Corporal Punishment and Elevated Neural Response to Threat in Children

Spanking remains common around the world, despite evidence linking corporal punishment to detrimental child outcomes. This study tested whether children (M_age = 11.60) who were spanked (N = 40) exhibited altered neural function in response to stimuli that suggest the presence of an environmental threat compared to children who were not spanked (N = 107). Children who were spanked exhibited greater activation in multiple regions of the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial PFC, bilateral frontal pole, and left middle frontal gyrus in response to fearful relative to neutral faces compared to children who were not spanked. These findings suggest that spanking may alter neural responses to environmental threats in a manner similar to more severe forms of maltreatment.     

Early Effects of North Carolina’s Comprehensive Articulation Agreement on Credit Accumulation Among Community College Transfer Students

Research in Higher Education - Community college transfer pathways, whereby students begin their postsecondary enrollment at a 2-year institution, are an increasingly popular option for students...     

Dynamic assessment: supporting educational psychologists’ practice through the use of video during supervision

ABSTRACT

Dynamic assessment (DA) is appealing to educational psychologists (EPs) due to: its flexibility, allowing EPs to adjust materials and processes to fit the assessment context; its usefulness, revealing ideas about how the next steps for learning might be achieved; and its focus on strengths. In Feuerstein’s words, “it is the instances of success of the individual that are the focal point for analysis for the reasons of success and failure”. Given the appeal of DA, it is frustrating that it has not been taken up more by practitioners. This paper will explore what DA is, and what it is not, summarise its advantages, consider why it is not more widely used, and introduce one way in which EPs can receive support for DA; using video of an EP “doing” DA within supervision in order to reflect on “good” DA.     

Dis-placing place-making: how African-American and immigrant youth realize their rights to the city

ABSTRACT

Notions of place-making assume that individuals and groups of people have legitimate ‘rights to the city.’ This paper unsettles these notions to incorporate the politically and legally tenuous relationships African-American and Immigrant youth have to their cities. We describe a community-based digital STEAM curriculum called Mobile City Science that invited youth to engage in place-making efforts using mobile and location-aware technologies. The design study relied on a contradiction that is fundamental to youth place-making in an era of white nationalism: for African-American and Immigrant youth to engage power structures in community development processes, they had to engage in a series of dis-placements that removed them from embodied experiences and in-location perceptions of their communities. Self-censoring, witnessing, historicizing, and re-veiwing were all examples of dis-placements youth enacted to speak truth to power with digital and mobile tools.     

Perspectives on Childrearing Competence

Some families cannot rely on children's intellectual achievement as a prime indicator of parenting success. This study juxtaposes how well 130 parents of mildly mentally handicapped children are doing in their own estimate and the opinion of 21 key school personnel. A surprisingly high level of home‐school disagreement is identified along with implications for more effective collaboration.     

Evaluating the success of deaf parents

Nineteen parent-child pairs completed the Parental Strengths and Needs Inventory (PSNI) and were interviewed about their relationships. Parent and child scores on the PSNI were above average, with parents expressing high interest in information about childrearing. Interviews revealed issues specific to deaf parents, such as using children as interpreters and frustration when children had poor sign language skills. Children with good sign language skills said they were generally willing to interpret for their parents, except during conflict situations. Children also reported advantages to having deaf parents: they enjoyed being bilingual and their parents tolerated noise and loud music. Study results underscore the importance of triangulation strategies in cross-cultural research.     

HUMAN SUBJECTS AND COGNITIVE AGING RESEARCH: A UNIQUE SOLUTION TO A PERENNIAL PROBLEM

A fundamental concern of cognitive aging researchers is to find a representative sample of healthy, older adults who are willing to participate in experimental research. There are essentially two methods for marshalling a sizable body of older research participants. One can solicit the aid of local community‐dwelling adults through civic and church‐related organizations. Alternatively, one can travel to specific locations where elderly people are likely to congregate, for example, a retirement community. In this article, we describe our experiences with these two methods of research‐participant recruitment. The processes involved in both securing and utilizing a local body of research volunteers are presented first. We then discuss two subject‐testing expeditions outside of the university environment that have been highly successful. In the final section, we contrast selected demographic characteristics of our local and off‐site research volunteers and discuss the implications of differences between these two populations for conducting research with aged people.     

AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN SENIOR SETTINGS: ON THE NEED FOR EDUCATING GRANDPARENTS

The study reported in this paper examined perception of family relations by African-American elders. Data were collected from 39 participants in senior settings using the Grandparents Strengths and Needs Inventory to identify favorable qualities and areas for further improvement. Participants also were interviewed for common themes. Grandparents rated themselves favorably on satisfaction, overall success, and teaching. They assigned themselves high scores for coping with difficulty and managing frustration and identified information needs as the least favorable rating. Greater satisfaction and ability to manage frustration correlated with a more favorably perceived rating of personal health. Recommendations are given to enhance grandparent influence through educational programs.