Matching Items (6)
Filtering by
- Creators: Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics
- Creators: Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn
Description
Over the past few years, the issue of childhood trauma in the United States has become significant. A growing number of children are experiencing abuse, neglect, or some other form of maltreatment each year. Considering the stressful home lives of maltreated children, the one sure sanctuary is school. However, this idea requires teachers to be actively involved in identifying and caring for the children who need it most. Traumatic childhood experiences leave lasting scars on its victims, so it is helpful if teachers learn how to identify and support children who have lived through them. It is unfortunate that teachers will most likely encounter children throughout their career who have experienced horrendous things, but it is a reality. With this being said, teachers need to develop an understanding of what traumatized children live with, and learn how to address these issues with skilled sensitivity. Schools are not just a place where children learn how to read and write; they build the foundation for a successful life. This project was designed to provide teachers with a necessary resource for helping children who have suffered traumatic experiences. The methodology of this project began with interviews with organizations specializing in working with traumatized children such as Arizonans for Children, Free Arts for Abused Children, The Sojourner Center, and UMOM. The next step was a review of the current literature on the subject of childhood trauma. The findings have all been compiled into one, convenient document for teacher use and distribution. Upon completion of this document, an interactive video presentation will be made available through an online education website, so that distribution will be made simpler. Hopefully, teachers will share the information with people in their networks and create a chain reaction. The goal is to make it available to as many teachers as possible, so that more children will receive the support they need.
ContributorsHanrahan, Katelyn Ann (Author) / Dahlstrom, Margo (Thesis director) / Kelley, Michael (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Child chronic pain is both common and consequential and identification of malleable risk factors is a critical step towards developing effective interventions. Existing evidence points to the possibility that parent behavior may play a significant role in the development of children’s chronic pain through modeling of pain-related behaviors. An important parental trait that predicts parent behavior in pain contexts is parental pain catastrophizing, which has been linked to child pain outcomes as well as to increased facial pain behavior in both parents and their children during pain induction. Existing research has examined facial pain behavior in aggregate, summarizing facial expressions over the course of an entire dyadic interaction, which does not allow for evaluation of the dynamic interplay between a parent and child. The current study aimed to test the hypothesis that higher parental catastrophizing would predict decreased flexibility in emotional dynamics between parent and child (reflected in facial affect during a parent-child interaction that occurs within the context of child pain-induction), which would in turn predict fewer child chronic pain symptoms. The approach used dynamic systems analysis of facial behaviors during the parent-child interaction during the child’s performance of a pain inducing cold pressor task to assess dyadic emotional flexibility. Nine-year old children from a larger sample of twins (N = 30) were video recorded during a cold-water pain task while their parents observed them. Videos of the children and their parent from these interactions were analyzed using facial action unit software (AffDex), into positive, neutral, and negative facial emotional expressions. Synchronized parent and child coded facial data were then analyzed for flexibility using GridWare (version 1.1). Parents completed the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) to assess parental trait pain catastrophizing and the Body Pain Location/Frequency scale to assess child chronic pain symptoms during the prior three months. Contrary to prediction, parental catastrophizing was related to higher levels of flexibility, and flexibility was unrelated to child chronic pain. Exploratory analyses indicated that children with higher levels of effortful control had more emotionally flexible interactions with their parent during the cold pressor, and emotionally flexible interactions predicting lower levels of children’s negative emotional responses to the acute pain task. suggesting some promising avenues for future research.
ContributorsSowards, Hayley Anne (Author) / Davis, Mary (Thesis director) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Postpartum depression is recognized as the most common psychiatric disorder that appears in approximately 10-15% of women, with higher frequencies among low-income minority women. Past studies have revealed that depressive symptoms negatively impact child development and mother-child synchrony. The current study's purpose was to explore the effects of postpartum depressive symptoms on later dyadic dysregulation. The data was collected from Las Madres Nuevas' study, a longitudinal investigation. Participants were 322 Mexican and Mexican American mother-infant dyads from the Phoenix metropolitan area who were recruited though a Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS) prenatal clinic. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used to measure depression 6 weeks postpartum. Additionally, the dysregulation-coding scheme used at child's 24 months of age measured the children's, mothers', and dyads' regulatory skills throughout their interactions with each other. Linear regression analyses were the central analyses of this study. In the first regression analysis, results showed that mother's age at prenatal visit (p= 0.44), 6-week depression score (p= 0.37), mother's education (p= 0.77), and number of biological children (p= 0.28) did not significantly predict dyadic dysregulation at 24 months. The second linear regression analysis concluded that the 6-week depression score, mother's country of birth, the interaction of maternal depression and country of birth, mother's education, mother's age at prenatal visit, and number of biological children also did not predict dyadic dysregulation at 24 months. Although not statistically significant, the findings suggest that the Hispanic Paradox theory, conservation of native cultural values, and strong social support have protective effects in Mexican immigrant and Mexican American childbearing women.
ContributorsOlivas Varela, Itzel (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis director) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Winstone, Laura (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Climate change presents a significant threat to human health, both mental and physical; as a result, it has become one of the most commonly discussed phenomena of the 21st century. As many people are aware, a wide range of social and physical factors affects mental health. However, many people fail to realize that these increases global temperatures also have a significant impact on mental health as a result of increased vulnerability that is often manifested through one's emotions. By analyzing perceptions of people across the globe, in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Fiji, we were able to pinpoint these emotions and trace them individual's feelings of worry, distress, and hope that resulted from their perceived impacts on climate change. Overall, we found that people tend to have overall more negative emotional reaction when it comes to the perceived effects of climate change. Of the respondents, more men than women expressed concern regarding the various negative implications. Finally, those in the United Kingdom exhibited a stronger emotional response, followed by those in New Zealand and Fiji, respectively.
ContributorsSmith, Austin Lee (Author) / Wutich, Amber (Thesis director) / du Bray, Margaret (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Emotions have been defined as coordinated and functional changes in subjective experience, motivation, physiological activation, instrumental behavior, expressive behavior, and cognition that are evoked by important threats or opportunities in the environment. The proposed study looks at cognitive changes associated with the experience of several positive emotions, with a specific focus on awe. Prior research shows that positive emotions tend to increase people's use of cognitive heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts used to simplify information we intake from the environment) and changes how they apply rules of thumb from stored knowledge to make decisions. Stereotypes, or assumptions about the characteristics held by individual members of a group, are one such heuristic. Awe, in contrast to other positive emotions, has been found to reduce people's tendency to rely on heuristics, rather than increasing its use. Thus, awe should tend to reduce stereotyping specifically. Participants made judgments on three characteristics and two types of theoretically valuable true/false statements. However, for both our measures, awe had no significant effect on stereotyping. Participants in the enthusiasm condition were significantly more likely than those in the awe condition to correctly identify stereotype-inconsistent statements present in the biography, which is the opposite of the predicted direction. Patterns for all four emotion conditions trended similarly to our predictions for stereotype-consistent statements correctly marked as being absent in the biography. There were no significant differences in ratings of three traits. Implications for enthusiasm and awe are discussed in the context of stereotypes of social objects and schemas of nonsocial objects.
ContributorsMurwin, Paige Elizabeth (Co-author) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Co-author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Previous research demonstrated the overall efficacy of an embodied language intervention (EMBRACE) that taught pre-school children how to simulate (imagine) language in a heard narrative. However, EMBRACE was not effective for every child. To try to explain this variable response to the intervention, the video recordings made during the four-day intervention sessions were assessed and emotion was coded. Each session was emotion-coded for child emotions and for child-researcher emotions. The child specific emotions were 1) engagement in the task, this included level of participation in the activity, 2) motivation/attention to persist and complete the task, as well as stay focused, and 3) positive affect throughout the session. The child-researcher specific emotions were 1) engagement with each other, this involved how the child interacted with the researcher and under what context, and 2) researcher’s positive affect, this incorporated how enthusiastic and encouraging the researcher was throughout the session. It was hypothesized that effectiveness of the intervention would be directly correlated with the degree that the child displayed positive emotions during the intervention. Thus, the analysis of these emotions should highlight differences between the control and EMBRACE group and help to explain variability in effectiveness of the intervention. The results did indicate that children in the EMBRACE group generally had a significantly higher positive affect compared to the control group, but these results did not influence the ability for the child to effectively recall or moderate the EEG variables in the post-test. The results also showed that children who interacted with the researcher more tended to be in the EMBRACE group, whereas children who did not interact with the researcher more frequently were in the control group, showing that the EMBRACE intervention ended up being a more collaborative task.
ContributorsOtt, Lauren Ruth (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05