Preschool Oral Narrative Retell Intervention: A Contextualized Approach

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a contextualized, explicit narrative intervention on oral narrative retell skills in typically developing preschoolers as a means for fostering the development of narrative structure, story comprehension, and narrative retell skills. Participants were recruited from the Childhood Development Laboratory preschool classrooms located in Buzzard Hall at Eastern Illinois University. Prior to intervention, participants\u27 core receptive and expressive language abilities were assessed using the Comprehensive Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool-2nd Edition (CELF-P-2), and oral narrative retells were analyzed for narrative complexity using the Test of Narrative Retell-Preschool Edition (TNR-P). The six weeks of narrative intervention consisted of explicit story grammar instruction and narrative retell practice. Participants\u27 oral narrative retells were reassessed using the TNR-P at week three, week six, and five weeks post intervention. The results of the study indicated that participants who received the experimental instruction demonstrated significant gains on narrative retell scores concluding the six-week intervention while their control group counterparts demonstrated no gains in narrative retell abilities. Likewise, experimental group participants demonstrated significantly higher skill maintenance five weeks post intervention compared to control group counterparts. Interestingly, participants\u27 core language abilities were inversely related to their TNR-P scores at baseline, while baseline sentence recall skills demonstrated a positive, linear relationship with narrative performance at the conclusion of intervention

Preschool Oral Narrative Retell Intervention: A Contextualized Approach

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a contextualized, explicit narrative intervention on oral narrative retell skills in typically developing preschoolers as a means for fostering the development of narrative structure, story comprehension, and narrative retell skills. Participants were recruited from the Childhood Development Laboratory preschool classrooms located in Buzzard Hall at Eastern Illinois University. Prior to intervention, participants\u27 core receptive and expressive language abilities were assessed using the Comprehensive Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool-2nd Edition (CELF-P-2), and oral narrative retells were analyzed for narrative complexity using the Test of Narrative Retell-Preschool Edition (TNR-P). The six weeks of narrative intervention consisted of explicit story grammar instruction and narrative retell practice. Participants\u27 oral narrative retells were reassessed using the TNR-P at week three, week six, and five weeks post intervention. The results of the study indicated that participants who received the experimental instruction demonstrated significant gains on narrative retell scores concluding the six-week intervention while their control group counterparts demonstrated no gains in narrative retell abilities. Likewise, experimental group participants demonstrated significantly higher skill maintenance five weeks post intervention compared to control group counterparts. Interestingly, participants\u27 core language abilities were inversely related to their TNR-P scores at baseline, while baseline sentence recall skills demonstrated a positive, linear relationship with narrative performance at the conclusion of intervention

Blurred (Identity) Lines: A Content Analysis of the #deleteuber Crisis on Twitter

Social media have established a growing prevalence and influence in social change, in political movements, and as vehicles for messages related to crisis. The movement #deleteuber demonstrated this growing trend. Using quantitative content analysis, 2,000 tweets posted on Twitter were analyzed in the 2 weeks following the incident to measure how media framing may impact organizational identity. Findings reveal that users on Twitter largely framed the crisis as political, opinionated, and episodic in nature. Additionally, users most commonly associated the crisis with the organization as a collective rather than with the CEO as an individual responsible for actions prompting the crisis, thus blurring the demarcation between personal and organizational identity in online spaces

Injustice perceptions about pain: parent–child discordance is associated with worse functional outcomes

Pain is experienced within and influenced by social environments. For children with chronic pain, the child–parent relationship and parental beliefs about pain are particularly important and may influence pain outcomes. Pain-related injustice perceptions have recently been identified as an important cognitive–emotional factor for children with pain. The current study aimed to better understand the pain-related injustice perceptions of children with chronic pain and their parents. The sample consisted of 253 pediatric chronic pain patients (mean age = 14.1 years, 74% female) presenting to a tertiary pain clinic. Patients completed measures of pain intensity, pain-related injustice perceptions, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. Parents completed a measure of pain-related injustice perceptions about their child's pain. Child–parent dyads were categorized into 1 of 4 categories based on the degree of concordance or discordance between their scores on the injustice measures. One-way analysis of variances examined differences in pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life across the 4 dyad categories. Our findings indicated that both the degree (concordant vs discordant) and direction (discordant low child–high parent vs discordant high child–low parent) of similarity between child and parent injustice perceptions were associated with child-reported pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. The poorest outcomes were reported when children considered their pain as highly unjust, but their parents did not. These findings highlight the important role of parents in the context of pain-related injustice perceptions in pediatric chronic pain

Pain intensity and attribution mediate the impact of patient weight and gender on activity recommendations for chronic pain

Background and purpose: Despite the notable benefits of physical activity for chronic pain, a large proportion of patients with chronic pain report that they do not receive activity-related recommendations from their providers. Research suggests that patient factors such as weight and gender influence activity-related recommendations for chronic pain. Research also suggests that appraisals of the intensity and cause of pain may explain these weight and gender effects. We investigated the influence of patient weight and gender on observers' likelihood of recommending activity-related treatments for pain. We also explored the mediating effects of observers' ratings of pain severity and the extent to which pain was due to medical and lifestyle factors (pain attribution). Patients and methods: Healthy young adults (N=616; 76% female) viewed videos (Ghent Pain Videos of Daily Activities) and vignettes of 4 patients with chronic back pain performing a standardized functional task. Patients varied by gender (female, male) and weight (normal, obese), but were otherwise equivalent on demographic characteristics and pain behaviors. Participants rated how much pain they perceived the patients to be experiencing, the extent to which they attributed the pain to medical and lifestyle factors, and their likelihood of recommending exercise, physical therapy (PT), and rest. Results: Patient weight and gender significantly interacted to influence exercise, PT, and rest recommendations. Both pain intensity and pain attribution mediated the relationships between patient weight and activity recommendations; however, these mediation effects differed across gender and recommendation type. Conclusion: Patient weight and gender influenced laypeople's activity recommendations for chronic pain. Moreover, the results suggest that observers' perceptions of pain intensity and pain attributions are mechanisms underlying these effects. If these findings are replicated in providers, interventions may need to be developed to reduce provider biases and increase their recognition of the benefits of physical activity for chronic pain

Vision Coach: Effects of Standing Versus Sitting on Visual Reaction Times

Assessment and intervention tools for occupational therapy practice must be evidence-based for appropriate use and include normative data with healthy adults. The overall goal of this research was to collect normative data on healthy adults' visual reaction time when completing the full field 60 light task on a novel device, the Vision Coach. The specific research question in this study was to determine if a change in body positioning in regards to person's base of support will affect a person's reaction time. We hypothesized that reaction times would be significantly different in the positions of standing versus sitting. Reaction times from 121 healthy adults, ages ranging from 21-79 years, were collected. Participants completed eight trials total, four trials in a standing position, and four trials in a sitting position. There were no significant differences on the factors of body position, gender, height, and wingspan on the averaged visual reaction times. The implication is that clients can be standing or sitting for use of the tool and therapists have normative data available for usage. This research also provides foundational data for further studies on the Vision Coach apparatus as well baseline criteria for the process of standardization of the Vision Coach. Future studies will need to address the limitation of learning to determine the number of practice trials required in both positions