Child Care Health and Development最新文献

Background

Researchers have made great efforts to help parents of children with intellectual disabilities overcome the stress and burden. Learning to be resilient is one effective strategy.

Aim

This study explores resilience among parents of children with intellectual disabilities and how career burnout and self-regulation relate to parents' resilience in mainland China.

Methods

The Burnout Scale, the Self-Regulation Scale and the Resilience Scale were administered to 324 parents of children with intellectual disabilities.

Results

Results showed that career burnout significantly negatively influenced resilience (β = −0.269, p = 0.000), while self-regulation significantly positively influenced resilience (β = 0.754, p = 0.000). In addition, self-regulation moderated the relationships between career burnout and resilience (β = 0.176, p = 0.003).

Conclusion

The findings offer valuable insights for enhancing the resilience of parents of children with intellectual disabilities.

Background

Recent studies have revealed a negative relationship between children's digital media use and social–emotional development. However, few studies distinguish between different digital devices and the different functions they provide that may lead to different outcomes.

Methods

This study explored the relationship between young children's time spent on various digital devices and their social–emotional delay based on a survey of 1182 preschoolers (3 to 6 years old) in rural China. Children's social–emotional delay was assessed through a validated screening tool (ASQ-SE II).

Results

Children's time spent on television, computers, tablets, or smartphones was not associated with their social–emotional delay. However, their risk of social–emotional delay increased as their time spent on game consoles increased. This relationship was reflected in five of the seven behavioural areas of children's social–emotional development (i.e., self-regulation, compliance, affect, social communications, and interactions with people). Moreover, it did not vary between children with different socioeconomic statuses.

Conclusions

This study suggests a possible relationship between children's social–emotional delay and video games, which might need to be paid more attention to than other media types.

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness and relevance of projective techniques such as house-tree-person (HTP) and family in individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), who have a limited ability to identify and verbalize emotions and express them often using behaviors.

Methods

We included individuals with genetic confirmation of PWS immersed in a regular transdisciplinary treatment in an institution dedicated to rare diseases. All individuals were evaluated using the HTP and family projective techniques. These instruments are commonly administered to the general population and, in this case, to people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities, including difficulties in their communication abilities.

Results

A total of 25 individuals with PWS between 10 and 41 years old (15 men and 10 women) were included. We identified the presence of graphic indicators corresponding to the behavioral phenotype of individuals with PWS, such as anxiety, stubbornness, emotional lability, difficulty in achieving adequate externalization and identification of emotions, impulsivity, aggressive traits, poor social skills, need for support and interaction, low self-concept, and compulsive behaviors.

Conclusions

In the present study, we demonstrated the usefulness of graphic techniques to elucidate aspects of behavior, emotions, and thoughts that individuals with PWS cannot formulate due to expression and communication difficulties.

Background

Chinese rural students have been documented to have relatively delayed cognitive development. From an ecological system perspective, empirical studies have identified the significant effect of the proximal environment on Chinese rural students' cognitive development. Yet, little do we know the mechanism behind that. More importantly, how the mechanism differs among rural students with different left-behind characteristics remains obscure.

Methods

Drawing longitudinal data from a nationally representative survey, this study examines the interrelations between rural students' parental educational expectation perception, their own educational expectation, and cognitive ability. Two models were examined using path analysis. The first mediation model tests the mediating effect of educational expectation between the association of parental educational expectation perception and cognitive ability, while the second moderated mediation identifies the moderating effect of rural students' left-behind status on the association between their parental educational expectation perception and educational expectation.

Results

The first mediation analysis reveals that rural students' perception of parental educational expectation is positively correlated with their educational expectation, which further positively correlated with their cognitive ability. The following moderated mediation analysis suggests that students' left-behind status significantly moderated the effect of their perceived parental educational expectations on their own educational expectation.

Conclusions

Chinese rural students' perception of parental educational expectation affects their cognitive ability through their own educational expectations. The number of migrant parents within a family further moderates the indirect effect of education expectation.

Background

Services from specialized professionals in childcare settings contribute to support early childhood development. Little is known, however, about how services are delivered in this context. The aims of this scoping review were to propose a framework to describe services delivered by specialized professionals in childcare contexts and synthesize knowledge about those services.

Methods

Documents published between 2000 and 2022 in APA PsychINFO, ERIC, CINAHL and MEDLINE were included. These documents described services delivered by a range of specialized professionals (e.g., speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists and early childhood special education teachers) in childcare contexts and whose aim was to support motor, cognitive, affective, language or social development of children. Deductive and inductive qualitative analyses and descriptive statistics were carried out.

Results

The review included 47 documents. The Description of Services delivered by specialized Professionals in Early Childhood (D-SPEC) Framework emerged from qualitative analyses. The D-SPEC Framework included 11 dimensions: three actors and their context, specialized professionals involved, children served, purpose of service, type of service, service duration and intensity, mode of service delivery, mode of access to services and funding. Most services delivered by specialized professionals in childcare were provided by a single professional and targeted language. Two documents described multitiered service delivery models with a continuum of services ranging from general support for all children to individualized interventions for children with specific needs. In-context services were preferred to pull-out services in most documents reviewed.

Conclusions

The D-SPEC Framework may be a useful tool to assist researchers in documenting and comparing services delivered by specialized professionals. More importantly, this framework will facilitate the development of intersectoral and interdisciplinary services essential for supporting early childhood development. Multitiered service delivery models appeared to be a promising way to develop those services addressing the various needs encountered in childcare.

Aim

This study aimed to investigate the psychometric characteristics of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence (PMSC) in Chinese children, utilizing the principles of item response theory (IRT).

Methods

A total of 284 children (147 boys), aged 4–10 years (M_age = 7.39, SD = 2.18), from four schools were recruited for testing, adhering to the principle of random sampling. The Rasch model was applied to evaluate the rating scale validity, local independence, scale dimensionality, person and item fit statistics, and differential item functioning (DIF).

Results

(1) The rating scale validity was confirmed by the monotonically increasing trend in both average item difficulty measures and Andrich thresholds. (2) However, the observation that standardized residual correlations for all items remained below 0.3 unequivocally confirmed the presence of local independence among the variables. (3) The scale's dimensions were substantiated, with Rasch measures explaining 40.6% of total variance, exceeding the 40% threshold. Additionally, the first contrast had an eigenvalue of 1.8 and explained 8.80% of the variance, both exceeding the minimum 3:1 ratio. Consequently, the unidimensionality assumption of the item was supported. (4) Person and item fit statistics indicated requisite reliability and separation, with all achieving suitable infit and outfit measures, and point-biserial correlations exceeding 0.55. (5) Regarding gender DIF, it was observed that the majority of items did not exhibit statistically significant gender DIF effects (p > 0.05) except item 8 (Bounce a ball, t = −2.74, p < 0.01, DIF = −0.51).

Conclusion

Rasch analysis revealed that the instrument exhibited strong scale validity among Chinese children, adhering to the Rasch model's unidimensionality and local independence principles, with robust person and item reliability and separation. All items demonstrated a good fit. Additionally, the significant gender difference in item 8 (Bounce a ball) warrants further consideration. In conclusion, PMSC is suitable for assessing the PMSC of Chinese children.

Background

About half of preschool-age children are not meeting recommendations of 15 min/h of physical activity (PA), and nearly one out of seven children between the ages of 2–5 years are living with obesity. Furthermore, children attending family child care homes (FCCHs), compared with larger child care centers, engage in lower levels of PA and appear to be at a higher risk of obesity. Therefore, examining PA and multi-level factors that influence PA in children who attend FCCHs is essential.

Methods

The Childcare Home Eating and Exercise Study (CHEER) examined PA behaviors of 184 children enrolled in 56 FCCHs and FCCH quality status, environment and policy features, and child characteristics. PA was assessed by accelerometer, and FCCH environment and policy was assessed via structured observation. Multiple linear regression was used to model associations between school day total PA and FCCH quality status, environment and policy features, and child characteristics.

Results

Child participants were on average 3.1 years old; participants were non-Hispanic Black (47.3%), Non-Hispanic White (42.9%), other race/ethnicity (7.1%), and Hispanic/Latin (2.7%). Children in FCCH settings participated in 11.2 min/h of total PA, which is below the recommended 15 min per hour. The PA environment and policy observation yielded a score of 11.8 out of a possible 30, which is not supportive of child PA. There were no associations between total child PA and FCCH quality status, environment and policy features, and child characteristics in these FCCH settings.

Conclusions

This study was unique in its examination of PA and a comprehensive set of factors that may influence PA at the individual, organizational, environmental, and policy levels in a diverse sample of children attending FCCHs in South Carolina. Additional research is needed to better understand how to increase children's physical activity while they are in the FCCH setting. This research should use multi-level frameworks and apply longitudinal study designs.

Background

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by diverse clinical manifestations including inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Objective

The present study aims to investigate the effects of neurocognitive training (NT), a personalized and specialized exercise programme on symptoms, attention and dynamic balance in treatment-naïve children diagnosed with ADHD.

Methods

Fourteen treatment-naïve children aged 7–12 years diagnosed with ADHD were enrolled in the intervention group. The NT intervention was administered weekly for 10 consecutive weeks, supplemented by a structured home exercise programme for 6 days a week over the same 10-week period. ADHD-related symptoms, attention and dynamic balance were assessed in pre-treatment, post-treatment, 6 months, and 12 months. Fifteen typically developing (TD) children, matched for age, underwent evaluation only once to establish baseline normative values.

Results

Following the NT (post-treatment), significant improvements were observed in hyperactivity-impulsivity scores, oppositional-defiant behaviours and dynamic balance when compared to the TD children (p < 0.05). In the ADHD group, a significant difference was found in the long term (12-month follow-up) in hyperactivity–impulsivity, oppositional-defiant behaviours and dynamic balance (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

The findings suggest that the NT yields favourable effects on hyperactivity–impulsivity, oppositional defiant behaviours and dynamic balance in children diagnosed with ADHD, with these improvements appearing to be sustained over the long term.

Clinical trial registration number: NCT04707040.