Mindfulness and the Effectiveness in the Classroom

The research in this paper analyzed the effectiveness of implementing mindfulness in a public classroom. The participants for the Capstone Project included 28 fourth-grade students in a public elementary school located on California’s Central Coast. The researcher implemented lesson plans that included body awareness and breathing techniques that are effective scaffoldings to implementing mindfulness in the classroom. The results produced, showed half of the students felt the mindfulness lessons helped the students understand how to use mindfulness, while the other half of the classroom did not. The students evaluated unanimously believe that mindfulness is an effective tool that should be implemented into the classroom. The researcher has assessed that the use of mindfulness in the classroom helps students assess and manage their emotions in stressful situations.The researcher could use this Capstone Project to help her future students assess and manage their emotions

Adaptive Body Gesture Representation for Automatic Emotion Recognition

We present a computational model and a system for the automated recognition of emotions starting from full-body movement. Three-dimensional motion data of full-body movements are obtained either from professional optical motion-capture systems (Qualisys) or from low-cost RGB-D sensors (Kinect and Kinect2). A number of features are then automatically extracted at different levels, from kinematics of a single joint to more global expressive features inspired by psychology and humanistic theories (e.g., contraction index, fluidity, and impulsiveness). An abstraction layer based on dictionary learning further processes these movement features to increase the model generality and to deal with intraclass variability, noise, and incomplete information characterizing emotion expression in human movement. The resulting feature vector is the input for a classifier performing real-time automatic emotion recognition based on linear support vector machines. The recognition performance of the proposed model is presented and discussed, including the tradeoff between precision of the tracking measures (we compare the Kinect RGB-D sensor and the Qualisys motion-capture system) versus dimension of the training dataset. The resulting model and system have been successfully applied in the development of serious games for helping autistic children learn to recognize and express emotions by means of their full-body movement

Evidence-based practice in cognitive-behavioural therapy

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is a practical, goal-focused approach that helps children understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The aim is to identify the dysfunctional and distorted cognitions associated with their psychological problems and to create more functional and balanced cognitive patterns that create less emotional distress and more helpful behaviours. CBT has strong evidence as an effective intervention for children and adolescents with emotional problems. The benefits for children with physical health and chronic conditions appear promising, although further research is required to substantiate these gains. </p

Focusing on Friendship: Online Supported Activities for Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum

A core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is social skills differences. Social skills groups have received support as an intervention that fosters social skills of those with ASD. However, there is limited information about the use of telehealth-based social skills groups. The proposed ASD adolescent social group design is formatted for telehealth services, and has been conducted virtually since 2020. This ASD social group program features unique virtual teaching and recreational activity curriculum as well as some program evaluation data methods and responses from participants

A study to determine the effects of a speech communication course in junior high on an adolescent\u27s self concept

Human behavior is a reflection of the many attitudes, beliefs, values, and cognitive processes of the individual. It has been theorized that self concept, or the way a person perceives his self image, acts as an integral force in directing many of those behaviors.1 According to research by Brownfain, a person with a high regard for self, or a positive self concept, exhibits more socially acceptable behaviors. Conversely, when a person has a low regard for self a variety of maladjusted and neurotic behaviors are displayed. 2 A conclusion of research concerning behavior and self concept may be summarized: . . . individuals derive their feelings about self from their interaction with others. Consequently, the link between self concept and actual behavior is a strong one. 3 The relationship between self concept and behaviors may be examined further by studying the development of self concept. Such development occurs primarily in the early years of ian individualfs life

Enhancing Emotional Competencies with Law Students

Research was conducted at the University of Newcastle Legal Centre (Australia) over 2013 and 2014 involving an emotional intelligence training module designed to improve the emotional competencies of law students on placement in a legal centre working with real clients. An earlier paper (Wardhaugh & James, IJCLE 2014) described the project and preliminary findings of Stage One. This paper provides the findings and ultimate conclusions of Stage Two. Overall the statistical analysis of variance between Stage One (control group in 2013) and Stage Two (intervention group in 2014) was not significant, the qualitative results from Stage Two produced valuable insights into enhancing professional development by leveraging the student experience of interviewing real clients in a clinic setting. Overall learnings from the project are discussed, including suggestions for further researc

Enhancing emotional competencies with law students

Research was conducted at the University of Newcastle Legal Centre (Australia) over 2013 and 2014 involving an emotional intelligence training module designed to improve the emotional competencies of law students on placement in a legal centre working with real clients. An earlier paper (Wardhaugh &amp; James, IJCLE 2014) described the project and preliminary findings of Stage One. This paper provides the findings and ultimate conclusions of Stage Two. Overall the statistical analysis of variance between Stage One (control group in 2013) and Stage Two (intervention group in 2014) was not significant, the qualitative results from Stage Two produced valuable insights into enhancing professional development by leveraging the student experience of interviewing real clients in a clinic setting. Overall learnings from the project are discussed, including suggestions for further research