xiv, 149 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Three types of literate words, including abstract nouns (freedom, challenge), mental state verbs (assume, explain), and derivatives (relationship, respectful), were examined in narrative and expository writing in typically developing children and adolescents. It was predicted that older students would use literate words more frequently than younger students, and that literate words would occur more frequently in expository writing than in narrative writing. One hundred and twenty typically developing children and adolescents including forty 5th graders, forty 8th graders, and forty 11th graders wrote one narrative and one expository essay at school. The results showed that genre had a substantial impact on the use of literate words in the writing of school-age children and adolescents. except metalinguistic verbs. Moreover, literate words were used significantly more often in expository than in narrative text, except derived adjectives. Additionally, metalinguistic verbs occurred more often in narrative writing than expository writing; however, the difference was not statistically significant. Age-related increases occurred in the use of abstract nouns, derived nominals, early/late developing metacognitive verbs and late developing metalinguistic verbs in narrative writing. Age-related increases also occurred in the use of derived adjectives, and late developing metacognitive and metalinguistic verbs in expository writing. The present study adds to the knowledge base concerning the development of literate word use in narrative and expository writing in typically developing children and adolescents. / Adviser: Marilyn Nippold

This thesis focuses on specific work of primary school teachers that is related to children with the symptoms of ADHD. The theoretical part describes primary school system, young school age children from the perspective of development psychology, further it deals with ADHD in terms of terminology, occurrence, origins of this disorder and description of symptoms ADHD. The practical part of this thesis contains interviews with teachers which encountered children with ADHD during their working experience.It analyses ways of pedagogic work with this disorder in primary schools.

This diploma work deals with the topic of Picture of God in Younger-school-age Children in the Church of the Brethen. It is divided into the theoretical and the practical part. Theoretical one tries to describe above all religious development of children at the age of 6 till 12 years and also various religious-pedagogical theories of the development of the picture of God. Diploma work is also focused on the picture of God in the doctrine of the Brethen Church. In the practical part, this work offers a closer look at the picture of God in the Younger-school-age Children of two selected congregations of the Brethen Church in towns of Prague and of České Budějovice. This research tell us interesting facts about the religious education of children of that both congregations.

This master thesis aims mainly on behaviour of primary-school children in the environment of the internet and on motivation which can lead to dangerous behaviour such as providing personal data. The theoretical part defines basic terms. Firstly, it focuses on psychological profile of primary-school children and on their experience with new technologies, then it describes major types of danger as results of hazardous behaviour of children on the internet focusing on cyberbullying and cybergrooming. The end of the theoretical part presents a number of basic researches related to primary-school children behaviour on the internet, which took place in the Czech Republic during last several years. The empirical part aims on qualitative research using the method called focus groups among primary-school children. Firstly, the research purpose and the methodology are described, followed by the most important part of the thesis - presentation of the results of the research and its evaluation, which involves also recommendation for education in this field and other potential researches. The conclusion of the thesis focuses mainly on the evaluation of the research and the work as a whole from the writer's point of view and on propounding of possible further development in this area. Keywords Children,...

This thesis deals with the health promotion policy of school-age children in the area of nutrition and physical activities, and identifies the most serious problems related to this field of health policy. It also focuses on the main problems associated with the lifestyle of school-age children in the Czech Republic. Proper eating habits and good relationship to physical activities are formed from an early age, so it is necessary in the terms of health promotion to focus mainly on children and their education to a healthy lifestyle. This creates possibilities to achieve an overall improvement in the health status of population. To fulfill the goals of this thesis, secondary data from documents that are related to the observed problem were used together with primary data from qualitative research, which was conducted by expert interviews. School-age children in the Czech Republic do not comply with the dietary guidelines or recommendations for physical activity proccesed by WHO. A related problem is obesity, which is caused by these factors. Health promotion policy responds to these problems by projects and health promotion programmes. Inadequate infrastructure, which does not allow its national exposure, insufficient funding, staffing and lack of skilled workers in this field were identified as the...

Children with language impairment (LI) have often been identified as having social communication breakdowns. A number of these problems are likely the result of deficits in emotional competence. This thesis examines a social communication intervention designed to target the emotional competence of children with LI. Three elementary school-aged children with LI were recruited to receive twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over the course of four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing using story retell, story exploration, story enactment, perspectives charts, journal entries, emotion labeling, and personalization. These activities revolved around Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog (1967) wordless picture book series. These books were used because of their age-appropriate subject matter and clear, simple depictions of character actions and facial expressions. To analyze the effectiveness of this intervention package in improving emotional competence, the number of emotion-based words belonging to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust that were produced each session was counted. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Finally, emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were highly variable but all three participants demonstrated improvements in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category. Although all three participants usually used words of a positive valence in an appropriate manner, inappropriate uses were also observed. When actual emotion-word productions mismatched the intended emotions, all three participants produced low valence agreement for words of positive valence and high valence agreement for words of negative valence. Further research is warranted but results suggested that this particular social communication intervention was effective in improving the production of specific emotion words by children with LI.

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in their social circles than children with typical language; they also interacted with fewer peers than did children with typical language. The children with LI interacted with more adults who were paid or obligated to interact with them than did their typical peers. Information about the nature of social interactions of children with LI as well as those of children with typical language was obtained from parent interviews. Qualitative observations from the parent interviews demonstrated that the Internet was not used as a significant mode of communication for children in this age group, although the children who used it to communicate were all from the Typical group. Most parents reported that children spent the most time and talked the most with immediate family members. A greater number of parents of children with LI than parents of children with typical language skills reported their children to have people they would like to talk to but did not. Parents of children with LI also reported their children to use fewer topics in conversation than were reported by parents of their typical peers. With few exceptions, parents of children in both groups reported that their children talked mostly about concrete rather than abstract topics. More parents of children with LI than those with typical language indicated that their children had topics they would like to talk about but did not or lacked the ability to do so.

Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also completed a shortened version of this questionnaire. Additionally, children completed an informal picture task (Fujiki, Brinton, & Todd, 1996) to determine the number of peers they interacted with in various activities (e.g., eating lunch at school). The number of family and close friends named by children in each group did not significantly differ. Children with typical language skills did name more interactional partners who were considered to be casual peer acquaintances and paid interactants than did the children with LI. Parent and child responses differed on several of the comparisons. The groups also differed on the number of peers named on the picture task activity, replicating previous results.

This thesis examines a social communication intervention that targets the emotional competence of children with language impairment (LI). Three elementary school-aged children with LI received twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing. The emotion-based word productions were counted and analyzed. Categorized words belonged to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were variable but two of the participants improved in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category while one participant did not improve over the intervention. Two of the participants also showed a decrease in the number of valence errors with no notable change in valence errors for the third participant. This suggests that this type of intervention can be effective in improving the use of emotion-based words in children with LI. More research is needed to develop this type of intervention.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with social and emotional learning, including emotion understanding and inferencing. Five children with DLD, ages 6;4 to 11;9, identified emotions depicted in pictured scenarios over a period of 10 weeks. Emotion categories included happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each child's responses were analyzed and plotted on a confusion matrix. In a few cases, children did not interpret the scenario accurately. Even when they interpreted the scenario accurately, all of the children misapplied, overgeneralized, or confused emotion labels in some cases. These errors represented limitations in social and emotional learning that could negatively impact the ability to interact with others, to establish and maintain relationships, and to succeed academically.