Editorial

Science &; Education -     

Family Fun Nights: Collaborative Parent Education Accessible for Diverse Learning Abilities

Quality early childhood education programs have a responsibility to provide enriched educational services to preschool students paired with parent support, education, and outreach. Pearl Buck Preschool, a non-profit organization devoted to the delivery of preschool services for children of parents with intellectual disabilities or learning difficulties, created a unique parent program titled Family Fun Night. This six-session series was developed with a strengths-based, collaborative framework and was connected to the Program-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports implementation in the preschool. The following paper discusses the development, facilitation, implementation, logistics, and assessment of the Family Fun Night series. Barriers to implementation are also discussed.     

Perspectives on Conceptualizing Developmentally Appropriate Sexuality Education

Despite recognition of the importance of a developmentally appropriate approach to sexuality education, there is little direct guidance on how to do this. This study employed in-depth interviews with experienced sexuality educators and developers of sexuality education materials to identify how this concept is understood and applied in the field. Developmentally appropriate sexuality education was conceptualized consistently across interviews to include (a) addressing developmentally relevant topics, (b) adapting content to cognitive development, (c) accommodating developmental diversity, and (d) facilitating the internalization of sexual health messages. However, these views fell short of incorporating the breadth of knowledge offered by adolescent development research.     

Order and duration of stimuli are important determinants of reactivation

Prior cuing treatments intended to alleviate the forgetting of a conditioned avexsion-to an odor were tested with 18-day-old rats. Previous experiments had shown that when such pups were conditioned with the use of a CS?/CS+ procedure, pretest presentation of the CS? or US, but not the CS+, alleviated the forgetting otherwise seen after a 3-h retention interval. In Experiment 1, it was determined that the forgetting was not alleviated if the GS? was either preceded or followed by presentation of the CS+, despite the fact that the CS?/CS+ ordering mimicked that of original conditioning. Experiment 2 was an examination of the balance of extinction and reactivation effects caused by presenting the CS+ for varying durations following the 3-h retention interval. The forgetting over this interval was alleviated if the CS+ was presented for 5 or 15 sec, but not 30 sec. With an increase in duration of exposure from 15 to 30 sec, the consequences of the CS+ as a prior cuing treatment apparently shifted from reactivation to extinction. Experiment 3 was a test of the interaction between the consequences of different lengths of CS+ exposure and the effectiveness of adding CS? to the CS+ as a reactivation treatment. The varied effectiveness of reactivation treatments is discussed interms of a change in stimulus conditions from training to reactivation.