Language-specific phonological skills and the relationship with reading accuracy in Sylheti-English sequential bilinguals

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phonology on second language (L2) early reading skills in Sylheti-English bilinguals (N = 58; 48% girls; British Bangladeshi) and their monolingual-English peers (N = 43; 45% girls; 96% White British, 4% multiethnic British) in a diaspora context. Language-specific phonological awareness and nonword repetition were tested at two time points (6;2–7;8 years-old). At Time 1, the bilinguals had lower productive accuracy for phonological sequences that violated their L1 phonology (d = .56; .84), and these skills accounted for a significant amount of variance in their reading accuracy. At Time 2, the language-specific effects were no longer present. These findings highlight the importance of considering language structure in multilingual early literacy development.     

The state of evidence for social and emotional learning: A contemporary meta-analysis of universal school-based SEL interventions

This article provides a systematic review and meta-analysis of the current evidence for universal school-based (USB) social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions for students in kindergarten through 12th grade available from 2008 through 2020. The sample includes 424 studies from 53 countries, reflecting 252 discrete USB SEL interventions, involving 575,361 students. Results endorsed that, compared to control conditions, students who participate in USB SEL interventions experienced significantly improved skills, attitudes, behaviors, school climate and safety, peer relationships, school functioning, and academic achievement. Significant heterogeneity in USB SEL content, intervention features, context, and implementation quality moderated student experiences and outcomes. Strengths and limitations of this evidence and implications for future USB SEL research, policy, and practice are discussed.     

Responsive Parenting Buffers the Impact of Maternal PTSD on Young Children

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This study investigates maternal responsive parenting behaviors as a theorized buffer to the detrimental impact of maternal PTSD symptoms on young children’s depression and anxiety symptoms, disruptive behavior, and stress-related symptoms. Design. A multi-ethnic sample of 242 trauma-exposed mothers and their preschool-aged children was assessed. Maternal responsive parenting behaviors were observed during standardized parent-child interactions. Maternal and child mental health symptoms were reported by mothers. Results. Maternal PTSD symptoms were associated with their responsive parenting behaviors and predicted children’s mental health symptoms. Responsive parenting was inversely associated with children’s depression and stress-related symptoms. Moderation analyses revealed an interactive effect of maternal symptoms and responsive parenting on preschool children’s disruptive behavior and stress-related symptoms. Conclusions. Responsive parenting behaviors can mitigate the ill effects of maternal PTSD symptoms. Nurturing relationships buffer the impact of maternal PTSD. Helping parents’ to sensitively respond to their young children’s distress can support positive outcomes in children.     

Prior incest in mothers of abused children

Previous studies have shown that most abusing parents have a history of physical abuse or neglect in their own childhoods. There is little data on the frequency of prior sexual abuse among parents who physically or sexually abuse their children. Many case reports describe the uncovering of a prior incest experience in a parent during the investigation of the child's current incest accusation, but it is unclear how frequently this occurs. One hundred mothers of abused children were asked about sexual incidents that occurred before age 18; the control group consisted of 500 normal women from the same community who were surveyed during meetings of various voluntary organizations. Age and ethnicity did not differ in the two groups. Of the mothers of abused children, 24% reported a prior incest experience, whereas only 3% of the control women reported prior incest. This eightfold difference was highly significant. The 34 mothers from families where sexual abuse was occurring were no more likely to report prior incest than were the 66 mothers from families where physical abuse occurred. The one case of genital mutilation of a child occurred in a family where both parents had been incest victims. Case studies indicate that the parent who has been an incest victim has inhibitions and fears about tenderness, traceable to the childhood incest experience, which are important in the development of either physical abuse or sexual abuse in the family.     

Studies in Historical Replication in Psychology IV: An Inquiry into the Psychological Research and Life of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) is well known as an early twentieth century writer, but less well known is her involvement in automatic writing research. Critics of Stein’s literary works suggest that her research had a significant influence on her poetry and fiction, though Stein denied any influence. A partial replication of Stein’s 1896 study was conducted with the goal of addressing three historical questions: (1) What contributed to Stein’s involvement in automatic writing research?; (2) To what extent did Stein believe that she experienced automatic writing?; and (3) To what extent did her automatic writing research influence her later literary works?     

Artifactual dimensions of visual rhetoric: what a content analysis of 114 peer-reviewed articles reveals about data collection reporting

This content analysis examined how the authors of 114 peer-reviewed journal articles explained their empirical approaches to visual rhetoric scholarship. The authors content analysis sought to answer the question: how do scholars engage with the material dimensions of visual culture, specifically in terms of artifact selection and reporting data collection procedures? The answers to this question, the authors argue, are needed urgently as visual rhetoric research continues to expand because inconsistent reporting will hinder replicability and the reader’s access to the author’s argument. The authors use the findings of their content analysis to surface the implicit norms of empirical visual rhetoric research and to develop recommendations for reporting visual data collection procedures.     

Prevention is better than cure: coping skills training for adolescents at school

Children and adolescents today face a plethora of stressful problems, including family and relationship conflict, death of close family members or friends, and academic and social pressures. Such problems have been found to contribute to an increased risk of various emotional–social–cognitive difficulties in adolescence. These include academic failure, social misbehaviour, interpersonal problems, and depression.

Programmes that promote coping with normative stress, delivered to the whole population, have been considered to represent a promising direction for the prevention of social emotional difficulties. The Best of Coping: Developing Coping Skills Program (Frydenberg & Brandon, 2002 Frydenberg E Brandon CM (2002) The best of coping Melbourne: Oz Child [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) was introduced in two school settings on four separate occasions. Evaluation of the results provides modest support for coping skills enhancement but provide a warning about the need for caution when implementing and evaluating the Programme. First, it appeared to have some opposing effects on males and females. Second, improvements in students' coping responses were apparently related to the authenticity of implementation of the Programme.

The findings are discussed with regard to the need to implement programmes through which we can teach adolescents coping responses, which include optimism and problem‐solving skills, so that they may handle problems and stressors more effectively. Additionally, an important feature of such programmes is a focus on the reduction of the use of non‐productive coping skills. With an increase in psycho‐social problems, the need to provide school‐based programmes is discussed, with emphasis placed on programme implementation. In particular, the probable need for ongoing involvement of psychologically trained school counsellors with teachers, through the life of the programme.     

Principles for archival information services in the public domain

In 2010, in response to the Australian Government’s November 2009 apology to Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, a scoping study was undertaken by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) to assess the options for a national ‘Find and Connect’ service to allow people to locate and access relevant records and have recourse to support services. The scoping study noted that Pathways, a web-based public knowledge space and a product of the Victorian ‘Who Am I?’ research project, was a community-based information resource without equal in the out-of-home care sector in Australia or indeed internationally. The scoping team made the observation that Pathways, due to its quality of content and coherent structure, appeared to be based on a set of principles and wondered what they were. In response the research team set about articulating the principles that underpinned their approach to archival documentation and the use of digital technologies – principles that had emerged through more than two decades of public domain, archive-focussed projects. This paper presents those ten principles and discusses them within the context of Pathways and the ‘Who Am I?’ project. The principles played a key role in FaCHSIA adopting Pathways as the model for the national Find and Connect database and web resource, launched on 15 November 2011. The principles underpin community knowledge building in the fourth or pluralised dimension of the Records Continuum. The paper ultimately argues that all stakeholders (all people and organisations connected with records) should have the ability to contribute to the utilisation of those records through the improvement of documentation and that some archival systems do have a duty of care to ensure they can inter-operate with community-generated knowledge.