Browsing by Subject "Preschoolers"
Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Cognitive-based intervention for bilingual preschoolers(2012-12) Greene, Kai Jason; Pena, Elizabeth D; Bedore, Lisa M; Sheng, Li; Toribio, Almeida J; Falcomata, TerryCognitive-based narrative intervention for bilingual preschoolers Abstract The aim of this study was to determine how an intervention conducted in Spanish and English influenced macro and micro structure in the oral narratives produced by eight preschool Spanish-speaking English-language-learners (M = 68 months, range 59 to 79 months) during a four-week summer intervention program. Following a single-subject pre-experimental repeated A-B measure design, each subject completed an initial treatment phase in Spanish followed by an English treatment phase. The cognitive-based intervention method focused on the mediated learning of language-independent cognitive strategies such as attention, self-regulation, organization, and problem solving. Analysis at the macrostructure level included story component and episode structure and microstructure level analysis considered lexical diversity and use of grammatical forms in each language. All narrative samples were evaluated to determine the effect of language treatment condition and narrative productivity in both languages. Mediated learning significantly increased participants’ ability to independently produce narrative macrostructure story component and episodic structure on multiple elicitation tasks across both languages. Mixed results were observed at the microstructure level for participants’ demonstration of lexical diversity and grammatical complexity specific to language condition and elicitation task. These findings help us understand which macro and micro structure skills transfer under a cognitive-based intervention conducted in two languages.Item Reliability versus affiliation : selective trust in accented speakers(2013-05) Blanco, Cynthia Patricia; Bannard, ColinRecent work has shown that preschoolers track informants’ past reliability concerning familiar information and labels, and they use this information to judge the correctness of novel information and labels they provide. But linguistic factors also sway children’s choices for social interaction, for which native-accented speakers are preferred. The present study uses the selective trust paradigm to consider how accentedness interacts with speaker reliability with native- and foreign-accented informants. The results show that speaker reliability and accentedness affect four-year-olds’ choices, but the impact of these factors differed by response type. Preschoolers preferred to ask the native-accented speaker for information, regardless of his reliability. However, in choosing which label to learn, preschoolers selected the reliable speaker’s label, regardless of accent, and correctly identified the unreliable speaker. This study provides evidence suggesting that young children separate their social biases from their objective assessment of novel information.Item Structural and process quality in early care and education settings and their relations to self-regulation in three-year olds(2012-08) Bentley, Alison Claire, 1983-; Gershoff, Elizabeth T.; Huston, Aletha C.; Dix, Theodore H.; Anderson, Edward R.; Osborne, CynthiaPrevious research has shown how home and parental characteristics support or hinder the development of children’s self-regulation in the family context. There have only been limited attempts to understand these mechanisms in early childhood education settings. This study used the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (when participating children were 36-months old) to examine the relations among various aspects of the early childhood education setting, the interactions in the setting, and children’s self-regulation in center-based and home-based settings. Structural equation modeling was used to test a model proposing the deconstruction of early childhood education quality into structural (i.e., environmental and caregiver characteristics) and process quality components (i.e., positive and negative interactions) and to examine these as predictors of three-years old children’s self-regulation abilities. A meditational model was tested in which positive and negative interactions in the classroom mediated the relations between the structural characteristics and self-regulation. There were three important findings. First, although there were no consistent patterns of associations between structural features and self-regulation across the two types of care, there were more significant relationships in home-based care compared to center-based care. These findings showed that the home-based caregiver characteristics were more closely tied to the processes in the classroom than those characteristics of caregivers in center care. Second, both positive and negative caregiving were associated with children’s compliance, which suggested that compliance may have been influenced differently by process quality compared to other self-regulation measures, such as self-control and emotion-, behavior-, and attention-regulation. It may be that high rates of compliance may be markers of highly restrictive caregiving rather than the result of good quality caregiving. Third, there were very few significant relationships between process quality measures and children’s self-regulation measures, which suggested that commonly used process quality measures may not be capturing the processes that are most important for the development of self-regulation.Item A study of incidence, prevalence, treatment patterns, healthcare utilization, and costs of treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among Texas Medicaid preschoolers(2015-12) Singh, Rakesh Ranjeet; Lawson, Kenneth Allen, 1952-; Barner, Jamie C; Richards, Kristin M; Sasane, Rahul; Wilson, James PAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common neurobehavioral disorder diagnosed in children and adolescents, affecting approximately 11% of children in the United States in 2011. Children are often diagnosed with ADHD before seven years of age. Yet, there is very little information about the diagnoses, treatments, healthcare utilization, and costs associated with ADHD in preschool children. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends behavioral therapy as the first-line therapy for preschoolers, with a recommendation to prescribe medications only if behavioral therapy is unsuccessful in alleviating ADHD-related symptoms. For children in elementary school, combination therapy is recommended. Thus, the goal of the current study was to assess the epidemiology (i.e., prevalence and incidence), treatment patterns (i.e., adherence, persistence, augmentation, and switching), healthcare utilization, and costs in preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD using the Texas Medicaid dataset. Patients < 6 years of age diagnosed with ADHD (ICD-9 codes 314.00, 314.01) with continuous enrollment for a 6-month pre-index period and a 12-month post-index period between 2008 and 2013 were identified from the Texas Medicaid dataset. Epidemiology estimates were calculated for all the patients < 6 years of age diagnosed with ADHD. Treatment patterns, healthcare utilization, and costs were estimated for patients between 2 – 6 years of age. Based on the study inclusion criteria, we identified 10,877 patients in the overall cohort. A subsample from the overall cohort was selected for inclusion in the treatment pattern cohort (n = 8,833). The index date for the overall cohort was the ADHD diagnosis date. The index date for the treatment pattern cohort was the date of the first ADHD prescription. Prevalence and incidence estimates were calculated for all the patients < 6 years of age. Time-to-initiation, healthcare utilization, and costs were analyzed using the overall cohort. Treatment pattern outcomes (i.e., adherence, persistence, augmentation, and switching) were evaluated using the treatment pattern cohort. The study sample was further subcategorized into pharmacotherapy only, psychotherapy only, and combination therapy groups. The study covariates included patient demographic (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, and urban/rural status), clinical (i.e., other psychotropics, other mental health diagnosis, medication duration of action, and medication class), and prior utilization (i.e., pre-index total costs, pre-index psychiatric visits, and pre-index non-psychiatric visits) characteristics. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to analyze the data. The prevalence of ADHD in preschoolers was estimated to be between 2.1% and 8.5% from years 2008 to 2012. Incidence estimates were stable and were estimated to be between 2.4% and 2.1% from years 2009 to 2012. Medication adherence, augmentation, and switching rates were higher in the combination therapy group as compared to the pharmacotherapy group. The combination therapy group had significantly higher healthcare utilization in all resource utilization categories except ADHD-related prescriptions, other mental health-related office-based, and inpatient visits. Similarly, medical, prescription, and total healthcare costs were also significantly higher in the combination therapy group as compared to the pharmacotherapy group except for the other mental health-related medical costs. In summary, the prevalence and incidence of ADHD in preschoolers is significant. Most of the patients received medication therapy followed by combination therapy and psychotherapy. A comparison of treatments revealed that combination therapy group had a higher healthcare burden as compared to the pharmacotherapy group. This study adds to the existing literature regarding ADHD in preschoolers, from a Medicaid perspective. Also, since Texas Medicaid provides coverage for nearly 50% of children in Texas these results have important implication for the state of Texas. The results of the current study will help identify the more important healthcare utilization and cost categories so as to develop a more targeted intervention approach for patients with ADHD. Further research is needed to understand the long-term effects of pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and combination therapy in preschoolers. More evidence is needed to identify the best treatment option for the management of ADHD in preschoolers.Item Vocabulary outcomes among low income preschoolers for dialogic reading interventions(2012-05) Fergus, Alyson Marie; Peña, Elizabeth D.; Sheng, LiReceptive and expressive vocabulary skills in preschoolers are predictors of later literacy skills. Research shows that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are generally behind their peers in the area of vocabulary skills when they enter school. Many preschool programs now focus on increasing these skills through shared book reading interventions. The purpose of the current research is to study the efficacy of a specific shared book reading intervention, dialogic reading, with low-income preschoolers in the area of vocabulary development. The search yielded 10 intervention studies that utilized dialogic reading strategies in interventions with the target population. Studies yielded mixed results but generally found that dialogic reading intervention does have significant positive effects on receptive and expressive vocabulary. Limitations and implications for practice are discussed.Item What’s in their backpacks : pre-kindergartners’ literacy practices from home to school and back(2010-12) Scott, Deana Jill Allen; Brown, Christopher P., Ph. D.; Mosley, Melissa; Schallert, Diane; Reifel, Stuart; Worthy, JoPre-kindergarten students often arrive the first day of school carrying a backpack filled with supplies which they are eager to use. Inside these backpacks are scissors, glue, and crayons. This study proposes that the pre-kindergartners are also carrying another backpack, their literacy backpack holding all of their literacy skills and practices that they use every day at home. This qualitative case study examined these literacies brought from home in the students’ figurative literacy backpacks. The study also focused on their teachers’ literacy views and practices. The study was conducted in three parts. First, through field observations and interviews with parents, the literacy practices occurring at home were identified and examined. Unique “literacy stories” were crafted from the data for each of the pre-kindergartners and shared with their parents. Part two of the study examined the two pre-kindergarten teachers’ literacy practices through semi-structured interviews. The impact of external forces (e.g. state and federal mandates, school curriculum, grant requirements, and trainings) on the views and practices of the pre-kindergarten teachers was discussed. These external forces stress the development of formal literacies, thus modeling a narrow definition of literacy. Part three of the study focused on sharing the students’ “literacy stories” with their teachers and examining the teachers’ reactions to the stories. Data from the interviews following reading the stories pointed to the teachers’ acknowledging the multiple literacies found in the homes of their students and a desire to learn more about their families’ literacy practices in order to utilize them in the classroom. The students’ “literacy stories” proved to be a valuable tool in expanding the teachers’ definition of literacy. The stories helped the teachers broaden their views of literacy to include literacy practices that occur in many different cultural and social contexts; adopting a definition more in line with the socio-cultural development of literacy and the NLS concepts (Street, 2003). Using this definition, multiple literacies will be made visible in the classrooms and connections from home to school can be made allowing students to strengthen their existing literacies and expand them to incorporate other literacies.