Discerning the seriousness of socioemotional symptoms in young children can be difficult. To address this issue, the Attention, Behavior, Language, and Emotions (ABLE) universal behavioral health screener uses a rubric for severity that includes indicators of problem duration, impairment, generalizability, exacerbation, persistence, peer…

Producing pronouns involves linguistic and social-cognitive knowledge because children must learn words and understand pronouns' changing referents. This study examined pronoun production longitudinally in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 15), whose social-cognition might impair pronoun use, and in typically developing (TD; n…

More research is needed that investigates how positive psychology-associated traits are predicted by neurocognitive processes. Correspondingly, the purpose of this study was to ascertain how, and to what extent, four traits, namely, grit, optimism, positive affect, and life satisfaction were predicted by the executive functioning (EF) dimensions…

Across the country, school administrators and educators struggle to find time for children to engage in physical activity while still giving them enough time in academic instruction. The steep rise in childhood obesity in the U.S. (National Center for Health Statistics, 2011; Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2014) suggests that the concern is…

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder experience difficulty initiating (IJA) and responding to joint attention (RJA), which is critical to engagement in social interactions. The adult role in developing joint attention is widely accepted, but measurement of outcomes from adult training is rarely reported. Method: Using a single case…

This study compared parent and teacher behavioral ratings for 77 children (ages 5-16) diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADD/H), attention deficit disorder without hyperactivity (ADD/WO), or learning disabilities (LD). ADD/WO and LD children were rated similarly on symptoms of withdrawal and impulsivity but differed…

Twenty-six adolescents with educable mental retardation were identified as good or poor attenders based on teachers' ratings on an attention scale and were administered an auditory vigilance test and Posner's physical and name identity task. Although the vigilance task did not discriminate between groups, the more demanding Posner's task did.…

This study examined the relation between teacher suspicion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and teacher ratings on common behavior measures used to identify and diagnose ADHD. The children, urban, Midwestern, African-American first graders, (N=372) completed the Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT), an objective measure of…

This 15-item teacher rating scale measures three behavior traits: task orientation (how a child attends to and stays with classroom activities), extraversion (how readily a child interacts with other people), and hostility (how a child responds to some of the adjustments and conflict problems encountered in group activities). The scale is based…

This paper reports on an investigation of the interdependent relationship between ecological classroom dimensions and kindergarten students' task-related classroom behaviors, studied independently of personalities or age-group generalizations. Major purposes of the study were: (1) to identify and describe the main action structures observed in the…

This report summarizes activities and findings of a federally funded center at the Arkansas Children's Hospital which reviewed and disseminated literature on the identification and assessment of children with attention deficit disorders (ADD). Meetings throughout Arkansas led to the identification of interest areas, and findings are summarized for…