The transition to university is an exciting yet challenging period for many students. While previous research has documented the association between stress and adjustment, little is known about the long-term effect of students' early stress on their subsequent university adjustment. The present study sought to examine the effectiveness of a short,…

We explore the classification accuracy of a parent and teacher report measure, the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge (ITALK), to screen for developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children. Participants were 120 Spanish-English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and 19 bilingual children with DLD, ranging in age from…

COVID-19 negatively impacts students' learning as well as physical and mental health. This study examined the effects of perceived online learning difficulties and cyberbullying on academic engagement and mental health, and if parenting styles and student-teacher relationship moderated these relations among 733 middle school students (54.3% boys)…

This study explored the profiles of Longitudinal Life Environmental Satisfaction (LLES) during the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluating their predicting role in social-emotional adjustment in children and early adolescents. 488 children (M[subscript age] = 8.54; SD = 0.63), and 129 early adolescents (M[subscript]age = 11.08, SD = 0.48) completed two…

Students' emotional and behavioral difficulties are recognized as a continuing issue in the adolescent development and education. Since adolescents spend a great amount of time in schools, a central question is how schools can facilitate adolescents' adjustment and positive schooling. Using the ERG theory of human needs, the present study aims to…

School-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes represent a practical method of improving social and emotional well-being in students. To date, however, what is less well understood is why a theoretically sound, appropriately administered, engaging universal SEL programme may be more effective for some children over others. In the…

A concerning number of students fail to achieve writing proficiency, yet little attention has been devoted to examining why this occurs. While robust evidence indicates that behavior impacts reading and math achievement, the relationship between behavior and writing skills is unclear, particularly among young students. The authors examined the…

Student characteristics, their attitude to school and classroom climate can influence teacher-student relationships and adjustment to school. Poor early school experiences are associated with school avoidance, disruptive behaviour, teacher conflict, and suspension and exclusion. The focus, however, remains on the behaviour of individual children,…

Accuracy of autism screening using M-CHAT plus the follow-up interview (M-CHAT/F) for children screened positive at 18-months was compared to screening at 24-months. Formal ASD testing was criterion for a community sample of M-CHAT positive children (n = 98), positive predictive value (PPV) was 0.40 for the M-CHAT and 0.58 for the M-CHAT/F.…

The present article aims to show how to model longitudinal change in cohort sequential data applying latent true change models using Mplus' multi-group approach. The underlying modeling ideas are described and explained in this article. As an example, change in internalizing problem behaviors between the age of 8 and 13 years is modeled and…

Few questionnaires have been developed to screen for potentially poor implementers of school-based interventions. This study combines teacher characteristics, perceptions, and teaching/training experiences to develop a short screening tool that can identify potential "low-performing" or "high-performing" teachers…

The use of mental health-related intake assessments by juvenile correctional facilities as predictive measures of confinement behavior has seen limited use in recent years. This study employs the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Version 2 (MAYSI-2) and How I Think Questionnaire (HIT) as measurement tools on the same data set to assess the…

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is common in children, but little is known about its association with quality of life (QoL) in middle childhood. QoL is a complex construct, aligning with an individual's sense of well-being and is related to functional limitations associated with DLD. Biopsychosocial models of disability account…

Identification of children who exhibit emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBDs) has been prioritized in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region including Oman. Research showed that cognitive attribution processes are biased and defective in atypical populations such as students with learning disabilities (LD). The…

The current study examined (1) if the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) would yield alternative factor structures related to either symptoms or strengths with early adolescent students when an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used; (2) which scales best predicted suspensions of typically developing early adolescents; and (3) what…