Effect of Movement Activities on Student Engagement: A Handbook of Movement Activities for Elementary Teachers

A handbook has been developed to aid teachers in the incorporation of movement activities in the elementary classroom. The activities can be done between lessons or between long periods of focus. The activities will help to gain attention and engagement of students. The activities in the handbook are to be used as a supplement to any existing elementary curriculum. The handbook consists of seventy-eight activities that may be used in a variety of classroom settings. Current literature and research surrounding the topics of engagement, stimulation, retention, and the importance of movement for adolescents were explored

Emotional Expression Management and Social Acceptance in Childhood: Ability, Strategy, and Gender.

The present study was designed to examine the relationship between children\u27s ability to manage emotional expressions and peer acceptance. Specifically, using a mild mood induction paradigm, children between the ages of 8- to 10-years were instructed to neutralize and dissemble genuinely negative emotions. Children\u27s ability to effectively manage their negative emotional expressions was then examined with respect to gender differences and in relation to peer acceptance ratings. Results indicated that girls were significantly better than boys at substituting positive expressions for genuine negative ones, were marginally worse than boys at neutralizing negative expressions, and overall were significantly more expressively positive than boys. With respect to social acceptance, findings revealed that the ability to neutralize negative expressions was significantly related to overall acceptance ratings for boys. For girls, the ability to substitute positive expressions for genuinely negative ones was significantly related to peer acceptance as rated only by girls. Taken together, these results support the general hypothesis that the ability to manage emotional expressions is an important component in children\u27s social functioning

The assessment of reflective and behavioral social cognitive problem solving skills in well-liked, aggressive, and withdrawn children

Recent research suggests that children\u27s ability to solve interpersonal problems is related to their social adjustment. As children are continually confronted with personal and interpersonal problems which they must solve in order to maintain positive peer relations, the study and promotion of effective problem solving skills is of great importance. The aim of the present study was to assess children\u27s responses to hypothetical problem situations as well as to assess their overt behavioral responses in a simulated problem situation. Children were classified as socially effective (well-liked) and socially ineffective (withdrawn and aggressive) on the basis of peer and teacher ratings and nominations. Children then responded to six hypothetical stories describing an interpersonal problem (three involving a peer conflict and three involving the initiation of an interaction with a peer) and participated in two simulated real-life behavioral problem situations which mirrored two of the hypothetical stories. The results suggest some correspondence between hypothetical and behavioral indices of social problem solving skill. Withdrawn males generated fewer alternatives to both hypothetical and behavioral situations, and offered more non-confrontative intention statements to peer initiation stories than did other children. In contrast, aggressive males were found to differ from other children in the proportion of aggressive intention statements offered and in the proportion of aggressive acts produced in the peer conflict situation. Suggestions for future modifications and replications of the present research are made and implications for designing intervention programs are offered

Juror Perceptions Of Child Witness Testimonial Aids

The goal of the present study is to assess the affect testimonial supports have on mock jurors’ perceptions of child witnesses in a sexual abuse case. In general jurors’ perceptions operate on a two-factor model. The two factors are child competency and honesty. Jurors perceive children’s competency and honesty differently based on the child’s age and the mock juror’s gender. Testimonial supports have been suggested as a way to relieve some of the stress that a trial brings on a child. However, this seems to exacerbate the negative perceptions jurors already hold of child witnesses. The current juror perceptions of child witness credibility when emotional support animals were used as a testimonial aid. Participants read one of six interviews of a child sexual abuse victim that varied the testimonial aid and child witness age. They then answered questionnaires to indicate their perception of the child’s credibility and the verdict they would render in the case. Overall, there were no differences in child witness credibility across the three testimonial aids. However, the defendant in the cases where the child used emotional support animal was more likely to be found guilty than the defendant in the hearsay condition. Participants also rated 4 year olds as more credible across all three dimensions: cognitive ability, suggestibility, and honesty. These findings are contrary to past research findings and limitations and implications are discussed

Mutuality and intimacy in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal boys\u27 friendship relations

The present study explored both the frequency and patterns of affective expression, play duration, and communicative exchange among dyads of boys diagnosed with ADHD with their friend. As expected, few significant differences between the two groups were revealed through frequency analyses, but interesting findings resulted from the examination of the patterns of behaviors (through sequential analyses). Overall, the results supported the hypothesis of less mutuality and intimacy in the friendships of boys diagnosed with ADHD. The boys in the ADHD/friend dyads were found to spend more time in nonassociative play during free-play and to be less likely to return to positive interaction after a shift to nonassociative play. In addition, the communicative exchange of the children in the AD HD/friend dyads was marked by marginally more conflict than was the communication between the normal/friend dyads. The patterns of communicative exchange revealed fewer shifts to reinforcement and personal information exchange by the ADHD children in their dyads, as well as overall fewer friend responses and more consecutive attention-directing shifts in the ADHD/friend dyads. Thus, as evidenced by these behaviors, it appears that the friendships of boys diagnosed with ADHD may be characterized by less mutuality and less intimacy than the friendships of normal control boys

The effects of differential exposure to stories on second language discourse skills of pre-primary children

Linguistics and Modern LanguagesM.A. (Linguistics

Do Programs Designed To Train Working Memory, Other Executive Functions, And Attention Benefit Children With Adhd? A Meta-analytic Review Of Cognitive, Academic, And Behavioral Outcomes

Children with ADHD are characterized frequently as possessing underdeveloped executive functions and sustained attentional abilities, and recent commercial claims suggest that computer-based cognitive training can remediate these impairments and provide significant and lasting improvement in their attention, impulse control, social functioning, academic performance, and complex reasoning skills. The present review critically evaluates these claims through meta-analysis of 25 studies of facilitative intervention training (i.e., cognitive training) for children with ADHD. Random effects models corrected for publication bias and sampling error revealed that studies training short-term memory alone resulted in moderate magnitude improvements in short-term memory (d= 0.63), whereas training attention did not significantly improve attention and training mixed executive functions did not significantly improve the targeted executive functions (both nonsignificant: 95% confidence intervals include 0.0). Far transfer effects of cognitive training on academic functioning, blinded ratings of behavior (both nonsignificant), and cognitive tests (d= 0.14) were nonsignificant or negligible. Unblinded raters (d= 0.48) reported significantly larger benefits relative to blinded raters and objective tests (both p \u3c .05), indicating the likelihood of Hawthorne effects. Critical examination of training targets revealed incongruence with empirical evidence regarding the specific executive functions that are (a) most impaired in ADHD, and (b) functionally related to the behavioral and academic outcomes these training programs are intended to ameliorate. Collectively, meta-analytic results indicate that claims regarding the academic, behavioral, and cognitive benefits associated with extant cognitive training programs are unsupported in ADHD. The methodological limitations of the current evidence base, however, leaves open the possibility that cognitive training techniques iv designed to improve empirically documented executive function deficits may benefit children with ADHD

Iowa Monograph: Current Issues in Behavior Disorders-1982, 1982

The purpose of the Iowa Monograph Series is to provide a forum for the exploration of topics which are, in the opinion of the editors, relevant to the needs of direct service persons working with and for students with behavioral disorders. This particular monograph presents a selection of papers dealing with current issues in this area of special education from both theoretical and applied perspectives