An analysis of multiple misplaced parental social contingencies. (1/1523)

This study analyzed the training of a mother to modify five subclasses of her attention to her young child's noncompliance with instructions, and also displayed the changes in her child's behavior correlated with these events. Training in four subclasses consisted of teaching the mother to withhold various forms of social attention to her daughter's undesired behavior; training in the fifth subclass involved introduction of a brief room-timeout procedure for noncompliance. The effectiveness of the parent-training procedure, consisting of initial instructions and daily feedback, was demonstrated through a multiple-baseline design across the five subclasses of parent behavior. Sequential decreased in the first three subclasses of the mother's social attention to undesired child behavior resulted in incomplete improvements in some child responses; however, a decrease in the fourth subclass resulted in a significant increase in undesired child behavior. Complete remediation of all child behaviors was achieved following the training of a timeout procedure for noncompliance. Postchecks conducted up to 16 weeks later showed that these effects were durable.  (+info)

The effects of social punishment on noncompliance: a comparison with timeout and positive practice. (2/1523)

The effects of social punishment, positive practice, and timeout on the noncompliant behavior of four mentally retarded children were assessed in a multitreatment withdrawal design. When programmed, the experimental procedure occurred contigent on non-compliance to experimenter-issued commands. Commands were given at 55-sec intervals throughout each experimental session. The results showed (1) lower levels of noncompliance with social punishment than with the positive-practice or timeout conditions, and (2) that relatively few applications of social punishment were required to obtain this effect. The advantages of social punishment over other punishment procedures, considerations to be made before using it, and the various aspects of the procedure that contribute to its effectiveness were discussed.  (+info)

The changing criterion design. (3/1523)

This article describes and illustrates with two case studies a relatively novel form of the multiple-baseline design called the changing criterion design. It also presents the design's formal requirements, and suggests target behaviors and circumstances for which the design might be useful.  (+info)

Alternate child care, history of hospitalization, and preschool child behavior. (4/1523)

BACKGROUND: With more single mothers entering the workforce due to welfare reform efforts, more hospitalized children from single-parent families will have experienced alternate child care arrangements where routine care is provided by adults other than the child's mother. OBJECTIVES: To investigate with secondary analysis of data whether experience with alternate child care has a moderating effect on the relationship between hospitalization and behavior of preschool children living in female-headed single-parent families. METHOD: A sample of 60 preterm and 61 full-term children who were 3, 4, or 5 years old was recruited for the larger longitudinal study. Behavior problems were measured with the Child Behavior Checklist. History of hospitalization and alternate child care arrangements were measured with the Life History Calendar. RESULTS: Preschool children who experienced hospitalization without alternate child care experience had more somatic complaints, but those with both hospital and alternate child care experience had fewer aggressive behaviors than other children. For children with a history of hospitalization, aggressive behaviors decreased as the proportion of the child's life in alternate child care increased. CONCLUSIONS: Experience with alternate child care may ameliorate some of the negative effects of hospitalization, and potentially other novel and negative experiences, for preschool children. This could be due to child care providing positive experiences with separation from the mother, a peer group with which to talk about the novel experience, or actual instruction about the novel experience.  (+info)

Health needs of preschool children. (5/1523)

An epidemiological study of disease in a geographically identified population of 250 children is reported. 22% had not seen their general practitioner (GP) at all in the past year, while 20% had seen him four times or more. The vast majority of these visits were because of an infective illness; and developmental and behavioural problems were rarely presented to GPs. 53% of children had not been to hospital since birth, but 11% had been at least four times. Respiratory infections and middle ear disease were the commonest illness reported, and nearly 3% had an infected or discharging ear at the time of examination. 15% of 3 year olds had speech and language problems. 18% of children over 2 years were thought by the examiners to have a behavioural problem, half being assessed as mild, the remainder as moderate or severe.  (+info)

Use of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist to screen for psychosocial problems in pediatric primary care: a national feasibility study. (6/1523)

BACKGROUND: Routine use of a brief psychosocial screening instrument has been proposed as a means of improving recognition, management, and referral of children's psychosocial morbidity in primary care. OBJECTIVE: To assess the feasibility of routine psychosocial screening using the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) in pediatrics by using a brief version of the checklist in a large sample representative of the full range of pediatric practice settings in the United States and Canada. We evaluated large-scale screening and the performance of the PSC in detecting psychosocial problems by (1) determining whether the prevalence of psychosocial dysfunction identified by the PSC was consistent with findings in previous, smaller samples; (2) assessing whether the prevalence of positive PSC screening scores varied by population subgroups; and (3) determining whether the PSC was completed by a significant proportion of parents from all subgroups and settings. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twenty-one thousand sixty-five children between the ages of 4 and 15 years were seen in 2 large primary care networks: the Ambulatory Sentinel Practice Network and the Pediatric Research in Office Settings network, involving 395 pediatric and family practice clinicians in 44 states, Puerto Rico, and 4 Canadian provinces. Parents were asked to complete a brief questionnaire that included demographic information, history of mental health services, the 35-item PSC, and the number of pediatric visits within the past 6 months. RESULTS: The overall prevalence rates of psychosocial dysfunction as measured by the PSC in school-aged and preschool-aged pediatric outpatients (13% and 10%, respectively) were nearly identical to the rates that had been reported in several smaller samples (12%-14% among school-aged children and 7%-14% among preschoolers). Consistent with previous findings, children from low-income families were twice as likely to be scored as dysfunctional on the PSC than were children from higher-income families. Similarly, children from single-parent as opposed to those from 2-parent families and children with a past history of mental health services showed an elevated risk of psychosocial impairment. The current study was the first to demonstrate a 50% increase in risk of impairment for male children. The overall rate of completed forms was 97%, well within an acceptable range, and at least 94% of the parents in each sociodemographic subgroup completed the PSC form. CONCLUSIONS: Use of the PSC offers an approach to the recognition of psychosocial dysfunction that is sufficiently consistent across groups and locales to become part of comprehensive pediatric care in virtually all outpatient settings. In addition to its clinical utility, the consistency and widespread acceptability of the PSC make it well suited for the next generation of pediatric mental health services research, which can address whether earlier recognition of and intervention for psychosocial problems in pediatrics will lead to cost-effective outcomes.  (+info)

The Montefiore community children's project: a controlled study of cognitive and emotional problems of homeless mothers and children. (7/1523)

OBJECTIVES: This study compares the prevalence of emotional, academic, and cognitive impairment in children and mothers living in the community with those living in shelters for the homeless. METHOD: In New York City, 82 homeless mothers and their 102 children, aged 6 to 11, recruited from family shelters were compared to 115 nonhomeless mothers with 176 children recruited from classmates of the homeless children. Assessments included standardized tests and interviews. RESULTS: Mothers in shelters for the homeless showed higher rates of depression and anxiety than did nonhomeless mothers. Boys in homeless shelters showed higher rates of serious emotional and behavioral problems. Both boys and girls in homeless shelters showed more academic problems than did nonhomeless children. CONCLUSION: Study findings suggest a need among homeless children for special attention to academic problems that are not attributable to intellectual deficits in either children or their mothers. Although high rates of emotional and behavioral problems characterized poor children living in both settings, boys in shelters for the homeless may be particularly in need of professional attention.  (+info)

The relation between behavior problems and peer preference in different classroom contexts. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (8/1523)

This study tested two alternative hypotheses regarding the relations between child behavior and peer preference. The first hypothesis is generated from the person-group similarity model, which predicts that the acceptability of social behaviors will vary as a function of peer group norms. The second hypothesis is generated by the social skill model, which predicts that behavioral skill deficiencies reduce and behavioral competencies enhance peer preference. A total of 2895 children in 134 regular first-grade classrooms participated in the study. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to compare four different behaviors as predictors of peer preference in the context of classrooms with varying levels of these behavior problems. The results of the study supported both predictive models, with the acceptability of aggression and withdrawal varying across classrooms (following a person-group similarity model) and the effects of inattentive/hyperactive behavior (in a negative direction) and prosocial behavior (in a positive direction) following a social skill model and remaining constant in their associations with peer preference across classrooms. Gender differences also emerged, with aggression following the person-group similarity model for boys more strongly than for girls. The effects of both child behaviors and the peer group context on peer preference and on the trajectory of social development are discussed.  (+info)

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