School Psychology

Autism Caught On Tape -- Computer Scientists Use Technology To Help Children With Autism

2009-09-02T13:58:00.001-04:00

ScienceDaily -- Computer scientists have devised two tools to help people interact with autistic children. Videotaping interactions allows teachers or parents to replay situations and evaluate the cause of particularly good or bad behavior. Cataloging actual data, rather relying on memory or interpretation, proves to be a more accurate measure of a situation.

How Schools, Parents Can Work Together For Successful Kids

2009-09-02T13:55:00.001-04:00

ScienceDaily (2009-08-18) -- It is widely understood that, ideally, schools and parents should work together to ensure that children can succeed as students and citizens. But what is the right balance? And how much do teachers want parents involved in the classroom? A new study identifies ways that schools and communities can work with parents to give children the greatest chance of success.

Overt and covert behavior

2008-02-24T19:25:00.003-05:00

The term "behavior" has been misrepresented and misinterpretted by many in the school psychology field, including proponents as well as opponents of behavior analysis. Proponents have used the term too loosely, while opponents have used a bit of a warped definition to attack the field.

Furthermore, school psychologists as well as behavior analysts have also taken a very narrow view of the definition of behavior.

According to Cooper, Heron, and Heward (2007), in order for a phenomeonm to be considered a behavior, we need to have several conditions:

there must be a part of the organism which is moving.
there must be a change in the environment as a result of this movement.

With this, it is easy to see that throwing a desk or completion of homework are behaviors. However, some individuals in the field develop behavior plans based on the lack of a behavior, such as "not doing homework" and "not throwing a desk as targets or goals of behavior plans.

That is not going to work.

You need to target behaviors constantly. You may want to reduce certain behaviors or increase other ones, but you want to target behaviors or to set behaviors as goals - not non-behaviors.

Let's look at reading, something that is often not considered to be a behavior. While reading, there is movement of the lips, tongue, and vocal chords. After the behavior is done, there is a transformation of the sound waves in the environment, which informs us that we have had a behavior occur.

Ahh, someone would say - that only counts if the person is reading out loud. What if the person is reading silently.

Yes, it is sticky, but not unmanageable. If one is reading silently, thinking, feeling mad, or examining a beautiful painting, there are neurotransimtters which are being released and activating neurons. After the neurosynaptic reaction the brain is different than what it was prior to starting the behavior. Therefore, these activities qualify as a behavior.

Overt behaviors are those that anyone can observe, while covert behaviors are those that only the organism can examine.

More on this after a bit....

Rehab

2007-07-26T09:59:00.000-04:00

There was an interesting article on the CNN website that lamented that Lohan and Spears were making a "mockery" of the entire rehab process.

Did it really take a strung out actress and a singer past her prime to do that?

Not that I feel bad for them, but really - how much of this is the fact that two good-looking girls are going all out and crazy as opposed to two guys?

There is hardly a tree in the New York suburb of Suffolk that has not been crashed into by a car owned by Bily Joel. And hardly a drug that Robert Downing Jr. has not used to excess.

I wonder about rehab. Does it really work? Are there studies out there that allow us to examine the efficacy and effectiveness of the most commonly used procedures in drug and alcohol treatment? Alcoholics Anonymous does not allow for independent research to examine these aspects of their treatment.

Furthermore, any individual who does question AA is often sent for re-training (at least here in New York). These re-training sessions are similar to the re-education camps that Mao Zedong sent those who opposed the Communist party.

At its core, rehab attempts to stop behaviors, and gives very few skills to replace behaviors. I mean, seriously, does playing squash really take the place of a good drink? (see the ads of TV and in our schools: "Do sports, don't drink").

Rehab is in essence a bunch of DRA procedures- a differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors. People are reinforced for playing ping pong as opposed to drinking or smoking pot.

The problem is that you can do both at the same time. Hey - just look at Sunday softball games - they are designed so you can drink and play at the same time. And Keith Hernandez, legendary baseball player of the 80's used to pop into the dugout between innings to down a cold and snort a line or two.

The issue which people in the rehab treatment community don't really get is that there is really nothing out there which is as reinforcing as drugs or alcohol. There is nothing really that can replace it.

Maybe it might be better to help these people change their environment, permanently. Rehab is a place that these people use which (to borrow a word from the field) "enables" these people. It changes their environment temporarily, allows people to feel falsely secure in this new environment, and discourages people from actually making changes.

It does, however, allow these people to talk about the changes that they want to make. But talking isnt doing.

So, when we blame Brittney Spears or Lindsay Lohan for "making a mockery" of rehab, consider that maybe the intervention of rehab is flawed. Where is the evidence?

B.F. Skinner quotes

2007-07-26T01:01:00.000-04:00

I came across a few quotes here and there from BF Skinner:

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.

Albert Ellis (1913 - 2007)

2007-07-26T00:38:00.000-04:00

June 25, 2007

The founder of rational emotive behavior therapy, Albert Ellis, died Tuesday at the age of 93 following an extended illness. His work and theories provided the basis for what is today known as rational-emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) a form of cognitive behavior therapy, which has become an effective treatment approach for many different disorders.

His straight talk approach to cognitive therapy, with an underlying focus on general principles was groundbreaking in its day; in contrast today, many counselors apply many of his theories and therapeutic principles in therapeutic situations. It is interesting to note that while Ellis's ideas were initially met with resistance within the psychological community, a 1982 survey of clinical psychologists ranked Ellis as the second most influential therapist (behind Carl Rogers and ahead of Sigmund Freud).

Where the Freudians maintained that a painstaking exploration of childhood experience was critical to understanding neurosis and curing it, Dr. Ellis believed in short-term therapy that called on patients to focus on what was happening in their lives at the moment and to take immediate action to change their behavior. “Neurosis,” he said, was “just a high-class word for whining.” He was also quoted as saying, “the trouble with most therapy is that it helps you to feel better,” he said in a 2004 article in The New York Times. “But you don’t get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.”

His basic message was that all people are born with a tendency to distort everyday perceptions that sabotage their ultimate quest for happiness. But he recognized that people also had the capacity to change themselves. The role of therapists according to REBT is to intervene directly, using strategies and homework exercises to help patients first learn to accept themselves as they are (unconditional self-acceptance, he called it) and then to retrain themselves to avoid destructive emotions — to "establish new ways of being and behaving,” as he put it.

In 2005, Ellis became involved in legal disputes with the institute that he had founded after he was removed from its board and his weekly Friday seminars were canceled. While he was reinstated last year after a judge ruled that he had been wrongly removed, his relationship with the institute remained strained.

Girls' Rumination on Problems Actually Causes Depression

2007-07-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

Amanda Rose, in an study published in the July issue of Development Psychology has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed (Prospective Associations of Co-Rumination With Friendship and Emotional Adjustment: Considering the Socioemotional Trade-Offs of Co-rumination)

The six-month study, which included boys and girls, examined the effects of co-rumination - excessively talking with friends about problems and concerns. Rose discovered that girls co-ruminate more than boys, especially in adolescence, and that girls who co-ruminated the most in the fall of the school year were most likely to be more depressed and anxious by the spring.

When girls co-ruminate, they're spending such a high percentage of their time dwelling on problems and concerns that it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds. Those are symptoms of depression. In terms of anxiety, co-ruminating likely makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences. Co-rumination also may lead to depression and anxiety because it takes so much time - time that could be used to engage in other, more positive activities that could help distract youth from their problems. This is especially true for problems that girls can't control, such as whether a particular boy likes them, or whether they get invited to a party that all of the popular kids are attending.

The study involved 813 third, fifth, seventh and ninth grade students. The participants answered questionnaires that assessed co-rumination, depression, anxiety and the quality of their best friendship in the fall and spring of the school year.

Ironically, although co-rumination was related to increased depression and anxiety, Rose also found that co-rumination was associated with positive friendship quality, including feelings of closeness between friends. Boys who co-ruminated also developed closer friendships across the school year but did not develop greater depressive and anxiety symptoms over time.

What's intriguing about theses findings is that co-rumination likely represents too much of a good thing. Some kids, especially girls, are taking talking about problems to an extreme. When that happens, the balance tips, and talking about problems with friends can become emotionally unhealthy. Rose recommended adolescents should be encouraged to talk about their problems, but only in moderation and without co-ruminating.

This is an interesting study for several reasons. The most important is that it calls into question the utility of individual therapy for children (especially girls). If it can lead to further depression and anxiety, is it an ethical thing to do? Talking about the problem may be useful up to a degree and then it may become too dangerous.

Therapy effectiveness and efficacy studies point to activities that will engage the body as well as active solution focused therapy as better methods of dealing with these issues.

Overweight Children Face Stigma

2007-07-13T20:35:00.000-04:00

The July issue of Psych Bulletin has an article which indicates that overweight children are teased by their peers as early as age 3. They face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes. Children who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.

Even with a growing percentage of overweight people, the stigma shows no signs of subsiding, due to the fact that television and other media continue to reinforce negative stereotypes.

Children as young as 3 are more likely to consider overweight peers to be mean, stupid, ugly and sloppy. A growing body of research shows that parents and educators are also biased against heavy children. In a 1999 study of 115 middle and high school teachers, 20 percent said they believed obese people are untidy, less likely to succeed and more emotional.

Video Game Addiction

2007-06-24T07:12:00.000-04:00

The AMA has held discussions recently as to whether or not "video game addiction" is a viable psychiatric condition.

According to the report prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, based on a review of scientific literature, “dependence-like behaviors are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages.” Overuse most often occurs with online role-playing games involving multiple players, the report says.

World of Warcraft (WOW) is among the most popular. Other games include Second Life.

This is, I believe, an important step to dealing with this issue, however, we need to look at other issues to help children get out of the house to play and socialize more. Labelling another addiction in children is another way of blaming children, when what is really at fault is the environment (i.e., our society

Emailing without tears: Best Practices for School Psychologists in the Use of Email

2007-06-23T18:52:00.000-04:00

It is a testament to the power of the Internet that there have been several books recently released which deal with the issue of “email etiquette”. There was once a time when email was a novelty, but now, it is currently a part of our common practice as school psychologists. And since email is an important feature of our practice, we should try to develop some general guidelines to ensure that all people who read them understand the emails that we send.

People seem to consider email as a hybrid of many other forms of communication. To some people, emailing is similar to the act of writing.

However, most people can type faster than they can write, and they may compare emailing to the act of speaking, an activity that for many of us is effortless. This is unfortunately a wrong comparison – when a person speaks, he or she can correct herself if the listener misunderstands them, since it is a “real time” activity. In contrast, emailing is not in “real time”; in fact, the receiver may read an email in 5 minutes or 5 days.

This fundamental assumption of email is critical: the process of email is more similar to writing a letter than it is to speaking. In contrast, most people treat it more like speaking rather than writing a letter.

As such, there are certain steps you should take in order to ensure that your email is clear and easily understood by your receiver. Here are some other general guidelines:

Your email should be longer than a few words and way shorter than a novel. Too many people may write emails that read, “OK” or “Me too” vs. “Thank you for the invitation. Of course I will attend the meeting”. Also, emails are not the forums for novels. Always assume that the person you will write to will receive hundreds of emails in one day, so keep your message as short and sweet and to the point as possible.
Use punctuation. But use it sparingly and only when necessary. There is a spectrum of tendencies that this guideline refers to: Some people include an overabundance of punctuation (especially exclamations), while others seem to forget everything about punctuation once they sit in front of a computer.
Spell-check before you send it out. Spellchecking an email before it is sent out is not just a matter of common courtesy, but will help ensure that the receiver will understand your message.
Try to not use too much formatting. Many emails include lists of points, (e.g., agendas, talking points for meetings, etc.) A good rule of thumb is that if you need to include a list that targets more than four points, it may be better to include your list as a document attachment (i.e., an MS Word or WordPerfect document). Some modes of accessing email do not allow for an easy display of list formatting. For example, many people access email from their telephones; lists often come up with garbled characters.
Make sure you are aware of who you are responding to. All to often a sender sends an email to a group of people, and one receiver may inadvertedly respond to the entire group, when in fact that receiver may have wanted to respond to the original sender. This is also the case with listservs. Prior to getting trigger-happy with the send button, review which address or addresses you are sending the email to.
To Cc or not to Bcc. That is the question. There are three ways to receive an email. The sender may send it To you, Cc the message to you (Cc = “carbon copy”) or they may Bcc the message to you (Bcc = “blind carbon copy”).

Sounds simple, right? Well, no, not really. First, there are users who have no idea that the Cc exists. When you receive an email, every address that the message was sent To or Cc’ed to shows up in one column, so it is hard for the receiver to know who the message was intended for, who the sender thought it might be a good idea to provide FYI (For Your Information). In cases such as this the receivers have no clue as to who should take action so either they all do something or they all do nothing. Prior to the Cc’ing people, take a good look at the people on your list – do they truly need to know about this message? If not, then get rid of them. People already receive too many emails so try to be polite and limit their work.

Bcc is an even murkier problem. The addresses in the Bcc are like Cc except that the addresses in To and Cc do not know that the addresses in the Bcc are included in the conversation. The To and Cc' addresses are blind to the Bcc addresses. Consider the problems that Bcc can engender and try to not use it; some may even consider it unethical.

Put a signature on it. Never, ever, ever assume that the receiver knows who you are. Even if your email address is your name. At the very least, your signature for each and every email should include:

• Your name
• Your title (M.S., M.S.Ed., Ph.D., etc.)
• Your position (School Psychologist, Director, etc.)
• Your affiliation (university, district, agency, etc.)

Most email programs allow you to set a standard default signature.

Try to minimize your use of abbreviations. Abbreviations are rampant on the Internet. But not everyone knows what these abbreviations mean. Please be polite to your receiver and explain what your abbreviations mean when you are using them. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusing people.

Here is a list of some of the more commonly used abbreviations on the Internet.

BTW by the way
FYI for your information
IMHO in my humble opinion
LOL lots of laughs
ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing
TTYL talk to you later

Keep the formatting of your email as simple as possible. Some email programs such as America Online or Outlook allow you to customize the look of your emails by providing a background or additional characters in the email when it is sent out. In general, this is an inconvenience for many individuals, who may need to spend a good deal of time downloading extra files in order to read your email.
Respect the thread. We have all had the opportunity to exchange a flurry of emails with one particular colleague when planning some type of activity. A “thread” is a series of emails that share the same subject or topic name. Most email services will organize these emails into an easily cohesive group that can be accessed.

Should someone email you with the subject line, “Meeting on Monday” , when you answer, you should open that email and simply respond. Many people will create a brand new subject in order to respond. Not only is that time consuming to you the sender, but also there is a risk that the receiver will view this email as a totally different issue, and may not deal with the message effectively.

Anger Management. The use of caps indicates that someone is angry about something. Avoid them, unless you are really angry. “I can’t make the meeting,” means that the person cannot attend, while “I CAN’T MAKE THE MEETING,” means that the person cannot attend and s/he is angry at some slight to the schedule.
If it comes from your work email address, then it comes from work. Consider this situation. A professional is at home at 9 pm, and send an email to a parent who is having problems with her child. This professional recommends something to the parent. That recommendation is coming from the office, despite the fact that the sender may have been at home, late at night. Every email that you receive or send from your work address is considered work-related; as such, it can be placed in a student’s permanent record or subpoenaed in a court of law. Please consider that before you run to send out an email.

For more information, please consult the following -

Websites:

http://www.iwillfollow.com/email.htm
http://www.emailreplies.com/

Books:

Miller, S. (2001). E-Mail Etiquette: Do's, Don'ts and Disaster Tales from People Magazine's Internet Manners Expert. Warner Books.

Steele, J. (2006). Email: The Manual: Everything You Should Know About Email Etiquette, Policies and Legal Liability Before You Hit Send. Marion Street Press.

Self-Efficacy

2007-05-03T15:43:00.000-04:00

According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (1995, p.
2).

In other words, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura described these beliefs as determinants of how people think, behave, and feel (1994).

Since Bandura published his seminal 1977 paper, "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change," the subject has become one of the most studied topics in psychology. Why has self-efficacy become such an important topic among psychologists and educators? As Bandura and other researchers have demonstrated, self-efficacy can have an impact on everything from psychological states to behavior to motivation.

The Role of Self-Efficacy

Virtually all people can identify goals they want to accomplish, things they would like to change, and things they would like to achieve. However, most people also realize that putting these plans into action is not quite so simple. Bandura and others have found that an individual’s self-efficacy plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy:

View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered.
Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate.
Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities.
Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments.

People with a weak sense of self-efficacy:

Avoid challenging tasks.
Believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities.
Focus on personal failings and negative outcomes.
Quickly lose confidence in personal abilities (Bandura, 1994).

How does self-efficacy develop?

These beliefs begin to form in early childhood as children deal with a wide variety of experiences, tasks, and situations. However, the growth of self-efficacy does not end during youth, but continues to evolve throughout life as people acquire new skills, experiences, and understanding (Bandura, 1992).

According to Bandura, there are four major sources of self-efficacy.

1. Mastery Experiences“The most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences,” Bandura explained (1994). Performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. However, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy.

2. Social Modeling Witnessing other people successfully completing a task is another important source of self-efficacy. According to Bandura, “Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers' beliefs that they too possess the capabilities master comparable activities to succeed” (1994).

3. Social Persuasion Bandura also asserted that people could be persuaded to belief that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. Consider a time when someone said something positive and encouraging that helped you achieve a goal. Getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and instead focus on giving their best effort to the task at hand.

4. Psychological Responses Our own responses and emotional reactions to situations also play an important role in self-efficacy. Moods, emotional states, physical reactions, and stress levels can all impact how a person feels about their personal abilities in a particular situation. A person who becomes extremely nervous before speaking in public may develop a weak sense of self-efficacy in these situations.

However, Bandura also notes "it is not the sheer intensity of emotional and physical reactions that is important but rather how they are perceived and interpreted" (1994). By learning how to minimize stress and elevate mood when facing difficult or challenging tasks, people can improve their sense of self-efficacy.

Family upheaval causes stress induced physical probelms in adoelscents

2007-04-23T00:46:00.000-04:00

A study in the journal Developmental Psychology, says family turmoil and violence causes stress-induced physical problems in adolescents.

The presence of a responsive, supportive mother, however, appears to reduce the negative physiological changes. This study is the first to look at how maternal responsiveness may protect against cumulative risk.

The findings suggest the physiological toll of coping with multiple stress events is significantly greater than with that of coping with a single event.

The researchers used an index called "allostatic load" to measure stress-induced changes in neuroendocrine hormonal systems, cardiovascular responses and metabolism, which indicate the severity of wear and tear on organs and tissues, the university said.

Further Work on Abnormal Face Processing in Children with Autism

2007-04-23T00:34:00.000-04:00

Katarzyna Chawarska, Frederick Shic, Ami Klin and Fred Volkmar are due to present a paper at the International Meeting for Autism Research May 3-5 in Seattle, Washington. Their paper will focus on previous findings regarding face recongition in children with autism as well as new research as well.

Toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulty focusing on people's faces and making eye contact, but these researchers found that these same toddlers do not have difficulty looking at photographs of faces.
They also found that toddlers with ASD spend most of the time examining the eyes. This is a surprising finding, given that avoiding eye contact is one of the classic hallmarks of autism.
The results suggest that pictures of faces and eyes are, by themselves, neither inherently unattractive nor inherently aversive to toddlers with ASD. Therefore, the limited attention to faces and eyes observed in natural settings may be due to the fact that faces don't stand out to them as much as other objects in the environment.
There also may be heightened arousal related to the complex social and perceptual context in which faces usually occur.
The study examined visual scanning patterns and recognition of faces and abstract patterns in toddlers. The data were collected through an eye-tracking system.
When given time to familiarize with a picture of a face, both groups spent more time looking at the outside features of the face, such as the hair, ears and the neck compared to the their typically developing peers.
The researchers postulated that toddlers with disabilities were having a harder time encoding information regarding facial identity because they were simply looking less at facial features, which are of greatest help in extracting this type of information.
Those toddlers with ASD who adopted a pattern of looking at faces which closely resembled the pattern of typical toddlers, were less socially impaired and were also better at face recognition
While typical and developmentally delayed toddlers move quickly between various inner elements of the face, scanning rapidly between the left and right eye, toddlers with ASD tend to look longer at specific facial features than other children, which might signify an idiosyncratic approach to face processing specific to ASD in early development.

Follow-up to yesterday's post

2007-04-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press reports that across America, college counseling centers are strained by rising numbers of mentally ill students and surging demand for mental health services - a challenging trend as campus officials try to identify potential threats like the unstable Virginia Tech gunman.

And even when serious emotional problems are detected, university officials often feel constrained in how they respond due to an array of laws and policies protecting students' rights and privacy.

Reasons for the surge include the Americans with Disabilities Act, which gives mentally ill students the right to be at college, and increasingly sophisticated medications which enable them to function better than in the past.

A survey last year by the American College Health Association found that 8.5 percent of students had seriously considered suicide, and 15 percent were diagnosed for depression, up from 10 percent in 2000. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America found that 13 percent of students at major universities and 25 percent at liberal arts colleges are using campus mental health services.

On the downside, she and her colleagues see stress levels among students far higher than a generation ago due to increased workloads and financial strains, often coupled with lack of healthy lifestyles.

Complicating the overall picture is a web of laws and policies that limit the options for worried staff members. Troubled students generally can't be forced to obtain treatment, and privacy laws may limit sharing information about them, even to the extent that some parents have sued schools - including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Oregon Institute of Technology - for not advising them of their children's serious disorders.

Nonetheless, officials on many campuses have set up committees to pool information about students with emotional or behavioral problems so patterns can be detected in what might otherwise be seen as isolated incidents. The trick, officials say, is to find the proper balance between respecting a student's rights and protecting the university.

I wonder if President Bush's committees will recommend monies to help universities deal with the problem as opposed to blaming state organizations and universities...

VA Tech shootings

2007-04-21T02:14:00.000-04:00

President Bush has asked the Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services to conduct a "review of broader questions raised by this tragedy" says a Reuters report.

What exactly that means is quite murky. More money to schools and university to treat these issues? More legislation? More paperwork for psychologists and counselors on campuses?

There is already some chatter on some news services and blogs that the shooter was diagnosed with Autism when his family immigrated from South Korea to the United States. Maybe the question should be: will the government fund social skills training for bilingual children with disabilities?

Handouts are available at the New York Association of School Psychologists website: www.nyasp.org

Dreams are random firings of neurons

2007-04-17T15:35:00.000-04:00

the about.com site has a featured article today regarding Freud and his dreams.

Let's get a few things straight:

The interpretation of dreams has no reliability or validity as an assessment or intervention technique
Dreams are just random firings of neurons.

Our brains operate on a constructivist model, where it seeks out to organize disparate events and happenings into a coherent whole. See for example many of the conspiracy theories from JFK to a second shooter in the VA Tech shooting.

So, if someone is made to visualize certain people and hear certain voices in their sleep due to random firingsof neurons, the brain will seek to organize it into a whole, a story, a gestalt. The story is for all intents and purposes, meaningless.

Puerto Rico's students not reading or performing math at grade level

2007-04-14T13:19:00.000-04:00

A press release from the Dept. of Education indicates that students in Puerto Rico are not at grade level.

This is an interesting press release as it is not simply patting the Dept.'s back, but giving itself a good self- analysis and self-criticism.

http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/03/03292007a.html

School Based Abstinence Programs Don't Work

2007-04-14T13:13:00.000-04:00

The AP reports that students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not. These results are based on a study ordered by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes that were reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex at about the same age as other students -- 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don't believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement.

Congress identified Mathematica, a survey group to study the issue. They did a follow up survey in late 2005 and early 2006, after students in different cities had been exposed to abstinence programs. Mathematica found that about half of the abstinence students and about half from the control group reported that they remained abstinent.

So do we really need to waste our money

NASP conference, day 1

2007-03-27T12:40:00.000-04:00

Sorry about not being around for the last few days - I have been finishing up on my FBA project (more on that to come).

This morning I attending two conferences.

The first "Clarifying the Timing and Co-Occurance of Academic and Behvioral Problems" was an interesting set of studies generated by an NIMH grant. (Symposium 010). Most interesting was the causal relationship demonstrated in their path analyses between academic achievement in the 1st grade and depression in junior high school.

The second, was also interesting: "The Development of a System Intervention Program" by Chryse Haztichristou, Panayiota Dimitropoulou, Aikaterini Lampropoulou, and Konstantina Lykitsakou from the University of Athens. I was heartened to see school psychology at work in Greece, despite governmental incompetence. The prevention program they demonstrated was organic in nature as they drew from previous cultural patterns (e.g., the Olympics and fairy tales) and combined them with psychological principles to develop a great Greek intervention.

Social Networking Sites Help to Ease Transition from High School to College

2007-03-21T20:40:00.000-04:00

Another interesting article from the New York Times today - it appears that sites like www.myspace.com, www.friendster.com and www.friendbook.com are all helping the transition to college.

Apparently, many students who are applying to have been accepted to new universities are joing online groups to meet people who are already there or who will shortly get there.

Pretty interesting stuff....

I guess that technology is not such a bad thing after all....

When should school districts pay for private special education?

2007-03-21T14:55:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran an interesting article about a case to appear in front of the Supreme Court.

Tom Freston, the former chief executive of Viacom, the company that runs MTV and Comedy Central is worth $85 million. In 1997, his son, then 8, was found to be lagging in reading. The NYCDOE offered his son a coveted spot in the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education, a competitive school on the Upper East Side that also has classes for students with moderate disabilities. He would have been placed in a classroom with 15 students, and given speech and language therapy.

Freston chose to place his child in the Stephen Gaynor School on the Upper West Side, where students, in Gaynor’s language, display “learning differences.” While the city is required by federal law to pay for private programs for disabled children when it cannot provide appropriate programs, city officials said the Lab program was suitable for Mr. Freston’s son and wanted him to try it. After two years of reimbursing the Frestons for a large part of the private school tuition, the city stopped.

Now Freston wants his due.

Although the Supreme Court will hear this particular case, it has implications which are far-ranging. The real question is: Do school districts have to pay for private school for disabled children if the families refuse to try out public programs?

The answer should not be an over-powering "yes" or "no"; the Supreme Court would do well to decide this case in a narrow judgement. That is to say, they should decide whether the city owes Freston the money or not, but should go on to state that each case must be decided independently.

Let me indicate some points. There is no evidence that the program that the city offered was bad or inappropriate to the Freston's son's learning needs. Therefore, I truly think that the Frestons should have attempted a trial run of approximately 3 months before making the decision to switch over (that could have been a good time to use many of the tracking programs that are out there such as Aimsweb or DIBELS).

However, I see that many programs that Local Educational Agencies (LEA's) offer are often staffed by poorly trained teachers, with little or no support to deal with special educational issues. I have gone in to see many programs that deal with children with autism which are so inappropriate. In these instances, it is necessary that parents DO NOT take the chance to enroll their children in those programs.

Sexism in education

2007-03-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

I think that this is an interesting article found on the BBC education website which touches on the issue of how British society has focused on behavior bordering on discrimination when looking at males in education.

I've experienced a lot of that from subtle suggestions that I probably should not work with young children (by administrators) to overt suggestions that I need to keep the door to my office open when I administer routine assessments of intelligence and achievement to female students.

2007-03-20T15:22:00.000-04:00

Bereaved Children Of 9/11 Victims Suffered High Rates Of Psychiatric Illness

The rate of psychiatric illness among children who lost a parent in the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack doubled -- from about 32 to nearly 73 percent -- in the years following the event, according to a new study in the journal Biological Psychiatry. The study was conducted by researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

More than half (56.8 percent) of the young children studied suffered from some sort of anxiety disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which affected nearly three in 10 bereaved children.

Some highlights:

More than half (56.8 percent) of the young children studied suffered from some sort of anxiety disorder
3 out of 10 children in this bereaved groups were positive for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
heightened activity of the brain's "stress-response system" in many children who lost a parent on 9/11

Continued activation of this system can lead to long-term hypersensitivity to stress as adults and even impact on bone health, since the stress hormone cortisol can harm bone.

PTSD rates were 10 times that seen in non-bereaved children
27.3 percent of bereaved youngsters suffered from separation anxiety, double the rate seen in non-bereaved youngsters
25 percent experienced generalized anxiety, double the rate seen in non-bereaved youngsters
rates of simple phobias in bereaved children was also double that of non-bereaved children (13.6 percent vs. 5.9 percent).
rates of major depressive disorder in bereaved children was twice that of non-bereaved children -- 13.6 percent compared to 5.9 percent, respectively
the researchers conducted saliva analysis and idenitfied elevated cortisol levels in many bereaved children throughout the two-year study. That suggests that the HPA axis remained switched on at a relatively high level

chronic HPA activation in childhood may make individuals hypersensitive to stressors throughout their lifespan. Chronically elevated cortisol levels can also negatively impact bone health and boost risks for insulin-related dysfunction.

Why is CHC Theory Not Accepted by Mainstream Media?

2007-03-19T20:00:00.001-04:00

I was going through a few online things, and stumbled upon the about:psychology site. I checked the Theories of Intelligence page. This page (and site) is targeted to laypersons and is by no means a substitute for psychology training.

Curiously absent is CHC Theory. CHC (which stands for Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory after the three theorists which have helped to advance it) is a topic which I have not blogged about for a while, but I have actually had several discussions about why CHC as a theory of intelligence (or cognitive abilities) is not more widespread.

It is important to promote CHC Theory as it has demonstrated the most reliability and validity when compared to other intelligence theories. This is an important fact in the age of "evidence-based" practices. It also operates on an almost "open-source" model in which it is open to a vast amount of people who seem to research small tracts of the theory in order to add to the collective whole (by the way, this is actually the way that science needs to work).

For those of you who have attempted to read up on CHC theory, you will be the first to agree that there are few, if any primers on the theory. There are no websites with snippets of information on the theory, what it is all about, and how it might be applied.

Why not? Let me know.

Shameless plug for book

2007-03-18T21:33:00.000-04:00

Well - here's a shameless plug for the book which has my first chapter -

Handbook of Cognitive-Behavior Group Therapy with Children and Adolescents: Specific Settings and Presenting Problems edited by: Ray W. Christner, Jessica L. Stewart, Arthur Freeman

Check it out....

How is fear learned?

2007-03-18T21:19:00.000-04:00

An article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience indicates that that the neural processes associated with the development of fear are the same whether humans personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it.

The study shows that the amygdala, which is known to be critical to the acquisition and expression of fears from personal experience, is also involved during the acquisition and expression of fears obtained indirectly through social observation.

Previous research has shown how people develop fears after first-hand experience of an aversive event—getting stung by a bee or being burned by a hot pan. In acquiring these fears, a process known as fear conditioning, the brain’s amygdala plays a critical role.

However, it’s unclear if fear conditioning can occur indirectly—that is, through social observation with no personal experience. It is also uncertain what neural processes take place in the acquisition of fears stemming from events or circumstances not experienced first-hand.
In this study, subjects witnessed a short video of another individual participating in a fear-conditioning experiment. In the video, subjects saw another person responding with distress when receiving mild electric shocks paired with a colored square.The subjects watching the video were then told they would take part in an experiment similar to the one they just viewed.

Unlike the experiment in the video, these subjects never received shocks.

The results showed that the participants had a robust fear response when they were presented with the colored square that predicted electric shocks in the video, indicating that such a response resulted from merely observing—rather than directly experiencing—an aversive event.

In addition, using brain imaging techniques, the researchers found that the amydgala response was equivalent with both when watching others receive a shock and when presented with the colored square that was previously paired with shock in the video. This finding demonstrates that similar neural systems are engaged when fears are learned through first-hand experience or by merely observing others.

The knowledge of somebody else’s emotional state may evoke empathic responses. However, as our results reveal, when others’ emotions are accompanied with vivid expressions and perceived as potentially relevant to our own future well being, we may engage additional learning mechanisms.

In a way, learning by observing others’ emotional responses is like exploiting their expertise without being directly exposed to the potential risks associated with the direct learning. This seems a very adaptive thing to do for most social animals, which could explain why it is commonly seen across species. However, it remains to be explored in what way uniquely human social abilities contribute to learning fears through social observation.

2007-03-12T14:37:00.000-04:00

Dr. Grohol in his interesting blog has put up a post regarding the validity of diagnoses vis-a-vis projective assessment.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/03/12/when-the-diagnosis-is-part-of-the-problem-the-boston-globe/

Phonics is good, no matter what you say...

2007-03-10T15:22:00.000-05:00

There was an article which cam out yesterday (3/9/07) in the New York Times (click the title for the link) highlighting the phonics-whole language debates.

I think that this is silly.

Children taught with a phonics approach are at an advantage when they are asked to perform tasks sch as fluency and comprehension. Additionally, phonics instruction also benefits comprehension as shown by the Comprehensive Leadership Program

As can be seen, there significant comprehension benefits to phonics instruction.

As I have made my point previously when discussing evidence based interventions for children with autism, not providing children with evidence based interventions amounts to educational neglect and some of the worst violations of social justice.

People in the article cited improvements using techniques that are not evidence based - however, their data are based on one district's one-year improvement - even after they changed their method of assessment (they changed their test).

Click here for the National Reading Panel's video entitled Teaching Children to Read. Although one may purchase it, it is available for free as a streaming download - just scroll down.

Eating disorder education programs are really harmful

2007-03-10T14:47:00.000-05:00

A new article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders suggests that teaching teenagers about eating disorders can make them more knowledgeable about the problem, but it may also make them more likely to engage in eating disorders behaviors.

Yale University researchers found that when they presented female high school students with videos on eating disorders, it met the intended goal of boosting their knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.

However, the team saw that the students didn't necessarily find the results of eating disorders unappealing. Teens who watched a video featuring a woman recovering from an eating disorder became more likely to view girls with eating disorders as "very pretty," and some thought it would be "nice to look like" the woman in the video.

The findings suggest that more research should go into the unintended effects of eating disorder education before such programs are widely used, the researchers conclude in their article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Marlene B. Schwartz (the principal investigator) suggested that having an attractive, articulate woman talk about her eating disorder could inadvertently "glamorize" the condition.

376 female high school students viewed one of two videos on eating disorders.
Both videos were the same, except for the "presenter." In one video, the presenter was a young woman identified as a doctor, who told the story of a typical eating disorder patient; in the other, the woman was a "recovered eating disorder patient" who described her personal experience.
The students completed questionnaires before and after the video.
Overall, the study found, both videos increased the girls' knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.
Regardless of which video they saw, the girls were more likely to say afterward that "it's not that hard" to recover from an eating disorder. They were also more likely to believe girls with eating disorders have "strong" personalities.
Girls who viewed the video featuring the eating disorder patient were particularly likely to see women with anorexia or bulimia in a positive light.

Some of the discussions of the article suggested that instead of targeting "anti-eating disorders" programs, schools should address eating disorders by promoting healthy eating, exercise and positive body image, and discouraging "weight bias" and teasing based on physical appearance.

In general, I think that this is a correct view to espouse. In essence, by developing eating disorders prevention videos, we are focusing on the elimination of behaviors (or future behaviors) without teaching new behaviors.

Media influence varies accoring to ethnicity

2007-03-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

An article in theMarch issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine indicates that white teenagers are more likely than black adolescents to start smoking after high exposure to R-rated movies and minimal restrictions on television viewing.

I wonder how the effects of youtube and myspace also affect the issue as well.

Researchers suggest that since the majority of actors are white, the behavioral impact does not transport to black adolescents because they do not identify with the characters.

Past research has suggested that all U.S. adolescents, regardless of race, have a higher risk of initiating smoking as their exposure to smoking in the media increases. In 2002, smoking was portrayed in 90 percent of PG- and PG-13–rated movies, and in 100 percent of R-rated movies, according to background information provided by the authors.

The article goes on to say that about 20 percent of episodes of popular, non-educational prime-time television programs depict tobacco use, and pro-smoking portrayals outnumber anti-smoking portrayals by a ratio of 10 to 1.

Christine Jackson, Ph.D., from Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Chapel Hill, N.C., and colleagues interviewed 735 12- to 14-year-old adolescents from 14 public middle schools in the southeastern United States.

About equal proportions of the students were black and white, male and female, and none smoked at the beginning of the study. In the fall of 2001, the students were asked which of 93 popular films shown in theaters from 2001 to 2002 they had seen, how often they watched television, and whether their parents had rules about the types of television shows they watched.

At a follow-up interview in 2004, they were asked about their smoking behavior.
White adolescents with high exposure to R-rated movies were nearly seven times more likely to start smoking compared with those who had low exposure. Even after adjusting for other risk factors such as having a friend who smokes, lack of parental involvement and poor academic performance, those who watched more R-rated movies were still three times more likely to start smoking. White adolescents who had access to unsupervised television viewing were also more likely to start smoking.

However, in black adolescents, there was no association between risky media-watching habits and smoking initiation; those with higher exposure to R-rated movies and a private television were just as likely to start smoking as those with lower exposure.

The reasons for an association between media exposure to smoking and smoking behavior present in white adolescents but not black adolescents are not known. The researchers suggest the “transportation theory” as one possible explanation.

This theory speculates that the impact of a media type on an audience depends on that audience’s involvement in that media type. It has been shown that black adolescents identify better with black rather than white characters in the media. The researchers note that it may be the case that television and movies, in which the majority of actors are white, are less influential on their smoking behavior compared to white adolescents.

Criticism of Piaget

2007-03-06T15:53:00.000-05:00

I've often been surprised at how much people in education(and laypersons as well) take for granted that Jean Piaget's work may be false. Although we question many aspects of our lives, such as religion, politics, even the decision to vaccinate children against viruses and cancers, we often do not question "big names" in psychology.

Well, we should.

I'm not going to go into the intricacies of Piaget's theory. If you are interested, you should reference the Wikipedia article on his life and work. However, in general, Piaget's theory indicates that children progress intellectually through four stages of development: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operations and Formal Operations. At each one of these levels, Piaget posited, there were different challenges that the child needed to deal with. He also indicated that unless the child mastered the tasks in the one stage, he or she could not master the tasks in other stages.

There are problems that are inherent in all theories which posit "stages" of development. Development does not occur in discrete stages - it occurs whenever the environment places increased demands and/or provides less support to the individual. In our society, it simply appears that we all tend to place these demands on children at around the same time - this makes it appear that we are witnessing "stages" of development.

Zimmerman conducted a series of various studies beginning around the 1960's and up until today demonstrating that if the environment placed certain demands, then children would surpass what was expected of them.

Here are some other studies:

Baillargeon et al. (1985). Infants could identify, to a reasonable degree, events which violated the laws of physics, even though, Piaget noted that infants at the "sensorimotor" stage could not do so.

Das Gupta & Bryant (1988). Children were able to follow simple transformations, even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

Hughes (1978). Children were able to take the perspective of multiple people even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

Light, Buckingham & Robbins (1979). When children were taught to pay attention to the concrete properties of an event (e.g., pouring liquids into different sized beakers), then they were able to do so, even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

McCarrigle (1978). When given discrete instruction about the super-ordinate and sub-ordinate categories, children were able to classify information effectively.

Piaget was instrumental in getting people to think about children as individuals who are developing. However, children develop in radically different ways. Assessments of intelligence (WISC-IV) appreciate this as these children tend to go through items as much as possible. There is no cap on how much a child can or cannot do on a particular set of items.

Severe stress harmful to children's brain

2007-03-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

A study conducted by researchers at the Standford School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Hospital found that severe stress can affect children's brain development, according to U.S. researchers. Although this finding had been replicated previously with animals, this was the first study of its kind conducted with children.

Children with PTSD and high levels of cortisol (a stress hormone released by the adrenal glands) were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus, a brain structure important in memory processing and emotion.

The children in the study were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as a result of undergoing physical, emotional or sexual abuse, witnessing violence or experiencing lasting separation and loss. This type of developmental trauma often impairs the child's ability to reach social, emotional and academic milestones.

The researchers studied 15 children from age 7 to 13 suffering from PTSD. They measured the volume of the hippocampus at the beginning and end of the 12- to 18-month study period.
After correcting for gender and for physiological maturity, they found that kids with more severe PTSD symptoms and higher bedtime cortisol levels (another marker of stress) at the start of the study were more likely to have reductions in their hippocampal volumes at the end of the study than their less-affected, but still traumatized peers.

The researchers speculated that cognitive deficits arising from stress hormones interfere with psychiatric therapy and prolong symptoms.

Children predisposed by genetics or environment to be more anxious than their peers are also more likely to develop PTSD in response to emotional trauma, perhaps because their responses to other life experiences simply left them closer to that threshold than less-anxious children, according to the study to be published in the March issue of Pediatrics.

Pizza Hut reading program - no way man.

2007-03-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

Since 1985, that's been the gist of Pizza Hut's Book It, an incentive program used by 50,000 schools nationwide to reward young readers with free pizzas. The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.

Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

This week, Linn's organization called on parents to end their schools' participation in the long-standing program.

Though some activists have previously questioned Book It, Linn said Friday that only after the recent upsurge of concern over child obesity and junk food did her group feel it could make headway with a formal protest campaign. She said many schools are trying to reduce students' access to soda, and contended that Book It should face similar scrutiny.

But the program -- which has given away more than 200 million pizzas -- has deep roots and many admirers at the highest levels of politics and education. It won a citation in 1988 from President Reagan, and its advisory board includes representatives of prominent education groups, including teachers unions and the American Library Association.

Dallas-based Pizza Hut says Book It is the nation's largest reading motivation program -- conducted annually in about 925,000 elementary school classrooms from October 1 through March 31. A two-month program is offered for preschoolers.

Participating teachers set a monthly reading goal for each student; those who meet the goal get a certificate they can redeem at Pizza Hut for a free Personal Pan Pizza. Families often accompany the winners, turning the event into a celebration that can boost business for the restaurant.

At Strafford Elementary School in Strafford, Missouri, the roughly 500 students collectively read 30,000 books a year with Book It's help, said principal Lucille Cogdill.

I remember reading something about this in the book http://www.nowpublic.com/pizza_hut_reading_program_gets_a_thumbs_down_from_critics_0

There is no such thing as a "repressed memory"

2007-03-02T09:49:00.000-05:00
A few nights ago, I shocked my class by making the statement, "there are no such things as repressed memories". People seemed quite bothered by that. I needed to leave early from the class, so I wanted to publish some of my musings on the issue.

First, why is the concept of "repressed memory" so important to a school psychologist (or, why is it important for a school psychologist to know that there is no such thing as a repressed memory?)? It has particular relevance in cases of suspected or alleged physical and sexual abuse. It is important for school psychologists to understand how memory works and why the repressed memory is an urban psychological myth.

Second, let's get some clarity:
A repressed memory, according to some theories of psychology, is a memory (often traumatic) of an event or environment which is stored by the unconscious mind but outside the awareness of the conscious mind.
Some theorize that these memories may be recovered (that is, integrated into consciousness) years or decades after the event, often via therapy. They may also reoccur in dreams.
The idea of "dissociative amnesia" makes the assumption that memory repression is possible. The repressed memory concept was popularized during the 1980s and partly the 1990s by the popular press, some feminist groups, and some psychological schools of thought
The concept was originated by Sigmund Freud in his 1896 essay On the etiology of hysteria.
Freud abandoned his theory between 1897-1905, and during 1920-1923 replaced it with his impulse-based concept of Id, Super-ego, and Ego.
There were two principle reasons that Freud abandoned his theory of repressed memory (Freud, Sigmund 1952. Zur Geschichte der analytischen Bewegung, from: Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden Volume 10)
he increasingly came upon evidences in individual cases logically outruling any possibility the 'recovered' events could have occurred
he found himself able to direct his more suggestible patients into any recollection of memory he wanted to (especially while they were undergoing hypnosis), even more so in an entirely boundless manner when he turned to sexual matters.
This is an important set of points, as the father of psychoanalysis, quickly retracted the construct of "repressed memory" for the same reason that modern researchers have also rejected this notion.

Third you may ask if there is there any scientific basis for the construct of a "repressed memory"? Well, there are some conjectures and possibilities. For example, one theory discusses how the hippocampus may selectively choose to not consolidate memories which are traumatic. Others point to the role of cortisol damage to the hippocampus. These "hypotheses" are explored in Faigman DL, Kaye DH, Saks MJ, Sanders J, eds. Science in the law: social and behavioral science issues. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2002, pp 487-526.

I will tell you how it all turns out. These are just conjectures which don't make sense on any level neurologically.

Cortisol does indeed cause damage to the hippocampal structures and loops, but it does not erase traumatic events. In fact, what we have identified in PTSD is that many people have re-occurrences of the traumatic event, so the event memory is on a constant rewind. And, while cortisol damage may affect the person's accurate recollection of the trauma, there will still be a recollection that the event took place.

Studies of over than 10,000 trauma victims found none that repressed or recovered memories of trauma. (Pope HG Jr, Oliva PS, Hudson JI. Repressed memories. The scientific status of research on repressed memories. In: Faigman DL, Kaye DH, Saks MJ, Sanders J, eds. Science in the law: social and behavioral science issues. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2002, pp 487-526). Similarly, some studies of thousands of abused children found no evidence at all for so-called repressed or recovered memories. Coupled with laboratory studies and other naturalistic investigations, most prominent researchers in the field agree with Harvard University's Richard McNally and consider the notion of repressed memory to be a pernicious bit of psychiatric folklore. (McNally RJ. The science and folklore of traumatic amnesia. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 11:29-33, 2004).

Then we get to young children. Young children's memory is incredibly inaccurate, as their hippocampal structures are developing from conception until about three years old. Although they may forget (I've blogged on this before), they do not "repress" the memory - they just developmentally cannot consolidate memories effectively and cannot recall them effectively.
Another difference is actual amnesia following a trauma. This is not due to any psychic events impinging upon mental makeup. Retrograde amnesia is a real neurological issue which comes about through some physical assault to the brain which causes hippocampal structures to temporarily (or in some cases permanently) not recall as effectively or efficiently. The important aspect of retrograde amnesia is that it is caused by physical etiologies and not by psychic or psychological etiology.

Later I will discuss some court cases which have impacted this area.

Review of "Strange Son" by Portia Iverson

2007-02-27T15:35:00.000-05:00
Mr. and Mrs. Iverson have set up a foundation to deal with autism in their and many other individuals' chidlren. Mrs. Iverson wrote this book about her experiences with Soma Mukhopadhyay from Bangalore, India. Soma had managed to teach her severely autistic son, Tito to communicate, write poetry on a laptop, and articulate his thoughts and feelings.

Mrs. Iverson persuaded her foundation to bring Soma and 14-year-old Tito to Southern California for what proved to be an exhausting and exhaustive monthslong effort by a network of neuroscientists and well-wishers to anatomize the miracle that was Tito. But few miracles withstand minute dissection, and this one was no exception.

For one thing, the young poet was still an immensely dysfunctional adolescent who could not remain still for most neurological testing, who was besieged by erratic impulses (like trying to jump out of a minivan speeding down a California freeway) and who became unhinged whenever he was separated from his mother.

His mother was a loner and a bit of an oddball, whose method of cajoling intelligent communication from Tito depended on an alphabet board and a frenetic combination of shouts, gestures and taps on the knee.

But, when Soma finally sat down with Mrs. Iversen’s Dov and begins to prod and cajole him just as she does Tito, their frighteningly inaccessible and uncontrollable child began to use an alphabet board to tap out logical human thoughts.

He wanted a Barbie doll and a blue blazer. He identified that he had known how to read English for three years. His favorite color is red. He thinks his little brother is spoiled rotten. After a few weeks he drops Barbie like a shot when he learns that dolls are for girls.

We learn that Soma’s method works better for some autistic children than others, and is nowhere near being a panacea.

I havent read the book, but it may be interesting. Those of you who have, please drop me a line

School Psychology as a career - US News and World Report

2007-02-27T12:14:00.000-05:00
School psychology was rated as one of the top 25 careers by US News and World Report.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/18schoolpsych.summary.htm
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/18schoolpsych.expert.htm
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/18schoolpsych.life.htm

Coaching children to act like they are Mentally Retarded

2007-02-27T12:06:00.000-05:00
The AP reported yesterday that a woman admitted Monday that she coached her two children to fake retardation starting when they were 4 and 8 years old so she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf.

Rosie Costello, 46, admitted in U.S. District Court that she collected more than $280,000 in benefits, beginning in the mid-1980s. Most was from Social Security, but the state social services agency paid $53,000.

Costello pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government and Social Security fraud. Her son, Pete, 26, pleaded guilty earlier this month. Federal prosecutors in Seattle said Monday authorities had not yet located her daughter, Marie.

According to the plea agreement, Costello began coaching her daughter at age 4, and later used the same ruse with her son. He feigned retardation into his mid-20s -- picking at his face, slouching and appearing uncommunicative in meetings with Social Security officials.

Social Security workers became suspicious and uncovered a video of Pete Costello ably contesting a traffic ticket in a Vancouver courtroom.

Pete Costello is scheduled to be sentenced May 11 and faces from six months to a year in prison, as well as $59,000 in restitution. Rosie Costello is scheduled for sentencing May 17. Her standard sentencing range was not immediately available, but in the plea agreement she agreed to repay the government.

That's pretty extreme.

Math anxiety saps working memory

2007-02-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

Worrying about how you’ll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score This worry can often sap the brain’s limited amount of working memory, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems.
This research was conducted by Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas. He speculated that math anxiety occupies a person’s working memory.
Ashcroft speculated while easy math tasks such as addition require only a small fraction of a person’s working memory, harder computations require much more.
Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person’s working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test.
Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke.
Although test preparation classes can help students overcome this anxiety, they are limited to students whose families can afford them.

Teasing

2007-02-26T20:27:00.000-05:00
This article was written by Dr. Collie Conelly (http://www.independent.com/online_onlys/2007/02/teasing_a_real_problem_and_sol.html ) Teasing is a problem with children of all ages. Psychologists define teasing as an ambiguous message containing both humor and hostility. The ambiguity makes an appropriate response difficult.

Most children identify teasing as the number one concern that they have regarding school.

Children are typically told to ignore teasing or become aggressive with the teaser. The research on ignoring indicates that ignoring a teaser usually incites a more aggressive response from the teaser. Additionally, ignoring probably erodes the self-esteem of the target because of the inactive, helpless stance. Conversely, acting aggressive when teased is an active stance which could help self-esteem in the short run, but there are long term draw-backs. Aggressive action can easily escalate into a physical fight and recommending aggressive action communicates that harming another person is an acceptable value.

This article discusses an alternative respose to teasing called affiliative humor. As Dr. Conely describes, affiliative humor focuses upon the humorous part of the teasing message. By focusing upon the humor in the teasing message the target takes control of the interaction and transforms the interaction into a level interaction rather than a one-down interaction. The message is that we are both funny and clever. Affiliative humor jokes about the topic without putting any person down.

Poverty And Social Exclusion Increases Risk Of Mental Illness In Children With Learning Disabilities

2007-02-26T20:20:00.000-05:00
A new report from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities and Lancaster University, UK, has found that children with learning disabilities are six times more likely to have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder than other children in Britain.

According to The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents with Learning Disabilities in Britain, the increased risk of mental illness is not always caused by a young person's learning disability, but instead because of exposure to greater poverty and social exclusion than experienced by non-disabled children.

The report, based on the experiences of over 18,000 children aged between 5 and 15 years old, says that one in three (33 per cent) children with learning disabilities are likely to have a mother with mental health needs and nearly half are living in poverty (47 per cent).

Young people with learning disabilities also have fewer friends than other children living in Britain and are more likely to suffer abuse and be involved in serious accidents.

While the report found that children with learning disabilities are at an increased risk of mental illness than other children in Britain, nearly half (44 per cent) of the families surveyed said they did not receive sufficient help from medical professionals, social workers or mental health services.

Although this review of data was conducted in Great Britain, there are a lot of things that we can take away from this. Most importantly, we should consider learning disabilities as co-occurring with other forms of pathology.

Why do we persist in our bad habits?

2007-02-26T11:58:00.000-05:00
Although this article mentions many interesting reasons why (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061106144757.htm), I think that the main reason has to do with the delivery, quanity and quality of reinforcement.

Take alcohol or drug use (or hey, even scouring sites like myspace and youtube excessively): These activities give people immediate reinforcement. Oftentimes it is very difficult to eliminate a behavior which delivers immediate reinforcement (e.g., overeating) with a behavior that delivers delayed reinforcement (excercise --> better physique).

This could be looked at as a societal response as well - it is easier for societies to pollute in order to receive immediate reinforcement (getting rid of waste and participating in the burning of fossil fuels) vs. having them participate in activities designed to recycle and reuse waste in order to reap benefits in the future (Al Gore - eat your heart out!)

These examples highlight how important the immediacy of reinforcement is.

Brain Pacemakers aricle in Wired magazine

2007-02-26T03:55:00.000-05:00
Wired magazine this month has an article written by Steven Gulie, a programmer for Apple. Gulie wrote a first hand account of his brain pacemaker operation and subsequent "tunings" in order to help alleviate his Parkinson's Disorder.

A common purpose of modern brain implants and the focus of much current research is establishing a biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain, which became dysfunctional (in Gulie's case, the area which was targeted was the subthalamic nucleus, which normally produces dopamine). What was described was a process of inserting two filaments (deep brain stimulator lead wires) which were connected (with some peripheral wires) to a pacemaker surgically implanted into the person's collar.

The pacemaker then releases low volatge shocks which stimulate specific parts of the brain to bring upon the desired effect. Gulie described the pacemaker as being about the size of an Ipod.

Although this article is of interest, what is much more interesting is that recent research has focused on implanting pacemakers into the brains of individuals with Tourrette's Syndrome and depression.

Specifically for depression, the pacemaker is set to affect the vagus nerve; these electrical stimulations affect blood flow to different parts of the brain, and affect neurotransmitters including serotonin and norepinephrine.

Gulie wrote about some side effects after the operation, which were related to the identification of the appropriate voltage and rate of shocks that the pacemaker was to deliver. Very interesting stuff indeed.

As he identified, this operation was part of a very Web 2.0 procedure; previous brain pacemakers were much more crude and more difficult to work with.

Real play vs. artificial entertainment

2007-02-25T21:40:00.000-05:00
This article was sent to me from Stephen Lange, a good friend who studied school neuropsychology with me. He co-wrote this article with Brent Thompson.

They talk about the TV Kart, a shopping cart designed to continuously entertain children while their adult companions shop. The principal entertainment offered is exactly what the cart's name implies.

I agree with the point of the article: that is to say, little by little, we are supplanting natural opportunities for children to interact with the world with electronic, passive, automated interactions, which is definitely a negative.

From a young age, babies are exposed to mindless videos via Baby Einstein (which has been shown to not work); as children grow older, they spend inordinate amounts of time on sites such as myspace and youtube - I think that this article is correct in its warning.

What is a school psychologist?

2007-02-24T18:38:00.000-05:00
Sorry all for my departure - I was quite sick for some time and I had some problems installing Windows Vista on one of my computers.

I wanted to start to begin to answer the question in my title - what is a school psychologist. It is a particularly difficult profession to define - even its members are currently engaged in a debate as to what a school psychologist is.

Historically, the first school psychologists were teachers who were re-trained in psychology. These school psychologists were to consult with teachers regarding difficult learning and behavioral issues.

As the testing craze hit its phase, school psychologists because primarily evaluators.

Currently, this is how I would define the term. A school psychologist is:

An applied educational psychologist
A professional who is versed in child pathology so that s/he may prevent problems in the school setting.
A consultant to teachers, administrators and professionals for learning and behavior problems.
One of the things which strikes me is how professionals may not be willing to consult with school psychologists as they assume that they do not know the current research on evidence based practice in educational settings. Hopefully this will change.

For more information please consult the NASP Website page: Who are School Psychologists?

Parenting as a Form of Therapy

2007-02-21T20:44:00.000-05:00
In a comprehensive review, the American Psychological Association urged in August that for childhood mental disorders, “in most cases,” nondrug treatment “be considered first,” including techniques that focus on parents’ skills, as well as enlisting teachers’ help.

Some researchers and doctors are looking again at how inconsistent, overly permissive or uncertain child-rearing styles might worsen children’s problems, and how certain therapies might help resolve those problems, in combination with drug therapy or without drugs.

It has almost become standard practice for all adults to turn to medications before attempting some type of behavioral interventions for students or children. We need to look at some of these interventions first.

APA Report: Sexualization of Girls in Media is a Problem

2007-02-21T13:51:00.000-05:00
The American Psychological Association (APA) suggests that the proliferation of sexual images of girls and young women in the media is harming their self-image and development.

It is surprising that it took the APA until 2007 to come up with this finding. I would have though that this would have been news in 1980. I am curious to know how much money APA spent on this study, and what percentage of my dues contributed to this area. Nevertheless, despite my cynicism, there are a few interesting findings:

The report suggests that the volume of sexualized images has increased as more media content exists over a wider range of accessible technologies (Youtube.com, myspace.com, etc.) leading to increased exposure and pressure on young girls.
They also looked at the way products are sold and advertised to young girls.The Task Force described sexualization as: "when a person's value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another's sexual use." They looked at people like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera
Instead of simply blaming the media, the APA also looked at the attitudes of family members as a source of resilience or harm.
The report suggests that the sexualization of girls impedes the healthy development of a girl or young woman in several different areas. For example by undermining her confidence and making her feel dissatisfied with her body, this can result in negative self-image and lead to feelings of shame, anxiety, eating disorders, depression and low self-esteem
I am also curious - is the APA looking at boys as closely as it is looking at girls. Boys make up a multitude of disorders as well. Don't get me wrong - we need to look at girls, but don't stop looking at boys...

Autism and Evidence Based Interventions: A Matter of Social Justice

2007-02-20T15:04:00.000-05:00
I recovered my mail this morning and saw a flyer for a conference here in New York City on Autism and Early Childhood/Interventions. I was pretty interested, until I opened up the pamphlet to read what was being presented.

There is a full-day presentation on the Son-Rise program, and another one on the PLAY program. There were various break-out sessions on DIR (the Developmental, Individualized and Relationship Oriented model of Stanley Greenspan). There was also a seminar on the integration of chiropractic care in the treatment of autism.

These programs, models and various types of care have no evidence to support them. There is no study that has documented that any or all of these studies will work better than Applied Behavior Analysis, which is the treatment of choice for children with autism.

I do not have a child with autism. I cannot imagine fully the extent that these parents suffer and how they yearn for a treatment that will solve everything, immediately. However, there is no evidence that any of the treatments I mentoned before (e.g., Son-Rise, DIR, chiropractic treatment) do anything to help children with autism. In fact, since the implementation of these strategies means displacing strategies that do work (i.e., Applied Behavior Analysis), it is most possible that these new strategies could be damaging.

Imagine if you were diagnosed with a very bad case of diabetes, and you stumbled upon an ad online which reads, "Stop your insulin right now, and try this new technique, which will help you cure your diabetes". Would you do it?

Would you still try the new treatment if there were no studies to document that the treatment actually did anything to improve diabetes? OK, so how about this question: will you risk being off the treatment that works (e.g., insulin medication managament) in order to try the new medication/treatment?

The answer is no.

Not implementing evidence based interventions is also dangerous when viewed through a social justice framework. These interventions cost a great deal of money, and people who are not financially capable may be pressed into undue economic stress in order to implement programs and expensive consultations which they believe may help their children.

For example, a prominent school in Manhattan which implements DIR techniques costs over $70,000/ year. While parents can petition their school districts to re-pay the money, the school demands this money up front.

This means that people who do have a child with autism (and have been duped into believing that DIR does work) will be forced to do things they may not normally do (dip into college funds, life insurance policies, etc.) because they have been given wrong information. None of those treatments listed in the second paragraph have been demonstrated, scientifically, to work better than other treatments out there.

It is society's responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens, especially those with disabilities. In this society, those who have a degree and purport that these technologies work are acting unethically and immorally. Those people have a moral responsibility to report that which treatments work and which do not.

In order to do so, we need to implement ideas, interventions, and treatment programs that will work effectively and will not strain those in economic hardship.

Praise effort not intelligence

2007-02-20T11:44:00.000-05:00
After reading a lot of the material out there by Carol Dweck, both in the popular media as well as the actual research, it still surprises me that many people out there are reluctant to stop praising kids for how smart they are.

While I was working this morning, I was shocked to hear one mother remark out loud (only to the child - none of her adult friends were around) how smart her toddler was because he put a book back in the bookstore. Those of you who are curious, there is no item on any assessment of intelligence that asks a child to put books away.

I had a copy of Carol Dweck's book, and I dropped it in front of her and walked away.

Praising a person's intelligence only decreases the amount of effort that that person will exert in the future.

People (and children) tend to see intelligence as a fixed, all-or-none concept. I got it or I don't. Some children may distinguish math intelligence from video-game intelligence, but many don't think too deeply about such fine distinctions. These children then reason, "If I am intelligent, then things should come easy to me."

They then do some interesting things. They become invested in maintaining this status of "intelligent" by avoiding things that don't come easy to them. The opposite is true - if a child believes that he or she is not intelligent, they will avoid things that don't come easy to them so as to not confirm this belief, and will usually engage in activities that seem to come easy to them (usually disruptive behavior).

Praising effort leads children to believe that they are in control of their performance. "I failed my math test because I didn't study/ didn't pay attention/ didn't work hard enough" vs. "I failed because I am stupid" are two radically different statements. The first denotes that by changing my effort, I can change performance in the future. The second indicates that there is really nothing more I can do to improve.

So please, stop praising intelligence.

Panel Recommends Changes to NCLB

2007-02-20T01:11:00.000-05:00
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has inspired reactions ranging from anger to love during the five years it has been on the books.

Now that Congress is preparing to reauthorize the 2002 federal law, groups representing a range of interests -- educators, employers, testing advocates, testing foes and politicians of every stripe, including the president -- want the rules rewritten to reflect each of their points of view.

Let me go on record to state that I have always thought NCLB is a positive law. It, in essence states that schools have a responsibility to meet the needs of all children, despite race, ethnicity, gender and/or disability. I feel that the regulations and the benchmarks that the law sets out is way too difficult to achieve. For instance, schools need to demonstrate improvements every year, but after a certain point, groups tend to stop showing significant change and improvement as a matter of statistics.

But as the congressional debate kicks off, this much appears certain: The law's basic premise requiring every student everywhere to score at grade level by 2014 will be kept intact, regardless of how improbable success may be.

And schools that persistently fail to meet annual benchmarks for improvements in test scores still will be subject to a range of penalties -- from having to help students find a new school to shutting down altogether. This is the part of the law that I disagree with - instead of punishing low performing schools, the law should prescribe some remedy(ies) to help these schools meet the needs of children.

What Congress may change are some day-to-day rules.

For instance:

What's a highly qualified teacher? What makes a school successful? What's fair if you don't speak English or have a learning disability? Should testing focus exclusively on math and English? How much money should be spent, and how do we know if it's well spent?

Criticism about the highly prescriptive law has come mainly from educators -- traditional allies of the Democrats, who now control Congress. But Democrats such as East Bay Rep. George Miller and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy not only helped write the bipartisan No Child Left Behind law, they've been among its greatest champions.

Edward Kennedy has been quoted as saying: "This is a defining issue about the future of our nation and about the future of democracy, the future of liberty and the future of the United States in leading the free world...No piece of legislation will have a greater impact or influence on that."

But the California Teachers Association's parent organization, the National Education Association, which represents more than 3 million teachers, has declared No Child Left Behind fundamentally flawed. What the teachers dislike most is that the law essentially sends bad schools to the corner with a dunce cap.

These groups want Congress to expand the definition of successful schools to include those that improve somewhat -- not just those that raise test scores by the prescribed amount. There have been many who have been clamoring for this change for quite some time. I agree - these criteria are rather strict and unforgiving.

The way it is now, each public school must make adequate yearly progress. That means more students must score at grade level every year until everyone is proficient in 2014, though each state can set its own pace. Last year in California, the law required only one-fourth of students to score at grade level at each school. About 60 percent of schools met that goal.

Missing the state's goal two years in a row triggers consequences at schools that get federal funds for having a high proportion of low-income students -- as most California schools do.
Some consequences are welcome, such as new money for tutoring, more training for teachers and added technical assistance.

But some are not: Schools must tell students they can transfer to a higher-scoring school. If the low-achieving school continues to miss adequate yearly progress goals, more extreme measures can be imposed: Teachers can be ordered replaced or the school can be turned over to outside management or shut.

Many educators are asking Congress for a broader definition of success.

Business leaders -- the students' future employers -- are arguing just as fervently against making it easier to meet progress benchmarks.

"There is no more important or easy-to-understand measurement of student academic achievement than whether a child is reading and learning math at grade level," said Jim Lanich, president of the advocacy group California Business for Education Excellence. "By focusing on grade-level proficiency for every student, every year, in every subject, and by requiring reporting for each subgroup of students, it's easy to see which students are improving and which students are losing ground."

"Subgroup" is edu-speak for students sorted by ethnicity, poverty, language skills and special needs. No Child Left Behind also requires each subgroup in a school to make adequate yearly progress.

In coming months, advocates for students in these subgroups will appear before Congress to argue that fewer kids should have to be tested, that more English learners should be allowed to take a different test from children who are fluent and that students in different subgroups should be allowed to improve at differing rates.

Their key rationale is that the law unfairly paints many schools as failures, and that asking all students to reach the same benchmark ignores the fact that not all start from the same place.
"There is no 'standard' student, so why are we using standardized tests?" is how one 17-year-old student in San Francisco, Theresa Muehlbauer, once described the problem.

But one group representing low-achieving students will tell Congress just the opposite -- that the law has never been more necessary.

Russlynn Ali, executive director of Education Trust West, an advocacy group in Oakland, says bringing every child's skills up to grade level is the major civil rights battle of the 21st century -- and that broadening the definition of successful schools would weaken No Child Left Behind at its core.

"For the first time in our history, we have publicly committed to meeting the needs of all children who enter the schoolhouse door, regardless of the background or level of achievement they bring with them," Ali recently told the California Board of Education. She was urging the state to aggressively implement the federal law.

Miller, the Martinez Democrat who helped write the law and now chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, which is holding reauthorization hearings on it, said Congress is leaning toward the broader definition of success.

But he said another constituent's proposed change is already dead in the water -- the recommendation by President Bush that the government offer vouchers for private and religious school tuition.

That "didn't pass muster when Republicans controlled the Congress," he said, "and it certainly won't pass muster now that Democrats do."

Mirror Neurons and ASD

2007-02-19T23:11:00.000-05:00
The discovery of premotor and parietal cells known as mirror neurons in the macaque brain that fire not only when the animal is in action, but also when it observes others carrying out the same actions provides a plausible neurophysiological mechanism for a variety of important social behaviors, from imitation to empathy.

Recent data also show that dysfunction of the mirror neuron system in humans might be a core deficit in autism, a socially isolating condition. Here, we review the neurophysiology of the mirror neuron system and its role in social cognition and discuss the clinical implications of mirror neuron dysfunction.

Suicides in New Orleans

2007-02-19T12:49:00.000-05:00
This is a reprinting of a posting to a blog that I used to manage.

I worked for about 10 years in Nassau county, which is a suburb of New York. The last three years I coordinated a program for high functioning middle school students diagnosed with autism (I'm long since gone).

One of the things that focused on teaching was Theory of Mind, a complex skill that requires individuals to put themselves in other people's shoes, to think their thoughts - in essence, to feel their emotions, to be happy when they are happy and to cry when they are sad. I was rarely successful. Jack was not a success story for me. Sure he had develops some friendships while I was there, but he had not fully mastered the idea of Theory of Mind. But I enjoyed him immensely, despite his resistance to schoolwork and his chronic narcolepsy.

When I went back to visit him in 2005 and the others, he asked me to play chess, his favorite game. We sat there, enjoying each other's silence as the cool September breeze blew over us through the corner window.

"So, did you watch CNN at all?", he broke the silence.

"Yep"

"That's really a shame about those people in New Orleans."

My interest was piqued. "Yes it is-"

"I mean, when the waters are drained those people are gonna go back to destroyed houses, and wow - they might get depression or something bad- or even worse they might kill themselves"

"Why would they kill themselves?"

"WHY?! WHY?! - you're the psychologist - you tell me - they're gonna go home and nothing is there - if that happened to me - I have no idea how I would cope with it. Just no idea. Those poor people."
______________________________________________________

So if a child with autism could predict massive depression and suicides, why can't the Federal government, FEMA, the President, the governor of Louisiana or the mayor of New Orleanse predict it? Why couldn't they preliminarily deal with it?

The New York Times reported about a month ago that the suicide rate in New Orleans has risen to at least two times more than the average national rate. Many people who live though natural or wartime disasters tend to develop a disorder named Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

Common characteristics of the disorder include reliving the traumatic event through frightening memories, or nightmares that provoke the same feelings of horror, helplessness, and fear that you felt at the time of the event. These memories can be triggered by exposure to reminders of the event. Of course, the people who returned to their devastated, destroyed, demolished homes were forced to confront and relive the disaster over and over again.

PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder. Researchers from the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada found that the presence of an anxiety disorder as well as intense levels of hopelessness and despair increased the probability that an individual would commit suicide. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in psychology to know that hopelessness and continued exposure to a stressful event could lead to suicide. It also doesn't take an advanced to degree or a heightened level of civic-mindedness that something can be done to deal with this situation.

The science of prevention is a burgeoning field in psychology, which is guided by a principle borrowed from medicine. Prevention science has led to mandatory inoculations of children to fluoride in water. People who exercise more are less likely to get sick; some managed health care companies now fully or partially subsidize gym memberships. The same goes for psychology as well. Instead of attempting to heal once the damage has been done, we can either:

prevent the problem altogether
innoculate the individual so that the problem is not that bad.

Of course, if you have seen the examples I listed above, many of the prevention programs need to come from governmental agencies or need to be instituted by various corporate organizations. It would do no good if two or three socially conscious doctors began to dump fluoride into our reservoirs - we need the federal government to enact this into legislation.
While the entire population of New Orleans required some form of "inoculation" before re-entering the city (as well as ongoing interventions after entering the city), there are certain people who are more at risk for developing PTSD and then evidencing suicidality. Women are more likely to develop PTSD than men; minorities who come from a lower socioeconomic level are also more likely to develop PTSD. Then again, males tend to complete suicides more frequently than females, due to access to more lethal and more severe methods (e.g., guns).

While many people were ready to blame FEMA for the debacle in initial assistance to the residents of New Orleans, they were really not to blame. FEMA is an agency that deals with more long term, protracted issues. FEMA is responsible for initiating and maintaining rescue operations as well as clean-up and rebuilding. FEMA should also be responsible for initiating a suicide and PTSD prevention program for the city; this is FEMA's and the Federal government's most flagrant abuse in this whole matter so far.

Babies do form memories; they just forget...

2007-02-19T11:20:00.000-05:00
The AP reports that babies' rate of forgetting is even faster than that of adults, this quote taken directly from Patricia J. Bauer of Duke University said Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Bauer was part of a panel discussing "infant amnesia," the puzzling inability of people to remember events early in life.

Previous neuropsychological orthodoxy stated that babies' brains were simply unable to form memories, but Bauer said new research indicates that is incorrect; this was due to the fact that the hippocampal structures were not solidly developed at such a young age (they tend to solidify at age 3).

The ability to form memories depends on a network of structures in the brain and these develop at different times, Bauer said. As the networks come together between 6 months and 18 months of life, researchers see increased efficiency in the ability to form short-and long-term memory, she said.

From age six months to two years, memory increases from about 24 hours to a year researchers stated. But, noting that children, like adults, forget, she compared the brains of infants and adults to colanders used to drain food. The adult colander has small holes, for draining something like orzo or rice, while the infant colander has larger holes, such as for draining large penne pasta, but allowing more information to flow out.

Bauer's research proceeded by testing infants by using objects such as cups and blocks. In one test a baby would be shown two cups, a block would be put into one, the other cup would be put over the top and the group would be shaken to form a rattle.

This is something children do not do instinctively, she explained, but once they see it they can copy it, and researchers can see how long they remember when given the same objects.
Oakes said she studied infants by watching how long they would look at something. Babies will look longer at something new than something they are familiar with, she said, which allows researchers to calculate how long the baby remembers something.

Tracy DeBoer of the University of California, Davis, said babies born to diabetic mothers are at increased risk of memory loss. Such children may have shortages of oxygen and iron before birth and that can cause impaired memory when they are growing. That impairment did not occur in cases where the mothers' diabetes was controlled during pregnancy, she added.

Attitudes regarding intelligence influence children's academics

2007-02-17T11:37:00.000-05:00
A new study in the scientific journal Child Development shows that if you teach students that their intelligence can grow and increase, they do better in school.

All children develop a belief about their own intelligence, according to research psychologist Carol Dweck from Stanford University, often influenced by what parents and others in their environment tell them.

"Some students start thinking of their intelligence as something fixed, as carved in stone,"

Dweck says. "They worry about, 'Do I have enough? Don't I have enough?'" Others do not make effortful attempts because they have been told (and have been convinced) that since they are smart, effort is for dummies. Dweck calls this a "fixed mindset" of intelligence.

Some other children think intelligence is something you can develop your whole life. Dweck calls this a "growth mindset" of intelligence.

Dweck investigated whether a child's belief about intelligence has anything to do with academic success. So, first, she looked at several hundred students going into seventh grade, and assessed which students believed their intelligence was unchangeable, and which children believed their intelligence could grow. Then she looked at their math grades over the next two years.
"We saw among those with the growth mindset steadily increasing math grades over the two years," she says. But that wasn't the case for those with the so-called "fixed mindset." They showed a decrease in their math grades.

Dweck and her colleague from Columbia, Lisa Blackwell next investigated if they "gave" students a growth mindset, by teaching them how to think about their intelligence, what effect would that have on their grades?

So, about 100 seventh graders, all doing poorly in math, were randomly assigned to workshops on good study skills. One workshop gave lessons on how to study well. The other taught about the expanding nature of intelligence and the brain.

The students in the latter group "learned that the brain actually forms new connections every time you learn something new, and that over time, this makes you smarter."

Basically, the students were given a mini-neuroscience course on how the brain works. By the end of the semester, the group of kids who had been taught that the brain can grow smarter, had significantly better math grades than the other group.

"When they studied, they thought about those neurons forming new connections," Dweck says. "When they worked hard in school, they actually visualized how their brain was growing."
Dweck says this new mindset changed the kids' attitude toward learning and their willingness to put forth effort. Duke University psychologist, Steven Asher, agrees. Teaching children that they're in charge of their own intellectual growth motivates a child to work hard, he says.
"If you think about a child who's coping with an especially challenging task, I don't think there's anything better in the world than that child hearing from a parent or from a teacher the words, 'You'll get there.' And that, I think, is the spirit of what this is about."

Anna Nicole Smith and "Failure to Thrive"

2007-02-15T17:01:00.000-05:00
A legal document written by Anna Nicole Smith's former nanny, Quethlie Alexis, in December has been leaked and it contains multiple accusations about Anna Nicole (aka Vickie Marshall), among them a claim she dangerously starved Dannielynn because "She wanted her baby to be 'sexy'." One of the the accusations in the sworn affidavit include:
Alexis was ordered to "underfeed" Dannielynn because "Ms. Marshall was obsessed with making sure that her baby was 'sexy.' Ms. Marshall knew that the correct amount of baby food was 3 ounces every 3 hours ... Ms. Marshall insisted that the maximum I was to give was 2.5 ounces. Dannielynn is badly underweight and not thriving, as a baby should."
The discussions are currently focusing on the fact that Smith's baby has not thrived the way that she should have. This condition is referred to as "Failure to Thrive" or FTT.
FTT is defined as the inadequate intake of calories by an infant, oftentimes through purposeful or inadvertent environmental deprivation. There is some evidence that parents who have had insecure family relationships as well as concerns regarding obesity may limit their infant's intake by 60% - 90% of actual caloric intake. Keep in mind, that some very real issues, that are often not under parents' control (such as poverty and lack of food resources) may also lead to FTT as well.
FTT is associated with global deficits in later social and cognitive development.
In essence, this is something which should have been expected. While I disagree with the glamorization of Smith's death, I do think that the media need to discuss this aspect

NJ Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. seeks action on autism

2007-02-15T13:36:00.000-05:00
As has been documented in many CDC studies, the rate of autism is highest in New Jersey (and here in New York, in Staten Island). The most recent CDC study found the rate of autism to be 1 in 152 nation-wide, but in NJ, the rate was 1 in 94 children. Researchers are puzzled as to why the rate is so high.

Speaker Roberts put together a package of seven legislative bills to support autism treatment measures. They include:
The establishing a statewide autism registry.
The training of teachers in autism awareness.
The creation of a task force on adult autism.
Requiring autism awareness training for emergency personnel.
The provision more money for the Governor's Council on Autism, which spend $4 million per year.
The instruction of doctors in early detection.
The revision of the seven-person Governor's Council on Autism to add two more members and diversify membership.
I applaud Speaker Roberts' initiatives, however, I'd like to hold off judgement in order to review the bills. Specifically, I would like to see evidence based interventions as the basis for training teachers and emergency personnel; I'd also like to see where this money will be going. For instance, there should be some money earmarked to examine why the rate is so high in NJ, as well as money provided for the intensive treatment of autism.
Furthermore, I would be interested to see how this bill would affect school psychologists who are practicing in New Jersey.

Behavioral techniques uses to influence children's eating habits

2007-02-14T18:17:00.000-05:00
Researchers in London have developed a program to influence children's eating habits using behavioral application techniques. The program was funded by the Irish government, the European Union Commission, and Unilever.

They created an educational video program called "Food Dudes" that relies on peer pressure, peer modeling, and a reward system to persuade kids to eat more fruit and vegetables and shun fatty foods.
The Food Dudes video stars a quartet of preadolescent kids who get superpowers from eating fruits and vegetables. The dudes battle General Junk, who steals healthy food, thereby robbing the world of its life force.
The Food Dudes are slightly older than the kids targeted in the program, making them believable role models. Prizes like small toys, pencils and pens are also an enticement.
"In some respects, we use the same techniques as multinationals selling junk food" said Dr. Fergus Lowe, a University of Wales psychologist who was part of the team that devised the program.
A pilot program at 150 schools in Ireland, targeting children aged 2 to 11, doubled intake of fruit and vegetables and in some cases boosted consumption of such foods by 10 to 14 times, the organizers say.
In one primary school, the fruit consumption of children aged five and six more than doubled. The kids were originally only eating 28 percent of their fruit; six months later they were eating nearly 60 percent. Vegetable consumption jumped from eight percent to 32 percent.
In a control school, where the program was not used, no change in fruit or vegetable consumption was noted.
Scotland has introduced a modified version of the program in 210 schools in Glasgow, and England is experimenting with the Food Dudes in schools in London and Plymouth. The World Health Organization recently honored Food Dudes with a best practices award.
"People had assumed that it would be very difficult to make fruits and vegetables appealing to children, but Food Dudes has proven that that's not true," said Dr. Francesco Branca, WHO's European adviser for nutrition and food security, who is not involved in the Food Dudes program.
In 2005, the government announced it would ban school cafeterias from serving poor-quality hamburgers and hot dogs. From this September, vending machines selling soft drinks, chocolate bars and potato chips to students will be outlawed. The poor quality of school food first rose to the national consciousness thanks to Oliver's TV series "Jamie's School Dinners," which shocked Britons by showing them exactly what kids were eating at school.
Changing food habits isn't easy. Humans are genetically predisposed to prefer sugary and fatty foods - an evolutionary twist that made sense in prehistoric times but not anymore.
"Back when we lived in caves and children were crawling in forests, anything that tasted sweet was generally safe to eat," said Paul Sacher, a dietitian at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. High-fat foods were also desirable because they were good sources of energy. "Today, evolutionary tendencies are actually our worst enemy," said Sacher. "We're beyond the stage where we have to be that careful, yet we still have this natural desire for sweet things."

Common Sense

2007-02-12T10:53:00.000-05:00
The other day, I was discussing someone and the description of them came up - they have no common sense.

But what is common sense?

Well, it reflects a lot of things. I've made a bit of a list, but it is by no means exhaustive.

1. Attention to the saliency of stimuli - A person with common sense will be able to observe something or someone and recognize which aspects of the stimulus are important and s/he should attend to. This is important because people will focus discretely on these tasks and they will be able to learn from these tasks.

2. The use of modeling as a technique to learn new skills. A person with common sense will learn by observing models in his/her environment. A person with common sense will also pay attention to all models - not just the ones that have a skill that they need to learn immediately, but those that have skills which they believe will be needed in the future.

3. A wait-and-task-analyze approach - A person with common sense will be able to delay resopnding to a particular situation, and analyze steps that will need to be accomplished. This can also be described as planning your actions. As part of this technique, a person with common sense will not only task analyse how to solve immediate problems, but also how to solve future problems and problems that are not even distally present (for instance, a person with common sense may have task analysed, in a rudimentary sense, what to do in case of a natural disaster)

4. A theory-of-mind. A person with common sense will be able to project in the future how s/he will feel, how others will feel and how others will perceive them as feeling and being (for instance, a person with common sense will be able to determine how the model is feeling, how she or he feels towards the model and how others may perceive him if he performs the activities the model just completed.

School Psychologists and Suicide

2007-02-10T10:10:00.000-05:00
One of my students contacted me this morning and was quite upset about a problem she was facing.

She had dealt with a child who was evidencing suicidal ideation, and she told her principal and AP about it (her supervisor was out sick). Her administration told her to ignore it. She didn't. She spoke to her supervisor and they agreed that they needed to report this.

She called the parents of the child and arranged for a hospital visit. Her administration was not amused. They apparently threatened to "get them in trouble".

I told her that this was a common reaction of administrators when school psychologists do things that are not in their control. According to the NASP Ethics Code: "School psychologists are committed to the application of their professional expertise for the purpose of promoting improvement in the quality of life for children, their families, and the school community." This child obviously did not have a good quality of life, and, her actions were an attempt to make that better.

Good job, I say. For further information, check out the NASP reprint of an article in the communique discussing what can be done for children who are suicidal.

http://www.nasponline.org/publications/cq/cq354suicide.aspx

Can young children accurately be diagnosed?

2007-02-09T23:04:00.000-05:00
Well, yes, I actually do think that you can and should diagnosed young children if they require it - diagnosis oftentimes means that young children get the help that they need.

However, John Grohol brings up a good point - oftentimes medical professionals see a psychiatric diagnosis as a reason and excuse to prescribe medication. That is a practice that would require a great deal more of research before it becomes common.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/02/09/can-a-3-year-old-be-accurately-diagnosed/

Autism May Be More Prevelant Than Previous Estimates, CDC Report says

2007-02-08T17:16:00.000-05:00
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported findings today from the first and largest summary of prevalence data from multiple U.S. communities participating in an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) surveillance project. The results showed an average of 6.7 children out of 1,000 had an ASD in the six communities assessed in 2000, and an average of 6.6 children out of 1,000 having an ASD in the 14 communities included in the 2002 study. All children in the studies were eight years old because previous research has shown that most children with an ASD have been identified by this age for services.

For decades, the best estimate for the prevalence of autism was four to five per 10,000 children. More recent studies from multiple countries using current diagnostic criteria conducted with different methods have indicated that there is a range of ASD prevalence between 1 in 500 children and 1 in 166 children. The CDC studies provide information on the occurrence of ASDs in fourteen communities in the United States.

"Our estimates are becoming better and more consistent, though we can't yet tell if there is a true increase in ASDs or if the changes are the result of our better studies," said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding. "We do know, however, that these disorders are affecting too many children."

Overall, the 2000 study found ASD rates ranged from one in 222 children to one in 101 eight-year old children in the six communities studied.

The 2002 study found ASD rates ranging from one in 303 to one in 94 among eight-year old children. The average finding of 6.6 and 6.7 per 1,000 eight-year-olds translates to approximately one in 150 children in these communities. This is consistent with the upper end of prevalence estimates from previously published studies, with some of the communities having an estimate higher than those previously reported in U.S. studies.

ASDs are developmental disabilities and are defined by considerable impairments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests. They can be diagnosed as early as 18 months and last throughout a person's life. ASDs include autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS, including atypical autism), and Asperger syndrome.

The 2000 study included approximately 4.5 percent of U.S. eight-year-old children born in 1992 from six states - Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina and West Virginia. A total of 1,252 eight-year olds were identified as having an ASD.

The 2002 study included approximately 10 percent of U.S. eight-year-old children born in 1994 from 14 states - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. A total of 2,685 eight-year-olds were identified as having an ASD.

"It is extremely difficult to accurately estimate the number of children who have an ASD," said Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, chief of CDC's autism program. "Medical records often do not provide such information, and identification is often made by schools or education specialists.

The data reported today by the Autism and Development Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network was designed to provide more consistent and reliable estimates."

"It's important to note that these studies don't provide a national estimate, but that they do confirm that ASDs in the areas surveyed are more common in these communities studied than previously thought," said Yeargin-Allsopp. "We need to continue efforts to monitor the prevalence of ASDs and to improve our understanding of these disorders. Good estimates of how many children in a community may have an ASD will also help school and health officials in their planning and intervention efforts."

The purpose of CDC's ADDM project was to develop a system for better understanding the size and characteristics of the population of children with an ASD.

In addition to trying to measure the number of children with an ASD, the studies also looked at when parents and others first noted signs of developmental concerns in their children. The 2000 and 2002 studies found 51 percent to 88 percent of children with ASDs had documented developmental concerns before the age of three. Half of the children were diagnosed with an ASD when they were between four and one half and five and one half years old. The most commonly documented concerns were in language development, followed by social development.

"We don't know the causes of ASDs, but we do know that if we can identify autism and other developmental problems in children early, they can begin receiving appropriate interventions sooner," said Yeargin-Allsopp. "It is important for parents, health care professionals and childcare providers to recognize developmental milestones such as smiling, pointing and waving bye-bye. It's also important that health care professionals give children routine developmental and autism-specific screenings."

While these studies did not investigate the causes of ASDs, CDC's Centers for Autism and Development Disabilities Research and Epidemiology (CADDRE) Network is doing a multi-state study to help identify factors that may put children at risk for ASDs and other developmental disabilities.

This project is being conducted by CDC, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Arizona at Tucson, University of Arkansas, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina, University of Utah, Marshall University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Six sites participated in the 2000 project, and an additional eight were added for the 2002 project.

CDC also has a public awareness campaign titled, "Learn the Signs. Act Early" designed to increase the awareness of child development by educating parents, health care professionals and childcare providers on the importance of tracking a child's social and emotional development, including the potential early warning signs of autism and other developmental disabilities.

Kids' Suicides Rise, CDC Report Finds

2007-02-07T15:39:00.000-05:00
Something isn't going well - and I'm not sure why

Kids' Suicides Rise, CDC Report Finds

Associated Press - February 05, 2007

CHICAGO - New government figures show a surprising increase in youth suicides after a decade of decline, and some mental health experts think a drop in use of antidepressant drugs may be to blame.

Suicides climbed 18 percent from 2003 to 2004 for Americans under age 20, from 1,737 to 1,985 deaths. Most suicides occurred in older teens, according to the data - the most current to date from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By contrast, the suicide rate among 15- to 19-year-olds fell in previous years, from about 11 per 100,000 in 1990 to 7.3 per 100,000 in 2003.

Suicides were the only cause of death that increased for children through age 19 from 2003-04, according to a CDC report released Monday.

"This is very disturbing news," said Dr. David Fassler, a University of Vermont psychiatry professor.

He noted that the increase coincided with regulatory action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that led to a black box warning on prescription packages cautioning that antidepressants could cause suicidal behavior in children.

Fassler testified at FDA hearings on antidepressants during 2003 and 2004 and urged caution about implementing black box warnings. The agency ordered the warnings in October 2004 and they began to appear on drug labels about six months later.

Psychologist David Shern, president of Mental Health America, called the new data "a disturbing reversal of progress."

Other research has linked certain antidepressants with decreasing suicide rates, Shern said, adding, "We must therefore wonder if the FDA's actions and the subsequent decrease in access to these antidepressants in fact have caused an increase in youth suicide."

The advocacy group receives funding from makers of antidepressants, government agencies and private donations.

The suicide data are in a report on vital statistics published in February's Pediatrics.
Antidepressant use among children decreased during the same time period. Data from Verispan show 3 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for kids through age 12 in 2004, down 6.8 percent from 2003. Among 13- to 19-year-olds, the number dropped less than 1 percent to 8.11 million in 2004. Steeper declines in both age groups occurred in 2005, according to the prescription tracking firm.

The suicide data are preliminary and don't show whether suicides might have been concentrated in one region or among one gender or ethnic group, said the CDC's Dr. Alexander Crosby.
"It's something that we want to look a little bit closer into," Crosby said. "It's probably too early to say" if declining use of antidepressants had anything to do with it, he said,

The CDC is expected to issue a more thorough report on the data in a month or two.
The data are concerning, but it's too soon to know if they're anything more than a statistical blip, said Dr. John March, a Duke University psychiatry professor. He led landmark National Institute of Mental Health research linking antidepressant use with an increased risk for suicidal behavior, but also showing that getting psychotherapy at the same time canceled out that risk.

Some mental health experts believe suicide prevention programs and effective use of treatment including drugs and therapy contributed to the decline in suicides that occurred in the 1990s.
Funding cuts for school-based suicide prevention programs might have contributed to the apparent rise noted in the new CDC report, said Emory University psychologist Nadine Kaslow. But the rise might not indicate a nationwide trend and needs to be investigated, she said.
"It's definitely concerning" but will need to be followed to see whether increases occurred in subsequent years, Kaslow said.

NYASP Urban Issues LIstserv

2007-02-05T22:04:00.000-05:00
So I tend to take on a lot whenever I join a new group.

I've started a NYASP google group which is specific to NY State Urban school psychology issues.

Come on in and join...

FBA Podcast Handout Sheet

2007-01-09T15:27:00.000-05:00
This is the handout for a podcast that I
developed on Functional Behavioral Assessment. You can find the podcast
at: http://collabra2.liu.edu/weblog/andrewlivanis/FBA/

In our previous class we discussed the l_____________________ (or the t______________-t__________ c_________________________), as well as the f_______________________ of behavior.

Let review some of the definitions necessary for these issues:

Antecedents – ________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Behavior - ________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

Consequence - ________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

We refer to a full ABC interaction as a __________ _____________ or a _____________

___________________ __________________.

The more learn units you can identify, the _______________________________________________________________

Consider this example:

What do you think will happen on Wednesday in math class? If algebra is what will be done on Wednesday, _________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

This consequence is one ___________________________________.

However, what should be noted is that the environment is

s__________________________________________ this behavior by

__________________________________________________________

If the e______________ (the teacher in this instance) changed the

a_____________________ (by providing some sort of assistance to Johnny or changing the

topic) or the c______________________ (by resisting the urge to kick him out), then it is

possible that the behavior might not occur.

All behavior occurs to o________________ on the environment (i.e.,

“__________________ ______________________________”)

Remember that the environment refers to the external world as well as the individual’s internal

world.

All behavior occurs to force an environment to either _________________

___________________________________________________________. In order

to make our interventions better and more effective, we need to identify _________

behaviors occur. During this “why” assessment (i.e., ___________________ Behavioral

Assessment), we need to look at several things:

Antecedent
Behavior
Consequence

By recording _________________ three term contingencies or learn units, we can start to

look at ________________ in behavior which may help us to determine “why” someone is

performing this behavior.

Example

· Mrs. Johnson is a teacher in a kindergarten
· Johnny and Mary are cursing in the classroom.
· Cursing occurs when they are exposed to situations that are aversive (usually math).
· Current intervention - scolding them – is not effective
· Applies a negative punishment procedure Time Out for both students. (This is called a “_________________________” approach; because you are using one technique without examining individual factors that are impacting the behavior).
o Baseline: only scolding
o Intervention: no speaking – simply take students by the hand and put them into the time out room.

· Baselines are the same.
· Effect of the intervention is different
o Johnny: after the time out intervention was put into place, his cursing behavior increased
o Mary: the time out intervention appeared to decrease her cursing behavior.
o Why this difference?

We can only conclude: _________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Let’s look at Mary first. Her three term contingencies during baseline are outlined in the table below:
Once Mrs., Johnson stops scolding her and starts using the time out room instead, her behavior decreases. Why? It appears that the punishment procedures worked – Mary was removed from a situation in which she was actually receiving reinforcement.

But hold on a minute! We mentioned before that Mary would curse in situations that were already aversive to her. So how was she obtaining reinforcement?

If we can exclude that no other children were giving her reinforcement, we would need to say that the teacher, by scolding her was giving her p_______ ________________________________________. Remember that the definition of positive reinforcement is the ___________________________ _________________________________________________________________And that is what the stimulus (Mrs. Johnson’s scolding), performed right after the behavior (Mary cursing) is doing in this instance.

In essence, the time out procedure operated almost as a mini-experiment to test this assumption out. Mary cursed, and was placed in time out without the teacher speaking to her. She was not able to access the ____________ ___________________________________, which was acting as a positive reinforcer for her.

Let’s look at Johnny’s baseline three term contingencies:
In essence, this is the exact same chart as Mary’s chart. Once Mrs., Johnson stops scolding him and starts using the time out room instead, his behavior increases. Why? It appears that Johnny is being n______________ _________________________________________ for his cursing behavior, both during baseline and probably more so after the intervention.

In both phases (during baseline and intervention), he is allowed to escape or delay performing his math assignments. For Johnny, the scolding serves as a negative reinforcer – __________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________And that is what the stimulus (Mrs. Johnson’s scolding), performed right after the behavior (Johnny cursing) is doing in this instance.

In essence, the time out procedure operated almost as a mini-experiment to test this assumption out. Johnny cursed, and was placed in time out. While in time-out, although he could not access reinforcement (as was Mary’s gripe), he did not have to do his math assignments. Over time, he learned that if he cursed enough times, he could potentially avoid or escape the entire math period.

We can say that May performed the behavior to obtain __________________ ____________________________. Therefore, the function of her behavior was _______________________ ___________________________________. We can also say that Johnny performed the behavior for _____________________ __________________________________________ – he cursed in order to _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________. Therefore, the function of his behavior is ________________________ ___________________________________.

This example is important because it highlights some important aspects of functional behavioral assessment and functional behavioral analysis:

1. _________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

2. ____________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________
3.________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________
4. ___________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________
5. ________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

Course book listings for Spring 2007

2006-11-20T12:12:00.000-05:00

Hello all -
I am posting the textbooks that I will use for my courses in the next semester. Please make every attempt to purchase them as soon as possible.
The books that are highlighted in blue have links attached to them so that you may track the best price.
IF YOU ORDER USED TEXT BOOKS, KEEP IN MIND THAT THEY WILL USUALLY TAKE A LOT LONGER TO COME TO YOU. SO IF YOU PLAN TO ORDER USED BOOKS, ACT QUICKLY.
Keep in mind that the textbooks from NASP are only available from www.nasponline.org - so you won't find "a deal" on them on amazon. The only deal you can get is if you become members of NASP; in that case the organization will give you a discount.
HDL 650
Sameroff, A.J., Lewis, M., & Miller, S.M. (2000). Handbook of Developmental
Psychopathology, 2 ed. Springfield, MS: Springer Publishing. 0306462753

Bear, G.G. & Minke, K.M. (2005). Children’s Needs III: Development, Prevention and
Intervention. Washington, D.C.: NASP Publishing. 0-932955-79-7

HDL 714

Shapiro, E.S. (2004). Academic Skills Problems: Direct Assessment and Intervention, 3ed. New York: Guilford Publishing. 1572309776

Shapiro, E.S. (2004). Academic Skills Problems Workbook, Revised Edition. New York: Guilford Publishing. 1572309687

Luiselli, J.K. & Diament, C. (2002). Behavior Psychology in the Schools: Innovations in Evaluation,, Support and Consultation. New York: Haworth Press. 0789019213

Shinn, M.R., Walker, H.M., & Stoner, G. (????). Interventions for Academic and
Behavior Problems II: Preventive and Remedial Approaches. Washington, D.C.: NASP Publishing.

Recommended for 714:

Canter, A.S., Paige, L.Z., Roth, M.D., Romero, I., Carroll, S.A. (2004). Helping
Children at Home and School II: Handouts for Families and Educators (CD-ROM version). Washington, D.C.: NASP Publishing. 0-932955-82-7.

Brown-Chidsey, R. (2005). Assessment for Intervention: A Problem-Solving Approach. The Guilford Press: NY 1-59385-140-5

Daly III, E.J., Chafouleas, S., & Skinner, C. (2005). Interventions for Reading Problems:
Designing and Evaluating Effective Strategies. The Guilford Press: NY ISBN: 1-59385-081-6

Shinn, M.R. (1998). Advanced Applications of Curriculum-Based Measurement. The
Guilford Press: NY ISBN: 1/57230-257-7

Comments on behavioral intervention projects for HDL 655

2006-10-05T17:25:00.000-04:00

Some notes on some special topics in behavioral interventions.

Some of you have chosen some topics that do not follow the standard protocol in behavioral interventions or require some more intensive procedures. Let’s look at some of them:

Going to the gym more often – is one that many of you chose to do. The problem with this goal is how does one measure increasing attendance? In general, you need to increase your attendance as well as increase the amount of behaviors that you engage in while you are there. So it is not enough to simply go to the gym, but you need to also increase what you do there.

The first issue that becomes evident almost immediately is the issue of small steps to achieve your goal. Some of you indicated that you are not going to the gym at all, and your goal is to go 5 times a week. That is really unrealistic. First of all, it is unhealthy, and can result in a lot of bodily damage. Secondly, the goal is almost unreachable, and the option of quitting is quite real.

So, how do you measure progress in the gym? Here are some ideas:
Duration of Time spent working out – might be a good one – what you would do is simply measure the amount of time you are working out. This is easy to do if you are taking a class (which is usually 45m – 1h) or if you use a cardiovascular machine (they normally have timers built into them)
Count of free weight or weight machines – here you will need to be careful as you will be increasing not only the amount of repetitions over time, but you will also increase the weight that you will be using.

Regardless of which measurement procedures you will use, you will need to develop small steps along the way to indicate that you are on track.
------

Academic Interventions - School psychologists have taken the area of behaviorism into the classroom and have affected quite a few changes. One of the topics that you will need to know about are permanent products. In order to assess progress academically, you will need to obtain some permanent samples of the child’s behavior to demonstrate that it has advanced or improved. This is easy to do in math and in writing, because those topics are naturally based on permanent products (solving problems on paper and writing essays) but much more difficult to do with reading.

So for reading, we need to develop contrived situations to assess reading progress. One way to do this is to develop a set of questions, which can be asked and answered verbally and you will take down notations. For instance – assign readings from a magazine, and after each session, request more reading time. As the reading time becomes longer, there will be more and more questions that the child must respond to. One program might look like this:

Amt. of Time Required to Read------ Things child must tell you about the story
10 -----------------------------------------------------------2
20-----------------------------------------------------------4
30-----------------------------------------------------------8

What the child is required to tell you can vary according to what you are trying to target – facts, hypothetical and critical thinking, etc. etc. You can ask for more and more details as time goes on. Based on the number of correct responses, you will deliver reinforcement.

If the child answers your questions incorrectly, or does not give appropriate responses, you will need to model the correct response for the child and ask the child to repeat or paraphrase what you provided.

You can chart many different types of issues here, including, number of correct responses, number of modeling sentences you give, etc. etc. Remember that this will be a changing criterion design because once the student is able to read for 10 minutes and can effectively answer 2 questions, and then you need to increase the pressure for the child to perform more.

Some children may be so intent on reading quickly to get reinforcement, they may blurt out the answers or various factoids about the story before time is up in the hopes that they can get reinforcement before time is up. In that instance, you will need to apply a DRL procedure in which you will not reinforce (acknowledge) any verbal behaviors during the reading time.

Finally, please consider the developmental age of the child and consider the average amount of time that children usually spend reading at that age. For instance, asking a 5 year old child to read for 30 minutes will lead to a lot of frustration.
------

Increasing “good manners” – is an area that is especially important. Here the focus needs to be on the teaching technique, and measurement becomes a bit odd and weird.

There are a lot of good books on good manners that are available, but you don’t really need to buy them. You can develop your own social stories, in which you introduce the topography of the behavior (the various situations in which you would use terms like “thank you”) as well as the function of the behavior (why it is in the child’s benefit to use such terms, such as increased approval from others and usually more and quicker access to materials and activities). Develop probes or questions about the story and then chart their correct responses, similar to the techniques that I noted above for reading.

Afterwards, you will need to practice or rehearse the behaviors in a variety of situations.

Finally, you will need to set up behavioral analogues, in which you expose the child to a new and unique person, and assess whether or not they use these terms with them. Ideally you should get two/three new people and see if the child uses the words with him/her. Your charting here will be the percentage of correct responses.
--------

Inducing language in children without much language to begin with – This is a tough one and we discussed it partially in class. In general there two major competencies that need to go into having children produce language

The understanding that sounds form the basis of communication
The understanding that communication is a two-way process

The understanding that sounds form the basis of communication You can shape speaking via the methodology of reinforcing closer and closer approximations to the target word. Your first step is to hold up an item that the child obviously wants (e.g. motivate the operations) and ask “do you want this?” If the child makes any sound, then s/he gets it. After this becomes consistent, you can begin to look for sounds that more closely match the target word (“yes” “milk” “food” – pick one word and focus on that for a while. If you were looking at increasing the word “milk”, you would first target \m\ then \mi\, then \mik\ or \mil\ then \milk\.

The understanding that communication is a two-way process This involved teaching non-verbal communicative behaviors in situations that are not conducive to developing verbal repertoires. This is done in the same way as above

Books for Fall 2006 semester

2006-07-16T10:02:00.000-04:00
Hello all -

I an attempt to help you all save money, I am posting the textbooks that I will be using for the courses that I will be teaching next semester. To the right, I've inlcuded links that will help you track the least expensive prices for each one of these books. My suggestion is that you try to procure these texts as soon as possible - what I have seen is that the books tend to increase in price as the fall semester approaches.

WARNING: You may be tempted to order the old copies of books. Please, don't order old copies of books. Psychology in general and school psychology in specific changes VERY rapidly. For example, the laws governing school psychology practice were modified in 2004, so many of the textbooks have been either re-written or are in the process of being re-written to keep up with these changes.

HDL 721a-002 (Cognitive I)
Flanagan, D.P & Harrision, P.L. (2005). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment:Theories, Tests and Issues (3rd edition). New York: Guilford Publishing.Flanagan, D.P. & Kaufman, A.S. (2004).

Flanagan, D. P., Essentials of WISC-IV Assessment.Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Essentials of WIAT -II and KTEA-II Assessment. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Mather, N. & Jaffe, L.E. (2002).

Woodcock-Johnson III: Reports, Recommendations, and Strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

HDL 680 (Fieldwork in School Psychology)
IDEA 2004. (2006). By Peter W.D. Wright and Pamela D. Wright. Harbor House Law Press.

Reynolds, C.R., & Gutkin, T.B. (1998). The Handbook of School Psychology. Wiley Publishing.

HDL 655 (Behavior Management in the Classroom)
Behavior Modification: What it is and How to do it (8th edition) (2002). By Martin & Pear. Prentice Hall Publishing.

Chandler, L.K., Dahlquist, L.K. (2006). Functional Assessment. (2nd edition) Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Behavior Modification in Applied Settings. (2000). By Alan Kazdin. Wadworth Publishing.

The New Orleans problem is still at hand

2006-06-21T14:38:00.000-04:00
This article describes how 10 months after the Katrina disaster, New Orleans and the surrounding area is still dealing with issues of depression and suicide. Click here to read the article. Although the article does not necessarily point any fingers as to who is at fault, my take is that the federal gov't., specifically, FEMA has really dropped the ball in providing mental health assistance.

Back in February, I wrote something on this issue on my other blog.

Technorati tags: Katrina FEMA New Orleans disaster prevention suicide depression PTSD school trauma psychology anxiety

Chelation treatment video

2006-06-19T18:54:00.000-04:00
So, I'm still not convinced that this treatment is workable, but I am encouraged to see that someone is conducting a study on chelation, which is double blind. Click here to see this MSNBC video.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter.

Technorati tags: chelation, autism, Asperger, intervention, MSNBC

Intelligent Insights on Intelligence Theories and Tests (aka IQ's Corner): Free download of "Brain Facts" from Soceity for Neuroscience

2006-06-14T15:47:00.000-04:00
I think that this is an interesting posting - it discusses that people can download (for free) a copy of Brain Facts, a primer on the brain and nervous system published by the Americian Society for Neuroscience.

Intelligent Insights on Intelligence Theories and Tests (aka IQ's Corner): Free download of "Brain Facts" from Soceity for Neuroscience

Report on Hispanic Mental Health in the Schools

2006-06-09T23:55:00.000-04:00
An interesting report which was conducted by the Center for Disease Control reports that Hispanic teenagers are at risk for many mental health issues. The CDC survey of nearly 14,000 U.S. high school students has been conducted every other year, since 1991. Results reported Thursday were from last year's survey. Some of the more interesting findings were:

More than 11 percent of all Latino students - and 15 percent of Latino girls - said they had attempted suicide. The white and black rates were about 7.5 percent.
Latinos also reported much higher rates of using cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamines.
Hispanics report that their use of condoms was at lower rates than the other population groups.
About 36 percent of Hispanics reported prolonged feelings of sadness or hopelessness, slightly higher than previous years. In contrast, about 28.5 percent of black students reported such feelings in the 2005 survey, about the same as two previous surveys. And about 26 percent of white students reported such feelings, down slightly from 2003 and 2001.
1 in 8 Latino students said they had done cocaine, 1 in 10 had done ecstasy, 1 in 11 methamphetamines and 1 in 28 heroin.

Hispanic, Latino, mental health, children, suicide, drug use, school psychology, depression,

2006-06-07T01:05:00.000-04:00
Are we overportecting our children too much? An expert says yes. obesity school psychology danger

2006-06-07T00:59:00.000-04:00
Mental, Emotional Health Providers Assist Indonesian Quake Children Victims

Indonesia earthquake children relief PTSD school psychology

Neuropsychology text reviews

2006-05-28T14:47:00.000-04:00
So, here I am again reviewing the textbooks for the Neuropsychology course. As usual, I elicited feedback from the students in my courses. There were four books assigned for this course:

Book 1:
D'Amato, R., Fletcher-Janzen, E., & Reynolds, C. (2005). Handbook of School Neuropsychology. Wiley Publishing.

The hype that this book produced has not been commesurate with my expectations nor those of my students' either. The table of contents is quite impressive, and there are some chapters which are quite interesting (look for the chapter written by Dean on the expansion of the CHC theory for use with neuropsychological issues).

However, there are many problems with this text. First and foremost, this is apparently a text for a second course in school neuropsychology, so many of the chapters are inaccessible to people not versed in neurological parlance and nomenclature. If this was the case, perhaps the editors may have wanted to name the text Advanced School Neuropsychology.

Here's where it gets to be a bit dicey: there is a large portion of the text which reviews major brain structures and functions. However, those chapters are bizarrely devoid of any illustrations or graphics. The editors should know that the reason that neuropsychology is not grasped well by many students is that it is, essentially, a Gv task, which requires the student to visually connect the dots before we can deal with the abstractions of the links between brain and behavior.

Furthermore, the field's methodology is also inductive in nature and is curiously opposite the deductive methodology we impound in students from the Research Methods and Design courses and on. Therefore, we need to take time to also introduce these traditions to our students. In reality, no neuropsychological textbook actually takes the time to introduce how the field thinks about thinking. Oftentimes, we sacrifice fundamental aspects of instruction for more content. I think that if we can spend more time teaching students how to think about neuropsychology (or any other topic in psychology for that matter), we will have students that will be able to access the logic of much research.

Overall, I was very dissappointed with this textbook. So were my students. On a scale of 1 - 10, they gave the text an overall average rating of a 6, and most students who responded to my survey that they were, at least 80% certain that they would sell the book back. When asked to indicate why they were likely to sell it back, they noted that it was too technical and too difficult to follow. Despite the attempts by the editors to include chapters on interventions for common school difficulties (e.g., ADHD), they were really not any different that the interventions noted in other standard texts and offered little unique insight which would merit this text a place on their shelves.

I, for one, will search for a new standard text for the school neuropsychology course.

Books 2 - 4:
Feifer, S.G. & DeFina, P.A. (????). The neuropsychology of reading disorders. Middletown, MD: School Neuropsych Press.

Feifer, S.G. & DeFina, P.A. (????) . The neuropsychology of written language disorders. Middletown, MD: School Neuropsych Press.

Feifer, S.G. & DeFina, P.A. (2005). The neuropsychology of mathematics. Middletown, MD: School Neuropsych Press.

So, I need to put a partial disclaimer on the following review, only because I know the second author and admire his style very much. Just a second to describe his teaching style, as he supervised me as part of a course for the School Neuropsychology Diplomate. Phil DeFina is brilliant and his understanding of the brain as well as how to instruct is unparalleled. His ability to present the brain as a functional unit is clearly lacking in other approaches (i.e., the way he taught it, I got it, and I was quickly able to apply it to my assessments and interventions). Then, as a school psychologist, he was accutely interested in aspects of brain functioning that clearly have to do with school issues.

Finally, the man does not simply instruct and supervise. He preaches the Gospel of School Neuropsychology. He is clearly a preferrable alternative to the boring lectures and presentations given by other psychology professors

I don't know Steven Feifer, but have heard that he is an equally brilliant school psychologist. Although I won't be around, he is presenting at Atlantic City this summer as part of a NASP Summer Conference. I would urge everyone in the field to see him.

His and Phil's books are absolutely excellent, quite possibly the undeserved secrets of the field. They present with a somewhat standard format, with theory interwoven with practice throughout. Their discussions of possible assessment techniques as well as intervention strategies and reviews of existing educational programs is brillian and well-thought out.

My students thought so as well. They appreciated that the review of the brain structures was kept to a minimum in initial chapters; instead they were taught in context. More importantly, the relationship between the brain, academic behavior, and potential disabilities was very clearly made. None of my students noted that they would look to re-sell this book, and everyone rated it as "easy to read", "clear" and "practical". These books are definitely worth buying.

A note on these books - if you order directly from the publisher, you can receive some sort of discount if you purchase all three books at once. It's worth it.

Technorati Tags IDEIA, school psychology,Phil Defina , CHC , NASP, Steven Feifer, school neuropsychology, CHC

Call for Posters

2006-05-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

CALL FOR POSTERS
FOR COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY IN SCHOOLS SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP
OF THE ASSOCIATION OF BEHAVIORAL AND COGNITIVE THERAPIES (ABCT)

The Cognitive Behavior Therapy in School Settings Special Interest Group through ABCT is accepting proposals for the Special Interest Group (SIG) Poster Exposition at the 2006 Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois. The use of posters provides an informal and interactive opportunity to share research, data, and innovative practice. We are looking for posters that present information relative to school-based services including, psychological counseling, cognitive and behavioral interventions, assessment of mental health issues, school-based mental health services, and specific intervention and prevention programs. We are accepting posters of completed research as well as those projects that are in progress.

Proposals should include the following information:
A cover sheet listing the title of the poster, all authors and their affiliations, and contact information (e.g., address, telephone, and email) of the primary presenter.
An Abstract containing 300 words or less describing an introduction to the research questions, the purpose of the research, the methods used, and the outcome.
Biographical information of 50 words or less for each presenter.
Exposition posters must be mounted on foam core or poster board that is no larger than 28” wide X 22” high. This will enable the use of easel-like cardboard stands that permit the posters to be easily viewed by exposition attendees. Presenters must bring their posters pre-mounted. Posters may not be hung from hotel walls. If necessary, presenters may use handouts to supplement information that will not fit on their posters.

Those interested should send questions and proposals (including the information above) to Dr. Jessica L. Stewart, ABCT School Poster Session, 50 N. Second Street, New Bedford, MA 02740. Telephone: (508) 742-7492. Preferably, you may also submit proposal electronically by e-mail at drjessicastewart@yahoo.com. All proposal materials must be received by August 25, 2006.

Psychopathology text reviews

2006-05-22T00:33:00.000-04:00
Quite some time ago, I promised that I would write reviews of the books that I had required as reading for my students in their classes. I've been quite a bit sidetracked with things lately, and have not been able to keep up my end of the bargain. So, I've begun to update the site with some other book reviews.

Sameroff, A.J., Lewis, M., & Miller, S.M. (2000). Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology, 2 ed. Springfield, MS: Springer Publishing.

Generally, the students in my class enjoyed this textbook and felt that it gave good information. They also felt that it would be something that they would refer back to on a frequent basis. Although I enjoyed the text as well, I felt as if some of the chapters were incomplete, and often sacrifices some pertinetn information for brevity. Nevertheless, the developmental psychopathological approach presented here is priceless and should be valued.

Chess, S. & Thomas, A. (1995). Temperament in Clinical Practice. New York: Guilford Publications.

The students also enjoyed this text, although some students complained about the archaic language which often impeded understanding. I tend to agree with that complaint, but, this book was originally published in the 60's and the general language of most textbooks was somewhat...well, you know what I mean. This book is an excellent primer on temperament; what's more it gives very clear examples of how different dimensions can act alone or in collaboration with other dimensions to present a profile of student functioning. Also, the extra chapters delineating the developmental progression of temperament throughout the lifespan helps the reader to identify how temperament changes throughout the life. All that, plus, great case studies really sell this book for me. You would be wise to pick up a copy.

Interesting blog

2006-05-17T16:04:00.000-04:00
This is a very interesting blog, and can be used as a great resource for all....Please check it out.

ABA4Autism or other Neuropsychological Disorders

National Research Center on Learning Disabilities

2006-05-11T22:44:00.000-04:00
http://www.nrcld.org/

2006-05-11T22:42:00.000-04:00
Yes, this is THE Witt site.

This site has excellent CBM and CBA resources, as well as great articles.

Check out his STEEP stuff.

http://www.joewitt.org/

Book lists for Summer 2006 courses

2006-05-03T15:12:00.000-04:00
OK, so here goes:

HDL 704 - Testing and Measurements

Required:
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition. American Psychological Association ISBN: 1557987912

Bensley, A. (1997). Critical Thinking in Psychology : A Unified Skills Approach. Wadsworth Publishing ISBN: 0534256201

Cohen, R., Swerdlick, M., & Phillips, S. (2001). Psychological Testing and Assessment. McGraw Hill ISBN: 0767421574

HDL 734: Research Methods and Design

Required:
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition. American Psychological Association ISBN: 1557987912

Bensley, A. (1997). Critical Thinking in Psychology : A Unified Skills Approach. Wadsworth Publishing ISBN: 0534256201

Kazdin, A. (2003). Research Design in Clinical Psychology, 4th edition. Allyn and Bacon Publishing ISBN: 0205332927

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - students are not required to buy this text, but it is highly recommended that they do so......

Kazdin, A. (1982). Single Case Study Design. Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195030214

Dr. Soozee's blog

2006-03-20T00:31:00.000-05:00
Interesting blog - you should check it out simply for the FBA llinks that it offers.

Also check out www.behavior.org

APA style

2006-03-15T23:50:00.000-05:00
So, I may be a drag, but I do mean that I want to see APA style on my assignments. Call me what you may, but you will thank me for it later on.

Click onto the link for an online tutorial on APA style. Also, you can get one from www.amazon.com

Physiological Roots for Emotional Eating

2006-02-25T02:56:00.000-05:00
I guess that the last few posts have dealt with eating issues and pathology, so I guess that this one is no exception - this posting and this link merely highlight the fact that the emotional eating of "comfort foods" is physiologically based (keep in mind that the link is a summary of previous research articles and not an actual study). The process follows this course:
When the body starts to feel stress, certain hormones like cortisol are released.
It's those hormones that then make comfort foods actually taste better, sparking cravings.
It is the fatty foods and the sugar-laden foods that tend to help lower those stress hormones, only temporarily. This represents an inappropriate, inadequate response to stress, as it is very short term.
Individuals with excess belly fat have an exaggerated response to cortisol which may be why it's difficult for some to lose that weight in the midsection.
Researchers have also found that exercise, meditation, and massage can be useful in a weight-loss strategy because they keep stress levels from peaking which keeps people out of the junk food.

Technorati tags: eating disorders, obesity, stress

Neighborhood may help prevent childhood obesity

2006-02-23T19:58:00.000-05:00
A new article in the journal Social Science and Medicine suggests that the neighborhood an adolescent lives in may influence his or her development of obesity.

Specifically, here are some of the findings of this study:

The study included 807 adolescents and 3000 adults.
The researchers found significant factors such as close-knit neighborhoods exhibited an effect on obesity rates in adults and children.
Close-knit neighborhoods were characterized as having strong collective efficacy -- neighbors get along and are willing to help each other, and many adults are role models for adolescents.
Adolescents who lived in neighborhoods with high levels of collective efficacy were also less likely to be overweight or at risk for overweight and had a lower body mass index -- a ratio of weight to height -- than did their peers in other neighborhoods.
Adolescents in low-collective efficacy neighborhoods, on the other hand, were 64 percent more likely to be at-risk-for-overweight and 52 percent more likely to be overweight than those living in neighborhoods with an average level of collective efficacy.
The reason for the association is unknown, but the researcher speculated that children in neighborhoods with high collective efficacy may be more likely to play outside rather than sit inside and watch television. Or, she said, "maybe (their) neighborhoods look different," with more parks and fewer fast food restaurants.
It is interesting that this study fits into a transactional model of psychopathology.

Technorati tags: eating disorders
, obesity,

Eating disorders

2006-02-23T02:20:00.000-05:00
An interesting article that I read about on several blogs such as Mind Hacks and World of Psychology regarding the generalized impression that we tended to have regarding eating disorders and the presence of a distorted body image.

These data suggest that the real problem in eating disorders is not a distorted body image but a lack of a distorted body image, that is, the lack of a self-serving body-image bias. In general, the article points out the fact that the non-eating disordered groups tended to have positive body image distortions while individuals with eating disorders tended to have appropriate evaluations of their bodies.

This makes some sense, as clinically, I have seen many students with eating disorders be overly critical about their bodies, an almost hypercritical eye towards visual details. An interesting idea might also be to have children who are positive for eating disorders evaluated to see if they possess preternatural elevated levels of Gv. My working clinical hypothesis (this hasn't been born out by research) is that many psychopathologies are actually extreme cognitive profiles.....Anyone biting?

Technorati tags: eating disorders
,CHC theory,

OSU closing center where chimpanzees learned ABCs

2006-02-23T01:26:00.000-05:00
Ohio State University is closing its center where psychology researchers taught chimpanzees numbers and letters and is sending the nine apes to a sanctuary in Texas, the university said Tuesday.

This is very sad. On a science-fiction note, I wonder if these chimps will then integrate with other chimps and teach them numbers and letters...... (Hey, I'd watch that movie!)

Technorati tags: chimpanzees, research, language,

On the differential validity of Asperger's disorder and Autism

2006-02-20T12:17:00.000-05:00
“The validity of a diagnostic construct should be judged on its predictive power relative to variables of clinical or research interest,” is one of the last statements made by Klin, Pauls, Shultz and Volkmar (2005) in their article examining diagnostic approaches to Asperger Syndrome (AS). It sounds like it is a cry of desperation.

And arguably so. The diagnostic question of “Whether to Asperger or not?” causes clinicians and researchers a great deal of stress. Indeed, Klin, et al (2005). state that the reason that the Pervasive Developmental (PDD) Category was splintered into many different pieces was in order to stimulate logical debate and research into the area. Indeed, it has done so, they state, in the case of, for instance, Rhett Syndrome, where a host of bio-genetic and neurological studies have been conducted. In this instance, it appears as if the experiment worked out well.

In 12 years, research has led us to a better understanding on Rhett syndrome, while in the same amount of time (and perhaps more, if you count the time from Asperger’s original paper in 1944), we are none the wiser about AS. Witness confusion among various individuals on the NASP listserv when discussing the syndrome. Twelve years after the fact, and the leading researchers are still attempting to compile evidence to support the validity of the syndrome.

Although many discuss Wing’s paper (1981) in which she documents to this generation her encounters with an individual with Asperger’s as being seminal, I would also count the text '>Asperger’s Syndrome by Klin, Volkmar and Sparrow (2000) as equally important, as it represents a collection of research on the construct. And the team from the Yale Study Center continues to pose some interesting questions for us.

Before I continue, I need to let you know that as a practicing school psychologist, I was always wary of parents who told me that AS was a syndrome along the same continuum as Autism (AU). My belief at the time was that this was a ploy to secure educational as well as social services (Medicaid housing after a certain age) many of which were limited to individuals with a classification or diagnosis of autism. I thought was that these parents felt if their child has a disorder similar to or along the same continuum as AU, they would be eligible for the same services as other children.

However, my thoughts changed once I began to work with many of these children in a clinical setting. Clinically, I began to view these children as being on a spectrum or dimension, some children had more of the disorder and some had less of it; the nature of their difficulties was not necessarily related to their label or diagnosis (PDD-NOS vs. AU vs. AS), but related to intellectual capacity, language abilities and social issues. Also, in terms of interventions, they all appeared to react the same.

Research indicates that there are many Verbal-Performance differences in childrens with AS. In general, the findings suggest better verbal than non-verbal skills, but most of the research was conducted using outdated assessment instruments and outdated theories of cognitive ability.

Much of the research however, was not conducted with the CHC theory.Gc, a sum of your cultural, verbal and linguistic knowledge.

This makes sense.

However, the Performance IQ (which is "supposed" to measure non-verbal reasoning) does not measure visual-spatial reasoning or Gv solely; it also taps fluid reasoning, or Gf – the ability to apply reason to deal with novel situations. Taken in this light, it makes perfect sense when you say that within an AS individual, Gc is greater than Gf.

To focus on VP differences, is in essence, very 20th century. Intellectual ability is not a simple construct, but incredibly complex and different depending on the child’s developmental level.

So, conceptually the idea of the groups having cognitive difference is still not demonstrated. A second area of investigation that Klin et al. highlight are the parental histories of both groups. Reviews of parental psychopathology revealed the presence of a Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP), a pattern of higher rates of social difficulties (as well as some other cub-clinical syndromes nearing anxiety and obsessional disorders) present in family members with AU, AS, and PDD-NOS. This concept of BAP is interesting, as it describes a familial, possibly genetic pathway to the disorder (which the authors note may be different for males and females). Although there were differences among the groups in terms of BAP presence in the families of children with AU, AS, and PDD-NOS, these differences did not approach significance.

A third area to investigate is the “onset of language” criterion; AS children tend to develop language as typically developing, AU children have language delays. The way that the DSM-IV-TR criteria are currently laid out, Woodbury-Smith, Klin and Volkmar (2005) indicate that the AS onset criteria is a poor criterion, as most of the data is often collected retrospectively. Thus, the parental reporting of “no problems in the development of early language” is a problem, as it is sensitive to reporter bias. Therefore, it is difficult, to ascertain truly if language development was normal or not. Oftentimes, we have the common occurrence of “regressed language” even though the DSM-IV-TR indicates that even in the uncommon world of psychopathology regressed language is a rare phenomenon (keep in mind, it is rare even within the domain of the rare).

So the onset of language is a poor discriminating criterion – what about the quality of language? In AU it is echolaic, idiosyncratic and repetitive, while in AS it is formal, pedantic and has an odd prosody. However, clinically I have bumped into some cases where developmentally a child began displaying echolalic, idiosyncratic and repetitive language only to later (after intense ABA intervention) develop language which with formal, pedantic and with an odd prosody.

My question then is fundamental is: If the difference in cognitive profiles and the onset of difficulties is not different, then is it worth distinguishing two constructs on the basis of one difference if they have two similarities? Scientifically, the concept of null difference needs to apply UNTIL we find a difference. Until there is a group of studies that demonstrate systematic and consistent differences, we must consider the two groups the same.

Then, the bigger picture question is this: If two disorders present slightly different phenotypes, but are treated equally and effectively with the same procedures, is it really necessary to discriminate between the two? Your thoughts....

Technorati tags: autism, Asperger, CHC theory, psychology

Suicide prevention hotline

2006-02-17T20:28:00.000-05:00
An email sent out by NYASP promoted this hotline, and I hope that others may find the information helpful. Please pass along the information

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK (1-888-628-9454 for Spanish-speaking callers) is the only federally funded hotline for suicide prevention and intervention. People who are in emotional distress or suicidal crisis can call the Lifeline at any time, from anywhere in the Nation, to talk in English or Spanish with a trained crisis worker who will listen to and assist callers in getting the help they need.

For more information about the Lifeline, visit their Web site at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Technorati tags: suicide, suicide prevention,NYASP,hotline

"Developing Intelligence" blog

2006-02-17T20:14:00.000-05:00
This site is going up on my "favorites" list to the left. You MUST check it out. MY favorite posting, by far, is the Attentional Doughnut

Sleep problems in young children

2006-02-17T19:33:00.000-05:00
The National Sleep Foundation released a press release indicating that children are not receiving the appropriate amount of sleep. Overall, a survey of parents indicated that 69% of all children experience a significant sleep problem one or more times per night. Such problems include snoring, getting up at night, refusing to go to bed, night terrors, or heavy or loud breathing when sleeping. Here are some other findings reported:

Children who had TV's in their rooms slept less.
Children who drank caffeinated drinks averaged 3.5 fewer hours of sleep per week.
Children who get inadequate sleep are more likely to exhibit a variety of emotional and behavioral problems, such as:
concentrating and focusing
problems learning
moodiness
These children may be misdiagnosed by professionals who misinterpret these problems as manifestations of an attention-deficit or adjustment disorder rather than a sleep disturbance. This seems to be about right, based on my experiences in middle and high school. The press release indicates that most teens are living in a sleep-deprived state; their "moodiness" is simply a manifestation of a lack of sleep.
The press release indicates some tips for a good night's sleep:
-- Develop a regular bedtime routine.
-- Talk with your child about the importance of sleep, and be a good role model.
-- Make sure your child gets regular exercise.
-- Talk with your doctor if your child has any sleep problems such as snoring, heavy breathing, night terrors, etc.
-- Limit sleepovers, as it is typically a time when children get very little sleep.

Don't:
-- Consume drinks or foods with caffeine.
-- Allow teens to use medication as a solution to sleep problems.
-- Schedule too many weekend activities. Use the time to rest and get caught up on needed sleep.
-- Let your teen drive when tired.

Technorati tags: sleep, children, teens

How a millionaire spends a $1000 per student and gets results

2006-02-17T18:48:00.000-05:00
In this week's New York magazine, there is an article named "How Is a Hedge Fund Like a School?" discusses how Joel Greenblatt, the hedge fund guru turned a school around in Queens (I love Queens references, as this is where I live and write from).

Greenblatt walked in and found a research based curriculum for math and reading, and paid people to receive training as well as implement the program in a school. What was even more effective was that the program allowed the staff to identify children who were in need and provide remedial services immediately.

I encourage everyone to read this article - I've included the link above. But the article does not really discuss much about the program named Success for All developed by Bob Slavin. So here are a few points on the program.

Success for All (SFA) is a highly structured program designed primarily for use in Title I urban elementary schools serving at-risk students. It was piloted in one Baltimore elementary school in the 1987-88 school year. As of Fall 2000, Success for All was in use in approximately 1,800 schools -- urban, rural and suburban and in 48 states. It also is being used by schools in other countries, such as Canada, Mexico, Australia, Israel and England.
The program emphasizes prevention and early intervention, rather than remediation, to help children realize their potential from the start. The primary goals are to bring young students to grade level in reading and other basic skills and to keep them performing at grade level in the elementary years.
Success for All emphasizes several components:
■ One-on-one tutoring Assessments conducted every eight weeks
■ Initial and ongoing teacher training
■ Half-day preschool and whole-day kindergarten
■ Beginning reading instruction for 90 minutes each day
■ Reading groups that are regrouped regularly according to reading level
■ Cooperative learning
■ Family support services
■ Full-time facilitator who coordinates the program and provides training
■ Advisory committee that reviews the program's progress
__________________________________________________
There is a good deal of evidence doumenting the program's effectiveness:
1. Briggs and Clark conducted an analysis of the available studies on SFA in 1997. Their findings were:
● In most of the 23 schools and nine districts in which studies compared SFA and control students, SFA students scored significantly higher on reading tests than students in control groups. On average, SFA 1st graders were three months ahead of students in control groups. By the time they reached 5th grade, SFA students were more than a full grade ahead of control students.
● The original Baltimore SFA schools showed substantial reductions in retention rates. Schools that had more resources for implementing SFA were more successful in reducing retention than schools with fewer resources. Among five SFA schools, retention rates ranged from 0 to 1.9%. Previously, these schools had retention rates of 6.7 to 10.7%.
● Several districts experienced a 50% reduction in special education placements for learning disabilities. In the Baltimore SFA schools, 2.2% of 3rd graders were referred to special education, compared to 8.8% of 3rd graders in control groups. Reading scores for SFA special education students were substantially higher than control students, as well.

2. A study conducted by Smith et al. in 1996 evaluated SFA's effects on students' reading achievement in four cities. This independent study measured student achievement using matched groups of students in grades K-2. The sites included one school in Tennessee, two schools in Indiana, four schools in Alabama and two schools in Idaho. The Tennessee school implemented SFA for three years (1990-1993), while the other schools implemented the program for two years (1991-1993). Nationally standardized reading test batteries (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test and Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty) were used to measure achievement.

The findings were as follows:
■ In three of the four sites, SFA students showed greater achievement than students in the control groups at the four sites.
■ Achievement was most marked for students who ranked below the 25th percentile.
■ According to the evaluators, however, ÂSFA effects were not as strong and consistent as those obtained in the original studies. This research suggests that SFA can be implemented in sites geographically removed from the developers and apart from their direct supervision, but that continual monitoring and support of the program's quality is needed to ensure success over time,Â (p.1).

3. In 1996, Slavin et al. evaluated the outcomes of 23 SFA schools in nine districts in eight states. Their findings were as follows:
● SFA students showed significantly greater gains in achievement over matched control students in all districts.
● The program had the highest impact on:-- The achievement of English as a Second Language (ESL) and special education
● students -- Reducing special education referrals.
● Effect sizes increased with the number of years of implementation (the longer children are in the program, the better they do). (See Figure 1 below).

4. A 1997 study conducted by Jones, Gottfredson and Gottfredson evaluated SFA in the Charleston, South Carolina, school district. It is important to note that the district's implementation of SFA did not include the standard requirement that 80% of teachers vote by secret ballot to endorse participation in the program. In addition, the district did not adopt the family support component. As always, the model's effectiveness may vary with level of implementation.

The tests used to measure student achievement were the Cognitive Skills Assessment Battery, Metropolitan Readiness Test, Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests - Revised, the Merrill Language Screening Test, the Test of Language Development, the Basic Skills Assessment Program, the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) and the Durrell Test of Reading Difficulty.The results of the study were mixed. According to the authors, Âsome of the effects were significant and positive, others were nonsignificant, and still others were significant and negativeÂ (Jones, et al., 1997). Findings of the study included:
● Large positive effects were found for SFA students in the kindergarten program. These positive effects, however, did not occur in the later grades. The effects in grades 1-3 were Âgenerally inconsistent and small.Â
● In the first group (cohort 1), for all years, only one measured effect size proved significant: Comparison students scored higher than the SFA participants on SAT reading in Year 1.
● In the second group (cohort 2), in Year 1, SFA students scored higher than comparison school students on the Woodcock Letter-Word Identification and Word Attack scales, and the Metropolitan Auditory and Visual Matching scales. Comparison school students, however, scored higher than SFA students on Sentence Imitation. In the second year, SFA students scored higher than comparison school students on the Woodcock Word Attack.
● In the third group (cohort 3), SFA students scored significantly higher in the second year than comparison school students on the Woodcock Letter-Word Identification and Word Attack scales, and the Metropolitan Visual Matching scales (p. 659).

5. Hurley, Chamberlain and Slavin (2000) examined the performance of students in grades 3-5 on the reading portion of the TAAS (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills) of all Texas schools implementing SFA as of 1998. They compared cohorts of SFA schools to the overall state with regards to gain of percent passing, during the period from the year before these schools began to implement SFA to 1998. Schools were grouped in cohorts by the year in which they began to implement SFA. The study found that each cohort of SFA schools gained significantly more than did the state for the same time period. They also reported that the longer schools had been in the program, the greater was the difference in gain over the state. For example, the 40 Texas schools using SFA for only one year gained in percent passing 9.8% while the state gained 5.2%. Forty-five schools using the program for four years gained 18.8% from the year prior to implementation to 1998 while the state gained only 11.1% for the same time period. Effects were particularly positive for African American and Hispanic children in SFA schools, compared to their counterparts in the state as a whole, so the program had the effect of significantly reducing the Minority-White achievement gaps.

Technorati tags: Joel Greenblattschool reading education New York New York magazine Queens Slavin Success for All

Brain Images Show LD Children Respond To Spelling Treatment

2006-02-16T14:12:00.000-05:00
One of the interesting things about reading disorders is that children with a positive diagnosis tend to show different patterns of brain activity that non-identified children. This is a brief summary of reserach (too brief in my opinion - I would have liked to have seen more of it) in which a treatment showed positive results as shown through pre- and post- fMRI patterns. Specifically, the LD groups post fMRI patterns more closely resembled the non-LD children's fMRI patterns.

Interesting stuff - check it out

Technorati tags: fMRI learning disability psychologyspelling
reading brain

Snowed in today

2006-02-12T17:17:00.000-05:00
So, as we are getting about 3 feet of snow in the NYC area, this has given me some lazy time to play online. I bumped into an interesting website http://www.studentprogress.org/ designed by the Office of Special Education Programs.

OSEP) has funded the National Center on Student Progress Monitoring. It's housed at the American Institutes for Research, and works in conjunction with researchers from Vanderbilt University to assist and disseminate information dedicated to the implementation of scientifically-based student progress monitoring.

Interesting reviews. It also has a library full of interesting articles, powerpoints, etc.

Check it out.....

http://www.studentprogress.org/

Technorati tags: CBA
evidence
school psychology

Asperger's disorder ruled to be a disability by a federal judge

2006-02-06T18:33:00.000-05:00
One of the issues that has plagued many school officials working working with children with Asperger's disorder is whether or not this disorder actually meets the criteria for a legal disability as per IDEIA.

In Maine, a federal judge has provided some guidance:
A York County girl who suffers from Asperger's syndrome is entitled to special education services even though she completes her homework, behaves well in class and scores well on tests
The judge in the case said that the girl's parents demonstrated that the disability adversely affects her educational performance "and is thus eligible for special education under (federal law) due to her Asperger syndrome and her depressive disorder." (note: the article does not indicate under which classification disability category Asperger's syndrome is subsumed).
The ruling described Asperger's as a "clinically recognized pervasive developmental disability" with symptoms that include "limited interests or an unusual preoccupation with a particular subject to the exclusion of other activities."
The girl in this case, who attended public schools in Hiram and Cornish through 5th grade, performed well academically but in the fourth grade her teachers noticed that she looked sad, anxious and had a difficult time making friends.
The decision recognizes that social development is an important part of education
Of course, the ruling should have broad impact in many areas, specifically in the fact that case law is recognizing and shaping the fact that Asperger's Disorder has educational impacts that go far beyond reading, writing and math.

Technorati tags: autism asperger special education IDEA IDEIA

Section 504 vs. IDEIA

2006-02-05T10:22:00.000-05:00
Section 504 refers to the the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, 29 U.S.C. Â§ 794 (Section 504). Section 504 is a federal law designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education (ED).

Section 504 states: "No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States . . . shall solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance . . . ."

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) enforces Section 504 in programs and activities that receive funds from ED. Recipients of these funds include public school districts, institutions of higher education, and other state and local education agencies. The regulation implementing Section 504 in the context of educational institutions appears at 34 C.F.R. Part 104.

The Section 504 regulation requires a school district to provide a "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) to each qualified student with a disability who is in the school district's jurisdiction, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability. FAPE consists of the provision of regular or special education and related aids and services designed to meet the student's individual needs. For additional information, please contact the Office for Civil Rights.

Section 504 requires recipients of federal monies to provide to students with disabilities appropriate educational services designed to meet the individual needs of such students to the same extent as the needs of students without disabilities are met. An appropriate education for a student with a disability under the Section 504 regulations could consist of education in regular classrooms, education in regular classes with supplementary services, and/or special education and related services.

The section of this act authorizes the OCR to examine procedures by which school districts identify and evaluate students with disabilities and the procedural safeguards which those school districts provide students. OCR is also authorized to examine incidents in which students with disabilities are allegedly subjected to treatment which is different from the treatment to which similarly situated students without disabilities are subjected. Such incidents may involve the unwarranted exclusion of disabled students from educational programs and services.

So what criteria need to be met in order to qualify for as a "disabled child" under section 504?
The determination of whether a student has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity must be made on the basis of an individual inquiry. The Section 504 regulation, at 34 C.F.R. 104.3(j)(2)(i), defines a physical or mental impairment as any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or anatomical loss affecting one or more of the following body systems:
neurological;
musculoskeletal;
special sense organs;
respiratory, including speech organs;
cardiovascular;
reproductive;
digestive;
genito-urinary;
hemic and lymphatic; skin;
and endocrine;
or any mental or psychological disorder, such as:
mental retardation,
organic brain syndrome,
emotional or mental illness,
and specific learning disabilities.
The regulation does not set forth an exhaustive list of specific diseases and conditions that may constitute physical or mental impairments because of the difficulty of ensuring the comprehensiveness of such a list.

Major life activities, as defined in the Section 504 regulation at 34 C.F.R. 104.3(j)(2)(ii), include functions such as:
caring for one's self,
performing manual tasks,
walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, and working.
This list is not exhaustive. Other functions can be major life activities for purposes of Section 504.

WHAT ARE SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPECIAL EDUCATION AND SECTION 504?

504
A Civil Rights Act - act is laid out as a way to protect civil rights of disabled students and give them "equal access" to a FAPE (Free and Appropriateeducationn)
Local funding - districts get NO extra funding to help deliver services
Section 504 Coordinator - responsible for coordinating these services
Accommodations are given to allow students more access to educational placements
All disabilities are eligible - the criteria are rather broad as to who can receive theseaccommodationss
Parents should be involved in all team meetings.
Notice to parents is required before evaluation or any changes
An evaluation is necessary before it can be determined if a child is eligible for Section 504 services.
Special Education (IDEIA)
An education act - IDEIA was set forth to ensure that an appropriate education was delivered to students with disabilities.
State-federal-local funding - monies for IDEIA come from federal and state agencies
Special education Director - responsible for coordinating these services
Individualized Education Program - each child who is found to be "disabled" must receive an individualized plan of educational action which specifies the nature, type, and degree of disability, as well as strengths that can be drawn upon; furthermore, short term and long term goals need to be drawn out and measured on a consistent basis.
14 federal disabilities - the federal government sets out 14 sets of criteria that need to be met in order to be eligible for services. States may modify these criteria somewhat.
Parents should be involved in all team meetings.
Notice to parents is required before evaluation or any changes
An evaluation is necessary before it can be determined if a child is eligible for IDEIA services.

Cross-cultural study compares cognitive development in 3-to-5-year-olds

2006-01-29T22:46:00.000-05:00
Sabbagh, M.A., Xu, F., Carlson, S.M., Moses, L.J., Lee, K. (2006). The development of executive functioning and theory of mind. Psychological Science, 17, 1, 74-81.

I find this article extremely interesting for many reasons. The researchers decided to compare a group of Chinese preschoolers to American preschoolers. They administered tests of verbal abilities to match controls and then they administered several tests of executive functioning.

There was a compelling rationale for conducting this study - culturally, it was noted that Chinese children were required to display inhibition of impulse control at earlier ages than their American counterpart. Genetically, it appears that the dreaded 7-repeat-allele of the dopamine receptor gene (which is associated with ADHD) is quite rare in China (1.9% of the population) especially when compared to populations in the US (48.3%). And, as we all know children with ADHD show difficulties inhibiting their impulsivity. (Much of this prior research is discussed in several chapters of D'Amato, Fletcher-Janzen and Reynolds's text School Neuropsychology .

This, in of itself, is a fascinating concept - that the combined pressure of cultural standards (via child-rearing practices) eliminates much of the "lack of inhibition" in the general population, while biology serves to ensure that extreme cases of "inhibition lack" are not commonly experienced.

The authors found that:

"executive functioning" (the ability to control our attention and behavior) develops more rapidly in Chinese preschoolers than in North Americans. Associated with the frontal lobe of the brain, executive functioning skills allow us to focus on goals even when there are distractions.
When tested for the development of another, related ability called "theory of mind" (understanding that people's actions are motivated by thoughts and feelings), however, Chinese pre-schoolers did not appear to performance any better than those in North America. Previous research had shown that within cultures, advances in executive functioning were associated with advances in theory of mind development. However, Dr. Sabbagh's findings show that advances in executive functioning are not themselves sufficient to demonstrate theory of mind understanding.
In the study more than 100 Chinese and North American three-to-five-year-olds were tested on a set of eight executive functioning and five theory of mind tasks. On every one of the executive functioning tasks, the Chinese children scored higher. Most of the executive functioning tasks were inhibition-esque, like the Stroop color-naming task.
But not a single theory of mind task showed the same cultural difference. This is odd, since the presence of increased executive functioning appears to predict the presence of theory of mind.
However the authors offer as a possible explanation that the development of theory of mind is perhaps moderated by social experienced. They remind us that previous research has shown that children with siblings tend to have better theory of mind conceptualization; Chinese children often do not have this luxury due to the "1 child per family" legal restriction.
Despite these issues, genetic contributions and child rearing practices of Chinese parents appear to go a long way to helping develop theory of mind, although social experiences with peers perhaps may be a necessary ingredient to the pot.

school psychology psychology executive functions theory of mind

preschool cross cultural

Myomancy - one interesting blog

2006-01-29T17:39:00.000-05:00
I've just spent the last few hours perusing the Myomancy blog, which is quite interesting. I particularly enjoy the section in which "Franchised Dyslexia Treatments" are discussed and reviewed. Please give it a look - I'm convinced that you will become addicted to it.

Specific memory issues found in autistic children

2006-01-27T18:31:00.000-05:00
Williams, D.L., Goldstein, G.G., Minshew, N.J. (2005). The Profile of Memory Function in Children with Autism, Neuropsychology, 20, 1, 21- 29.

This is an interesting article as it idenitfies some concrete memory issues in an autistic sample. Here are some summary points:
The sample included 76 children from ages 8 to 16. Half were verbal children with autism, half were normal controls matched for age, IQ and gender. All children with a diagnosis of autism had WISC-III Full Scale IQ's above 80. Students ranged between 10 and 13 years of age.
All children were administered the WRAML and the WISC-III.
The children with autism, compared to the matched controls, had poorer memory for complex information (many individual elements or one complicated element) in both word and picture form. In essence, the children with autism found it hard to remember information if they needed a cognitive organizing strategy to aid recall or if they had to detect such an organizing element in the information itself.
Children with autism also had poor working memory for spatial information (Gsm-WM & Gv-MV), or remembering over time where something was located once it was out of sight (Gv-PI & Gv-MV). Although working memory for verbal information was fine, a "Finger Windows" subtest of recall of a spatial sequence easily distinguished between children with and without autism. Spatial working memory depends on a specific region of the frontal cortex that is known to be dysfunctional in autism.
Despite these two impairments, the children with autism did not have global memory problems. They showed good associative learning ability (Glr-MA) , verbal working(Glr-MM & Gsm-WM) memory and recognition memory (Glr-MA).
Because their memories differed in only two specific ways, the authors hypothesize that memory in autism appears to be organized differently than in normal individuals -- reflecting differences in the development of brain connections with the frontal cortex.
The authors further explain how these memory problems can affect behavior. "Typical people automatically notice and focus on what's important or relevant," she says. "But because people with autism focus on details instead, they can't recall or respond to what most people think is important."
(Notations for Broad and Narrow abilities were put in by yours truly. Please feel free to post your comments on whether you feel these adequately represent the actual tasks described.)

Omega-3 fatty acids and prenatal care

2006-01-26T14:19:00.000-05:00
Lately, the rage is discussing which foods should or should not be eaten during pregnancy. Recently Joseph Hibbeln and Jean Goldberg presented some preliminary findings on the role of omega-3 fatty acids consumed during pregnancy.
Their results show that the children of mothers who had consumed the smallest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids during their pregnancy:
had verbal IQ's that were lower than average
had lower scores on measures of fine motor performance at age 3.5
had more difficulties with social interactions
Further results discuss the following:
It appears that based on previous animal studies, omega-3 fatty acids appear to raise the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the frontal lobes.
Consumption of omega-3's may not necessarily be enough - it appears that the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids is somewhat of a better measure to look at data. Average American's omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is 20/80 while the average Japanese person's ration is 40/60. So, while omega-6 is not bad per se, the ratio should be anywhere between 34/66 to 50/50
Keep in mind that:
Omega-6 fatty acids are found in: cereals, eggs, poultry, most vegetable oils, whole-grain breads, baked goods, and margarine.
Omega-3 fatty acids are found in: oily cold-water fish such as tuna, salmon, and mackerel, fresh seaweed, dark green leafy vegetables, flaxseed oils, and certain vegetable oils.
The most interesting aspect of this article is the side mention that most individuals, especially pregnant women do not get enough omeg-3 fatty acids in their diet. Some of the best ways to get your omega-3's is through cold-water fish. These fish however are restricted due to the fact that they may be affected by methyl mercury.
Mercury is a chemical that has been linked to autism, but a lack of omega-3's leads to less language, poor motor skills and socialization difficulties. Maybe the problem is lack of omega-3's and not necessarily just the presence of mercury. That would be something interesting to look at.....

Nixzmary Brown: The problems of "burnout" and "drift"

2006-01-26T10:31:00.000-05:00

New York City has changed since the early 1980's. New York magazine columnists describe that change as going from "gritty" to "crunchy". Having grown up and currently living in New York City, I see that change. When I went to high school, I would purchase a $0.50 cup of black coagulated liquid with copious amounts of caffeine, some milk and sugar in order to wake me up. The guy who would sell it to me was Jimmy, the Greek coffee shop owner, who smoked unfiltered cigarettes (while stirring my coffee), smelled of noxious body odors and was tattooed from head to toe from years of serving in the Greek military. On alternate Thursdays he would shave. This was New York City in 1986.
Now, I have three Starbucks cafes near my house where I can purchase a $4.00 non-fat soy latte flavored with organically grown sugar. The latte is not so much to wake me up, but to "highlight my morning experience". The barista that makes my latte is from Oklahoma. June, a hopefully optimistic, wide-eyed girl wants to be an actress, smells of fresh sandalwood, and probably never smoked a cigarette in her life. On alternate Thursdays, June gets a facial. This is New York City in 2006.
So when a 7 year old girl is pummeled to death by her parents, and several agencies failed to intervene, the city goes ape. The support staff at school should have performed this. The child case workers should have done that. A list of people is released to the media that directs the public as to who needs to be blamed. People are suspended from work; others are investigated. We need to find someone to blame to make us feel better about our city, and continue our lovely latte existence. We cannot slip back into our tattooed coagulated liquid days!!! Once the individuals in the agencies are hung out to dry and the parents are locked in a jail cell for 7000 years, then we can all breathe much more easily.
At that point, we might even consider getting a facial.
The problem is that these agencies, as is the case with many agencies and unfortunately corporations as well is that they do not adequately address the problem of "burnout" or "drift". According to New York psychologist Herbert J. Freudenberger, PhD., (who coined the term), "burnout" is a state of fatigue or frustration brought about by a devotion to a cause, a way of life, or a relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.
The ironic aspect is that worker "burnout" is seen in people who were once incredibly passionate about their careers, their job. I've met many DOE and ACS workers who initially had this belief - that their deity-inspired mission - their personal crusade - is to educate children fully and utterly and to protect them from any and all harm. These people are often willing to work 90 or 100 hours a week, often with little or no promise for overtime. They don't need money - they are on a jihad to educate the masses or liberate children from the tyranny of abusive adults. Sometimes, supervisors and managers notice these intense work schedules and take it for granted that they should only be working 35 - 40 hours a week. They are impressed by their commitment to the profession, and they are then assigned tougher and tougher cases.
Exhaustion then sets in. Working 100 hours a week, wears thin on sleep schedules. Friends and family become distant. In fact a person who is in the process of "burning out" will have arguments with their spouses, friends and family - they are seen as trying to sabotage his or her career opportunities. Don't forget that the nature of their job is so intense and draining that it is a wonder that many of these individuals walk around sane.
Soon, the worker develops a devastating belief: "Nothing that I can possibly do can really help anymore". The worker then develops a belief that even if he or she worked 24 hours a day and seven days a week, nothing could further the goals of the original crusade. A more critical consequence of burnout is overlooked as well, one which pervades most or all of a person's daily life. People who burn out often have difficulties controlling their attention - directing and maintaining their attentional faculties.
Dimitri van der Linden and his colleagues at the University of Radboud in the Netherlands found that burnt out individuals or individuals who were in the process of burning out tended to make many more errors on cognitive tasks when compared to individuals who were not under a lot of stress.

van der Linden and his associates found that these individuals had difficulties inhibiting their attention and responses. What that means is that these individuals tended to have difficulties "holding back" their initial response or solution to a problem, and as a consequence didn't appear to engage in any sort of deep processing in order to solve the task at hand.

The burnt out ACS worker is probably facing the same problem. The DOE guidance counselor, teacher or school psychologist is not far behind.

The problem of “burning out” leads to “drift” and problems with” treatment integrity”. The individuals begin their jobs implementing a particular plan, but then they seem to “drift” from that particular protocol. Even slight drifts can lead to not implementing the plan as originally proposed or a lack of “treatment integrity”. This phenomenon has been documented in business as well as in education.

Fortunately there is a way to deal with many of these issues. First, Mayor Bloomberg’s general plan to hire more case workers and supervisors is to be applauded. However, that plan may go the way of the Long Island Expressway in Suffolk County. Any good city planner could have told you that adding lanes to the Long Island Expressway will not alleviate traffic – it will make it worse, since more people will be likely to use it (thinking of course, that the extra lane will alleviate traffic!).

Mayor Bloomberg’s plan also called for more training and supervision. However, I would be interested in how this training and supervision should take place. Research shows that training and supervision needs to be delivered frequently over long tracts of time, and not in a “one-day seminar model”. These one day seminars lead to eventual drift – even people who are not overstressed or in the process of burning out will still forget some aspects of a plan, and not implement the plan appropriately.

Ruth Malkenson at the Tel Aviv University, Robin Codding at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Kurtz Arabella at the University of Leicester all discussed the need for frequent feedback and supervision. Summarized as a whole, emotional supervision as well as constant feedback helps to combat drift and burnout. Malkenson uses the term “booster” sessions of supervision and feedback – so supervision should not be looked at almost like a flu shot – you need to get one on a frequent basis, otherwise, it just doesn’t work.

As I write this, John Mattingly, the head of the ACS is currently being grilled by the NYC City Council. I’m sure, that politically, they will want to hang him out to dry; After all, they will claim, someone has to pay. And I agree – someone needs to pay for DOE and ACS workers to get frequent and consistent supervision.

Effect of interactive metronome training on children with ADHD

2006-01-24T04:17:00.000-05:00
There have been more than a few articles posted recently about the use of metronome training to improve regulation skills in children diagnosed with ADHD as well as Autism Spectrum Disorders.

I know that some of you may slyly say that some of this work comes from people who adhere to a sensory integration approach and I have blasted this approach as ridiculous and silly. My strong opinions against sensory integration come from my own experiences of it not working as well as NASP's article in the Communique indicating that there is not research to support it.

However this metronome device seems to be interesting, and there are some definite effects

I have not yet seen the "Interactive Metronome" device noted in this article, so I cannot comment on the specifics of this technique, to be honest with you. Yet it is something which is quite interesting and perhaps may touch upon certain narrow abilities. I can't seem to locate a particular ability per se, but this intervention may be targeting some aspects of Gs:R9, in which the speed of test taking is moderated by an internal rhythm. Clinically, I could recall dozens of times when music (especially slow rap rhythyms) appeared to calm and focus many children with various executive functioning issues.

I also was not able to find a direct link to this article, but did find the citation and abstract on PubMed - I was only able to get a hard copy. I should actually admit that I really didn't find it per se, but my upstate man Dave Cusick illuminated us folk downstate with the link - Dave thanks a lot for this.

Also if anyone else has interesting articles please email me or post up some comments. If you want to tout your own ideas about this or any other areas, go on ahead.......