Get the picture? The effects of iconicity on toddlers' reenactment from picture books

What do toddlers learn from everyday picture-book reading interactions? To date, there has been scant research exploring this question. In this study, the authors adapted a standard imitation procedure to examine 18- to 30-month-olds' ability to learn how to reenact a novel action sequence from a picture book. The results provide evidence that toddlers can imitate specific target actions on novel real-world objects on the basis of a picture-book interaction. Children's imitative performance after the reading interaction varied both as a function of age and the level of iconicity of the pictures in the book. These findings are discussed in terms of children's emerging symbolic capacity and the flexibility of the cognitive representation.

Attentional bias toward fear-related stimuli: An investigation with nonselected children and adults and children with anxiety disorders

Research investigating anxiety-related attentional bias for emotional information in anxious and nonanxious children has been equivocal with regard to whether a bias for fear-related stimuli is unique to anxious children or is common to children in general. Moreover, recent cognitive theories have proposed that an attentional bias for objectively threatening stimuli may be common to all individuals, with this effect enhanced in anxious individuals. The current study investigated whether an attentional bias toward fear-related pictures could be found in nonselected children (n = 105) and adults (n = 47) and whether a sample of clinically anxious children (n = 23) displayed an attentional bias for fear-related pictures over and above that expected for nonselected children. Participants completed a dot-probe task that employed fear-related, neutral, and pleasant pictures. As expected, both adults and children showed a stronger attentional bias toward fear-related pictures than toward pleasant pictures. Consistent with some findings in the childhood domain, the extent of the attentional bias toward fear-related pictures did not differ significantly between anxious children and nonselected children. However, compared with nonselected children, anxious children showed a stronger attentional bias overall toward affective picture stimuli. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The preparation of reach-to-grasp movements in adults, children, and children with movement problems

This study explored the use of advance information in the control of reach-to-grasp movements. The paradigm required participants to reach and grasp illuminated blocks with their right hand. Four target blocks were positioned on a table surface, two each side of the mid-saggital plane. In the complete precue condition, advance information precisely specified target location. In the partial precue condition, advance information indicated target location relative to the midsaggital plane (left or right). In the null condition, the advance information was entirely ambiguous. Participants produced fastest responses in the complete precue condition, intermediate response times in the partial condition, and the slowest responses in the null condition. This result was observed in adults and four groups of children including a group aged 4-6 years. In contrast, children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD, n = 11, aged 7-13 years) showed no advantage of partial precueing. Movement duration was determined by target location but was unaffected by precue condition. Movement duration was a clear function of age apart from children in the DCD group who showed equivalent movement times to those of the youngest children. These findings provide important insights into the control of reach-to-grasp movements and highlight that partial cues are exploited by children as young as 4 years but are not used in situations of abnormal development.

Physical activity of young children

Occupational therapists concerned with the long-term health and welfare of children need to be aware of the decline. in physical activity of children in most Western societies. The current study examined the extent of physical activity in the lives of 50 Australian children with a mean age of 7.74 years through questionnaires completed by the children's parents and pedometer (step) data collected from the children during 4 days. The current data show that higher self-perception of physical competence, child's levels of physical skill, and low parental perception of peer teasing were the best predictors of physical activity. Higher family socioeconomic status was found to be a significant predictor of more steps being taken on weekends, and partner's (usually a father's) level of exercise was an important predictor of the number of weekend steps. Children who were perceived to experience more peer teasing completed fewer steps on the weekend. The findings from this study indicate that children's physical activity levels may depend on the availability of family resources, and that children in their early school years may already experience negative effects from teasing that, combined with reduced self-confidence, may lay the foundation for their with drawing from physical activity as they get older.

Dynamic occupational therapy cognitive assessment for children: Perceived utility in Australian occupational therapy practice

Background and Aim: The Dynamic Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment for Children (DOTCA-Ch), recently developed in Israel, assesses the cognitive areas: orientation, spatial perception, praxis, visuomotor construction and thinking operations of 6- to 12-year-old children. The dynamic aspect, which incorporates mediation and prompting, has been presented as a valuable clinical feature of this new assessment. This study investigated the cultural suitability, dynamic nature and comprehensiveness of the DOTCA-Ch as a single cognitive assessment for occupational therapy practice in Australia. Methods: Twenty-three paediatric occupational therapists participated in three tutorial and video demonstrations, which were then followed by a group interview. Results and Conclusion: Thematic analysis of transcripts identified four main themes: appropriateness of assessment tasks, language, mediation and clinical utility. Within each theme, the participants raised both positive and negative features. This paper highlights occupational therapists' mixed views on the clinical utility of this assessment in Australia. Limitations of this study and areas for further research are suggested

Obesity in pre-school children: Issues and challenges for community based child health nurses

Childhood obesity is becoming a topical issue in both the health literature and the popular media and increasingly child health nurses are observing preschool children who appear to be disproportionately heavy for their height when plotted on standardised growth charts. In this paper literature related to childhood obesity in New Zealand and internationally is explored to identify current issues, and the implications of these issues for nurses in community based child health practice are discussed. Themes that emerged from the literature relate to the measurement of obesity, links between childhood and adult obesity and issues for families. A theme in the literature around maternal perception was of particular interest. Studies that investigated maternal perceptions of childhood obesity found that mothers identified their child as being overweight or obese only when it imposed limitations on physical activity or when the children were teased rather than by referring to individual growth graphs. The implications for nursing in the area of child health practice is discussed as nurses working in this area need an understanding of the complex and often emotive issues surrounding childhood obesity and an awareness of the reality of people's lives when devising health promotion strategies.

Posttraumatic stress disorder and general psychopathology in children and adolescents following a wildfire disaster

Objective: To report on the use of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index (PTSD-RI) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in identifying children and adolescents who may require psychological interventions following exposure to a wildfire disaster. Method: Six months after a wildfire disaster, we conducted a school-based program to screen for wildfire-related events, such as exposure to and perception of threat, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and general psychopathology. Results: The screening battery was completed by 222 children (mean age 12.5 years, SD 2.48; range 8 to 18 years). Severe or very severe PTSD was reported by 9.0% of students, while 22.6% scored in the abnormal range on the Emotional Symptoms subscale of the SDQ. Younger children and individuals with greater exposure to and perception of threat experienced higher levels of PTSD and general psychopathology. Female students reported a greater perception of threat but did not report higher levels of PTSD or other symptoms. Conclusions: Screening was well received by students, parents, and staff and proved feasible in the postdisaster environment. The PTSD-RI and SDQ demonstrated different individual risk associations and functioned as complementary measures within the screening battery. The identification of children at greatest risk of mental health morbidity enabled service providers to selectively target limited mental health resources.

Measuring the ability of school children with a history of otitis media to understand everyday speech

The present study compared the ability of school-aged children with and without a history of otitis media (OM) to understand everyday speech in noise using the University of Queensland Understanding of Everyday Speech Test (UQUEST). Participants were 484 children (246 boys, 238 girls) attending Grade 3 (272, mean age = 8.25 yr., SD = 0.43) and Grade 4 (212, mean age = 9.28 yr., SD = 0.41) at 19 primary schools in Brisbane metropolitan and Sunshine Coast schools. Children selected for inclusion were native speakers of English with normal hearing on the day of testing and had no reported physical or behavioral impairments. The children were divided into three groups according to the number of episodes of OM since birth. The results showed no significant differences in speech scores across the participant groups. However, a significant difference in mean speech scores was found across the grades and the noise conditions. Although children with a history of OM performed equally well at a group level when compared to the controls, they exhibited a large range of abilities in speech comprehension within the same group.

Telling the story of theory of mind: Deaf and hearing children's narratives and mental state understanding

Theory of mind (ToM) was examined in late-signing deaf children in two studies by using standard tests and measures of spontaneous talk about inner states of perception, affect and cognition during storytelling. In Study 1, there were 21 deaf children aged 6 to 11 years and 13 typical-hearing children matched with the deaf by chronological age. In Study 2, there were 17 deaf children aged 6 to 12 years and 17 typical-hearing preschoolers aged 4 to 5 years who were matched with the deaf by ToM test performance. In addition to replicating the consistently reported finding of poor performance on standard false belief tests by late-signing deaf children, significant correlations emerged in both studies between deaf children's ToM test scores and their spontaneous narrative talk about imaginative cognition (e.g. 'pretend'). In Study 2, with a new set of purpose-built pictures that evoked richer and more complex mentalistic narration than the published picture book of Study 1, results of multiple regression analyses showed that children's narrative talk about imaginative cognition was uniquely important, over and above hearing status and talking of other kinds of mental states, in predicting ToM scores. The same was true of children's elaborated narrative talk using utterances that either spelt out thoughts, explained inner states or introduced contrastives. In addition, results of a Guttman scalograrn analysis in Study 2 suggested a consistent sequence in narrative and standard test performance by deaf and hearing children that went from (1) narrative mention of visible (affective or perceptual) mental states only, along with FB failure, to (2) narrative mention of cognitive states along with (1), to (3) elaborated narrative talk about inner states along with (2), and finally to (4) simple and elaborated narrative talk about affective/perceptual and cognitive states along with FIB test success. Possible explanations for this performance ordering, as well as for the observed correlations in both studies between ToM test scores and narrative variables, were considered.

Testing the protracted lexical restructuring hypothesis: The effects of position and acoustic-phonetic clarity on sensitivity to mispronunciations in children and adults

Although developmental increases in the size of the position effect within a mispronunciation detection task have been interpreted as consistent with a view of the lexical restructuring process as protracted, the position effect itself might not be reliable. The current research examined the effects of position and clarity of acoustic-phonetic information on sensitivity to mispronounced onsets in 5- and 6-year-olds and adults. Both children and adults showed a position effect only when mispronunciations also differed in the amount of relevant acoustic-phonetic information. Adults' sensitivity to mispronounced second-syllable onsets also reflected the availability of acoustic-phonetic information. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the lexical restructuring hypothesis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.