A Young Child's Anxiety and Math Performance: Enhancing Cognitive Behavioral Intervention with Conjoint Behavioral Consultation

Partnering with families, school personnel, and community resources is an important step to supporting the child and family, especially when children might suffer from debilitating anxiety concerns. However, little research examines the impact of anxiety on math performance for young children participating in school-based interventions enhanced by family components. The following research questions were addressed in the study: 1a) Will a young child with elevated levels of anxiety show a decrease in anxiety symptoms with a Cognitive Behavioral framework intervention program for children? 1b) Will anxiety be reduced with the addition of a Conjoint Behavioral Consultation with the family and teacher? 2a) Will a young child show an increase in math performance after participation in a Cognitive Behavioral framework intervention program for children? 2b) Will math performance be increased with the addition of a Conjoint Behavioral Consultation with the family and teacher? A single-subject staggered baseline across situations intervention study addressed whether the Coping Cat, an evidenced-based child-focused intervention now widely used in schools and clinics to treat childhood anxiety, combined with family and school consultation will decrease elevated anxiety levels and improve math performance in an elementary-aged student. The objective was to support mental health development and math performance with an eight-year-old, female elementary student through a collaborative effort of stakeholders in the student's life. Baseline data was collected with repeated measures of anxiety and math performance, and was compared to two intervention phases: first, a child-focused intervention and second, a family and school consultation. The study tested the theory that the Cognitive Behavioral intervention and Conjoint Behavioral Consultation intervention will influence, positively, the anxiety levels and math performance for an elementary-aged student. Results indicate that the child participant with elevated levels of anxiety showed a reduction in symptoms with the introduction of a Cognitive Behavioral framework intervention when compared to her baseline data. The participant showed further reduction in symptoms across the school and home settings with the implementation of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation when compared to baseline and the first intervention phase. Math performance began to increase with the introduction of the Cognitive Behavioral intervention, and continued to improve with the implementation of the Conjoint Behavioral Consultation. Findings suggest that consultation should begin immediately when an intervention is implemented in order to enhance outcomes.

The Utility of Therapeutic Assessment Style Fables During the Termination Stage of Psychotherapy

Stories, fables, and myths have been used for a long time in human history. They serve as a way for cultures and people to communicate, preserve important cultural values, and create meaning. The use of narratives has been recognized as a helpful technique in the field of psychology and can be found in many orientations and intervention techniques (Dwivedi, 2006; Roberts, 2000). Narrative therapy, bibliotherapy, trauma narratives, and Therapeutic Assessment (TA) are some of the areas in which the benefits of using written stories are incorporated into work with clients. In this paper, the clinical utility of using Therapeutic Assessment style fables in the termination phase of psychotherapy is explored. The termination phase is a challenging time for both therapists and clients. The use of rituals in the process of termination has been found to have a positive impact on the experience (Gutheil, 1993). This paper presents several case studies and examines the subsequent impact and clinical benefits of using termination fables in psychotherapy.

Examining the Complex Relationships of Early Intervention on Language and Psychosocial Development in Families Facing Multiple Risks with a Focus on Children of Hispanic Immigrants

Abundant research has shown that poverty has negative influences on young child academic and psychosocial development, and unfortunately, disparities in school readiness between low and high income children can be seen as early the first year of life. The largest federal early care and education intervention for these vulnerable children is Early Head Start (EHS). To diminish these disparate child outcomes, EHS seeks to provide community based flexible programming for infants and toddlers and their families. Given how relatively recent these programs have been offered, little is known about the nuances of how EHS impacts infant and toddler language and psychosocial development. Using a framework of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) this paper had 5 goals: 1) to characterize the associations between domain specific and cumulative risk and child outcomes 2) to validate and explore these risk-outcome associations separately for Children of Hispanic immigrants (COHIs), 3) to explore relationships among family characteristics, multiple environmental factors, and dosage patterns in different EHS program types, 4) to examine the relationship between EHS dosage and child outcomes, and 5) to examine how EHS compliance impacts child internalizing and externalizing behaviors and emerging language abilities. Results of the current study showed that risks were differentially related to child outcomes. Poor maternal mental health was related to child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, but not related to emerging child language skills. Although child language skills were not related to maternal mental health, they were related to economic hardship. Additionally, parent level Spanish use and heritage orientation were associated with positive child outcomes. Results also showed that these relationships differed when COHIs and children with native-born parents were examined separately. Further, unique patterns emerged for EHS program use, for example families who participated in home-based care were less likely to comply with EHS attendance requirements. These findings provide tangible suggestions for EHS stakeholders: namely, the need to develop effective programming that targets engagement for diverse families enrolled in EHS programs.

Closer to life : the work of sari dienes

Like many of her female contemporaries, artist Sari Dienes’s contributions to the art historical dialogue have been largely overlooked in favor of her male counterparts. Often seen as a mentor and mother figure to neo-Dada artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Dienes was an active member of the New York avant-garde circle surrounding composer/choreographer duo John Cage and Merce Cunningham in the 1950s and 1960s. These social relationships are central to the existing discourse on Sari Dienes, while her work remains little discussed. The fact that her dynamic, ever-changing style lacked aesthetic consistency was commonly lamented by notable figures such as Betty Parsons, however, I argue that Dienes’s diverse oeuvre is unified by her philosophies on art and life. The unification of art and life, denoted clearly by Dienes’s use of the found object, experimentation and chance happenings, and sensory experience, marks her as an innovator and catalyst in the neo-Dada movement as well as in other experimental art endeavors that took place in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism.