Court Appointed Special Mentor (CASMs) Instructional Manual

One hundred and twenty-five foster youth enrolled in CASA of Monterey County agency are not receiving the advocacy they need. As a result, the creation of the Instructional Manual within the department of the Court Appointed Special Mentor (CASM) was implemented. The Instructional Manual is a strategic educational project that will provide interns, especially CASMs, with simple and thorough guided information that can assist them with unanswered questions. Moreover, it will provide everyone within the agency with consistently communicated instructions on how to perform essential tasks for their job duties. In other words, it will standardize workplace practices, especially related to critical files that contain important information about foster youths’ chances of obtaining an advocate. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the Instructional Manual, first, CASMs must demonstrate an understanding of how to navigate the agency’s database “CASA Tracker.” Second, CASMs must adhere to the check list of responsibilities and expectations form, and complete the case file report. Third, all the essential information must be updated in the selected foster youths’ files. Lastly, data was collected and analyzed to determine its effectiveness. After three months of implementation, the number of foster youth on the wait list decreased from 125 to 93 foster youth. Thus, it was recommended that CASA of Monterey County agency should continue implementing the Instructional Manual as it is an important tool for the agency’s CASMs, but most importantly, for the foster youth who are on the wait list whom they serve

Pupillary Stroop effects

We recorded the pupil diameters of participants performing the words’ color-naming Stroop task (i.e., naming the color of a word that names a color). Non-color words were used as baseline to firmly establish the effects of semantic relatedness induced by color word distractors. We replicated the classic Stroop effects of color congruency and color incongruency with pupillary diameter recordings: relative to non-color words, pupil diameters increased for color distractors that differed from color responses, while they reduced for color distractors that were identical to color responses. Analyses of the time courses of pupil responses revealed further differences between color-congruent and color-incongruent distractors, with the latter inducing a steep increase of pupil size and the former a relatively lower increase. Consistent with previous findings that have demonstrated that pupil size increases as task demands rise, the present results indicate that pupillometry is a robust measure of Stroop interference, and it represents a valuable addition to the cognitive scientist’s toolbox