Department of Human Development and Family Studies
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Browsing Department of Human Development and Family Studies by Subject "Behavioral sciences"
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Item Child life iPad distraction: a psychosocial tool for children receiving an injection(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Atencio, Stephanie; Burns-Nader, Sherwood; University of Alabama TuscaloosaDistraction is a common and effective type of nonpharmacological intervention that offers support to children during medical procedures. Distraction helps children shift their attention away from a procedure to something more positive and engaging. Child life specialists are health care professionals who utilize distraction as a way to promote children's coping. Child life specialists are frequently using the iPad for interventions, including distraction, yet little research has examined the iPad as an effective distraction tool in pediatric health care. Also, few studies examine the psychosocial support that is provided by child life specialists during distraction. The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of iPad distraction provided by a child life specialist on children receiving an injection at a pediatric clinic. Forty-one child participants, from 4- to 11-years-old, were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the standard iPad group and the child life iPad group. The standard iPad group received iPad distraction, but did not receive the component of child life. The child life iPad group received iPad distraction during an injection with psychosocial support from a child life specialist. Each child engaged with the iPad prior to the injection to provide familiarity and instruction on the specified iPad activity he or she would use. Children from 4- to 7-years-old engaged in "Talking Tom" and children 8- to 11-years-old played "Cut the Rope." Once the nurse entered the room to administer the injection, children in the child life iPad group were encouraged to continue playing the selected activity and were positively redirected to the iPad during the injection by the child life specialist. Children in the standard iPad group were not encouraged to continue engaging with the iPad, yet still had access to the iPad activity. The findings show that child life iPad distraction did not benefit those who received psychosocial support during the injection more than those who did not receive the psychosocial support. Gender and age differences were noted on children's pain and emotions during the injection with males and older children showing less pain and emotional behavior compared to females and younger children.Item A comparative review of a reggio emilia inspired program for infants and toddlers(University of Alabama Libraries, 2020) Blocker, Lindsay; Hernandez-Reif, Maria; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThe Reggio Emilia approach is a social constructivist method that fosters children’s creative development through organized focus on symbolic representations (Edwards et al., 2012). This study compared the physical environments and teacher-child interactions in infant and toddler classrooms in a Reggio Emilia Inspired Program (RI) to those of a matched non-Reggio Emilia Inspired Program (NRI). A brief history of the RI approach and the founder, Loris Malaguzzi, key child development theorists, and key teaching principles and strategies of the RI paradigm are reviewed. A RI and a non-RI program, both NAEYC accredited, were compared for quality of teacher-child interactions, classroom environment, children’s behaviors, and development using standardized measures. Participants were two teacher (one RI infant and one RI toddler) and their children. With school closures due to COVID-19, data collection was stopped early at both sites. The findings are presented as a feasibility study. The ITERS-3 was used to assess the classroom environments of the two programs (RI and NRI). Analysis of the ITERS-3 scores failed to reveal that the RI approach promoted a more optimal classroom environment for infants’ and toddler’s learning than the NRI approach. However, closer examination conducted by videotaping an activity in the classroom revealed high-quality teacher-child interactions for both the RI infant and toddler classroom. Interviews in the RI program depicted teachers who view their children as an equal part of the classroom supporting the RI principle of the Image of the Child. This study contributes to the literature on RI programs and raises new questions related to the sensitivity of environmental scales in assessing creative, non-structured, reflexive program.Item The consequences of reversing trust or not reversing trust(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Leslie, Alicia Deanna; Scofield, Jason M.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaYoung children often rely on the testimony of others. However, children tend to be selective about which sources they trust. For example, some children will reverse trust when a trusted speaker proves unreliable, suggesting that 4-year-olds use a speaker's current testimony to help make decisions about the trustworthiness of that speaker's past testimony (Scofield & Behrend, 2008). The current study was designed to determine why some children are able to reverse trust and why some are not. The results indicated that trust reversers tended to believe that the unreliable speaker was no longer trustworthy. The results also indicated that trust non-reversers varied by age, with 3-year-olds tending to believe that the unreliable speaker was trustworthy and 4- and 5-year-olds tending to believe that the unreliable speaker was no longer trustworthy, though they did have difficulty correcting past misinformation. Overall, results suggested that most children believe that an unreliable speaker is no longer trustworthy for new information.Item The development of young children's emotion regulation and their mothers' coping strategies(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Schaefers, Kelly Wilson; Hernandez-Reif, Maria; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis study sought to establish correlations between maternal emotion regulation strategies and children’s emotion regulation understanding. Ninety-seven children three-to-six years old, together with their mothers, participated. Mothers completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and Vignette and Strategy Questionnaire (VSQ) to report on their use of six emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, suppression, passive, expressing, problem-solving, and seeking). Children participated in a puppet task designed to measure the child’s ability to identify healthy emotion regulation strategies. A multiple linear regression using the child’s age, the six maternal emotion regulation strategies, and the child’s performance on the puppet task revealed that only the child’s age significantly predicted performance. Positive correlations were found between reappraisal use and expressing, problem-solving, and seeking strategies. Suppression was negatively correlated with expressing. Contrary to expectations, passive strategy use did not correlate to either reappraisal or suppression. The findings suggest that mothers' coping strategies do not seem to impact young children's emotion regulation. Rather, young children's knowledge of healthy ways to control emotions appears to develop with age.Item Using music to facilitate infant word learning(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Granger, Jessica Anise Marian; Hernandez-Reif, Maria; University of Alabama TuscaloosaPrevious studies on infant word-object learning suggest that infants as young as 6-months of age are capable of learning word-object relationships when labeled by their mother (Matayaho & Gogate, 2008). Yet, the unexplored topic that music could influence infants' learning led to the conduction of this present study. Sixteen 6-8 month old infants heard two novel word-object pairs being labeled. Eight of the infants heard the word-object pair being labeled through speech, while the other 8 heard the pair being labeled through song. Results indicated that infants within the song condition performed better than the infants in the speech condition for identifying the correct word-object pair. Un-hypothesized results also indicated that girls performed better than boys. These findings are discussed and if replicated imply that singing, as opposed to speaking words, may facilitate young infants word-object learning.