Medeiros, Marcelo

2009-01-01

The concept of vulnerability is being discussed in the public health area as a potential tool toward the transformation of the health practices for allowing an articulation individual-community. Understanding health as a process of subjectivation determined by social, cultural and historical contexts, this article aims to approach the question children and adolescents in street situation on the basis of the concept of civil vulnerability, using the theoretical background presented by Robert Castel. This author understands the social marginalization lived by different individuals and social groups in a dynamic form, determined by the association of work and social insertion. As refers to children and adolescents in street situation, we believe that they are reflecting a process of intensified vulnerability (culminating in disaffiliation) to which thousands of Brazilian families are subject due to the extreme social inequalities in our country. We hope that our theoretical discussion will be able to contribute to the development of a theoretical reference in public health and to the planning and implementation of health actions directed to this population.

Two-year-old children but not domestic dogs understand communicative intentions without language, gestures, or gaze.

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Richard; Mueller, Bettina; Kaminski, Juliane; Tomasello, Michael

2015-03-01

Infants can see someone pointing to one of two buckets and infer that the toy they are seeking is hidden inside. Great apes do not succeed in this task, but, surprisingly, domestic dogs do. However, whether children and dogs understand these communicative acts in the same way is not yet known. To test this possibility, an experimenter did not point, look, or extend any part of her body towards either bucket, but instead lifted and shook one via a centrally pulled rope. She did this either intentionally or accidentally, and did or did not address her act to the subject using ostensive cues. Young 2-year-old children but not dogs understood the experimenter's act in intentional conditions. While ostensive pulling of the rope made no difference to children's success, it actually hindered dogs' performance. We conclude that while human children may be capable of inferring communicative intent from a wide variety actions, so long as these actions are performed intentionally, dogs are likely to be less flexible in this respect. Their understanding of communicative intention may be more dependent upon bodily markers of communicative intent, including gaze, orientation, extended limbs, and vocalizations. This may be because humans have come under selective pressure to develop skills for communicating with absent interlocutors - where bodily co-presence is not possible. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The effect of background music and song texts on the emotional understanding of children with autism.

Science.gov (United States)

Katagiri, June

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of background music and song texts to teach emotional understanding to children with autism. Participants were 12 students (mean age 11.5 years) with a primary diagnosis of autism who were attending schools in Japan. Each participant was taught four emotions to decode and encode: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear by the counterbalanced treatment-order. The treatment consisted of the four conditions: (a) no contact control (NCC)--no purposeful teaching of the selected emotion, (b) contact control (CC)--teaching the selected emotion using verbal instructions alone, (c) background music (BM)--teaching the selected emotion by verbal instructions with background music representing the emotion, and singing songs (SS)--teaching the selected emotion by singing specially composed songs about the emotion. Participants were given a pretest and a posttest and received 8 individual sessions between these tests. The results indicated that all participants improved significantly in their understanding of the four selected emotions. Background music was significantly more effective than the other three conditions in improving participants' emotional understanding. The findings suggest that background music can be an effective tool to increase emotional understanding in children with autism, which is crucial to their social interactions.

Graphic symbols as "the mind on paper": links between children's interpretive theory of mind and symbol understanding.

Science.gov (United States)

Myers, Lauren J; Liben, Lynn S

2012-01-01

Children gradually develop interpretive theory of mind (iToM)-the understanding that different people may interpret identical events or stimuli differently. The present study tested whether more advanced iToM underlies children's recognition that map symbols' meanings must be communicated to others when symbols are iconic (resemble their referents). Children (6-9 years; N = 80) made maps using either iconic or abstract symbols. After accounting for age, intelligence, vocabulary, and memory, iToM predicted children's success in communicating symbols' meaning to a naïve map-user when mapping tasks involved iconic (but not abstract) symbols. Findings suggest children's growing appreciation of alternative representations and of the intentional assignment of meaning, and support the contention that ToM progresses beyond mastery of false belief. © 2011 The Authors. Child Development © 2011 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Children's understanding of cancer and views on health-related behaviour: a 'draw and write' study.

Science.gov (United States)

Knighting, K; Rowa-Dewar, N; Malcolm, C; Kearney, N; Gibson, F

2011-03-01

Few studies have explored young children's understanding of cancer and health-related behaviours yet this is essential to develop health promotion initiatives that build on young children's current knowledge levels and awareness. An exploratory descriptive design using the 'draw and write' technique was used to investigate children's views of cancer and health behaviours. The sample included 195 children aged eight to 11 years from five schools in deprived, affluent and rural locations in Scotland. When asked about cancer children demonstrated a good level of awareness by responding with text and drawings about the what they understood cancer to be; types of cancer; causes of cancer; what happens to people who have cancer; their personal experience of cancer and the emotions they associated with cancer. Older children, and children attending affluent schools, have more defined ideas about the causes of cancer and awareness of broader issues such as the risk of passive smoking or the potential impact on the family. Factors such as alcohol and illegal drugs were only reported by children attending schools in deprived locations. Children demonstrated considerable knowledge about healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviours; however, it is not clear whether this knowledge translates into their behaviours or the choices offered within their home environment. Children view cancer in a negative way from an early age, even without personal experience. There is a need to demystify cancer in terms of its causes, how to recognize it, how it is treated and to publicize improved survival rates. There is a need for targeted and developmentally appropriate approaches to be taken to health education in schools, with an awareness of the influence of the media on children's information. Strategies should take into consideration the socio-economic and cultural contexts of children's lives which influence their choices and behaviours. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Understanding Violence Against Children in Rwanda | IDRC ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Violence against children in all its forms (physical, emotional, and sexual) is a profound ... and long-term mental and physical effects (UN Secretary-General's Study on ... The research team will work with children and young people between 13 ...

Bedtime Electronic Media Use and Sleep in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Mazurek, Micah O; Engelhardt, Christopher R; Hilgard, Joseph; Sohl, Kristin

2016-09-01

The purpose of this study was to better understand the use of screen-based media at bedtime among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study specifically examined whether the presence of media devices in the child's bedroom, the use of media as part of the bedtime routine, and exposure to media with violent content just before bedtime were associated with sleep difficulties. Parents of 101 children with ASD completed questionnaires assessing their children's sleep habits, bedroom media access (including television, video game devices, and computers), and patterns of nighttime media use (including timing of media exposure and violent media content). Children with ASD who used media as part of the bedtime routine showed significantly greater sleep onset latency than those who did not (39.8 vs 16.0 minutes). Similarly, children who were exposed to media with violent content within the 30-minute period before bedtime experienced significantly greater sleep onset delays and shorter overall sleep duration. In contrast, the mere presence of bedroom media was not associated with either sleep onset latency or sleep duration. Overall, these findings indicate that incorporating television and video games into the bedtime routine is associated with sleep onset difficulties among children with ASD. Exposure to violent media before bed is also associated with poor sleep. Families of children with ASD should be encouraged to regulate and monitor the timing and content of television and video game use, whether or not such devices are physically present in the child's bedroom.

Young Children's Understanding of Teaching and Learning and Their Theory of Mind Development: A Causal Analysis from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhenlin Wang

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Children's understanding of the concepts of teaching and learning is closely associated with their theory of mind (ToM ability and vital for school readiness. This study aimed to develop and validate a Preschool Teaching and Learning Comprehension Index (PTLCI across cultures and examine the causal relationship between children's comprehension of teaching and learning and their mental state understanding. Two hundred and twelve children from 3 to 6 years of age from Hong Kong and the United States participated in study. The results suggested strong construct validity of the PTLCI, and its measurement and structural equivalence within and across cultures. ToM and PTLCI were significantly correlated with a medium effect size, even after controlling for age, and language ability. Hong Kong children outperformed their American counterparts in both ToM and PTLCI. Competing structural equation models suggested that children's performance on the PTLCI causally predicted their ToM across countries.

The Development of Children's Understanding of Marriage and Divorce.

Science.gov (United States)

Mazur, Elizabeth

The hypothesis was investigated that, in a structured interview, older children and children from divorced families would express more complex, abstract, and integrated reasoning about marriage and divorce than younger children and children in intact families. It was further hypothesized that children with divorced parents would reach a more…

Decoding Representations: How Children with Autism Understand Drawings

Science.gov (United States)

Allen, Melissa L.

2009-01-01

Young typically developing children can reason about abstract depictions if they know the intention of the artist. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are notably impaired in social, "intention monitoring" domains, may have great difficulty in decoding vague representations. In Experiment 1, children with ASD are unable to use…

“Listen, do, repeat, understand and remember”: Teaching English to very young children in Aceh

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qismullah Yusuf

2017-07-01

Full Text Available This qualitative study investigated the methods used in teaching English vocabulary to very young children (i.e. toddlers at a bilingual school in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Not much research has been published on teaching English to toddlers in the EFL context; therefore, this research is important as the results can become additional input to L2 teachers who teach very young children because by understanding their conditions of learners, teachers can help them reach their full potential as language learners. An observation sheet and a set of interview questions were used to collect data from an English teacher. There was only one teacher who became the participant because the school under study is thus far the only school that provides an English learning environment for children as young as toddlers in the city of Banda Aceh. The class was observed for three class meetings. The results showed that of the four teaching methods observed, the most commonly employed method was Total Physical Response (TPR, followed by Natural Approach (NA, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT and Suggestopedia (SG as the least. Furthermore, based on the interview with the teacher, it was indicated that TPR and NA were more appropriate for teaching the toddlers English vocabulary. Through TPR, the very young children demonstrated their understanding of commands by responding with simple answers or gestures. In NA, they were situated in a natural environment and not prompted to speak until they felt ready to do so. Additionally, the teacher used no specific textbooks because music, pictures, and authentic materials procured an immense role in supporting the activities in the classroom.

Understanding the role of fast electrons in the heating of dense matter: experimental techniques and recent results

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Freeman, R.; Anderson, C.; Hill, J.M.; King, J.; Snavely, R.; Hatchett, S.; Key, M.; Koch, J.; MacKinnon, A.; Stephens, R.; Cowan, T.

2003-01-01

An intense laser impinging upon dense matter converts a large fraction of its energy into fast electrons. (Here we take 'fast' to mean electrons that are much more energetic than the normal Boltzmann-like distribution measured in the tens to hundreds of eV.) Upon transiting the interior of the dense matter, these electrons are responsible for isochoric heating of the material. Just how these electrons traverse the material, and various interfaces within the material, is a subject of substantial amounts of computation and theory, and recently, experiments. Here we outline the nature of the heating mechanisms, and the current level of understanding of the complex physical processes. In particular we discuss new experimental techniques to record essential features of this transport problem

"Those who care much, understand much." Maternal perceptions of children's appetite: Perspectives from urban and rural caregivers of diverse parenting experience in Bangladesh.

Science.gov (United States)

Naila, Nurun; Nahar, Baitun; Lazarus, Monica; Ritter, Gaelen; Hossain, Muttaquina; Mahfuz, Mustafa; Ahmed, Tahmeed; Denno, Donna; Walson, Judd; Ickes, Scott

2018-01-01

Appetite in children is an important determinant of nutritional intake and growth. The information used by caregivers to understand children's appetite can help inform infant and young child feeding promotion and appetite assessment. We conducted a qualitative study to (a) explore maternal perceptions and responses to children's appetite and (b) to identify how these factors differ by type of caregiver, level of maternal experience, and urban versus rural context. We used purposive sampling to recruit mothers and alternate caregivers into 14 total focus group discussions (six to eight participants in each group; N = 95) in both urban and rural settings in Bangladesh. To understand children's appetite, caregivers monitor children's dietary patterns, emotional signs, and physical and verbal cues. Healthy appetite was observed by willingness to eat diverse foods, finish offered portions, and by acceptance of foods without excessive prompting. Child illness was cited for a cause of low appetite, which was manifested through fussiness, and avoiding commonly consumed foods. Mothers described a limited set of feeding practices (offering diverse foods, playing, and cheering children with videos) to encourage consumption when children lacked appetite. Mothers' stress related to work was noted as a barrier to identifying appetite cues. Urban mothers described a lower access to instrumental social support for child feeding but informational support than mothers in the rural setting. Understanding caregivers' perceptions of children's appetite may inform strategies to improve responsive feeding and tool development to assess changes in appetite as early indicators of change in health or nutrition status among high-risk children. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Using identity and recognition as a framework to understand and promote the resilience of caregiving children in western Kenya

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skovdal, Morten; Andreouli, E.

2011-01-01

Children around the world have been observed to assume caregiving responsibilities when a parent or other family members fall ill. Whilst the circumstances surrounding caregiving children in Anglophone countries have been looked at in detail, we know relatively little about how children in Africa...... experience young caregiving. This paper seeks to further our understanding of caregiving children in Africa by looking at how local constructions of childhood can facilitate their agency and resilience, paying particular attention to the role of identity and recognition. The study involved 48 caregiving...... children from Western Kenya who through individual interviews, photography and draw-and-write compositions articulated their experiences. The views of ten local adults have also been included. A thematic analysis revealed that caregiving children in Kenya are active participants in community life...

Intention Understanding in Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Boria, Sonia; Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena; Cattaneo, Luigi; Sparaci, Laura; Sinigaglia, Corrado; Santelli, Erica; Cossu, Giuseppe; Rizzolatti, Giacomo

2009-01-01

When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) done by another individual, we extract, according to how the motor act is performed and its context, two types of information: the goal (grasping) and the intention underlying it (e.g. grasping for drinking). Here we examined whether children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to understand these two aspects of motor acts. Two experiments were carried out. In the first, one group of high-functioning children with ASD and one of typically developing (TD) children were presented with pictures showing hand-object interactions and asked what the individual was doing and why. In half of the “why” trials the observed grip was congruent with the function of the object (“why-use” trials), in the other half it corresponded to the grip typically used to move that object (“why-place” trials). The results showed that children with ASD have no difficulties in reporting the goals of individual motor acts. In contrast they made several errors in the why task with all errors occurring in the “why-place” trials. In the second experiment the same two groups of children saw pictures showing a hand-grip congruent with the object use, but within a context suggesting either the use of the object or its placement into a container. Here children with ASD performed as TD children, correctly indicating the agent's intention. In conclusion, our data show that understanding others' intentions can occur in two ways: by relying on motor information derived from the hand-object interaction, and by using functional information derived from the object's standard use. Children with ASD have no deficit in the second type of understanding, while they have difficulties in understanding others' intentions when they have to rely exclusively on motor cues. PMID:19440332

Intention understanding in autism.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sonia Boria

Full Text Available When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup done by another individual, we extract, according to how the motor act is performed and its context, two types of information: the goal (grasping and the intention underlying it (e.g. grasping for drinking. Here we examined whether children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD are able to understand these two aspects of motor acts. Two experiments were carried out. In the first, one group of high-functioning children with ASD and one of typically developing (TD children were presented with pictures showing hand-object interactions and asked what the individual was doing and why. In half of the "why" trials the observed grip was congruent with the function of the object ("why-use" trials, in the other half it corresponded to the grip typically used to move that object ("why-place" trials. The results showed that children with ASD have no difficulties in reporting the goals of individual motor acts. In contrast they made several errors in the why task with all errors occurring in the "why-place" trials. In the second experiment the same two groups of children saw pictures showing a hand-grip congruent with the object use, but within a context suggesting either the use of the object or its placement into a container. Here children with ASD performed as TD children, correctly indicating the agent's intention. In conclusion, our data show that understanding others' intentions can occur in two ways: by relying on motor information derived from the hand-object interaction, and by using functional information derived from the object's standard use. Children with ASD have no deficit in the second type of understanding, while they have difficulties in understanding others' intentions when they have to rely exclusively on motor cues.

Health care quality measures for children and adolescents in Foster Care: feasibility testing in electronic records.

Science.gov (United States)

Deans, Katherine J; Minneci, Peter C; Nacion, Kristine M; Leonhart, Karen; Cooper, Jennifer N; Scholle, Sarah Hudson; Kelleher, Kelly J

2018-02-22

Preventive quality measures for the foster care population are largely untested. The objective of the study is to identify healthcare quality measures for young children and adolescents in foster care and to test whether the data required to calculate these measures can be feasibly extracted and interpreted within an electronic health records or within the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System. The AAP Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care served as the guideline for determining quality measures. Quality measures related to well child visits, developmental screenings, immunizations, trauma-related care, BMI measurements, sexually transmitted infections and depression were defined. Retrospective chart reviews were performed on a cohort of children in foster care from a single large pediatric institution and related county. Data available in the Ohio Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System was compared to the same population studied in the electronic health record review. Quality measures were calculated as observed (received) to expected (recommended) ratios (O/E ratios) to describe the actual quantity of recommended health care that was received by individual children. Electronic health records and the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System data frequently lacked important information on foster care youth essential for calculating the measures. Although electronic health records were rich in encounter specific clinical data, they often lacked custodial information such as the dates of entry into and exit from foster care. In contrast, Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System included robust data on custodial arrangements, but lacked detailed medical information. Despite these limitations, several quality measures were devised that attempted to accommodate these limitations. In this feasibility testing, neither the electronic health records at a single institution nor the county level Statewide

Attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of caregivers and rehabilitation providers about disabled children's sleep health: a qualitative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Xiaoli; Gelaye, Bizu; Velez, Juan Carlos; Pepper, Micah; Gorman, Sara; Barbosa, Clarita; Zafonte, Ross D; Redline, Susan; Williams, Michelle A

2014-10-01

Children with disabilities are more likely to have sleep disturbances than children without disabilities. Identifying attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and perceptions of caregivers and health professionals is essential in developing effective intervention programs to improve disabled children's sleep health. However, no such qualitative data about adults who have key roles in the life and daytime activities of children with disabilities are available. This qualitative study aimed to understand attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and perceptions about disabled children's sleep hygiene among caregivers and rehabilitation providers of children with disabilities. Twenty seven adults, including nine primary caregivers and eighteen rehabilitation providers, participated in five focus group discussions between September and December 2012 at the Rehabilitation Center in Punta Arenas, Chile. A trained facilitator guided focus group discussions using a semi-structured script. Audiotapes and transcripts of focus group discussions were reviewed and analyzed for recurrent themes. Participants identified seven themes related to children's sleep hygiene: lifestyle behaviors, family factors, children's disabilities and/or comorbidities, environmental factors, adults' responsibilities for children's sleep, perception of good sleep, and parental distress about children's sleep problems. While both caregivers and rehabilitation providers recognized the importance of sleep for children's health and functioning, they differed in their understanding of how sleep hygiene practices influence sleep. Rehabilitation providers recognized the negative influence of electronics on sleep and the positive influence of sleep routines. In contrast, caregivers reported use of television/movie watching and stimulants as coping strategies for managing children's sleep problems. Caregivers may benefit from better understanding the influence of electronics and stimulant use on child sleep health. Rehabilitation

Understanding high traffic injury risks for children in low socioeconomic areas: a qualitative study of parents' views.

Science.gov (United States)

Christie, N; Ward, H; Kimberlee, R; Towner, E; Sleney, J

2007-12-01

To gain an in-depth qualitative understanding of parents' views about their children's exposure to road traffic injury risk in low socioeconomic areas. Focus groups facilitated by a moderator with content analysis of data. Focus groups were conducted in 10 low socioeconomic English districts that also have high rates of child pedestrian injury. Research was conducted in community venues within each area. Parents of children aged 9-14 years living in low socioeconomic areas. Parents believe that children play in their local streets for the following reasons: they like playing out with friends near home; there are few safe, secure, and well-maintained public spaces for children; children are excluded from affordable leisure venues because of their costs; insufficient parental responsibility. For children that play in the street, the key sources of risk identified by parents were: illegal riding and driving around estates and on the pavements; the speed and volume of traffic; illegal parking; drivers being poorly informed about where children play; children's risk-taking behavior. Intervention programs need to take into account multiple reasons why children in low socioeconomic areas become exposed to hazardous environments thereby increasing their risk of injury. Multi-agency partnerships involving the community are increasingly needed to implement traditional road safety approaches, such as education, engineering, and enforcement, and provide safe and accessible public space, affordable activities for children, and greater support for parents.

Understanding Children with Asthma: Trouble and Triggers

Science.gov (United States)

Lim, JungHa; Wood, Beatrice L.; Cheah, PoAnn

2009-01-01

Asthma is one of the most common illnesses of childhood; in the United States, nearly 9% of children have the condition (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2006). Among children with chronic illnesses, asthma is the most common cause for school absence and hospitalization (Akinbami, 2006). Asthma is a chronic disorder of the…

Understanding Ethical Issues of Research Participation from the Perspective of Participating Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Science.gov (United States)

Broome, Marion E.

2017-01-01

Background The past twenty years have seen distinct shifts in the way the participation of children and adolescents in research is viewed. This has been emphasized by the growing pediatric research enterprise. Additional information on children’s and adolescents’ experiences during research participation is needed to better inform researchers on the ethical conduct of research with this vulnerable population. Aims The objective of this analysis was to examine ethical issues in research with children and adolescents from their perspective as participants, including: assent, parental consent, risk perception, impact of research participation, and incentives. Methods This systematic review was conducted per the Long et al. framework by means of an iterative searching process. Using the key words ‘research ethics’ and ‘child or pediatric or adolescent’, PubMed, CINAHL, and EBSCOhost databases were searched to identify articles. Limitations placed on the original searches were: English language, year of publication between 2003–2014, humans, abstract available, and age birth–18 years. Findings Twenty-three empiric studies were identified and formed the sample. Included studies represented a diverse range of areas of research, methods, settings, sample demographics, authors, and journals. Discussion Even young children demonstrated the ability to understand essential elements of research, although there is variability in children’s level of understanding. Trust was a significant contributing factor to children’s and adolescents’ participation in research, and also shaped their assessments of risk. Research participation was mainly beneficial for children and adolescents. Incentives were mainly viewed positively, although concerns of possible undue influence were expressed. Linking Evidence to Action This systematic review highlights the importance of including the perspectives of children and adolescents and provides researchers and nurse clinicians

Symbolic Understanding of Pictures in Low-Functioning Children with Autism: The Effects of Iconicity and Naming

Science.gov (United States)

Hartley, Calum; Allen, Melissa L.

2015-01-01

This research investigated whether symbolic understanding of pictures in low-functioning children with autism is mediated by iconicity and language. In Experiment 1, participants were taught novel words paired with unfamiliar pictures that varied in iconicity (black-and-white line drawings, greyscale photographs, colour line drawings, colour…

A Comparative Study of the Use and Understanding of Self-Presentational Display Rules in Children with High Functioning Autism and Asperger's Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Barbaro, Josephine; Dissanayake, Cheryl

2007-01-01

The use and understanding of self-presentational display rules (SPDRs) was investigated in 21 children with high-functioning autism (FHA), 18 children with Asperger's disorder (AspD) and 20 typically developing (TD) children (all male, aged 4- to 11-years, matched on mental age). Their behaviour was coded during a deception scenario to assess use…

Feasibility of using a handheld electronic device for the collection of patient reported outcomes data from children

OpenAIRE

Vinney, Lisa A.; Grade, John; Connor, Nadine P.

2011-01-01

The manner in which a communication disorder affects health-related quality of life (QOL) in children is not known. Unfortunately, collection of quality of life data via traditional paper measures is labor intensive and has several other limitations, which hinder the investigation of pediatric quality of life in children. Currently, there is not sufficient research regarding the use of electronic devices to collect pediatric patient reported outcomes in order to address such limitations. Thus...

Children's understanding of area concepts: development, curriculum and educational achievement.

Science.gov (United States)

Bond, Trevor G; Parkinson, Kellie

2010-01-01

As one part of a series of studies undertaken to investigate the contribution of developmental attributes of learners to school learning, a representative sample of forty-two students (age from 5 years and 3 months to 13 years and 1 month) was randomly selected from a total student population of 142 students at a small private primary school in northern Australia. Those children's understandings of area concepts taught during the primary school years were assessed by their performance in two testing situations. The first consisted of a written classroom test of ability to solve area problems with items drawn directly from school texts, school examinations and other relevant curriculum documents. The second, which focused more directly on each child's cognitive development, was an individual interview for each child in which four "area" tasks such as the Meadows and Farmhouse Experiment taken from Chapter 11 of The Child's Conception of Geometry (Piaget, Inhelder and Szeminska, 1960, pp. 261-301) were administered. Analysis using the Rasch Partial Credit Model provided a finely detailed quantitative description of the developmental and learning progressions revealed in the data. It is evident that the school mathematics curriculum does not satisfactorily match the learner's developmental sequence at some key points. Moreover, the children's ability to conserve area on the Piagetian tasks, rather than other learner characteristics, such as age and school grade seems to be a precursor for complete success on the mathematical test of area. The discussion focuses on the assessment of developmental (and other) characteristics of school-aged learners and suggests how curriculum and school organization might better capitalize on such information in the design and sequencing of learning experiences for school children. Some features unique to the Rasch family of measurement models are held to have special significance in elucidating the development/attainment nexus.

Using electronic storybooks to support word learning in children with severe language impairments.

Science.gov (United States)

Smeets, Daisy J H; van Dijken, Marianne J; Bus, Adriana G

2014-01-01

Novel word learning is reported to be problematic for children with severe language impairments (SLI). In this study, we tested electronic storybooks as a tool to support vocabulary acquisition in SLI children. In Experiment 1, 29 kindergarten SLI children heard four e-books each four times: (a) two stories were presented as video books with motion pictures, music, and sounds, and (b) two stories included only static illustrations without music or sounds. Two other stories served as the control condition. Both static and video books were effective in increasing knowledge of unknown words, but static books were most effective. Experiment 2 was designed to examine which elements in video books interfere with word learning: video images or music or sounds. A total of 23 kindergarten SLI children heard 8 storybooks each four times: (a) two static stories without music or sounds, (b) two static stories with music or sounds, (c) two video stories without music or sounds, and (d) two video books with music or sounds. Video images and static illustrations were equally effective, but the presence of music or sounds moderated word learning. In children with severe SLI, background music interfered with learning. Problems with speech perception in noisy conditions may be an underlying factor of SLI and should be considered in selecting teaching aids and learning environments. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2012.

Technology in the curriculum: A vehicle for the development of children's understanding of science concepts through problem solving

Science.gov (United States)

Jane, Beverley; Smith, Leanne

1992-12-01

This research was carried out over a period of ten months with children in Grades 2 and 3 (aged 7 and 8) who were participating in a sequence of technology activities. Since the introduction into Victorian primary schools of The Technology Studies Framework P-10 (Crawford, 1988), more teachers are including technology studies in their classrooms and by so doing may assist children's understanding of science concepts. Children are being exposed to science phenomena related to the technology activities and Technology Studies may be a way of providing children with science experiences. ‘Technology Studies’ in this context refers to children carrying out practical problem solving tasks which can be completed without any particular scientific knowledge. Participation in the technology activities may encourage children to become actively involved, thereby facilitating an exploration of the related science concepts. The project identified the importance of challenge in relation to the children's involvement in the technology activities and the conference paper (available from the first author) discusses particular topics in terms of the balance between cognitive/metacognitive and affective influences (Baird et al., 1990)

Surrogacy families 10 years on: relationship with the surrogate, decisions over disclosure and children's understanding of their surrogacy origins.

Science.gov (United States)

Jadva, V; Blake, L; Casey, P; Golombok, S

2012-10-01

This study aimed to prospectively examine families created using surrogacy over a 10-year period in the UK with respect to intending parents' and children's relationship with the surrogate mother, parents' decisions over disclosure and children's understanding of the nature of their conception. Semi-structured interviews were administered by trained researchers to intending mothers, intending fathers and children on four occasions over a 10-year period. Forty-two families (19 with a genetic surrogate mother) participated when the child was 1-year old and by age 10 years, 33 families remained in the study. Data were collected on the frequency of contact with the surrogate mother, relationship with the surrogate, disclosure of surrogacy to the child and the child's understanding of their surrogacy birth. Frequency of contact between surrogacy families and their surrogate mother decreased over time, particularly for families whose surrogate was a previously unknown genetic carrier (P Surrogacy families maintained good relationships with the surrogate mother over time. Children felt positive about their surrogate mother and their surrogacy birth. The sample size of this study was small and further, larger investigations are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Reducing electronic media use in 2-3 year-old children: feasibility and efficacy of the Family@play pilot randomised controlled trial.

Science.gov (United States)

Hinkley, Trina; Cliff, Dylan P; Okely, Anthony D

2015-08-14

Participation in electronic media use among 2-3 year olds is high and associated with adverse health and developmental outcomes. This study sought to test the feasibility and potential efficacy of a family-based program to decrease electronic media (EM) use in 2-3-year-old children. Family@play was a six-session pilot randomised controlled trial delivered to parents of 2-3 year-old children from August to September 2012 in a community environment in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. Development of program content was guided by Social Cognitive and Family Systems Theories. The primary outcome was children's electronic media use. Secondary outcomes included children's time in sitting, standing and stepping. Data collectors were blinded to group allocation. Parents completed comprehensive process evaluation measures and participated in focus group discussions following completion of the program. Regression analyses were undertaken and effect sizes calculated using principles of intention to treat. Twenty-two participants (n = 12 intervention; n = 10 control) provided complete baseline data; complete data from 16 participants (n = 6 intervention; n = 10 control) were available post-intervention. Process evaluation results were high, showing the acceptability of the program. Compared with children in the control group, there were greater decreases in total EM use among children in the intervention group (adjusted difference [95 % CI] = -31.2 mins/day [-71.0-8.6] Cohen's d = 0.70). Differences for other outcomes were in the hypothesised direction and ranged from small for postural (sitting, standing, stepping) outcomes to moderate to large for individual electronic media (e.g. TV viewing, DVD/video viewing). This is the first family-based study to engage families of 2-3 year old children outside the United States and target multiple EM behaviours. Family@play was shown to be a feasible and acceptable intervention to deliver to

Cellular Assays for Ferredoxins: A Strategy for Understanding Electron Flow through Protein Carriers That Link Metabolic Pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Atkinson, Joshua T; Campbell, Ian; Bennett, George N; Silberg, Jonathan J

2016-12-27

The ferredoxin (Fd) protein family is a structurally diverse group of iron-sulfur proteins that function as electron carriers, linking biochemical pathways important for energy transduction, nutrient assimilation, and primary metabolism. While considerable biochemical information about individual Fd protein electron carriers and their reactions has been acquired, we cannot yet anticipate the proportion of electrons shuttled between different Fd-partner proteins within cells using biochemical parameters that govern electron flow, such as holo-Fd concentration, midpoint potential (driving force), molecular interactions (affinity and kinetics), conformational changes (allostery), and off-pathway electron leakage (chemical oxidation). Herein, we describe functional and structural gaps in our Fd knowledge within the context of a sequence similarity network and phylogenetic tree, and we propose a strategy for improving our understanding of Fd sequence-function relationships. We suggest comparing the functions of divergent Fds within cells whose growth, or other measurable output, requires electron transfer between defined electron donor and acceptor proteins. By comparing Fd-mediated electron transfer with biochemical parameters that govern electron flow, we posit that models that anticipate energy flow across Fd interactomes can be built. This approach is expected to transform our ability to anticipate Fd control over electron flow in cellular settings, an obstacle to the construction of synthetic electron transfer pathways and rational optimization of existing energy-conserving pathways.

Categorization of videogames: some comments on 'Children and electronic games' by Funk, et al.

Science.gov (United States)

Griffiths, M

2000-06-01

Comments are made on an article by Funk, et al. about children and electronic games. This author argues the cross-cultural differences and developmental effects must be taken into account and that the categorization system of videogames based on content is incomplete or too general to cover the complex actions of contemporary videogames. These factors alone may have implications for research.

Emotional Abilities in Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD): Impairments in Perspective-Taking and Understanding Mixed Emotions are Associated with High Callous-Unemotional Traits.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Kearney, Richard; Salmon, Karen; Liwag, Maria; Fortune, Clare-Ann; Dawel, Amy

2017-04-01

Most studies of emotion abilities in disruptive children focus on emotion expression recognition. This study compared 74 children aged 4-8 years with ODD to 45 comparison children (33 healthy; 12 with an anxiety disorder) on behaviourally assessed measures of emotion perception, emotion perspective-taking, knowledge of emotions causes and understanding ambivalent emotions and on parent-reported cognitive and affective empathy. Adjusting for child's sex, age and expressive language ODD children showed a paucity in attributing causes to emotions but no other deficits relative to the comparison groups. ODD boys with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CU) (n = 22) showed deficits relative to low CU ODD boys (n = 25) in emotion perspective-taking and in understanding ambivalent emotions. Low CU ODD boys did not differ from the healthy typically developing boys (n = 12). Impairments in emotion perceptive-taking and understanding mixed emotions in ODD boys are associated with the presence of a high level of CU.

The Children's Social Understanding Scale: construction and validation of a parent-report measure for assessing individual differences in children's theories of mind.

Science.gov (United States)

Tahiroglu, Deniz; Moses, Louis J; Carlson, Stephanie M; Mahy, Caitlin E V; Olofson, Eric L; Sabbagh, Mark A

2014-11-01

Children's theory of mind (ToM) is typically measured with laboratory assessments of performance. Although these measures have generated a wealth of informative data concerning developmental progressions in ToM, they may be less useful as the sole source of information about individual differences in ToM and their relation to other facets of development. In the current research, we aimed to expand the repertoire of methods available for measuring ToM by developing and validating a parent-report ToM measure: the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS). We present 3 studies assessing the psychometric properties of the CSUS. Study 1 describes item analysis, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and relation of the scale to children's performance on laboratory ToM tasks. Study 2 presents cross-validation data for the scale in a different sample of preschool children with a different set of ToM tasks. Study 3 presents further validation data for the scale with a slightly older age group and a more advanced ToM task, while controlling for several other relevant cognitive abilities. The findings indicate that the CSUS is a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in children's ToM that may be of great value as a complement to standard ToM tasks in many different research contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Extending the construct of psychopathy to youth: implications for understanding, diagnosing, and treating antisocial children and adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Frick, Paul J

2009-12-01

This paper reviews several attempts to extend the construct of psychopathy to children and adolescents. The research suggests that the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits may be particularly important. Specifically, the presence of these traits designates a clinically important subgroup of youth with childhood-onset conduct problems who show a particularly severe, aggressive, and stable pattern of antisocial behaviour. Also, children with CU traits show numerous emotional, cognitive, and personality features that are distinct from other antisocial youth that are similar to features found in adults with psychopathy. The research on CU traits has important implications for understanding the different causal pathways through which children develop severe antisocial and aggressive behaviour, as well as implications for diagnosing and intervening with antisocial youth.

Possible Effects of Electronic Social Media on Gifted and Talented Children's Intelligence and Emotional Development

Science.gov (United States)

Freeman, Joan

2016-01-01

In just a few decades, electronic networks have expanded beyond all expectations. Instant messaging via smart phones and computers of all sorts whizz round the world. Researchers and policy makers are strongly divided in their findings and conclusions as to the effects of possible persuasive changes on the minds and lives of children, particularly…

A New Understanding of Quality of Life in Children and Adolescents with Obesity: Contribution of the Self-determination Theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Buttitta, Marie; Rousseau, Amélie; Guerrien, Alain

2017-12-01

Preservation of Quality of Life (QOL) is now a major determinant of obesity management, but little is known about variables predicting QOL. Identifying these predicting variables of QOL would provide further understanding of the QOL concept and help draw clinical implications. The Self-determination Theory (SDT) is a promising understanding perspective of the QOL. The SDT postulates that well-being and motivation are determined by the satisfaction of three needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Many researches have confirmed the relationships between these SDT's needs and well-being, but this theory has little been applied to the problem of QOL in obese children and adolescents. Literature results and theoretical implications of the SDT in understanding of QOL in youth obesity are discussed. New clinical applications could be drawn: in children with obesity, interventions promoting high satisfaction of the SDT's needs could improve their QOL and help them break the vicious circles of overweight.

[From fantasy to reality: understanding the way of playing of institutionalized children victims of violence through therapeutic play].

Science.gov (United States)

Giacomello, Karina Jorgino; Melo, Luciana de Lione

2011-01-01

This qualitative research is based on the reference framework of Phenomenology--analysis of the structure of the situated phenomenon, and aims to understand institutionalized children victims of violence through therapeutic play sessions. Participants were three sheltered children of preschool age, one boy and two goals. The therapeutic play sessions of the drama type were held in a reserved place and ranged from 30 to 50 minutes, using the following guiding proposal: "Let us play that we are children who live at the shelter?" Two broad theme categories could be captured: playing and pretending and playing and reality. When they are pretending while playing, sometimes calmly, sometimes violently, the children brought contents that evidenced situations in their daily family reality. When they expose their reality, the children addressed questions about the shelter institution and the bond with these professionals and with the relatives. It can be affirmed that therapeutic play allowed for the children's effective communication by expressing their feelings, desires, experiences, criticism against the environment they live in and family relations, besides permitting a moment of pleasure and relaxation.

Analogical processes in children's understanding of spatial representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Yuan, Lei; Uttal, David; Gentner, Dedre

2017-06-01

We propose that map reading can be construed as a form of analogical mapping. We tested 2 predictions that follow from this claim: First, young children's patterns of performance in map reading tasks should parallel those found in analogical mapping tasks; and, second, children will benefit from guided alignment instructions that help them see the relational correspondences between the map and the space. In 4 experiments, 3-year-olds completed a map reading task in which they were asked to find hidden objects in a miniature room, using a corresponding map. We manipulated the availability of guided alignment (showing children the analogical mapping between maps and spaces; Experiments 1, 2, and 3a), the format of guided alignment (gesture or relational language; Experiment 2), and the iconicity of maps (Experiments 3a and 3b). We found that (a) young children's difficulties in map reading follow from known patterns of analogical development-for example, focusing on object similarity over relational similarity; and (b) guided alignment based on analogical reasoning led to substantially better performance. Results also indicated that children's map reading performance was affected by the format of guided alignment, the iconicity of the maps, and the order of tasks. The results bear on the developmental mechanisms underlying young children's learning of spatial representations and also suggest ways to support this learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding parenting concerns in cancer survivors with minor and young-adult children.

Science.gov (United States)

Inhestern, Laura; Bultmann, Johanna Christine; Beierlein, Volker; Möller, Birgit; Romer, Georg; Koch, Uwe; Bergelt, Corinna

2016-08-01

Parents with cancer are concerned about the impact of their disease on their children. However, parenting concerns and associated factors in cancer survivors have not previously been analyzed. The purpose of this study is to examine parenting concerns and to test a path model for understanding parenting concerns in cancer survivors. In a cross-sectional study, a total of 1416 parents with cancer (mean age 47.5years, 74% women) having minor or young-adult children were recruited through two cancer registries. Parenting concerns were assessed using the Parenting Concerns Questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the associations between social support, parenting confidence, emotional distress, family functioning and parenting concerns. Mothers reported higher total parenting concerns than fathers (peffects of emotional distress and parenting confidence on parenting concerns. Family dysfunctioning was associated with lower concerns. An indirect association between social support and parenting concerns was identified. Parenting concerns in cancer survivors display the need for interventions and after care programs that focus on affected families with minor and young adult children. The results of the structural path model illustrate the associations between psychological and interactional factors. Supporting parents with cancer in their parenting confidence and strengthen social support and family functioning may not only reduce the long-term burden on the parents themselves but also the burden on the entire family. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A pilot study using children's books to understand caregiver perceptions of parenting practices.

Science.gov (United States)

Bauer, Nerissa S; Hus, Anna M; Sullivan, Paula D; Szczepaniak, Dorota; Carroll, Aaron E; Downs, Stephen M

2012-06-01

To conduct a pilot study to test the feasibility and acceptability of using children's books to understand caregiver perceptions of parenting practices around common behavior challenges. A prospective 1-month pilot study was conducted in 3 community-based pediatric clinics serving lower income families living in central Indianapolis. One hundred caregivers of 4- to 7-year-old children presenting for a well-child visit chose 1 of 3 available children's books that dealt with a behavioral concern the caregiver reported having with the child. The book was read aloud to the child in the caregiver's presence by a trained research assistant and given to the families to take home. Outcomes measured were caregiver intent to change their interaction with their child after the book reading, as well as caregiver reports of changes in caregiver-child interactions at 1 month. Reading the book took an average of 3 minutes. Most (71%) caregivers reported intent to change after the book reading; two-thirds (47/71) were able to identify a specific technique or example illustrated in the story. One month later, all caregivers remembered receiving the book, and 91% reported reading the book to their child and/or sharing it with someone else. Three-fourths of caregivers (60/80) reported a change in caregiver-child interactions. The distribution of children's books with positive parenting content is a feasible and promising tool, and further study is warranted to see whether these books can serve as an effective brief intervention in pediatric primary care practice.

Understanding mild persistent asthma in children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bisgaard, Hans; Szefler, Stanley J

2005-01-01

Limitations in asthma prevalence studies and difficulties in diagnosing pediatric asthma lead to uncertainty over the full extent of mild persistent asthma in children and adolescents. Although recent surveys have reported that the majority of pediatric patients with asthma in the United States...... and Europe have symptoms consistent with mild disease, these surveys have limitations in design. Thus, the true prevalence of mild asthma remains unknown. It is unclear whether children with mild persistent asthma progress to more severe asthma, but the risk of severe asthma exacerbations seems...... to be unrelated to the symptom severity. Clinical studies restricted to pediatric patients with mild asthma are limited, but available data do suggest substantial morbidity of mild persistent asthma in this population and support inhaled corticosteroid intervention. There is a need for further investigation...

Understanding Children of Poverty and Affluence Through Auto-Photographic Metaphor.

Science.gov (United States)

Ziller, Robert C.; And Others

The self-social-environmenatl orientations of twenty-nine 12-year old children of poverty and children of affluence in Mexico City were obtained through 12 photographs taken by these children in response to the question "Who Are You?" The five findings which differentiated the children of affluence from the children of poverty pertained…

The Relation Between Emotion Understanding and Theory of Mind in Children Aged 3 to 8: The Key Role of Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Grazzani, Ilaria; Ornaghi, Veronica; Conte, Elisabetta; Pepe, Alessandro; Caprin, Claudia

2018-01-01

Although a significant body of research has investigated the relationships among children's emotion understanding (EU), theory of mind (ToM), and language abilities. As far as we know, no study to date has been conducted with a sizeable sample of both preschool and school-age children exploring the direct effect of EU on ToM when the role of language was evaluated as a potential exogenous factor in a single comprehensive model. Participants in the current study were 389 children (age range: 37-97 months, M = 60.79 months; SD = 12.66), to whom a False-Belief understanding battery, the Test of Emotion Comprehension, and the Peabody Test were administered. Children's EU, ToM, and language ability (receptive vocabulary) were positively correlated. Furthermore, EU scores explained variability in ToM scores independently of participants' age and gender. Finally, language was found to play a crucial role in both explaining variance in ToM scores and in mediating the relationship between EU and ToM. We discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these outcomes, particularly in relation to offering social and emotional learning programs through schools.

Understanding children's science identity through classroom interactions

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Mijung

2018-01-01

Research shows that various stereotypes about science and science learning, such as science being filled with hard and dry content, laboratory experiments, and male-dominated work environments, have resulted in feelings of distance from science in students' minds. This study explores children's experiences of science learning and science identity. It asks how children conceive of doing science like scientists and how they develop views of science beyond the stereotypes. This study employs positioning theory to examine how children and their teacher position themselves in science learning contexts and develop science identity through classroom interactions. Fifteen students in grades 4-6 science classrooms in Western Canada participated in this study. Classroom activities and interactions were videotaped, transcribed, and analysed to examine how the teacher and students position each other as scientists in the classroom. A descriptive explanatory case analysis showed how the teacher's positioning acted to develop students' science identity with responsibilities of knowledge seeking, perseverance, and excitement about science.

Two-Year-Old Children but Not Domestic Dogs Understand Communicative Intentions without Language, Gestures, or Gaze

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Richard; Mueller, Bettina; Kaminski, Juliane; Tomasello, Michael

2015-01-01

Infants can see someone pointing to one of two buckets and infer that the toy they are seeking is hidden inside. Great apes do not succeed in this task, but, surprisingly, domestic dogs do. However, whether children and dogs understand these communicative acts in the same way is not yet known. To test this possibility, an experimenter did not…

A Qualitative Approach to Understanding Real-World Electronic Cigarette Use: Implications for Measurement and Regulation

OpenAIRE

Maria Cooper, PhD; Melissa B. Harrell, PhD; Cheryl L. Perry, PhD

2016-01-01

Introduction An understanding of the real-world use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) is needed to inform surveillance efforts and future state and federal regulation. This study investigates the behavioral aspects of e-cigarette use. Methods We used qualitative methods to examine salient characteristics of e-cigarette use. The lead investigator (M.C.) conducted in-depth, semistructured individual interviews to explore patterns and behaviors associated with e-cigarette use a...

Association between electronic equipment in the bedroom and sedentary lifestyle, physical activity, and body mass index of children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gerson Luis de Moraes Ferrari

2015-11-01

Conclusion: Electronic equipment in the children's bedroom can negatively affect moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity and body mass index regardless of gender, school, and annual family income, which can contribute to physical inactivity and childhood obesity.

Understanding Children's Self-Regulation within Different Classroom Contexts

Science.gov (United States)

Timmons, Kristy; Pelletier, Janette; Corter, Carl

2016-01-01

In this study, children's self-regulation was observed, along with other social and academic activities in kindergarten classrooms during whole group, small group, transition and play contexts. We examined how children's self-regulation and engagement differed among classroom grouping, play and transition contexts. Results showed that students…

Understanding Family Migration in Rural South Africa: Exploring Children's Inclusion in the Destination Households of Migrant Parents.

Science.gov (United States)

Bennett, Rachel; Hosegood, Victoria; Newell, Marie-Louise; McGrath, Nuala

2015-05-01

Despite the removal of restrictions on movement and increasing female participation in migration, only a minority of migrant parents in South Africa include their children in their destination household. Quantitative analyses of the circumstances in which children accompany a migrant parent have been limited by the lack of available data that document family arrangements from the perspective of more than one household. This paper uses data about members of rural households in a demographic surveillance population in KwaZulu-Natal and a linked sample survey of adult migrants to examine factors associated with children's inclusion in the destination household of migrant parents, analyse the timing and sequence of children's moves to parental destination households, and describe the composition of parental origin and destination households. The findings confirm that in contemporary South Africa, only a small percentage (14%) of migrants' children who are members of the parental origin household are also members of the parental destination household. Membership of the parental destination household is associated with parental characteristics and the child's age, but not measures of socio-economic status, and children most commonly migrate several years after their migrant parent. Children included in the destination household of migrant fathers frequently live in small households, which also include their mother, whereas children included in the destination household of migrant mothers live in larger households. This study contributes to understanding the contexts of children's inclusion in parental destination households in South Africa and demonstrates the potential of data collected in migrants' origin and destination households.

Intact and Impaired Mechanisms of Action Understanding in Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Vivanti, Giacomo; McCormick, Carolyn; Young, Gregory S.; Abucayan, Floridette; Hatt, Naomi; Nadig, Aparna; Ozonoff, Sally; Rogers, Sally J.

2016-01-01

Typically developing children understand and predict others’ behavior by extracting and processing relevant information such as the logic of their actions within the situational constraints and the intentions conveyed by their gaze direction and emotional expressions. Children with autism have difficulties understanding and predicting others’ actions. With the use of eye tracking and behavioral measures, we investigated action understanding mechanisms used by 18 children with autism and a well-matched group of 18 typically developing children. Results showed that children with autism (a) consider situational constraints in order to understand the logic of an agent’s action and (b) show typical usage of the agent’s emotional expressions to infer his or her intentions. We found (c) subtle atypicalities in the way children with autism respond to an agent’s direct gaze and (d) marked impairments in their ability to attend to and interpret referential cues such as a head turn for understanding an agent’s intentions. PMID:21401220

Variation in Children's Understanding of Fractions: Preliminary Findings

Science.gov (United States)

Fonger, Nicole L.; Tran, Dung; Elliott, Natasha

2015-01-01

This research targets children's informal strategies and knowledge of fractions by examining their ability to create, interpret, and connect representations in doing and communicating mathematics when solving fractions tasks. Our research group followed a constant comparative method to analyze clinical interviews of children in grades 2-6 solving…

Children's Understanding of Verbal and Facial Display Rules

Science.gov (United States)

Gnepp, Jackie; Hess, Debra L. R.

1986-01-01

First-, third-, fifth-, and tenth-grade children listened to eight stories designed to elicit prosocial or self-protective display rules. Children predicted protagonists' verbal and facial expressions to emotion-laden situations. Findings indicated knowledge of control of emotional displays increases between first and fifth grades, but then levels…

Do television and electronic games predict children's psychosocial adjustment? Longitudinal research using the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Parkes, Alison; Sweeting, Helen; Wight, Daniel; Henderson, Marion

2013-05-01

Screen entertainment for young children has been associated with several aspects of psychosocial adjustment. Most research is from North America and focuses on television. Few longitudinal studies have compared the effects of TV and electronic games, or have investigated gender differences. To explore how time watching TV and playing electronic games at age 5 years each predicts change in psychosocial adjustment in a representative sample of 7 year-olds from the UK. Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11 014 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and prosocial behaviour were reported by mothers using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Change in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child characteristics. Watching TV for 3 h or more at 5 years predicted a 0.13 point increase (95% CI 0.03 to 0.24) in conduct problems by 7 years, compared with watching for under an hour, but playing electronic games was not associated with conduct problems. No associations were found between either type of screen time and emotional symptoms, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems or prosocial behaviour. There was no evidence of gender differences in the effect of screen time. TV but not electronic games predicted a small increase in conduct problems. Screen time did not predict other aspects of psychosocial adjustment. Further work is required to establish causal mechanisms.

The Understanding of Peace among Children and Adolescents: A Critical Review of Research

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ron Smith

2006-05-01

Full Text Available Contextualisation Despite the existence in Northern Ireland of an internationally endorsed Peace Process (the 1998 Good Friday or Belfast Agreement, the need for education to play its part in developing a new peace culture and peace consciousness remains as important as ever. In December 1998, the Education Minister established a working group concerned with the promotion of tolerance in schools. The report of this group recommended that there needed to be greater encouragement to regard the development of respect for diversity as a core rather than peripheral element of the school curriculum (DENI 2000. However, earlier research suggested that the received discourses and assumptions about school effectiveness and school improvement were inappropriate to meeting the challenges of improving school effectiveness for peace within a conflicted society (see, Smith 2001 a; 2001 b. This research confirmed that there was a pervasive "culture of silence" within schools with regard to open discussion on the causes and consequences of social division. There were also other silences and gaps in the story forms available to teachers within schools. When, for example, it came to having a say or being allowed to air their views on issues of relevance to school-based community relations policy and practice, the voice of students and parents were mostly silenced, disqualified or subjugated. Consequently, I decided to examine the theme of school improvement for peace from a Narrative psychology perspective. That is, from a perspective which gives a central role to the storied nature of human conduct. This stance is a special case of the wider perspective called social constructionism (Wagner and Watkins, forthcoming. A critical review of relevant extant literatures, including the developmental literature on children's and young peoples' understanding of peace, strengthened my view that new paradigm methodologies and methods were required to investigate and

Understanding Stigma from a Sociocultural Context: Mothers' Experience of Stigma Directed towards Children with Special Educational Needs

Science.gov (United States)

Uba, Chijioke Dike; Nwoga, Kechinyerem Amaka

2016-01-01

Although the need for a better understanding and deconstruction of the barriers that underpin and impede the realisation of inclusive education in many developing countries is acknowledged, few studies focus specifically on exploring how stigma affects the choices that parents in developing countries make on behalf of their children. This paper…

Theory of mind development in Chinese children: a meta-analysis of false-belief understanding across cultures and languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, David; Wellman, Henry M; Tardif, Twila; Sabbagh, Mark A

2008-03-01

Theory of mind is claimed to develop universally among humans across cultures with vastly different folk psychologies. However, in the attempt to test and confirm a claim of universality, individual studies have been limited by small sample sizes, sample specificities, and an overwhelming focus on Anglo- European children. The current meta-analysis of children's false-belief performance provides the most comprehensive examination to date of theory-of-mind development in a population of non-Western children speaking non-Indo-European languages (i.e., Mandarin and Cantonese). The meta-analysis consisted of 196 Chinese conditions (127 from mainland China and 69 from Hong Kong), representing responses from more than 3,000 children, compared with 155 similar North American conditions (83 conditions from the United States and 72 conditions from Canada). The findings show parallel developmental trajectories of false-belief understanding for children in China and North America coupled with significant differences in the timing of development across communities-children's false-belief performance varied across different locales by as much as 2 or more years. These data support the importance of both universal trajectories and specific experiential factors in the development of theory of mind.

Contributions of electron microscopy to the understanding of reactions on compound semiconductor surfaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sands, T.

1986-01-01

Reacted films on compound semiconductor substrates present challenging materials characterization problems which often require the application of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. In this paper, both the problem - solving potential of the TEM techniques and the limits imposed by preparation of thin film/compound semiconductor TEM specimens are discussed. Studies of the Ni/GaAs, CuCl/aq)/CdS and Pd/GaAs reactions exemplify the role of TEM in identifying and determining the spatial distribution of interface - stabilized polymorphs and new ternary phases (e.g. tetragonal Cu/sub 2/S, Ni/sub 3/GaAs and Pd/sub x/GaAs). These examples also serve to clarify the relationship between TEM and complementary analysis techniques such as Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, Auger electron spectroscopy and glancing-angle x-ray diffraction. In particular, it is argued that a combination of (1) high-spatial-resolution information obtained by TEM and (2) an indication of the ''average'' behavior provided by data from a complementary characterization technique provide the minimum quality and quantity of data necessary to understand most reactions on compound semiconductor substrates

Addressing dental fear in children with autism spectrum disorders: a randomized controlled pilot study using electronic screen media.

Science.gov (United States)

Isong, Inyang A; Rao, Sowmya R; Holifield, Chloe; Iannuzzi, Dorothea; Hanson, Ellen; Ware, Janice; Nelson, Linda P

2014-03-01

Dental care is a significant unmet health care need for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Many children with ASD do not receive dental care because of fear associated with dental procedures; oftentimes they require general anesthesia for regular dental procedures, placing them at risk of associated complications. Many children with ASD have a strong preference for visual stimuli, particularly electronic screen media. The use of visual teaching materials is a fundamental principle in designing educational programs for children with ASD. To determine if an innovative strategy using 2 types of electronic screen media was feasible and beneficial in reducing fear and uncooperative behaviors in children with ASD undergoing dental visits. We conducted a randomized controlled trial at Boston Children's Hospital dental clinic. Eighty (80) children aged 7 to 17 years with a known diagnosis of ASD and history of dental fear were enrolled in the study. Each child completed 2 preventive dental visits that were scheduled 6 months apart (visit 1 and visit 2). After visit 1, subjects were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: (1) group A, control (usual care); (2) group B, treatment (video peer modeling that involved watching a DVD recording of a typically developing child undergoing a dental visit); (3) group C, treatment (video goggles that involved watching a favorite movie during the dental visit using sunglass-style video eyewear); and (4) group D, treatment (video peer modeling plus video goggles). Subjects who refused or were unable to wear the goggles watched the movie using a handheld portable DVD player. During both visits, the subject's level of anxiety and behavior were measured using the Venham Anxiety and Behavior Scales. Analyses of variance and Fisher's exact tests compared baseline characteristics across groups. Using intention to treat approach, repeated measures analyses were employed to test whether the outcomes differed significantly: (1) between

Effect of electronic time monitors on children's television watching: pilot trial of a home-based intervention.

Science.gov (United States)

Ni Mhurchu, Cliona; Roberts, Vaughan; Maddison, Ralph; Dorey, Enid; Jiang, Yannan; Jull, Andrew; Tin Tin, Sandar

2009-11-01

This pilot study evaluated the feasibility (recruitment, retention, and acceptability) and preliminary efficacy of a six-week home-based electronic time monitor intervention on New Zealand children's television watching in 2008. Twenty-nine children aged 9 to 12 years who watched more than 20 h of television per week (62% male, mean age 10.4 years) were randomised to either the intervention or the control group. The intervention group received an electronic TV time monitor for 6 weeks and advice to restrict TV watching to 1 h per day or less. The control group was given verbal advice to restrict TV watching. Participant retention at 6 weeks was 93%. Semi-structured interviews with intervention families confirmed moderate acceptability of TV time monitors and several perceived benefits including better awareness of household TV viewing and improved time planning. Drawbacks reported included disruption to parents' TV watching and increased sibling conflict. Time spent watching television decreased by 4.2 h (mean change [SD]: -254 [536] min) per week in the intervention group compared with no change in the control group (-3 [241] min), but the difference between groups was not statistically significant, p=0.77. Both groups reported decreases in energy intake from snacks and total screen time and increases in physical activity measured by pedometer and between-group differences were not statistically significant. Electronic TV time monitors are feasible to use for home-based TV watching interventions although acceptability varies between families. Preliminary findings from this pilot suggest that such devices have potential to decrease children's TV watching but a larger trial is needed to confirm effectiveness. Future research should be family-orientated; take account of other screen time activities; and employ TV time monitors as just one of a range of strategies to decrease sedentary behaviour.

Understanding charge transport in molecular electronics.

Science.gov (United States)

Kushmerick, J J; Pollack, S K; Yang, J C; Naciri, J; Holt, D B; Ratner, M A; Shashidhar, R

2003-12-01

For molecular electronics to become a viable technology the factors that control charge transport across a metal-molecule-metal junction need to be elucidated. We use an experimentally simple crossed-wire tunnel junction to interrogate how factors such as metal-molecule coupling, molecular structure, and the choice of metal electrode influence the current-voltage characteristics of a molecular junction.

Rural Asthma: Current Understanding of Prevalence, Patterns, and Interventions for Children and Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Estrada, Robin Dawson; Ownby, Dennis R

2017-06-01

Asthma is the most common chronic illness of children and adolescents in the USA. While asthma has been understood to disproportionately affect urban dwellers, recent investigations have revealed rural pediatric asthma prevalence to be very similar to urban and to be more closely correlated with socioeconomic and environmental factors than geographic location or population density. Rural children experience factors unique to location that impact asthma development and outcomes, including housing quality, cigarette smoke exposure, and small/large-scale farming. Additionally, there are challenging barriers to appropriate asthma care that frequently are more severe for those living in rural areas, including insurance status, lack of primary care providers and pulmonary specialists, knowledge deficits (both patient and provider), and a lack of culturally tailored asthma interventions. Interventions designed to address rural pediatric asthma disparities are more likely to be successful when targeted to specific challenges, such as the use of school-based services or telemedicine to mitigate asthma care access issues. Continued research on understanding the complex interaction of specific rural environmental factors with host factors can inform future interventions designed to mitigate asthma disparities.

Medipix3 Demonstration and understanding of near ideal detector performance for 60 & 80 keV electrons

CERN Document Server

Mir, J.A.; MacInnes, R.; Gough, C.; Plackett, R.; Shipsey, I.; Sawada, H.; MacLaren, I.; Ballabriga, R.; Maneuski, D.; O'Shea, V.; McGrouther, D.; Kirkland, A.I.

2016-01-01

In our article we report first quantitative measurements of imaging performance for the current generation of hybrid pixel detector, Medipix3, as direct electron detector. Utilising beam energies of 60 & 80 keV, measurements of modulation transfer function (MTF) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE) have revealed that, in single pixel mode (SPM), energy threshold values can be chosen to maximize either the MTF or DQE, obtaining values near to, or even exceeding, those for an ideal detector. We have demonstrated that the Medipix3 charge summing mode (CSM) can deliver simultaneous, near ideal values of both MTF and DQE. To understand direct detection performance further we have characterized the detector response to single electron events, building an empirical model which can predict detector MTF and DQE performance based on energy threshold. Exemplifying our findings we demonstrate the Medipix3 imaging performance, recording a fully exposed electron diffraction pattern at 24-bit depth and images in SPM a...

Understanding the Reading Habits of Children in Singapore

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shaheen Majid

2007-12-01

Full Text Available Leisure reading contributes significantly to improving language competencies of children. This study investigates the reading habits and preferences of children, motivations behind reading, and their attitudes towards reading. A pre-tested questionnaire was used for collecting data and 440 upper primary students participated in the study. The findings suggest that a majority of the participating students were motivated to read for academically-related reasons, such as to improve language skills and to obtain better grades in examinations. Reading was the third most preferred leisure activity after hobbies and playing on computer or the Internet. It was also found that girls were generally more avid readers than boys. This paper offers certain suggestions for promoting reading habits among children.

Done Wrong or Said Wrong? Young Children Understand the Normative Directions of Fit of Different Speech Acts

Science.gov (United States)

Rakoczy, Hannes; Tomasello, Michael

2009-01-01

Young children use and comprehend different kinds of speech acts from the beginning of their communicative development. But it is not clear how they understand the conventional and normative structure of such speech acts. In particular, imperative speech acts have a world-to-word direction of fit, such that their fulfillment means that the world…

The Pattern of Electronic Game Use and Related Bodily Discomfort in Hong Kong Primary School Children

Science.gov (United States)

Lui, Donald P. Y.; Szeto, Grace P. Y.; Jones, Alice Y. M.

2011-01-01

The present study examined the usage pattern of electronic game devices among primary school children in Hong Kong. Commonly used types of games devices were grouped into three main categories: large-screen/TV-based games, small handheld game devices and active game devices. A survey was conducted among 476 students in a local primary school, with…

Improving students' understanding by using on-going education research to refine active learning activities in a first-year electronics course

Science.gov (United States)

Peter Mazzolini, Alexander; Arthur Daniel, Scott

2016-05-01

Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs) have been used across introductory university physics as a successful active learning (AL) strategy to improve students' conceptual understanding. We have developed ILDs for more complex topics in our first-year electronics course. In 2006 we began developing ILDs to improve students' conceptual understanding of Operational Amplifiers (OAs) and negative feedback in amplification circuits. The ILDs were used after traditional lecture instruction to help students consolidate their understanding. We developed a diagnostic test, to be administered to students both before and after the ILDs, as a measure of how effective the ILDs were in improving students' understanding.

The Effect of Montessori Method Supported by Social Skills Training Program on Turkish Kindergarten Children's Skills of Understanding Feelings and Social Problem Solving

Science.gov (United States)

Kayili, Gökhan; Ari, Ramazan

2016-01-01

The current research was conducted with the purpose of analyzing the effect of Montessori method supported by Social Skills Training Program on kindergarten children's skills of understanding feelings and social problem solving. 53 children attending Ihsan Dogramaci Applied Nursery School affiliated to Selcuk University, Faculty of Health Sciences…

Understandings of how Professional Practice and Problem Definitions Influence the Possibilities of Children's Conduct of Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Røn Larsen, Maja

are being covered up by the unifying administrative processes, it seems to undermine an understanding of the way these conflicts are of importance to the child’s concrete conditions of life. So saying, a more precise comprehension of children’s actual difficulties involves the analysis of, how the process...... practices (School, institutions family etc.). However the administrative bureaucracy’s call for unambiguous determination of “special needs” undermines the comprehension of plurality of professional perspectives. In this way a gap occurs between a multifaceted understanding of the child’s conduct of life...... and the production of the “child as a case”. I intend to explore the connections between bureaucratic, interdisciplinary and professional practices that are organised to support children, including the bureaucratic process of defining children’s “special needs”. In the process different professionals understand...

[Understand the neurodevelopment of language: a necessity to prevent learning disabilities in children].

Science.gov (United States)

Charollais, A; Marret, S; Stumpf, M-H; Lemarchand, M; Delaporte, B; Philip, E; Monom-Diverre; Guillois, B; Datin-Dorriere, V; Debillon, T; Simon, M-J; De Barace, C; Pasquet, F; Saliba, E; Zebhib, R

2013-09-01

Clinical and radiological knowledge of language development in the former premature infant compared to the newborn allows us to argue for exploration of the sensorimotor co-factors required for proper language development. There are early representations of the maternal language in the infant's visual, auditory, and sensorimotor areas, activated or stabilized by orofacial and articulatory movements. The functional architecture of language is different for vulnerable children such as premature infants. We have already mentioned the impact of early dysfunction of the facial praxis fine motor skills in this population presenting comprehension disorders. A recent meta-analysis confirms the increasing difficulty of understanding between 3 and 12 years, questioning the quality of the initial linguistic processes. A precise analysis of language, referenced from 3 years of age, should be completed by sensorimotor tests to assess possible constraints in automating neurolinguistic foundations. The usual assessment at this age can exclude sensory disturbances and communication and offers guidance and socialization. However, a recent study shows the ineffectiveness of "language-reinforced immersion" at 2 and 3 years in a population of vulnerable children. The LAMOPRESCO study of language and motor skills in the premature infant (National PHRC 2010) has assessed language and sensorimotor skills of preterm-born (theory of speech perception." Early and accurate assessment of language and the patient's constraints should differentiate and specify management strategies for all children, whatever their background and pathologies. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Hispanic Immigrant Mothers of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: How Do They Understand and Cope With Autism?

Science.gov (United States)

Ijalba, Elizabeth

2016-05-01

This study aimed to understand the experiences of raising a child with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in a group of Hispanic immigrant mothers. The following 3 aspects were explored: (a) the families' social environments, (b) cultural beliefs on development and autism, and (c) perceptions of bilingualism influencing language choices. In-depth 3-part phenomenological interviews and thematic analyses were conducted with 22 Hispanic immigrant mothers of preschool children with ASD. A total of 3 thematic categories emerged: stigmatization and social isolation, preconceptions about developmental milestones and autism, and mothers' reluctance to speak Spanish with their children. A lack of awareness about autism influenced social isolation, and autism was viewed as temporary and associated with fear or sadness. The mothers believed that exposure to 2 languages would increase their children's language difficulties. Hispanic immigrant mothers raising children with autism were often challenged by immigration status, economic hardship, and advice against using Spanish with their children. Professional training and parent education are needed to facilitate early identification of ASD. Immigrant families should be encouraged to communicate in the home language with their children. Information about ASD should be disseminated through community outreach, home-school connections, and pediatricians, who remain pivotal in informing Hispanic immigrant families.

Commentary: Understanding the impact of domestic violence on children, recognizing strengths, and promoting resilience: reflections on Harold and Sellers (2018).

Science.gov (United States)

Osofsky, Joy D

2018-04-01

Violence and abuse in families occurs frequently with significant impact on children of all ages. However, this type of interpersonal violence is often the least disclosed or discussed. Therefore, the Harold and Sellers paper is important to bring attention to the broad range of both behavioral and neuroscience research in this area and the clinical implications for children and adolescents including risk for later psychopathology. The commentary also expands an understanding of the impact and outcomes for very young children exposed to domestic violence. The authors provide a thorough description of the many prevention and intervention programs and approaches to help children exposed to domestic violence. In conclusion, it is essential to recognize that even at times of adversity for children and families, such as when domestic violence occurs, it is important to recognize strengths and support resilience. © 2018 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Science + Maths = A Better Understanding of Science!

Science.gov (United States)

Markwick, Andy; Clark, Kris

2016-01-01

Science and mathematics share a common purpose: to explore, understand and explain the pure beauty of our universe and how it works. Using mathematics in science enquiry can enhance children's understanding of science and also provide opportunities for children to apply their mathematical knowledge to "real" contexts. The authors…

The impact of electronic cigarettes on the paediatric population.

Science.gov (United States)

Durmowicz, Elizabeth L

2014-05-01

To review the impact of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on children. Five electronic databases were searched through 31 December 2013. Studies in English that included data for children younger than 18 years of age were included. In addition, relevant data from articles identified during searches of the e-cigarette literature, relevant state survey data and paediatric voluntary adverse event reports submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were reviewed and included. Use of e-cigarettes by youth is increasing and is not limited to traditional cigarette smokers. Data regarding the reasons for youth e-cigarette initiation and ongoing use are limited. The effects of e-cigarette marketing and the availability of flavoured e-liquids on youth use are unknown. The abuse liability of e-cigarettes in youth is also not known. Unintentional exposures to e-cigarettes and e-liquids have been reported in children. The number of e-cigarette-related reports received by poison centres is increasing. No data are available on secondhand and thirdhand e-cigarette aerosol exposures in children. Data on the impact of e-cigarettes on children are extremely limited. The available data indicate that youth awareness is high and use is increasing rapidly. The extent to which e-cigarette use in youth will result in nicotine dependence and subsequent use of other tobacco products is unknown. e-cigarettes present risks of unintentional nicotine exposure and are potential choking hazards. A greater understanding of the impact of e-cigarettes on children is needed and will be important in the evaluation of the effects of these products on the public health.

Association between electronic equipment in the bedroom and sedentary lifestyle, physical activity, and body mass index of children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gerson Luis de Moraes Ferrari

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Objective: To describe the association between electronic devices in the bedroom with sedentary time and physical activity, both assessed by accelerometry, in addition to body mass index in children from São Caetano do Sul. Methods: The sample consisted of 441 children. The presence of electronic equipment (television, personal computer, and videogames in the bedroom was assessed by a questionnaire. For seven consecutive days, children used an accelerometer to objectively monitor the sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Body mass index was categorized as suggested by the World Health Organization. Results: Overall, 73.9%, 54.2% and 42.8% of children had TV, computer, and videogames in the bedroom, respectively, and spent an average of 500.7 and 59.1 min/day of sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Of the children, 45.3% were overweight/obese. Girls with a computer in the bedroom (45 min/day performed less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than those without it (51.4 min/day. Similar results were observed for body mass index in boys. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was higher and body mass index was lower in children that had no electronic equipment in the bedroom. Presence of a computer (β = −4.798 and the combination TV + computer (β = −3.233 were negatively associated with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Videogames and the combinations with two or three electronic devices were positively associated with body mass index. Sedentary time was not associated with electronic equipment. Conclusion: Electronic equipment in the children's bedroom can negatively affect moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and body mass index regardless of gender, school, and annual family income, which can contribute to physical inactivity and childhood obesity. Resumo: Objetivo: Descrever a associação entre equipamentos eletrônicos no quarto com tempo sedentário e atividade f

Understanding valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory using origami molecular models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saraswati, Teguh Endah; Saputro, Sulistyo; Ramli, Murni; Praseptiangga, Danar; Khasanah, Nurul; Marwati, Sri

2017-01-01

Valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory is conventionally used to predict molecular geometry. However, it is difficult to explore the full implications of this theory by simply drawing chemical structures. Here, we introduce origami modelling as a more accessible approach for exploration of the VSEPR theory. Our technique is simple, readily accessible and inexpensive compared with other sophisticated methods such as computer simulation or commercial three-dimensional modelling kits. This method can be implemented in chemistry education at both the high school and university levels. We discuss the example of a simple molecular structure prediction for ammonia (NH 3 ). Using the origami model, both molecular shape and the scientific justification can be visualized easily. This ‘hands-on’ approach to building molecules will help promote understanding of VSEPR theory. (paper)

Understanding valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory using origami molecular models

Science.gov (United States)

Endah Saraswati, Teguh; Saputro, Sulistyo; Ramli, Murni; Praseptiangga, Danar; Khasanah, Nurul; Marwati, Sri

2017-01-01

Valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory is conventionally used to predict molecular geometry. However, it is difficult to explore the full implications of this theory by simply drawing chemical structures. Here, we introduce origami modelling as a more accessible approach for exploration of the VSEPR theory. Our technique is simple, readily accessible and inexpensive compared with other sophisticated methods such as computer simulation or commercial three-dimensional modelling kits. This method can be implemented in chemistry education at both the high school and university levels. We discuss the example of a simple molecular structure prediction for ammonia (NH3). Using the origami model, both molecular shape and the scientific justification can be visualized easily. This ‘hands-on’ approach to building molecules will help promote understanding of VSEPR theory.

Received, Understanding and Satisfaction of National Health Insurance Premium Subsidy Scheme by Families of Children with Disabilities: A Census Study in Taipei City

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Jin-Ding; Lin, Ya-Wen; Yen, Chia-Feng; Loh, Ching-Hui; Chwo, Miao-Ju

2009-01-01

The purposes of the present study are to provide the first data on utilization, understanding and satisfaction of the National Health Insurance (NHI) premium subsidy for families of children with disabilities in Taipei. Data from the 2001 Taipei Early Intervention Utilization and Evaluation Survey for Aged 0-6 Children with Disabilities were…

Projective mapping with food stickers: A good tool for better understanding perception of fish in children of different ages

OpenAIRE

Daltoe, Marina Mitterer; Breda, Leandra Schuastz; Belusso, A.C.; Nogueira, Barbara Arruda; Rodrigues, Deyse Pegorini; Fiszman, Susana; Varela, Paula

2017-01-01

The objective of this study was to better understand the perception of fish products among school children of three different age groups, 5–6 years, 7–8 years and 9–0 years. In order to do so, we used Projective Mapping (PM) with food stickers and a word association task (WA). A total of 149 children from three public schools in the state of Parana, Brazil, have participated on this study. The age groups were interviewed (on 1–1 basis) by six monitors qualified to apply the sensory methods us...

Towards a feminist understanding of intersecting violence against women and children in the family.

Science.gov (United States)

Namy, Sophie; Carlson, Catherine; O'Hara, Kathleen; Nakuti, Janet; Bukuluki, Paul; Lwanyaaga, Julius; Namakula, Sylvia; Nanyunja, Barbrah; Wainberg, Milton L; Naker, Dipak; Michau, Lori

2017-07-01

While intimate partner violence (IPV) against women and violence against children (VAC) have emerged as distinct fields of research and programming, a growing number of studies demonstrate the extent to which these forms of violence overlap in the same households. However, existing knowledge of how and why such co-occurrence takes place is limited, particularly in the Global South. The current study aims to advance empirical and conceptual understanding of intersecting IPV and VAC within families in order to inform potential programming. We explore shared perceptions and experiences of IPV and VAC using qualitative data collected in December 2015 from adults and children in Kampala, Uganda (n = 106). We find that the patriarchal family structure creates an environment that normalizes many forms of violence, simultaneously infantilizing women and reinforcing their subordination (alongside children). Based on participant experiences, we identify four potential patterns that suggest how IPV and VAC not only co-occur, but more profoundly intersect within the family, triggering cycles of emotional and physical abuse: bystander trauma, negative role modeling, protection and further victimization, and displaced aggression. The discussion is situated within a feminist analysis, including careful consideration of maternal violence and an emphasis on the ways in which gender and power dynamics can coalesce and contribute to intra-family violence. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Children's Religious Knowledge: Implications for Understanding Satanic Ritual Abuse Allegations.

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, Gail S.; Quas, Jodi A.; Bottoms, Bette L.; Qin, Jianjian; Shaver, Phillip R.

1997-01-01

Using a structured interview, 48 3- to 16-year-old children were questioned about their knowledge of religious and satanic concepts. Although few children evinced direct knowledge of ritual abuse, many revealed general knowledge of satanism and satanic worship. Results suggest that most children probably do not generally possess sufficient…

Individual, social, and physical environment factors associated with electronic media use among children: sedentary behavior at home.

Science.gov (United States)

Granich, Joanna; Rosenberg, Michael; Knuiman, Matthew W; Timperio, Anna

2011-07-01

Individual, home social and physical environment correlates of electronic media (EM) use among children were examined and pattern of differences on school and weekend days. Youth (n = 298) aged 11 to 12 years self-reported time spent using EM (TV, video/DVD, computer use, and electronic games) on a typical school and a weekend day, each dichotomized at the median to indicate heavy and light EM users. Anthropometric measurements were taken. Logistic regression examined correlates of EM use. In total, 87% of participants exceeded electronic media use recommendations of ≤ 2 hrs/day. Watching TV during breakfast (OR = 3.17) and after school (OR = 2.07), watching TV with mother (OR = 1.96), no rule(s) limiting time for computer game usage (OR = 2.30), having multiple (OR = 2.99) EM devices in the bedroom and BMI (OR = 1.15) were associated with higher odds of being heavy EM user on a school day. Boys (OR = 2.35) and participants who usually watched TV at midday (OR = 2.91) and late at night (OR = 2.04) had higher odds of being a heavy EM user on the weekend. Efforts to modify children's EM use should focus on a mix of intervention strategies that address patterns and reinforcement of TV viewing, household rules limiting screen time, and the presence of EM devices in the child's bedroom.

Improving students' understanding by using on-going education research to refine active learning activities in a first-year electronics course

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mazzolini, Alexander Peter; Daniel, Scott Arthur

2015-01-01

Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs) have been used across introductory university physics as a successful active learning (AL) strategy to improve students’ conceptual understanding. We have developed ILDs for more complex topics in our first-year electronics course. In 2006 we began developing ILDs to improve students’ conceptual understanding of Operational Amplifiers (OAs) and negative feedback in amplification circuits. The ILDs were used after traditional lecture instruction to help students consolidate their understanding. We developed a diagnostic test, to be administered to students both before and after the ILDs, as a measure of how effective the ILDs were in improving students’ understanding.

[Understanding social interaction in children with autism spectrum disorders: does whole-body motion mean anything to them?].

Science.gov (United States)

Centelles, L; Assaiante, C; Etchegoyhen, K; Bouvard, M; Schmitz, C

2012-06-01

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by difficulties in social interaction and verbal and non verbal reciprocal communication. Face and gaze direction, which participate in non verbal communication, are described as atypical in ASD. Also body movements carry multiple social cues. Under certain circumstances, for instance when seeing two persons from far, they constitute the only support that allows the grasping of a social content. Here, we investigated the contribution of whole-body motion processing in social understanding. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether children with ASD make use of information carried by body motion to categorize dynamic visual scenes that portrayed social interactions. In 1973, Johansson devised a technique for studying the perception of biological motion that minimizes static form information from the stimulus, but retains motion information. In these point-light displays, the movement figure, such as a body, is represented by a small number of illuminated dots positioned to highlight the motion of the body parts. We used Johansson's model to explore the ability of children with ASD to understand social interactions based on human movement analysis. Three-second silent point-light displays were created by videotaping two actors. The two actors were either interacting together or moving side by side without interacting. A large range of social interaction displays were used to cover social scenes depicting social norms (conventional gestures and courteous attitudes), emotional situations (carrying positive or negative valences) and scenes from games (sports, dance, etc.). Children were asked to carefully watch the stimuli and to classify them according to the question "Are the two persons communicating or not?". Four sessions of 3 minutes were performed by each child. Children with ASD were compared with typically developing control children matched with either non verbal mental age or chronological age. Response and

Young Children's Understanding of Conflicting Mental Representation Predicts Suggestibility.

Science.gov (United States)

Welch-Ross, Melissa K.; And Others

1997-01-01

Examined the relation between developmental suggestibility effects and preschoolers' emerging ability to reason about conflicting mental representations. Subjects were 42 three- to five-year-olds. Found in the children significant initial encoding and ability to retrieve event details. Also found an integration between children's theory of mind…

Why do we eat? Children's and adults' understanding of why we eat different meals.

Science.gov (United States)

Raman, Lakshmi

2011-01-01

In this study the author examined why children and adults think they need to eat. Preschoolers through adults were provided with physiological, social, psychological, and routine causes for eating breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner, and were asked to either agree or disagree with the causal responses provided. A 4 Reason x 4 Meal repeated measures analysis of variance revealed significant main effects for meals and reasons, as well as significant Meal x Reason and Meal x Reason x Grade interactions. The effect sizes ranged from 0.1 to 0.7. Across all age groups, participants acknowledged physiological needs and desires (fulfilling hunger and needs to stay healthy) and routine (e.g., it is dinner time) as the primary causes for eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. However, for snack physiological needs were the primary reason. Second-grade students onward spontaneously produced biological justifications such as the need for energy and nutrition as important reasons for food consumption. These results lend support to the developmental model that children's and adults' understanding of eating changes in middle childhood.

Removing obstacles for African American English-speaking children through greater understanding of language difference.

Science.gov (United States)

Pearson, Barbara Zurer; Conner, Tracy; Jackson, Janice E

2013-01-01

Language difference among speakers of African American English (AAE) has often been considered language deficit, based on a lack of understanding about the AAE variety. Following Labov (1972), Wolfram (1969), Green (2002, 2011), and others, we define AAE as a complex rule-governed linguistic system and briefly discuss language structures that it shares with general American English (GAE) and others that are unique to AAE. We suggest ways in which mistaken ideas about the language variety add to children's difficulties in learning the mainstream dialect and, in effect, deny them the benefits of their educational programs. We propose that a linguistically informed approach that highlights correspondences between AAE and the mainstream dialect and trains students and teachers to understand language varieties at a metalinguistic level creates environments that support the academic achievement of AAE-speaking students. Finally, we present 3 program types that are recommended for helping students achieve the skills they need to be successful in multiple linguistic environments.

Understanding a successful obesity prevention initiative in children under 5 from a systems perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Owen, Brynle; Brown, Andrew D; Kuhlberg, Jill; Millar, Lynne; Nichols, Melanie; Economos, Christina; Allender, Steven

2018-01-01

Systems thinking represents an innovative and logical approach to understanding complexity in community-based obesity prevention interventions. We report on an approach to apply systems thinking to understand the complexity of a successful obesity prevention intervention in early childhood (children aged up to 5 years) conducted in a regional city in Victoria, Australia. A causal loop diagram (CLD) was developed to represent system elements related to a successful childhood obesity prevention intervention in early childhood. Key stakeholder interviews (n = 16) were examined retrospectively to generate purposive text data, create microstructures, and form a CLD. A CLD representing key stakeholder perceptions of a successful intervention comprised six key feedback loops explaining changes in project implementation over time. The loops described the dynamics of collaboration, network formation, community awareness, human resources, project clarity, and innovation. The CLD developed provides a replicable means to capture, evaluate and disseminate a description of the dynamic elements of a successful obesity prevention intervention in early childhood.

Early Understanding of the Concept of Living Things: An Examination of Young Children's Drawings of Plant Life

Science.gov (United States)

Villarroel, José Domingo; Infante, Guillermo

2014-01-01

This paper looks at the drawings of a sample of 118 children aged between 4 and 7 years old on the topic of plant life and relates the content to their knowledge of the concept of living things. The research project uses two types of tests: a task to analyse the level of understanding of the concept of living things and a free drawing activity.…

Educators' Understanding of Young Children's Typical and Problematic Sexual Behaviour and Their Training in This Area

Science.gov (United States)

Ey, Lesley-anne; McInnes, Elspeth; Rigney, Lester Irabinna

2017-01-01

As part of a wider study, this paper reports on Australian educators' understanding of children's typical and problematic sexual behaviour and their source of training in this area. A sample of 107 educators from government, independent and Catholic primary schools, preschools and care organisations across Australia answered an online…

Understanding the effects of electronic polarization and delocalization on charge-transport levels in oligoacene systems

KAUST Repository

Sutton, Christopher; Tummala, Naga Rajesh; Kemper, Travis; Aziz, Saadullah G.; Sears, John; Coropceanu, Veaceslav; Bredas, Jean-Luc

2017-01-01

Electronic polarization and charge delocalization are important aspects that affect the charge-transport levels in organic materials. Here, using a quantum mechanical/ embedded-charge (QM/EC) approach based on a combination of the long-range corrected omega B97X-D exchange-correlation functional (QM) and charge model 5 (CM5) point-charge model (EC), we evaluate the vertical detachment energies and polarization energies of various sizes of crystalline and amorphous anionic oligoacene clusters. Our results indicate that QM/EC calculations yield vertical detachment energies and polarization energies that compare well with the experimental values obtained from ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy measurements. In order to understand the effect of charge delocalization on the transport levels, we considered crystalline naphthalene systems with QM regions including one or five-molecules. The results for these systems show that the delocalization and polarization effects are additive; therefore, allowing for electron delocalization by increasing the size of the QM region leads to the additional stabilization of the transport levels. Published by AIP Publishing.

Understanding the effects of electronic polarization and delocalization on charge-transport levels in oligoacene systems

KAUST Repository

Sutton, Christopher

2017-06-13

Electronic polarization and charge delocalization are important aspects that affect the charge-transport levels in organic materials. Here, using a quantum mechanical/ embedded-charge (QM/EC) approach based on a combination of the long-range corrected omega B97X-D exchange-correlation functional (QM) and charge model 5 (CM5) point-charge model (EC), we evaluate the vertical detachment energies and polarization energies of various sizes of crystalline and amorphous anionic oligoacene clusters. Our results indicate that QM/EC calculations yield vertical detachment energies and polarization energies that compare well with the experimental values obtained from ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy measurements. In order to understand the effect of charge delocalization on the transport levels, we considered crystalline naphthalene systems with QM regions including one or five-molecules. The results for these systems show that the delocalization and polarization effects are additive; therefore, allowing for electron delocalization by increasing the size of the QM region leads to the additional stabilization of the transport levels. Published by AIP Publishing.

Understanding Participation of Preschool-Age Children with Cerebral Palsy

Science.gov (United States)

Chiarello, Lisa Ann; Palisano, Robert J.; Orlin, Margo N.; Chang, Hui-Ju; Begnoche, Denise; An, Mihee

2012-01-01

Participation in home, school, and community activities is a primary outcome of early intervention services for children with disabilities and their families. The objectives of this study were to (a) describe participation of preschool-age children with cerebral palsy (CP); (b) determine effects of sex, age, and gross motor function on intensity…

Understanding the Mind or Predicting Signal-Dependent Action? Performance of Children With and Without Autism on Analogues of the False-Belief Task

OpenAIRE

Bowler, D. M.; Briskman, J.; Gurvidi, N.; Fornells-Ambrojo, M.

2005-01-01

To evaluate the claim that correct performance on unexpected transfer false-belief tasks specifically involves mental-state understanding, two experiments were carried out with children with autism, intellectual disabilities, and typical development. In both experiments, children were given a standard unexpected transfer false-belief task and a mental-state-free, mechanical analogue task in which participants had to predict the destination of a train based on true or false signal information....

Promoting Greater Understanding in Peers of Children Who Stammer

Science.gov (United States)

Turnbull, Jackie

2006-01-01

Children who stammer are often negatively stereotyped by other children and by teachers. They can also be easily identified as targets for teasing and bullying by peers. This may adversely affect their interaction levels in school and lower their self-esteem. This article suggests an approach aimed at reducing the development of adverse attitudes…

Understanding the Diverse Needs of Children whose Parents Abuse Substances

Science.gov (United States)

Solis, Jessica M.; Shadur, Julia M.; Burns, Alison R.; Hussong, Andrea M.

2013-01-01

In this review, we consider the potential service needs of children of substance abusing parents based on what we know about the risk outcomes faced by these children and the parenting deficits often present in these families. Importantly, our review does not address the etiological role of parental substance abuse in children's negative outcomes but instead we discuss the complex inter-related risk factors that often co-occur with and exacerbate risk associated with parental alcohol and drug use. We first review studies showing the elevated risk that children of substance abusing parents face in general for poorer academic functioning; emotional, behavioral, and social problems; and an earlier onset of substance use, faster acceleration in substance use patterns, and higher rates of alcohol and drug use disorders. We then review studies showing contextual risk factors for children of substance abusing parents, including parenting deficits (less warmth, responsiveness, and physical and verbal engagement as well as harsher and more over-involved interaction styles), greater risk for child maltreatment, and less secure attachment patterns. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for research and guidelines for professionals working with children and their families where parental substance abuse is present. PMID:22455509

The emerging causal understanding of institutional objects.

Science.gov (United States)

Noyes, Alexander; Keil, Frank C; Dunham, Yarrow

2018-01-01

Institutional objects, such as money, drivers' licenses, and borders, have functions because of their social roles rather than their immediate physical properties. These objects are causally different than standard artifacts (e.g. hammers, chairs, and cars), sharing more commonality with other social roles. Thus, they inform psychological theories of human-made objects as well as children's emerging understanding of social reality. We examined whether children (N=180, ages 4-9) differentiate institutional objects from standard artifacts. Specifically, we examine whether children understand that mutual intentions (i.e., the intentions of a social collective) underlie the functional affordances of institutional objects in ways that they do not for standard artifacts. We find that young children assimilate institutional objects into their intuitive theories of standard artifacts; children begin to differentiate between the domains in the elementary school years. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Understanding Violence Against Children in Rwanda | CRDI ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

And while there have been many initiatives to address it, studies evaluating the situation remain limited. There is a clear need for evidence to support advocacy, inform national planning and budgeting, and monitor impact. Violence against children is preventable. Developing and implementing effective prevention strategies ...

Electronic technology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jin Su

2010-07-01

This book is composed of five chapters, which introduces electronic technology about understanding of electronic, electronic component, radio, electronic application, communication technology, semiconductor on its basic, free electron and hole, intrinsic semiconductor and semiconductor element, Diode such as PN junction diode, characteristic of junction diode, rectifier circuit and smoothing circuit, transistor on structure of transistor, characteristic of transistor and common emitter circuit, electronic application about electronic equipment, communication technology and education, robot technology and high electronic technology.

When the body reveals the mind: Children's use of others' body orientation to understand their focus of attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Paulus, Markus; Murillo, Esther; Sodian, Beate

2016-08-01

A considerable amount of research has examined children's ability to rely on explicit social cues such as pointing to understand others' referential intentions. Yet, skillful social interaction also requires reliance on and learning from implicit cues (i.e., cues that are not displayed with the explicit intention to teach or inform someone). From an embodied point of view, orienting movements and body orientation are salient cues that reveal something about a person's intentional relations without being explicit communicative cues. In three experiments, the current study investigated the development of the ability to use body information in a word learning situation. To this end, we presented 2-year-old children, 3.5-year-old children, and adults with movies on an eye-tracking screen in which an actor oriented her upper body to one of two objects while uttering a novel word. The results show that the 3.5-year-old children and adults, but not the 2-year-old children, related the novel word to the referred object (Experiments 1 and 2). Yet, when the actor oriented her body to one object while pointing to the other object, children of both age groups relied on the pointing cue (Experiment 3). This suggests that by 3.5 years children use another's body orientation as an indicator of her intentional relations but that they prioritize explicit social cues over the implicit body posture cues. Overall, the study supports theoretical views that an appreciation of others' intentional relations does not emerge as an all-or-nothing ability but rather emerges gradually during the course of early development. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Fractions Learning in Children With Mathematics Difficulties.

Science.gov (United States)

Tian, Jing; Siegler, Robert S

Learning fractions is difficult for children in general and especially difficult for children with mathematics difficulties (MD). Recent research on developmental and individual differences in fraction knowledge of children with MD and typically achieving (TA) children has demonstrated that U.S. children with MD start middle school behind their TA peers in fraction understanding and fall further behind during middle school. In contrast, Chinese children, who like the MD children in the United States score in the bottom one third of the distribution in their country, possess reasonably good fraction understanding. We interpret these findings within the framework of the integrated theory of numerical development. By emphasizing the importance of fraction magnitude knowledge for numerical understanding in general, the theory proved useful for understanding differences in fraction knowledge between MD and TA children and for understanding how knowledge can be improved. Several interventions demonstrated the possibility of improving fraction magnitude knowledge and producing benefits that generalize to fraction arithmetic learning among children with MD. The reasonably good fraction understanding of Chinese children with MD and several successful interventions with U.S. students provide hope for the improvement of fraction knowledge among American children with MD.

Everyday social and conversation applications of theory-of-mind understanding by children with autism-spectrum disorders or typical development.

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Candida C; Garnett, Michelle; Kelly, Adrian; Attwood, Tony

2009-02-01

Children with autism-spectrum disorders (ASD) often fail laboratory false-belief tests of theory of mind (ToM). Yet how this impacts on their everyday social behavior is less clear, partly owing to uncertainty over which specific everyday conversational and social skills require ToM understanding. A new caregiver-report scale of these everyday applications of ToM was developed and validated in two studies. Study 1 obtained parent ratings of 339 children (85 with autism; 230 with Asperger's; 24 typically-developing) on the new scale and results revealed (a) that the scale had good psychometric properties and (b) that children with ASD had significantly more everyday mindreading difficulties than typical developers. In Study 2, we directly tested links between laboratory ToM and everyday mindreading using teacher ratings on the new scale. The sample of 25 children included 15 with autism and 10 typical developers aged 5-12 years. Children in both groups who passed laboratory ToM tests had fewer everyday mindreading difficulties than those of the same diagnosis who failed. Yet, intriguingly, autistic ToM-passers still had more problems with everyday mindreading than younger typically-developing ToM-failers. The possible roles of family conversation and peer interaction, along with ToM, in everyday social functioning were considered.

Information security of children and adolescents in understanding parents and teachers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bovina I.B.

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The article presents the first part of the work devoted to the study of ordinary representations of parents and teachers about information security of children and adolescents. It is about addressing the problem of information security of children and adolescents, discuss the effects of observing violence in the mass media on the subsequent behaviour of viewers, refers to directing television roles on the example of transfer schemes by S. Milgram in the context of television game (experiment J. L. Beauvois with colleagues. This paper examines the impact on users has the Internet, discusses the main directions of action in relation to ensuring information security of children and adolescents, focusing on psychological aspects of the concept of information security of children, demonstrates the importance of studying "naive theories" that govern the actions aimed at ensuring information security of children. The authors explain the prospect of studying problems of information security of children in the framework of the theory of social representations.

Contributions of Qualitative Research to Understanding Savings for Children and Youth

Science.gov (United States)

Sherraden, Margaret; Peters, Clark; Wagner, Kristen; Guo, Baorong; Clancy, Margaret

2013-01-01

This paper explores contributions of qualitative research to saving theory for children, youth, and parents in children's development account (CDAs) programs. It brings together findings from three studies: (1) elementary school age children saving for college, (2) youth transitioning from foster care saving for education and other purposes, and…

A Cross-Continental Study on Children's Drawings of Football Players: Implications for Understanding Key Issues and Controversies in Human Figure Drawings.

Science.gov (United States)

Baluch, Bahman; Duffy, Linda J; Badami, Rokhsareh; Pereira, Elisangela C Ap

2017-08-01

Professionals examine various aspects of girls' and boys' drawings as a way of understanding their intelligence, personality and emotional state. However, the extent to which such measures could be universally generalised or attributed to a specific cultural norm is still a debatable issue. In the present study five key features of children's drawings namely: the size (height) of the drawings, profile or full face, figure in action or static, shaded or non-shaded and the nature of additional details were examined from a cross-cultural perspective, and by providing a topic (football) for which children's drawing of a human figure could provide opportunities for the latter indices to manifest and flourish. Children from three countries; England, Iran and Brazil, representing three continents took part in this study. The participants were asked to draw a football player from their own country and from the other participating countries. The results showed that Brazilian children differ from Iranian and English children by drawing significantly smaller figures and putting more football action in the drawings. Shading of the figure drawn was more prevalent amongst English children. Such findings have implications for the interpretation of key aspects of children's drawings in educational, clinical and therapeutic settings and from a universal vs. culturally-specific viewpoint.

Mediated intimacy in families: understanding the relation between children and parents

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dalsggaard, Thomas; Skov, Mikael B.; Stougaard, Malthe

2006-01-01

interaction phenomena that unfold between children and their parents. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews to investigate the intimate acts between children and parents in three families. Our findings show that the intimate act between children and parents share a number of similarities......Mediating intimacy between children and their parents is still limited investigated and at the same time, we find that, emerging technologies are about to change and affect the way we interact with each other. In this paper, we report from an empirical study where we investigated the social...... in families....

How we see electronic games

Science.gov (United States)

Weinstein, Netta

2016-01-01

Theories regarding the influences of electronic games drive scientific study, popular debate, and public policy. The fractious interchanges among parents, pundits, and scholars hint at the rich phenomenological and psychological dynamics that underlie how people view digital technologies such as games. The current research applied Martin Heidegger’s concept of interpretive frameworks (Heidegger, 1987) and Robert Zajonc’s exposure-attitude hypothesis (Zajonc, 1968) to explore how attitudes towards technologies such as electronic games arise. Three studies drew on representative cohorts of American and British adults and evaluated how direct and indirect experiences with games shape how they are seen. Results indicated this approach was fruitful: negative attitudes and beliefs linking games to real-world violence were prominent among those with little direct exposure to electronic gaming contexts, whereas those who played games and reported doing so with their children tended to evaluate gaming more positively. Further findings indicated direct experience tended to inform the accuracy of beliefs about the effects of digital technology, as those who had played were more likely to believe that which is empirically known about game effects. Results are discussed with respect to ongoing debates regarding gaming and broader applications of this approach to understand the psychological dynamics of adapting to technological advances. PMID:27077016

How we see electronic games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew K. Przybylski

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Theories regarding the influences of electronic games drive scientific study, popular debate, and public policy. The fractious interchanges among parents, pundits, and scholars hint at the rich phenomenological and psychological dynamics that underlie how people view digital technologies such as games. The current research applied Martin Heidegger’s concept of interpretive frameworks (Heidegger, 1987 and Robert Zajonc’s exposure-attitude hypothesis (Zajonc, 1968 to explore how attitudes towards technologies such as electronic games arise. Three studies drew on representative cohorts of American and British adults and evaluated how direct and indirect experiences with games shape how they are seen. Results indicated this approach was fruitful: negative attitudes and beliefs linking games to real-world violence were prominent among those with little direct exposure to electronic gaming contexts, whereas those who played games and reported doing so with their children tended to evaluate gaming more positively. Further findings indicated direct experience tended to inform the accuracy of beliefs about the effects of digital technology, as those who had played were more likely to believe that which is empirically known about game effects. Results are discussed with respect to ongoing debates regarding gaming and broader applications of this approach to understand the psychological dynamics of adapting to technological advances.

How we see electronic games.

Science.gov (United States)

Przybylski, Andrew K; Weinstein, Netta

2016-01-01

Theories regarding the influences of electronic games drive scientific study, popular debate, and public policy. The fractious interchanges among parents, pundits, and scholars hint at the rich phenomenological and psychological dynamics that underlie how people view digital technologies such as games. The current research applied Martin Heidegger's concept of interpretive frameworks (Heidegger, 1987) and Robert Zajonc's exposure-attitude hypothesis (Zajonc, 1968) to explore how attitudes towards technologies such as electronic games arise. Three studies drew on representative cohorts of American and British adults and evaluated how direct and indirect experiences with games shape how they are seen. Results indicated this approach was fruitful: negative attitudes and beliefs linking games to real-world violence were prominent among those with little direct exposure to electronic gaming contexts, whereas those who played games and reported doing so with their children tended to evaluate gaming more positively. Further findings indicated direct experience tended to inform the accuracy of beliefs about the effects of digital technology, as those who had played were more likely to believe that which is empirically known about game effects. Results are discussed with respect to ongoing debates regarding gaming and broader applications of this approach to understand the psychological dynamics of adapting to technological advances.

Do Adolescents Prefer Electronic Books to Paper Books?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Margaret K. Merga

2015-11-01

Full Text Available While electronic books offer a range of benefits and may be supposed to be more appealing to young people than paper books, this assumption is often treated as fact by educational researchers. Understanding adolescents’ true current preferences is essential, as incorrect assumptions can lead to decisions which restrict adolescent access to their preferred book mode. The belief that adolescents prefer electronic books to paper books has already led to some school libraries being expunged of paper books. As adolescents show a higher level of aliteracy than younger children, and regular reading offers a broad range of benefits for young people, it is imperative that school’s decisions around providing access to books are responsive to adolescent students’ genuine preferences. This paper analyses the current and relevant academic research around adolescent preferences for book modes, finding that, at present, the contention that adolescents prefer electronic books is not supported by the available research. In addition, there are a number of issues identified that make analyzing the findings in this area problematic. Future studies in this area are needed before an adolescent preference for electronic books can be unequivocally substantiated.

LD, interpersonal understanding, and social behavior in the classroom.

Science.gov (United States)

Kravetz, S; Faust, M; Lipshitz, S; Shalhav, S

1999-01-01

This study used Baron and Kenny's (1986) criteria for mediation to investigate the extent to which interpersonal understanding mediates the relation between learning disabilities (LD) and social adaptation in the classroom. Twenty-two children with and 22 children without a diagnosis of LD completed a semistructured developmental clinical interview measure of interpersonal understanding. They were also rated by their fourth- and fifth-grade teachers on a measure of social adaptation in the classroom. Interpersonal understanding and social adaptation in the classroom were found to be positively correlated. Children with LD exhibited less interpersonal understanding and social adaptation. Although this group difference on social adaptation was greatly reduced when interpersonal understanding was statistically controlled, it remained statistically significant. These results suggest that reduced social adaptation in the classroom and lower interpersonal understanding are both associated with a diagnosis of LD. However, they do not conclusively support the claim that interpersonal understanding mediates the relation between LD and social adaptation. Thus, whether the social difficulties of people with LD stem from the same complex phenomena that produce these people's learning problems remains an open question.

Towards a Dialogic Understanding of Children's Art-Making Process

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Hyunsu

2018-01-01

This article is intended to identify the complex process of children's art making by bringing new methodologies into the analysis of children's pictures. This article analyses the art-making process of a selected drawing by a five-year-old boy. The study builds on previous findings regarding children's verbal discourses during the art-making…

Young Children's Understanding of Cultural Common Ground

Science.gov (United States)

Liebal, Kristin; Carpenter, Malinda; Tomasello, Michael

2013-01-01

Human social interaction depends on individuals identifying the common ground they have with others, based both on personally shared experiences and on cultural common ground that all members of the group share. We introduced 3- and 5-year-old children to a culturally well-known object and a novel object. An experimenter then entered and asked,…

Exploring a method for evaluation of preschool and school children with autism spectrum disorder through checking their understanding of the speaker's emotions with the help of prosody of the voice.

Science.gov (United States)

Horie, Mayumi; Okamura, Hitoshi

2017-11-01

We attempted to evaluate the ability of 125 preschool and school children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD children) to understand the intentions of those speaking to them using prosody of the voice, by comparing it with that of 119 typically developing children (TDC) and 51 development-age-matched children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD children), and to explore, based on the results, a method for objective evaluation of children with ASD in the early and later periods of childhood. Phrases routinely used by children were employed in the task administered to the children, with the prosody of the voice speaking these phrases changed to express the four emotions (acceptance, rejection, bluff and fooling). The percentage of children with ASD who could correctly identify the emotion of "fooling" was significantly lower than that of TDC, at each developmental age (corresponding to middle kindergarten class to sixth year of elementary school). On the other hand, in the children with ADHD, while the correct answer rate for identifying the emotion of "fooling" was significantly lower than that in the TDC and higher than that in the ASD children at development ages corresponding to the early years of elementary school, it did not differ significantly from that in the TDC and was higher than that ASD children at development ages corresponding to the later years of elementary school. These results indicate that children with ASD find it particularly difficult to understand the emotion of fooling by listening to speech with discrepancy between the meaning of the phrases and the emotion expressed by the voice, although the prosody of the voice may serve as a key to understanding the emotion of the speakers. This finding also suggests that the prosody of the voice expressing this emotion (fooling) may be used for objective evaluation of children with ASD. Copyright © 2017 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights

Does long time spending on the electronic devices affect the reading abilities? A cross-sectional study among Chinese school-aged children.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Zhen; Shao, Shanshan; Zhou, Jie; Ke, Juntao; Kong, Rui; Guo, Shengnan; Zhang, Jiajia; Song, Ranran

2014-12-01

Home literacy environment (HLE) is one of most important modifiable risk factors to dyslexia. With the development in technology, we include the electronic devices usage at home, such as computers and televisions, to the definition of HLE and investigate its impact on dyslexia based on the on-going project of Tongji's Reading Environment and Dyslexia Study. The data include 5063 children, primary school students (grade 3-grade 6), from a middle-sized city in China. We apply the principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the large dimension of variables in HLE, and find the first three components, denoted as PC1, PC2 and PC3, can explain 95.45% of HLE information. PC1 and PC2 demonstrate strong positive association with 'total time spending on electronic devices' and 'literacy-related activity', respectively. PC3 demonstrates strong negative association with 'restrictions on using electronic devices'. From the generalized linear model, we find that PC1 significantly increases the risk of dyslexia (OR = 1.043, 95% CI: 1.018-1.070), while PC2 significantly decreases the risk of dyslexia (OR = 0.839, 95% CI: 0.795-0.886). Therefore, reducing the total time spending on electronic devices and increasing the literacy-related activity would be the potential protective factors for dyslexic children in China. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Understanding and Working with Non-Compliant and Aggressive Young Children

Science.gov (United States)

Honig, Alice Sterling

2009-01-01

Interpersonal, familial, and situational risk factors that predict young children's aggression and non-compliance are explored. Here examples of specific techniques and provided to help teachers and parents effectively support children's early development of cooperative and prosocial behaviours as well as problem-solving skills in family and…

Observing and Understanding Children's Social Interactions. An Impression Management Perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Hatch, J. Amos

1994-01-01

Describes ways of observing and interpreting children's peer social behavior based on the impression management perspective, which focuses on the social construction of a child's individual self-concept. Suggests that teachers and caregivers can use impression management strategies to observe and promote prosocial development in young children.…

If Not the Brain, Then What? A Paradigm for Preservice Intervention Specialists that Provides an Understanding of Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Children

Science.gov (United States)

Cameron, Mary T.

2011-01-01

This article contends that although Intervention Specialists are presented with a variety of children with diverse challenges that arise from neurological dysfunction, few teacher education programs adequately prepare teachers to understand, recognize and address these needs. The University of Findlay requires candidates in the post-baccalaureate…

Electron-electron coincidence spectroscopies at surfaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stefani, G.; Iacobucci, S.; Ruocco, A.; Gotter, R.

2002-01-01

In the past 20 years, a steadily increasing number of electron-electron coincidence experiments on atoms and molecules have contributed to a deeper understanding of electron-electron correlation effects. In more recent years this technique has been extended to the study of solid surfaces. This class of one photon IN two electrons OUT experiments will be discussed with an emphasis on grazing incidence geometry, that is expected to be particularly suited for studying surfaces. The crucial question of which is the dominant mechanism that leads to ejection of pairs of electron from the surface will be addressed. It will be shown that, depending on the kinematics chosen, the correlated behaviour of the pairs of electrons detected might be singled out from independent particle one

Securing a Stop to the Summer Setback: Policy Considerations in the Future Expansion of the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Hopkins, Laura C; Hooker, Neal H; Gunther, Carolyn

2017-09-01

The Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) has been proposed as a solution to address the problem of child food security during the summer. Initial SEBTC findings from a demonstration project show promise and the federal government has approved substantial funding for its continuation. This report reviews empirical assessments of SEBTC and Electronic Benefits Transfer research, and presents policy considerations in the program's future expansion. Copyright © 2016 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding Energy

Science.gov (United States)

Menon, Deepika; Shelby, Blake; Mattingly, Christine

2016-01-01

"Energy" is a term often used in everyday language. Even young children associate energy with the food they eat, feeling tired after playing soccer, or when asked to turn the lights off to save light energy. However, they may not have the scientific conceptual understanding of energy at this age. Teaching energy and matter could be…

Development of a reliable, valid measure to assess parents' and teachers' understanding of postural care for children with physical disabilities: the (UKC PostCarD) questionnaire.

Science.gov (United States)

Hotham, S; Hutton, E; Hamilton-West, K E

2015-11-01

Previous research has highlighted lack of knowledge, understanding and confidence among parents and teachers responsible for the postural care of children with physical disability. Interventions designed to improve these qualities require a reliable and validated tool to assess pre- and post-intervention levels. Currently, however, no validated measure of postural care confidence (i.e. self-efficacy) exists. Hence, the aim of this research was to develop a reliable and valid questionnaire to assess parents' and teachers' confidence, alongside knowledge and understanding of postural care - the Understanding Knowledge and Confidence in providing POSTural CARe for children with Disabilities (UKC PostCarD) questionnaire. Items were developed by a multidisciplinary team and designed to map onto the content of 'An A-to-Z of Postural Care'. Parents, teachers and therapists assessed items for face validity. Scale reliability was then assessed using Cronbach's alpha and known-group validity was assessed by comparing scores of an 'expert' group (physiotherapists and occupational therapists) with those of a 'non-expert' group (with no formal training in postural care). The total scale and all three subscales (understanding and knowledge, confidence and concerns) demonstrated adequate reliability (α > 0.83) and subscale correlations formed a logical pattern (understanding and knowledge correlated positively with confidence and negatively with concerns). Experts' (n = 111) scores were higher than non-experts' (n = 79) for the total scale and all subscales (P children with disabilities. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Children's Behavior toward and Understanding of Robotic and Living Dogs

Science.gov (United States)

Melson, Gail F.; Kahn, Peter H., Jr.; Beck, Alan; Friedman, Batya; Roberts, Trace; Garrett, Erik; Gill, Brian T.

2009-01-01

This study investigated children's reasoning about and behavioral interactions with a computationally sophisticated robotic dog (Sony's AIBO) compared to a live dog (an Australian Shepherd). Seventy-two children from three age groups (7-9 years, 10-12 years, and 13-15 years) participated in this study. Results showed that more children…

Pain Elimination during Injection with Newer Electronic Devices: A Comparative Evaluation in Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Bansal, Neha; Saha, Sonali; Jaiswal, Jn; Samadi, Firoza

2014-05-01

The present study was taken up to clinically evaluate and compare effectiveness of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (TENS) and comfort control syringe (CCS) in various pediatric dental procedures as an alternative to the conventional method of local anesthesia (LA) administration. Ninety healthy children having at least one deciduous molar tooth indicated for extraction in either maxillary right or left quadrant in age group of 6 to 10 years were randomly divided into three equal groups having 30 subjects each. Group I: LA administration using conventional syringe, group II: LA administration using TENS along with the conventional syringe, group III: LA administration using CCS. After LA by the three techniques, pain, anxiety and heart rate were measured. The observations, thus, obtained were subjected to statistical analysis using analysis of variance (ANOVA), student t-test and paired t-test. The mean pain score was maximum in group I followed by group II, while group III revealed the minimum pain, where LA was administered using CCS. Mean anxiety score was maximum in group I followed by group II, while group III revealed the minimum score. Mean heart rate was maximum in group I followed in descending order by groups II and III. The study supports the belief that CCS could be a viable alternative in comparison to the other two methods of LA delivery in children. How to cite this article: Bansal N, Saha S, Jaiswal JN, Samadi F. Pain Elimination during Injection with Newer Electronic Devices: A Comparative Evaluation in Children. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2014;7(2):71-76.

Children in Beardslee's family intervention: relieved by understanding of parental mental illness.

Science.gov (United States)

Pihkala, Heljä; Sandlund, Mikael; Cederström, Anita

2012-11-01

Beardslee's family intervention (FI), which is a family-based preventive method for children of mentally ill parents, has been implemented on a national level in Sweden. Fourteen children and parents from nine families were interviewed about how the FI was for the children. Data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. A central finding was children's sense of relief and release from worry because of more knowledge and openness about the parent's illness in the family. The results indicating relief for the children are encouraging.

[Use of electronic media in adolescence. Results of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS)].

Science.gov (United States)

Lampert, T; Sygusch, R; Schlack, R

2007-01-01

The use of electronic media is playing an ever greater role in adolescents' recreational behaviour. From the point of view of the health sciences, one question which arises is the extent to which intensive media use is detrimental to physical activity and adolescents' health development. The data from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS), which were evaluated with a focus on 11-17-year-olds, confirm this heavy use of electronic media. However, there are distinct group-specific differences. For example, boys spend more time than girls on computers, the internet and games consoles, whereas girls more often listen to music and use their mobile phones. Watching television and videos is equally popular among girls and boys. Adolescents of low social status or a low level of school education use electronic media far more frequently and for longer times, especially television and video, games consoles and mobile phones. The same is true of boys and girls from the former states of the GDR and for boys (but not girls) with a background of migration. A connection to physical activity has been established for adolescents who spend more than five hours a day using electronic media. Moreover, this group of heavy users is more often affected by adiposity. The results of the KiGGS study, which are in line with earlier research findings, thus demonstrate that the use of electronic media is also of relevance from the point of view of public health and should be included in investigations into the health of children and adolescents.

Understanding the role of nutrition in the brain and behavioral development of toddlers and preschool children: identifying and addressing methodological barriers.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosales, Francisco J; Reznick, J Steven; Zeisel, Steven H

2009-10-01

The preschool years (i.e. 1-5 years of age) is a time of rapid and dramatic postnatal brain development (i.e. neural plasticity), and of fundamental acquisition of cognitive development (i.e. working memory, attention and inhibitory control). Also, it is a time of transition from a direct maternal mediation/selection of diet-based nutrition to food selection that is more based on self-selection and self-gratification. However, there have been fewer published studies in preschool children than in infants or school-aged children that examined the role of nutrition in brain/mental development (125 studies versus 232 and 303 studies, respectively during the last 28 years). This may arise because of age-related variability, in terms of individual differences in temperament, linguistic ability, and patterns of neural activity that may affect assessment of neural and cognitive development in pre-school children. In this review, we suggest several approaches for assessing brain function in children that can be refined. It would be desirable if the discipline developed some common elements to be included in future studies of diet and brain function, with the idea that they would complement more targeted measures based on time of exposure and understanding of data from animal models. Underlining this approach is the concept of 'window of sensitivity' during which nutrients may affect postnatal neural development: investigators and expert panels need to look specifically for region-specific changes and do so with understanding of the likely time window during which the nutrient was, or was not available.

Thermometers: Understand the Options

Science.gov (United States)

... the options Thermometers come in a variety of styles. Understand the different types of thermometers and how ... MA. Fever in infants and children: Pathophysiology and management. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed July 23, ...

Early false-belief understanding in traditional non-Western societies.

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, H Clark; Broesch, Tanya; Scott, Rose M; He, Zijing; Baillargeon, Renée; Wu, Di; Bolz, Matthias; Henrich, Joseph; Setoh, Peipei; Wang, Jianxin; Laurence, Stephen

2013-03-22

The psychological capacity to recognize that others may hold and act on false beliefs has been proposed to reflect an evolved, species-typical adaptation for social reasoning in humans; however, controversy surrounds the developmental timing and universality of this trait. Cross-cultural studies using elicited-response tasks indicate that the age at which children begin to understand false beliefs ranges from 4 to 7 years across societies, whereas studies using spontaneous-response tasks with Western children indicate that false-belief understanding emerges much earlier, consistent with the hypothesis that false-belief understanding is a psychological adaptation that is universally present in early childhood. To evaluate this hypothesis, we used three spontaneous-response tasks that have revealed early false-belief understanding in the West to test young children in three traditional, non-Western societies: Salar (China), Shuar/Colono (Ecuador) and Yasawan (Fiji). Results were comparable with those from the West, supporting the hypothesis that false-belief understanding reflects an adaptation that is universally present early in development.

Exploring Young Children's Understanding about the Concept of Volume through Engineering Design in a STEM Activity: A Case Study

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Do-Yong; Park, Mi-Hwa; Bates, Alan B.

2018-01-01

This case study explores young children's understanding and application of the concept of volume through the practices of engineering design in a STEM activity. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, engineering stands out as a challenging area to implement. In addition, most early engineering education…

Electronic gaming and psychosocial adjustment.

Science.gov (United States)

Przybylski, Andrew K

2014-09-01

The rise of electronic games has driven both concerns and hopes regarding their potential to influence young people. Existing research identifies a series of isolated positive and negative effects, yet no research to date has examined the balance of these potential effects in a representative sample of children and adolescents. The objective of this study was to explore how time spent playing electronic games accounts for significant variation in positive and negative psychosocial adjustment using a representative cohort of children aged 10 to 15 years. A large sample of children and adolescents aged 10 to 15 years completed assessments of psychosocial adjustment and reported typical daily hours spent playing electronic games. Relations between different levels of engagement and indicators of positive and negative psychosocial adjustment were examined, controlling for participant age and gender and weighted for population representativeness. Low levels (3 hours daily) of game engagement was linked to key indicators of psychosocial adjustment. Low engagement was associated with higher life satisfaction and prosocial behavior and lower externalizing and internalizing problems, whereas the opposite was found for high levels of play. No effects were observed for moderate play levels when compared with non-players. The links between different levels of electronic game engagement and psychosocial adjustment were small (Games consistently but not robustly associated with children's adjustment in both positive and negative ways, findings that inform policy-making as well as future avenues for research in the area. Copyright © 2014 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Understanding and managing sleep disruption in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Hanlon-Dearman, Ana; Chen, Maida Lynn; Olson, Heather Carmichael

2018-04-01

Accumulating evidence has revealed high rates of sleep disruption among children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Multiple animal and clinical studies have found a clear association between sleep problems and prenatal alcohol exposure, and recent research is beginning to characterize the types and extent of sleep disruption in FASD. Nevertheless, sleep disruption in children with FASD often goes unrecognized or is treated without referring to an evidence base. Children's disrupted sleep interferes with parental sleep and increases caregiver burden, which is of particular importance for families raising children with FASD, a group with very high levels of caregiving stress. The literature supporting an association between sleep problems and deficits in emotional, behavioral, and cognitive function in children is compelling, but needs further investigation in children with FASD. This paper will review the current state of knowledge on sleep in FASD and recommend a rational approach to sleep interventions for affected children and their families.

Understanding of subordinate clauses in the language of dysphasic children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lazarević Emilija

2007-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the results of the research of peculiarities of syntactic development, as an element of language structure on the grammatical level of children suffering from developmental dysphasia, after the completed speech pathology treatment of many years. Syntactic level at younger school age was studied by assessing language competence in the accomplishment of communicative sentence with subordinate clause. The research was performed on the samples of children at school age in regular primary schools in Belgrade. The sample comprised 160 respondents who were divided in two groups: target and comparative. The target group consisted of 60 respondents (children suffering from developmental dysphasia after the completed speech pathology treatment of many years, and the comparative group consisted of 100 respondents from regular primary school "Gavrilo Princip" in Zemun. Research results show that grammatical development of children suffering from developmental dysphasia takes place at a considerably slower rate and entails substantially more difficulties in accomplishing predication in subordinate clauses. This paper discusses the consequences which the difficulties in grammatical development can have on school achievement.

Introduction to electronics

CERN Multimedia

CERN. Geneva

2005-01-01

Electronics in HEP experiments: specificities and evolution The Art of Electronics: is there something beyond Ohm's law? Basic building blocks of Analog electronics: quickly understanding a schematic Charge preamps, current preamps and future preamps, shaping and the rest Electronics noise: fundamental and practical Evolution of technology: ASICs, FPGAs...

'Daddy ran out of tadpoles': how parents tell their children that they are donor conceived, and what their 7-year-olds understand.

Science.gov (United States)

Blake, L; Casey, P; Readings, J; Jadva, V; Golombok, S

2010-10-01

The present study explored the process of disclosure in gamete donation families in the UK. Interviews were conducted with 23 mothers and 15 fathers who had told their 7-year-old child about the nature of their conception. Twelve children were interviewed about what they understood and how they felt about their donor conception (DC). The majority of families had disclosed by the age of four and mothers were found to be the main disclosers. Although some parents expressed concerns about the disclosure, the majority did not experience difficulties. No child responded to disclosure in a negative way. Seven-year-old children showed little understanding of their DC, despite parents starting the process of disclosure before the age of four. In spite of mothers' concerns about disclosing DC to their children, children responded to disclosure in a neutral way and most parents did not find disclosure to be problematic.

How Young Children Understand Electric Circuits: Prediction, Explanation and Exploration

Science.gov (United States)

Glauert, Esme Bridget

2009-01-01

This paper reports findings from a study of young children's views about electric circuits. Twenty-eight children aged 5 and 6 years were interviewed. They were shown examples of circuits and asked to predict whether they would work and explain why. They were then invited to try out some of the circuit examples or make circuits of their own…

Understanding of Ratioproportionality and Equality Vs. Equity in Children's Sharing.

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Lizette

In this study preschool, first grade, and sixth grade children played games which assessed ratio-proportionality ability, thought to be a precursor to proportionality ability, thought to be a precursor to equity allocations. The 48 children (eight boys and eight girls from each grade) played a game with one train which had six cars and one train…

Silent suffering: understanding and treating children with selective mutism.

Science.gov (United States)

Manassis, Katharina

2009-02-01

Children with selective mutism (SM) restrict speech in some social environments, often resulting in substantial academic and social impairment. Although SM is considered rare, one or more children with SM can be found in most elementary schools. Assessment is performed to confirm the diagnosis, rule out psychological and medical factors that may account for the mutism, ascertain comorbid and exacerbating conditions needing treatment, and develop an intervention plan. Interventions are often multidisciplinary and focus on decreasing anxiety, increasing social speech and ameliorating SM-related impairment. Research is limited, but symptomatic improvement has been demonstrated with behavioral interventions and multimodal treatments that include school and family participation, as well as behavioral methods. Selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, especially fluoxetine, have also been found to be efficacious and merit consideration in severe cases. Persistence of some SM or anxiety symptoms despite treatment is common. Further development of treatments targeting specific etiological factors, comparative treatment studies and determination of optimal involvement of families and schools in treatment are needed to improve outcomes for children with SM.

ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES

African Journals Online (AJOL)

10332324

"[to] promote the understanding and, acceptance of and growth in the number of electronic transactions .... Chapter III of the ECT Act is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic. Commerce ... Communications Technology Law 146. 22.

34 CFR 300.505 - Electronic mail.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 34 Education 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Electronic mail. 300.505 Section 300.505 Education... DISABILITIES Procedural Safeguards Due Process Procedures for Parents and Children § 300.505 Electronic mail. A....508 by an electronic mail communication, if the public agency makes that option available. (Authority...

学龄儿童不同层次情绪理解的发展及其与同伴接纳的关系%The Development of Different Levels of Emotion Understanding in School Children and Its Relevance with Peer Relationships

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

马伟娜; 姚雨佳; 曹亮

2011-01-01

Over the last two decades,a lot of psychology researchers have made a large amount of research in the filed of children＇s understanding of emotion.Many researchers found that great developmental changes would take place during the preschool years.The development of emotion understanding helped young children to realize the feelings and mood of other people and themselves as well. Understanding of emotion could direct one＇s behavior in daily interaction and interpersonal relationships.In terms of previous studies on emotion understanding,very few papers were relevant to school-age children.When children grow up,the social environment around them may have a great influence on the development of emotion understanding competence.The peer relationship in late childhood is also an important influencing factor for children＇s emotion understanding competence.So this study was conducted to explore the development of children＇s emotion understanding and its relationship with the social environmental system,taking peer relationships as example. It was helpful to enrich and expand knowledge about the development of children＇s emotion understanding.148 elementary school students from one primary school in Anji County participated in this experiment.Among these school-age children,30 children were 7 years old,30 children 8 years old,29 children 9 years old,29 children 10 years old and 30 children 11 years old.The study used the adapted version of the test of emotion comprehension to explore their developmental trend of emotion understanding in these school children. The Test of Emotion Comprehension was departed in 9 different missions.These missions were the tests of facial expression recognition, emotion reasoning,emotion understanding based on desire,emotion understanding on belief,emotion understanding based on memory,understanding of emotion regulation,understanding of hiding emotion,understanding of mixed emotion,and understanding of moral emotion.It also

Delivering Summer Electronic Benefit Transfers for Children through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children: Benefit Use and Impacts on Food Security and Foods Consumed.

Science.gov (United States)

Gordon, Anne R; Briefel, Ronette R; Collins, Ann M; Rowe, Gretchen M; Klerman, Jacob A

2017-03-01

The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfers for Children (SEBTC) demonstration piloted summer food assistance through electronic benefit transfers (EBTs), providing benefits either through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) EBT. To inform food assistance policy and describe how demonstrations using WIC and SNAP models differed in benefit take-up and impacts on food security and children's food consumption. Sites chose to deliver SEBTC using the SNAP or WIC EBT system. Within each site, in 2012, households were randomly assigned to a benefit group or a no-benefit control group. Grantees (eight states and two Indian Tribal Organizations) selected school districts serving many low-income children. Schoolchildren were eligible in cases where they had been certified for free or reduced-price meals during the school year. Before the demonstration, households in the demonstration sample had lower incomes and lower food security, on average, than households with eligible children nationally. Grantees provided selected households with benefits worth $60 per child per summer month using SNAP or WIC EBT systems. SNAP-model benefits covered most foods. WIC-model benefits could only be used for a specific package of foods. Key outcomes were children's food security (assessed using the US Department of Agriculture food security scale) and food consumption (assessed using food frequency questions). Differences in mean outcomes between the benefit and control groups measured impact, after adjusting for household characteristics. In WIC sites, benefit-group households redeemed a lower percentage of SEBTC benefits than in SNAP sites. Nonetheless, the benefit groups in both sets of sites had similar large reductions in very low food security among children, relative to no-benefit controls. Children receiving benefits consumed more healthful foods, and these impacts were larger in WIC

Understanding reading comprehension amongst Maltese speaking children.

OpenAIRE

Grech, Louisa.

2011-01-01

This thesis investigated reading comprehension levels amongst Maltese bilingual students. A total of 428 participants, aged between 8 and 13, from state schools across Malta, were tested and the results of five studies presented. The primary purpose underlying the research was to inform the development of assessment procedures that can be used in the identification of children who have specific difficulties in reading within the Maltese context. Initially, the suitability of reading comprehen...

Availability and night-time use of electronic entertainment and communication devices are associated with short sleep duration and obesity among Canadian children.

Science.gov (United States)

Chahal, H; Fung, C; Kuhle, S; Veugelers, P J

2013-02-01

What is already known about this subject Short sleep duration is a risk factor for obesity. Television (TV) in the bedroom has been shown to be associated with excess body weight in children. Children increasingly use other electronic entertainment and communication devices (EECDs) such as video games, computers, and smart phones. What this study adds Access to and night-time use of EECDs are associated with shortened sleep duration, excess body weight, poorer diet quality, and lower physical activity levels. Our findings reinforce existing recommendations pertaining to TV and Internet access by the American Academy of Pediatrics and suggest to have these expanded to restricted availability of video games and smart phones in children's bedrooms. While the prevalence of childhood obesity and access to and use of electronic entertainment and communication devices (EECDs) have increased in the past decades, no earlier study has examined their interrelationship. To examine whether night-time access to and use of EECDs are associated with sleep duration, body weights, diet quality, and physical activity of Canadian children. A representative sample of 3398 grade 5 children in Alberta, Canada, was surveyed. The survey included questions on children's lifestyles and health behaviours, the Harvard Youth/Adolescent Food Frequency questionnaire, a validated questionnaire on physical activity, and measurements of heights and weights. Random effect models were used to assess the associations of night-time access to and use of EECDs with sleep, diet quality, physical activity, and body weights. Sixty-four percent of parents reported that their child had access to one or more EECDs in their bedroom. Access to and night-time use of EECDs were associated with shortened sleep duration, excess body weight, poorer diet quality, and lower physical activity levels in a statistically significant manner. Limiting the availability of EECDs in children's bedrooms and discouraging their

Electronic Commerce

OpenAIRE

Slavko Đerić

2016-01-01

Electronic commerce can be defined in different ways. Any definition helps to understand and explain that concept as better as possible.. Electronic commerce is a set of procedures and technologies that automate the tasks of financial transactions using electronic means. Also, according to some authors, electronic commerce is defined as a new concept, which is being developed and which includes process of buying and selling or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks...

Impacting Early Childhood Teachers' Understanding of the Complexities of Place Value

Science.gov (United States)

Cady, Jo Ann; Hopkins, Theresa M.; Price, Jamie

2014-01-01

In order to help children gain a more robust understanding of place value, teachers must understand the connections and relationships among the related concepts as well as possess knowledge of how children learn early number concepts. Unfortunately, teachers' familiarity with the base-ten number system and/or lack of an understanding of…

An Analysis on Children's Rights in Stories Recommended for Children in Turkey

Science.gov (United States)

Karaman-Kepenekci, Yasemin

2010-01-01

Children's rights are legally protected benefits for children to develop physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and morally with freedom and honor in a healthy and normal way. It is important that children know the rights they have. Works of high quality children's literature ensure the socialization of children by making them understand or…

Children's understanding of advertisers' persuasive tactics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rozendaal, E.; Buijzen, M.; Valkenburg, P.

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate children’s understanding of six popular tactics used by advertisers to elicit certain advertising effects, including ad repetition, product demonstration, peer popularity appeal, humour, celebrity endorsement and premiums. We first asked 34 advertisers of

The Relation Between Emotion Understanding and Theory of Mind in Children Aged 3 to 8: The Key Role of Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ilaria Grazzani

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Although a significant body of research has investigated the relationships among children’s emotion understanding (EU, theory of mind (ToM, and language abilities. As far as we know, no study to date has been conducted with a sizeable sample of both preschool and school-age children exploring the direct effect of EU on ToM when the role of language was evaluated as a potential exogenous factor in a single comprehensive model. Participants in the current study were 389 children (age range: 37–97 months, M = 60.79 months; SD = 12.66, to whom a False-Belief understanding battery, the Test of Emotion Comprehension, and the Peabody Test were administered. Children’s EU, ToM, and language ability (receptive vocabulary were positively correlated. Furthermore, EU scores explained variability in ToM scores independently of participants’ age and gender. Finally, language was found to play a crucial role in both explaining variance in ToM scores and in mediating the relationship between EU and ToM. We discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these outcomes, particularly in relation to offering social and emotional learning programs through schools.

Children's and students' independent work in the sphere of discovering and understanding the world and in science and social studies teaching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kovačević Zorica S.

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Studies worldwide suggest that one of the key problems in education is the training of students to independently select, combine and coordinate the use of different learning strategies in an effective manner. In order for the individual to be able to adapt learning strategies to the learning context, he or she must first master them, which requires the creation of conditions that enable children and students to independently practice certain academic skills in accordance with their experience, i.e. their previously acquired skills, and the nature of the learning content. This paper presents the results of a study which sought to examine the presence prevalence, quality and character of independent work among children in the 5 to 10 age range in the sphere of discovering and understanding the world and in science and social studies teaching. A descriptive method using the research technique of systematic observation was employed. The results suggest that there is a lack of activities that can adequately support the training of children and students for independent work and learning, that activities characterized by a higher degree of autonomy decline with children's and students' age, and that the character of children's and students' independent learning activities is not appropriate to the nature of the learning content.

A Cross-Continental Study on Children's Drawings of Football Players: Implications for Understanding Key Issues and Controversies in Human Figure Drawings

Science.gov (United States)

Baluch, Bahman; Duffy, Linda J.; Badami, Rokhsareh; Pereira, Elisangela C. Ap

2017-01-01

Professionals examine various aspects of girls’ and boys’ drawings as a way of understanding their intelligence, personality and emotional state. However, the extent to which such measures could be universally generalised or attributed to a specific cultural norm is still a debatable issue. In the present study five key features of children’s drawings namely: the size (height) of the drawings, profile or full face, figure in action or static, shaded or non-shaded and the nature of additional details were examined from a cross-cultural perspective, and by providing a topic (football) for which children’s drawing of a human figure could provide opportunities for the latter indices to manifest and flourish. Children from three countries; England, Iran and Brazil, representing three continents took part in this study. The participants were asked to draw a football player from their own country and from the other participating countries. The results showed that Brazilian children differ from Iranian and English children by drawing significantly smaller figures and putting more football action in the drawings. Shading of the figure drawn was more prevalent amongst English children. Such findings have implications for the interpretation of key aspects of children's drawings in educational, clinical and therapeutic settings and from a universal vs. culturally-specific viewpoint. PMID:28904595

KAPEAN: Understanding Affective States of Children with ADHD

Science.gov (United States)

Martínez, Fernando; Barraza, Claudia; González, Nimrod; González, Juan

2016-01-01

Affective computing seeks to create computational systems that adapt content and resources according to the affective states of the users. However, the detection of the user's affection such as motivation and emotion is challenging especially when an attention problem is present. An approach to convey learning resources to children with learning…

Understanding the value of mixed methods research: the Children's Safety Initiative-Emergency Medical Services.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Matthew; O'Brien, Kerth; Meckler, Garth; Chang, Anna Marie; Guise, Jeanne-Marie

2016-07-01

Mixed methods research has significant potential to broaden the scope of emergency care and specifically emergency medical services investigation. Mixed methods studies involve the coordinated use of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to gain a fuller understanding of practice. By combining what is learnt from multiple methods, these approaches can help to characterise complex healthcare systems, identify the mechanisms of complex problems such as medical errors and understand aspects of human interaction such as communication, behaviour and team performance. Mixed methods approaches may be particularly useful for out-of-hospital care researchers because care is provided in complex systems where equipment, interpersonal interactions, societal norms, environment and other factors influence patient outcomes. The overall objectives of this paper are to (1) introduce the fundamental concepts and approaches of mixed methods research and (2) describe the interrelation and complementary features of the quantitative and qualitative components of mixed methods studies using specific examples from the Children's Safety Initiative-Emergency Medical Services (CSI-EMS), a large National Institutes of Health-funded research project conducted in the USA. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Test-retest reliability of spatial and temporal gait parameters in children with cerebral palsy as measured by an electronic walkway.

Science.gov (United States)

Sorsdahl, Anne Brit; Moe-Nilssen, Rolf; Strand, Liv Inger

2008-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine test-retest reliability of seven selected temporal and spatial gait parameters and asymmetry measures in children with cerebral palsy. Seventeen children with CP between 3 and 13 years of age walked at three different speeds across an electronic walkway of 5.2m. The tests were repeated after approximately 25 min. The scores were normalized to a walking speed of 1.1m/s to avoid the confounding effect of gait speed on speed dependent gait parameters. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC(1,1) and ICC(3,1)) with 95% confidence intervals, within-subject standard deviation (S(w)) and smallest detectable difference (SDD) were calculated. The relative reliability of cadence, step length, stride length and single stance time was high to excellent (ICC(1,1) between 0.73 and 0.95), while it was poor for step width (ICC(1,1)=0.27 and 0.35). The relative reliability for two calculated asymmetry measures were high for the step length index (ICC(1,1)=0.82) and moderate for the single stance time index (ICC(1,1)=0.49). The absolute reliability values for all gait parameters are reported. Five of seven gait parameters measured by an electronic walkway and normalized to a common walking speed, appear to be highly repeatable in a short-term time span in children with CP who were able to walk without assistive walking devices, provided sufficient cognitive function.

Perceptions of Harm to Children Exposed to Secondhand Aerosol From Electronic Vapor Products, Styles Survey, 2015.

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen, Kimberly H; Tong, Van T; Marynak, Kristy; King, Brian A

2017-05-25

The US Surgeon General has concluded that e-cigarette aerosol is not harmless and can contain harmful and potentially harmful chemicals, including nicotine. We assessed factors associated with adults' perceptions of harm related to children's exposure to secondhand aerosol from electronic vapor products (EVPs). Data came from the 2015 Styles, an Internet panel survey of US adults aged 18 years or older (n = 4,127). Respondents were asked whether they believe aerosol from other people's EVPs causes children harm. Harm perceptions were assessed overall and by cigarette smoking, EVP use, and sociodemographic characteristics. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess odds of perceived harm. Overall, 5.3% of adults responded that secondhand EVP exposure caused "no harm" to children, 39.9% responded "little harm" or "some harm," 21.5% responded "a lot of harm," and 33.3% responded "don't know." Odds of "no harm" response were greater among men than among women, current and former cigarette smokers than among never smokers, and current and former EVP users than among never users; odds were lower among non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic other races than among non-Hispanic whites. Odds of responding "don't know" were greater among men, current cigarette smokers, and current and former EVP users; odds were lower among those aged 45 to 64 years than those aged 18 to 24 years and lower among non-Hispanic other races and Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites. Two-fifths of US adults believe that children's exposure to secondhand EVP aerosol causes some or little harm, while one-third do not know whether it causes harm. Efforts are warranted to educate the public about the health risks of secondhand EVP aerosol, particularly for children.

Towards Evidence-Based Understanding of Electronic Data Sources

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chen, Lianping; Ali Babar, Muhammad; Zhang, He

2010-01-01

Identifying relevant papers from various Electronic Data Sources (EDS) is one of the key activities of conducting these kinds of studies. Hence, the selection of EDS for searching the potentially relevant papers is an important decision, which can affect a study’s coverage of relevant papers...... the two studies and that from literature to provide initial evidence-based heuristics for EDS selection....

Understanding Informal and Formal Mathematical Abilities in Mainland Chinese and Chinese-American Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Zheng; Cheng, Christine; Mottram, Lisa; Rosenblum, Stacey

Informal and formal mathematical abilities were studied in the preschool, kindergarten, and first grade children in Beijing, China and Chinese-American children in New York City. Test of Early Mathematical Abilities-2nd Edition (TEMA-2) was administered to the three groups of children (children from Beijing, Chinese-American from lower-class, and…

Understand the children's anger through tree drawing

OpenAIRE

増岡, 怜那; 高橋, 靖恵

2006-01-01

When small children (three to six years old) express their anger through inappropriate behavior or over reacting, most parents and other adults find this anger hard to deal with. That is because people see anger as a negative emotion. In actuality expressing anger can be a positive step in emotional development. In this study two kinds of tests were conducted on six years olds. The first test, [Tree drawing test] a drawing of a tree from each subject, was used to measure the individual's leve...

Electronic Market and Business: Cyberspace vs. Electronic Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Deniss Ščeulovs

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The authors of the article analyze the concept "electronic environment". Having studied a range of academic literature sources and other sources, the authors of the article have drawn a conclusion that the academic writings do not provide a definition of "electronic environment". Furthermore, the various opinions among specialists regarding this concept often differ. Meanwhile, there are several explanations of the term "cyberspace" overlapping the concept of "electronic environment", and these terms are often believed to be synonyms. To understand what the term "electronic environment" means and to properly and correctly employ this concept in entrepreneurship, the authors have performed a lexicographic analysis of this concept by comparing reciprocal concepts. As a result of the research, the authors propose their view on what, in their opinion, "electronic environment" is and what its connection to the concept "cyberspace" is. The topicality of the article lies in the fact that often entrepreneurs and specialists of public and other institutions, when using these terms, imply completely different concepts. It can lead to misunderstanding and misinterpreting the information, as well as to encumbering the understanding of tasks, problems, etc.

Understanding Impulsivity among Children with Specific Learning Disabilities in Inclusion Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Dababneh, Kholoud Adeeb; Al-Zboon, Eman K.

2018-01-01

Impulsive behavior is a characteristic of children with specific learning disabilities (SLD), and is related to learning ability. The present study aims to identify impulsivity behavior in children with SLD who attend inclusion schools, from their resource room teachers' perspectives. A 31-item questionnaire that addressed four subscales was…

Chinese approaches to understanding and building resilience in at-risk children and adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Tak-Yan; Shek, Daniel T L; Kwong, Wai-Man

2007-04-01

This article discusses the prevailing Chinese belief systems that have bearings on the perception and practices of promoting resilience among children and youth in a major city in China. It briefly describes a huge social intervention program entitled "Understanding the Adolescent Project" to combat the problems among grade 7 students identified as adolescents at risk from 2001 to 2004 in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. A critical review of the problems encountered by social workers in the delivery of the program is presented to support the move to provide the preventive program for grade 4 students with clinical symptoms on a screening tool for identification of at-risk status. Starting in 2005, a large-scale positive youth development program was being developed for all secondary one to three (grades 7 to 9) students. Encouraging results of the evaluation studies demonstrated the effectiveness of this new preventive program, entitled Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programs.

Children's understanding of facial expression of emotion: II. Drawing of emotion-faces.

Science.gov (United States)

Missaghi-Lakshman, M; Whissell, C

1991-06-01

67 children from Grades 2, 4, and 7 drew faces representing the emotional expressions of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness. The children themselves and 29 adults later decoded the drawings in an emotion-recognition task. Children were the more accurate decoders, and their accuracy and the accuracy of adults increased significantly for judgments of 7th-grade drawings. The emotions happy and sad were most accurately decoded. There were no significant differences associated with sex. In their drawings, children utilized a symbol system that seems to be based on a highlighting or exaggeration of features of the innately governed facial expression of emotion.

Introduction to Electronics course

CERN Multimedia

CERN. Geneva HR-RFA

2006-01-01

Electronics in HEP experiments: specificities and evolution The Art of Electronics: is there something beyond Ohm's law? Basic building blocks of Analog electronics: quickly understanding a schematic Charge preamps, current preamps and future preamps, shaping and the rest Electronics noise: fundamental and practical Evolution of technology: ASICs, FPGAs...

‘Daddy ran out of tadpoles’: how parents tell their children that they are donor conceived, and what their 7-year-olds understand

Science.gov (United States)

Blake, L.; Casey, P.; Readings, J.; Jadva, V.; Golombok, S.

2010-01-01

BACKGROUND The present study explored the process of disclosure in gamete donation families in the UK. METHODS Interviews were conducted with 23 mothers and 15 fathers who had told their 7-year-old child about the nature of their conception. Twelve children were interviewed about what they understood and how they felt about their donor conception (DC). RESULTS The majority of families had disclosed by the age of four and mothers were found to be the main disclosers. Although some parents expressed concerns about the disclosure, the majority did not experience difficulties. No child responded to disclosure in a negative way. Seven-year-old children showed little understanding of their DC, despite parents starting the process of disclosure before the age of four. CONCLUSIONS In spite of mothers' concerns about disclosing DC to their children, children responded to disclosure in a neutral way and most parents did not find disclosure to be problematic. PMID:20719810

Danish children´s upbringing as consumers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Flemming; Nielsen, Jens Carsten

2004-01-01

The paper describes Danish 5-18 year olds children's situation in year 2000 based on TNSGallup'squantitative annual children- and youth index. The focus is on the following topics:Children's economy and saving ability, children and the emerging electronic world, brandawareness, transaction...... knowledge and shopping, media use and, interest and activities.KeywordsChildren's consumption, children's money spending, children's purchasing, children'sinterest and activities...

Understanding the dynamics of parent involvement in schooling ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Erna Kinsey

A qualitative study was undertaken to understand the realities and dynamics facing parents when attempting to be ... programmatic efforts for promoting children's adjustment and com- ... then conducted with six parents of two community-based support .... included in important issues regarding the education of their children.

Mental Models and other Misconceptions in Children's Understanding of the Earth

Science.gov (United States)

Panagiotaki, Georgia; Nobes, Gavin; Potton, Anita

2009-01-01

This study investigated the claim (e.g., Vosniadou & Brewer's, 1992) that children have naive ''mental models'' of the earth and believe, for example, that the earth is flat or hollow. It tested the proposal that children appear to have these misconceptions because they find the researchers' tasks and questions to be confusing and ambiguous.…

Siblings' Understanding of Learning Disability: A Longitudinal Study

Science.gov (United States)

Hames, Annette

2008-01-01

Background: There is very little research on how and when siblings understand that they have a brother or sister with a learning disability. Research regarding young children's understanding of intelligence, suggests that they may not develop a clear understanding of ability until about 7 years of age. Method: Through interviewing parents and then…

Deaf children's use of clear visual cues in mindreading.

Science.gov (United States)

Hao, Jian; Su, Yanjie

2014-11-01

Previous studies show that typically developing 4-year old children can understand other people's false beliefs but that deaf children of hearing families have difficulty in understanding false beliefs until the age of approximately 13. Because false beliefs are implicit mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues in standard false belief tasks, the present study examines the hypothesis that the deaf children's developmental delay in understanding false beliefs may reflect their difficulty in understanding a spectrum of mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues. Nine- to 13-year-old deaf children of hearing families and 4-6-year-old typically developing children completed false belief tasks and emotion recognition tasks under different cue conditions. The results indicated that after controlling for the effect of the children's language abilities, the deaf children inferred other people's false beliefs as accurately as the typically developing children when other people's false beliefs were clearly expressed through their eye-gaze direction. However, the deaf children performed worse than the typically developing children when asked to infer false beliefs with ambiguous or no eye-gaze cues. Moreover, the deaf children were capable of recognizing other people's emotions that were clearly conveyed by their facial or body expressions. The results suggest that although theory-based or simulation-based mental state understanding is typical of hearing children's theory of mind mechanism, for deaf children of hearing families, clear cue-based mental state understanding may be their specific theory of mind mechanism. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge

Science.gov (United States)

Nelson, Jackie A.; de Lucca Freitas, Lia Beatriz; O’Brien, Marion; Calkins, Susan D.; Leerkes, Esther M.; Marcovitch, Stuart

2016-01-01

Developmental precursors to children’s early understanding of gratitude were examined. A diverse group of 263 children were tested for emotion and mental state knowledge at ages 3 and 4, and their understanding of gratitude was measured at age 5. Children varied widely in their understanding of gratitude, but most understood some aspects of gratitude-eliciting situations. A model-building path analysis approach was used to examine longitudinal relations among early emotion and mental state knowledge and later understanding of gratitude. Children with a better early understanding of emotions and mental states understand more about gratitude. Mental state knowledge at age 4 mediated the relation between emotion knowledge at age 3 and gratitude understanding at age 5. The current study contributes to the scant literature on the early emergence of children’s understanding of gratitude. PMID:23331105

Understanding the Importance of Context: A Qualitative Study of a Location-Based Exergame to Enhance School Childrens Physical Activity.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Judy Robertson

Full Text Available Many public health interventions are less effective than expected in 'real life settings', yet little work is undertaken to understand the reasons why. The effectiveness of complex public health interventions can often be traced back to a robust programme theory (how and why an intervention brings about a change in outcome(s and assumptions that are made about the context in which it is implemented. Understanding whether effectiveness (or lack thereof is due to the intervention or the context is hugely helpful in decisions about whether to a modify the intervention; b modify the context; c stop providing the intervention. Exergames-also known as Active Video Games or AVGS-are video games which use the player's bodily movements as input and have potential to increase physical activity in children. However, the results of a recent pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT of a location-based exergame (FitQuest in a school setting were inconclusive; no significant effect was detected for any of the outcome measures. The aim of this study was to explore whether the programme theory for FitQuest was correct with respect to how and why it would change children's perceptions of physical activity (PA and exercise self-efficacy in the school setting. A further aim was to investigate the features of the school setting (context that may impact on FitQuest's implementation and effectiveness. Qualitative data (gathered during the RCT were gathered from interviews with teachers and children, and observation of sessions using FitQuest. Thematic analysis indicated that whilst children enjoyed playing the game, engaged with goal setting within the game context and undertook low to vigorous physical activity, there were significant contextual factors that prevented it from being played as often as intended. These included environmental factors (e.g. size of the playground, school factors (cancellations due to other activities, school technology policy (rules

Understanding the Importance of Context: A Qualitative Study of a Location-Based Exergame to Enhance School Childrens Physical Activity.

Science.gov (United States)

Robertson, Judy; Jepson, Ruth; Macvean, Andrew; Gray, Stuart

2016-01-01

Many public health interventions are less effective than expected in 'real life settings', yet little work is undertaken to understand the reasons why. The effectiveness of complex public health interventions can often be traced back to a robust programme theory (how and why an intervention brings about a change in outcome(s)) and assumptions that are made about the context in which it is implemented. Understanding whether effectiveness (or lack thereof) is due to the intervention or the context is hugely helpful in decisions about whether to a) modify the intervention; b) modify the context; c) stop providing the intervention. Exergames-also known as Active Video Games or AVGS-are video games which use the player's bodily movements as input and have potential to increase physical activity in children. However, the results of a recent pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a location-based exergame (FitQuest) in a school setting were inconclusive; no significant effect was detected for any of the outcome measures. The aim of this study was to explore whether the programme theory for FitQuest was correct with respect to how and why it would change children's perceptions of physical activity (PA) and exercise self-efficacy in the school setting. A further aim was to investigate the features of the school setting (context) that may impact on FitQuest's implementation and effectiveness. Qualitative data (gathered during the RCT) were gathered from interviews with teachers and children, and observation of sessions using FitQuest. Thematic analysis indicated that whilst children enjoyed playing the game, engaged with goal setting within the game context and undertook low to vigorous physical activity, there were significant contextual factors that prevented it from being played as often as intended. These included environmental factors (e.g. size of the playground), school factors (cancellations due to other activities), school technology policy (rules relating to

Comparison of Sedentary Behaviors between Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Typically Developing Children

Science.gov (United States)

Must, Aviva; Phillips, Sarah M.; Curtin, Carol; Anderson, Sarah E.; Maslin, Melissa; Lividini, Keith; Bandini, Linda G.

2014-01-01

Time spent in sedentary behavior is largely due to time spent engaged with electronic screen media. Little is known about the extent to which sedentary behaviors for children with autism spectrum disorder differ from typically developing children. We used parental report to assess and compare time spent in sedentary behaviors for 53 children with…

The Child as Econometrician : A Rational Model of Preference Understanding in Children

OpenAIRE

Lucas, Christopher G.; Griffiths, Thomas L.; Xu, Fei; Fawcett, Christine; Gopnik, Alison; Kushnir, Tamar; Markson, Lori; Hu, Jane

2014-01-01

Recent work has shown that young children can learn about preferences by observing the choices and emotional reactions of other people, but there is no unified account of how this learning occurs. We show that a rational model, built on ideas from economics and computer science, explains the behavior of children in several experiments, and offers new predictions as well. First, we demonstrate that when children use statistical information to learn about preferences, their inferences match the...

On Being in the Wrong Place: The Role of Children's Conceptual Understanding and Ballgame Experience When Judging a Football Player's Offside Position

Science.gov (United States)

Lange-Küttner, Christiane; Bosco, Giorgia

2016-01-01

We investigated the role of children's conceptual understanding and ballgame experience when judging whether a football player is in an offside position, or not. In the offside position, a player takes advantage of being behind the defence line of the opposing team and just waits for the ball to arrive in order to score a goal. We explained the…

Children Writing Stories

Science.gov (United States)

Armstrong, Michael

2006-01-01

In this book, the author reveals the creative force of children's narrative imagination and shows how this develops through childhood. He provides a new and powerful understanding of the significance of narrative for children's intellectual growth and for learning and teaching. The book explores a series of real stories written by children between…

Effect of minimal/mild hearing loss on children's speech understanding in a simulated classroom.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Dawna E; Valente, Daniel L; Spalding, Jody L

2015-01-01

While classroom acoustics can affect educational performance for all students, the impact for children with minimal/mild hearing loss (MMHL) may be greater than for children with normal hearing (NH). The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of MMHL on children's speech recognition comprehension and looking behavior in a simulated classroom environment. It was hypothesized that children with MMHL would perform similarly to their peers with NH on the speech recognition task but would perform more poorly on the comprehension task. Children with MMHL also were expected to look toward talkers more often than children with NH. Eighteen children with MMHL and 18 age-matched children with NH participated. In a simulated classroom environment, children listened to lines from an elementary-age-appropriate play read by a teacher and four students reproduced over LCD monitors and loudspeakers located around the listener. A gyroscopic headtracking device was used to monitor looking behavior during the task. At the end of the play, comprehension was assessed by asking a series of 18 factual questions. Children also were asked to repeat 50 meaningful sentences with three key words each presented audio-only by a single talker either from the loudspeaker at 0 degree azimuth or randomly from the five loudspeakers. Both children with NH and those with MMHL performed at or near ceiling on the sentence recognition task. For the comprehension task, children with MMHL performed more poorly than those with NH. Assessment of looking behavior indicated that both groups of children looked at talkers while they were speaking less than 50% of the time. In addition, the pattern of overall looking behaviors suggested that, compared with older children with NH, a larger portion of older children with MMHL may demonstrate looking behaviors similar to younger children with or without MMHL. The results of this study demonstrate that, under realistic acoustic conditions, it is difficult to