Psychology

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Early childhood education

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    The Portrayal of Anger and Anger Management in Children's Picture Books
    (2024) Hernandez, Ilcia; Teglasi, Hedwig; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Through a comprehensive analysis of a sample of 80 children’s picture books, this study highlights the importance of embedding language to describe anger experiences and elements of social information processing (SIP) within stories to enhance young children’s understanding of anger arousal within themselves and others, as well as of anger management strategies. This study identified anger-eliciting situations, physiological and behavioral reactions, coping strategies proposed by helpers or the main character, along with other themes related to emotion socialization within the books. The current study identifies gaps in the portrayal of SIP mechanisms within stories, which underscores a need to emphasize the role of emotion dysregulation and of SIP biases during interpersonal conflicts as it is critical to foster regulation, reappraisal, and problem-solving skills among readers. The depiction of anger arousal and its escalation, predominantly through illustrations, is explored, along with implications for emotion understanding and cultural considerations of emotion expression. Picture book stories convey beliefs and values about anger by normalizing the emotion while promoting constructive regulation and expression through addressing the arousal in the body, delaying reactive responses, and using cognitive coping strategies. Overall, the current study has implications for caregivers and clinicians, in that becoming aware of how anger experiences are portrayed in picture books can aid in book selection based on a match with an individual child’s experiences and temperament to maximize its use as a tool for social-emotional learning and anger management in young children.
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    THE EFFECTS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ON BYSTANDER BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES: THE BULLYING LITERATURE PROJECT
    (2019) Scott, Arianna Lakeisha Lashley; Wang, Cixin; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Traditional approaches to bullying intervention focus on the bully-victim dyad. However, research indicates that bullying is a group phenomenon and often occurs in the presence of peer witnesses. Bystanders are uniquely situated to either deter or facilitate the social power play that can underlie bullying behavior. Specifically, individuals who bully others may be motivated by a desire to gain (or maintain) high status among their peers. Bystander-based bullying interventions are able to exploit this by directly targeting social components that reward and maintain bullying behavior, such as peer support of bullying, thereby disrupting the social feedback cycle involved in perpetration. However, bystander-based bullying interventions for elementary students pose a unique set of challenges in terms of fostering the awareness of bullying, social thinking, and cognitive-emotional skills that are necessary for positive bystander action. Children’s literature is a promising medium to facilitate elementary-aged students’ access to social-emotional knowledge, skills, and behavioral change. This study sought to add to the theoretical research base of bystander behavior using a majority-Hispanic sample to investigate the relationships between several theoretically-linked bystander-related variables and determine predictors of positive bystander behavior. Secondly, this study investigated the effectiveness of a literature-based, bystander-targeted, bullying intervention (the Bullying Literature Project) on children’s bystander behavior, attitudes towards bullying, prosocial behaviors, peer friendships, and victimization. Finally, potential moderators of the intervention on bystander behavior were investigated. Results revealed differences across grade and gender for select variables of interest, identified anti-bullying attitudes and victimization as significant predictors of positive bystander behavior, and identified a small, negative correlation between peer friendship and victimization, among other significant correlations. Main results revealed the Bullying Literature Project increased positive bystander behavior (small effect size) and teacher-rated prosocial behavior (large effect size), compared to the wait-list-control group, in a subset of the dataset. No moderation effects involving gender, peer friendship, or anti-bullying attitudes were found. Discussion and future directions of bystander-based bullying interventions are reviewed.
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    An Experimental Study Of Mentoring Practices In An America Reads Program: Measures of Intervention Fidelity And Implementation
    (2013) Nelson, Janaiha Faith; Gottfredson, Gary D; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The America Reads (AR) program at the University of Maryland serves approximately 350 local elementary school students per semester, and trains undergraduate tutors to teach reading using techniques drawn from Reading Recovery methods. Previous research implies that the implementation of interventions should be evaluated prior to gauging their effectiveness.  The present study assessed aspects of program implementation for America Reads at the University of Maryland. In addition, it examined the efficacy of a self-monitoring and corrective feedback procedure for improving level of implementation. AR tutors were randomly assigned to the experimental self-monitoring and feedback procedure or to usual and customary monitoring to assess the effects on mentor implementation. Controlling for school assignment, the effect of this self-monitoring and feedback procedure on mentors' self-reported level of implementation was not significant in the small sample of mentors. Descriptive results including information about the effectiveness and utility of existing procedures for monitoring program implementation, and tutor training have a number of implications for strengthening the Maryland realization of AR; they have implications for the use of monitoring and feedback in the design of similar educational service programs.