<p> To gain an understanding of children&rsquo;s social milieu, this study explored international children&rsquo;s phenomenology about their social networks, stressors, and supports using the ecomap, a graphic tool that maps children&rsquo;s social relationships and their appraisals of them. Specifically, it addressed the following two research questions using archival ecomap data collected from 816 school-aged children (ages four &ndash; 19 years) from 14 cities in 12 countries (Brazil &ndash; Manaus, Estonia &ndash; Tallinn, Greece &ndash; Athens, India &ndash; Mumbai, Italy &ndash; Padua, Mexico &ndash; Xalapa, Romania &ndash; Bucharest, Russia &ndash; Samara, Slovak Republic &ndash; Ko&scaron;ice, Sri Lanka &ndash; Negombo, Tanzania &ndash; Arusha, and the United States &ndash; Boston, Massachusetts; Mayag&uuml;ez, Puerto Rico; New Orleans, Louisiana): (a) What are the characteristics of international children&rsquo;s social networks, and what cross-cultural patterns exist; and (b) Who and what do children consider their social supports and social stressors, and what cross-cultural patterns emerge? The nature of the ecomap drawings and their associated narratives allowed for a concurrent mixed methods approach to be used to identify cross-cultural phenomenological patterns about the structures (network size, embeddedness, and network composition), functions (stressor and support types), and evaluations (relationship appraisals) of children&rsquo;s social worlds. Considerable diversity was found in the data, but a number of notable cross-site, cross-gender, and cross-age patterns were identified. In general, children in this sample reported a trimmed mean network size of 7.87 (<i>SD</i> = 3.61), with middle school students reporting the largest (<i>M</i> = 8.78). Embeddedness, measured as the balance of perceived stress and supports (Nastasi &amp; Borja, 2015; Summerville, 2013), also was generally positive, suggesting that children generally perceive themselves to be connected to their social networks. Most commonly reported members included home parent/caregivers, friends/peers, extended family members, and siblings; and across grade levels, sites, and gender, network members were generally appraised positively. When asked about the ways that network members support or trigger distress, youth in this sample described over 50 stress and support themes, most of which related to interpersonal relationships and interactions. The results of the current study not only contributes to the literature on children&rsquo;s stressors and supports, but also build on Nastasi and colleagues&rsquo; <i>Promoting Psychological Well-Being Globally</i> project (PPWBG; Nastasi &amp; Borja, 2015), whose international team collected the ecomap data to understand children&rsquo;s well-being and the culturally- and developmentally-unique factors that influence them.</p>

No description available.

<p> Anxiety is a prominent diagnosis that children can experience at an early age. When untreated, due to negative perceptions and stigmas, childhood anxiety can manifest into severe mental conditions. However, there are professionals who are trained to assist children with their anxiety and destigmatize the idea of anxiety. The intention of this study was to examine the perspectives of professionals who work with children with anxiety and to explore further these professional&rsquo;s beliefs about where anxiety originates. Data was collected through four semi-structured interviews with participants who have diverse backgrounds and work in multiple settings with children who experience anxiety. The results of this study indicate that there are both stigmas and an acceptance of individuals with anxiety disorders. Furthermore, this study brings an awareness to the impact that culture and media can play in developing fears and anxieties in children as well as the importance of seeking early interventions in order to minimize further mental health concerns. </p><p>

<p> This investigation addresses five constituents&mdash;calling, social consequences, imagination, story, and the experience of being gifted. It is grounded in the fundamental human inquiry of identity and purpose and contains both personal and universal answers. Primarily, the author sought to answer one question: How did imagination and story reveal and develop my personal narrative? This led her to Hillman&rsquo;s (1997) contention that our true biography&mdash;the destiny written into our metaphoric <i>acorn</i>&mdash;has been stolen. Three questions arose from the primary question used to organize the literature review: (a) How has the use of this knowledge affected my understanding of the evolution of the human story? (b) What evidence is there to identify when our species developed imagination? and (c) Why is imagination undervalued? </p><p> There were four sub-questions answered through the personal data: (a) How is a quest or calling revealed? (b) Why is the phenomenon of Neverland essential to human well-being? (c) How did social forces impede the expression of imagination and the process of the original human story? and (d) What does it mean to be <i>gifted</i>? </p><p> The method chosen for this work was autoethnography, which, according to Bochner and Ellis (2016), exists in a space between many apparent polarities including facts and meanings,objectivity and subjectivity, and art and science in what Reed-Danahay (1997) explained was how we come to know, name, and interpret personal and cultural experiences. The author was the only participant in this study; however, the meaning emerging from the inquiry could be relevant for many. </p><p> The rationale and significance of this study was based on the assumption that the quality of human lives often suffers when people remain disconnected from experiencing their authentic self. The key finding was that through claiming the state of Neverland, as represented by the Peter Pan story, the author was able to connect with who she is and why she is here. This research allowed the author to reclaim her calling, imagination, and story, and acknowledge her giftedness. The ultimate call is for a new paradigm that welcomes and supports the unfolding human destiny.</p><p>

<p> <b>Background:</b> Previous studies have related adverse childhood experiences (ACE) to heart disease. However, more research needs to explore neural mechanisms and psychological factors that contribute to the pathway of adverse childhood experiences leading to heart disease. <b>Purpose: </b> The present study examines racial identity as a moderator of adverse childhood experiences and cardiac autonomic dysregulation as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia. <b>Method:</b> Forty-six undergraduate students of African descent attending a Historically Black University in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States participated in this study. During the first phase, participants completed consent forms and questionnaires including the ACE Scale and the Cross Racial Identity Scale. Participants returned to the laboratory on a second occasion during which researchers employed an impedance cardiograph to record resting levels of interbeat intervals (IBI) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). <b>Results:</b> Ordinary least squares regression analyses were conducted to test the moderating role of racial identity attitudes on the relationship between ACE prevalence and RSA. The overall regression model which included ACE prevalence, Multiculturalist attitudes, gender, and all interaction terms significantly predicted resting IBI. The overall model that included ACE prevalence, Afrocentric attitudes, gender, and all interaction terms also significantly predicted resting IBI. Participants with ACE and Afrocentric attitudes were more likely to have decreased resting RSA. Furthermore, in addition to ACE prevalence and Afrocentric attitudes, considering gender added 10% more explanatory variance in predicting resting RSA. Male participants with ACE and low Afrocentricity ratings were more likely to have decreased resting RSA. Additionally, considering gender with ACE prevalence and Miseducation attitudes added 10% more explanatory variance in predicting resting RSA. <b> Discussion:</b> Results and limitations are further discussed in the context of existing literature.</p><p>

Typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

There may be a cumulative effect of social and environmental risk factors which lead to chronic, elevated levels of stress. Constant elevations of maternal stress hormones during pregnancy disrupt developing fetal brain chemistry and architecture, resulting in later memory and learning deficiencies. While we know that the quality of the fetal environment and the timing of exposure to a variety of substances are critical for developmental and health outcomes, little is known about the consequences of maternal cumulative risk on the fetus and later cognitive development. With data from the Nurse Family Partnership Elmira Sample, this work investigates whether maternal cumulative risk during pregnancy predicts IQ in 3 and 4 year olds, without and with postnatal influences. The role that birth outcomes play as mediators of this relationship is also explored. Finally, moderation effects and cumulative genetic risk of five polymorphisms of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene are examined. Increased maternal cumulative risk during pregnancy was negatively associated with IQ at ages 3 and 4 with and without the inclusion of postnatal controls. Birth outcomes partially mediated this relationship to a small extent. GR rs6198 G and rs6190 G alleles infer risk while rs6198 A alleles serve as protective factors with respect to the association of maternal cumulative risk during pregnancy and IQ in young children. This study contributes insights on the cumulative effects of chronic social and environmental stressors that may lead to increased levels of maternal stress hormones during pregnancy and poor cognitive outcomes in young children in the presence of specific glucocorticoid receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms. Application of findings to early intervention programming and policy is discussed.

Adolescence is the time when humans begin utilizing mating strategies (e.g., flirting, fighting or rumor spreading about competitors) to attract and keep mates. Consistent empirical evidence shows that some adolescent boys are on a developmental pathway in which they utilize aggression and risky behaviors in their mating strategies, but there is little research on adolescent girls' use of aggression and risk-taking in mating. This study hypothesized that ethnically diverse, young adolescent girls nominated consistently as flirters were also more likely to be nominated as aggressive and report higher levels of risk taking behaviors (e.g., drug use, delinquency) than girls not nominated as flirters. This study assessed mating effort via a new approach: peer-report of flirting behavior, which is dissimilar to previous studies that asked participants to report on their mating effort behaviors or report on peers who were not participants in the study. It is proposed that flirting behavior will increase yearly from 6th to 8th grade, coinciding with the start of puberty. It is also predicted that consistent flirters will endorse dating more frequently, as mating behavior and mate success are strongly linked in the literature. This study also investigated the relationship between attractiveness, which is an aspect of mate value, and mating effort. Researchers have found that mating effort and mate value increase one's mating success and they are positively correlated. Also, this study analyzed the relationship between adolescents' familial adversity and their mating effort as previous research found that familial adversity has a causal influence on teenage sexual risk taking behaviors, earlier start of puberty, and earlier sexual debut. Sixth graders in two large middle schools in a low income, ethnically diverse, northeastern school district were followed for three years for a larger longitudinal study. This study uses data from a subsample of 190 adolescent girls with complete data for 7th and 8th grades. Measures were administered in language arts or social studies classes during the fall of each year. Measures included a peer-report of flirtatiousness and aggressive behavior via the Revised Class Play (Masten, Morrison, & Pelligrini, 1985), self-report of dating frequency, and self-report of risk taking behaviors including substance and alcohol use (Winters, 1992) and delinquency (Elliot, Huizinga, & Ageton, 1985). Attractiveness was assessed via peer-report ratings of yearbook photos and self-reports of body image and appearance satisfaction (Cash, 2000). Adverse familial background was measured as self-report of psychological aggression from parents (Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998) and living arrangements in 6th grade.

While much research has suggested that emotional experiences change dramatically over the lifespan, less is known about what underlies these changes at a mechanistic level. Specifically, it is unclear whether age predicts differences in bottom-up reactivity to emotional events, or in the ability to exert top-down control over emotional responses. The present studies sought to address these gaps in the literature. Studies 1 and 2 compared the behavioral and neural correlates, respectively, of emotional reactivity to and regulation of emotional responses to social and non-social aversive stimuli in individuals aged 10-22. Study 1 additionally examined the interaction between individual differences in sensitivity to social rejection and age and how this impacts regulation of emotional responses to social stimuli. Across these studies, age predicted differences in neural and behavioral correlates of regulation but not reactivity. Study 3 broadened the sample age range to include children as young as 6 years and obtained results that were generally consistent with those of Studies 1-2. Study 4 examined the generalizability of the findings from Studies 1-3 by examining reactivity and regulation of appetitive, rather than aversive, responses in participants ranging from 6-22 years. Behavioral indices of reactivity and regulation correlated with age in Study 4, but neural effects of age were only found for regulation. Data from Study 4 additionally suggested links between the neural correlates of regulation of craving and body mass index.

Previous research suggests that the home environment explains up to one half of the association between poverty and low cognitive skills. Building on this research, this study provides a more nuanced analysis of the family processes through which socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children's academic outcomes by: 1) including maternal education and family income as predictors of parenting and children's academic skills, and 2) separating the home environment into parental investments of time and materials. Data are drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K; n=20,582). Structural equation modeling is used to examine the extent to which these parental investments mediate associations between markers of SES and children's reading and math achievement. Models also test for moderation of the productivity of parental investments. Results indicate that SES is associated with children's school success via a pathway in which maternal education influences the extent to which parents invest in learning materials for their children, and these learning materials in turn foster development of early literacy and numeracy skills. Parental time has an unexpected negative association with children's achievement, which is explained in supplemental models. Family income and maternal education also moderate the productivity of parental investments, such that the negative effect of time and the positive effect of materials are magnified in more advantaged households. Findings suggest that the following interventions may be worthwhile policy priorities: 1) support for low-SES mothers' pursuit of further education, and/or 2) provision of learning materials for children in disadvantaged families.