This testimony was presented before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Military Personnel on March 9, 2010. It discusses the findings from the study "Children on the Homefront: The Experience of Children from Military Families." This study provided important data on the well-being of military children and quantitatively…

Based on the lessons learned from providing support to states developing guidance documents, the National Center on Response to Intervention has created "Developing an RTI Guidance Document." Included in this tool are frequently asked questions about guidance documents and a template to help states, districts, and schools develop their…

We explored two unanswered questions about the role of alcohol use in sexual behavior. First, we considered whether alcohol use temporally precedes and predicts changes in sexual behavior assessed as the number of sexual partners, whether the reverse pattern holds, or whether the association reflects a common, external cause. Second, we assessed…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of maternal depression during the child's first year of life (i.e., sensitive period) on subsequent behavior problems. Method: Participants were 175 mothers participating in the Oregon Adolescent Depression Project (OADP) who met lifetime diagnostic criteria for major depressive…

Traditional diagnosis treats behavior problems as "disorders" in the individual rather than "discord" in relationships. From an ecological perspective, a "problem" involves behavior that hurts self or others. Three global patterns of problems are: Inconsiderate of Others, Inconsiderate of Self, and Low Self-Worth. Strength-based assessment…

Disruptive behaviors requiring intervention occur across multiple school systems, including individual students and classrooms. Such behaviors, including talking aloud in class, getting out of one's seat, or more serious behaviors, can be frustrating for other students as well as teachers, who are trying to help students meet ever-increasing…

The current study presents a method for assessing the relative effects of attention and escape on noncompliance in preschoolers. Attention and escape conditions were alternated in a multielement design, and a contingency reversal procedure, in which one test condition served as a control for the other, was used to demonstrate control. For all 3…

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used child mental health questionnaire with five hypothesised subscales. There is theoretical and preliminary empirical support for combining the SDQ's hypothesised emotional and peer subscales into an "internalizing" subscale and the hypothesised behavioral and hyperactivity…

Researchers and practitioners often employ timeout procedures to manage inappropriate classroom behavior. When implemented inappropriately, however, timeout can result in dangerous situations and have received increased scrutiny (i.e., seclusion). The timeout ribbon procedure can prevent some of the dangerous situations associated with other forms…

The current status of at-risk and adjudicated youth with behavioral challenges provides a context for addressing needed future directions for research and practice in fields that impact this population. This context includes the myriad characteristics and complex needs of these youth, the programs and services currently available in communities…

Background: Previous studies indicate that children may experience disrupted cortisol secretion in child care. The extent to which this is a transient or long-term disruption is not known, as most studies have relied on cross-sectional designs, and age-heterogeneous small sample sizes. This study aims to (a) compare cortisol secretion measured at…

Suicide and parasuicides (i.e. suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt) have long been recognized as serious social problems, especially among youth. A series of logistic regression models were developed incorporating various internalizing and externalizing risk factors experienced by young people with the goal of predicting parasuicides among…

It is posited within the literature that the sexualised challenging behaviour of adults with intellectual disability may be influenced by low levels of sexual knowledge, lack of sexual experience and unmet sexual needs. In this study, individuals with sexualised challenging behaviour were identified and matched for gender, age and ability level…

A school-based program of mindful awareness practices (MAPs) was evaluated in a randomized control study of 64 second- and third-grade children ages 7-9 years. The program was delivered for 30 minutes, twice per week, for 8 weeks. Teachers and parents completed questionnaires assessing children's executive function immediately before and following…

Psychologists have been studying resilience since the 1970s to understand what enables individual to meet developmental milestones despite serious risk factors. Although early research used terms like "invincible" and "invulnerable" to describe youth who showed resilience, the current understanding is that resilience is enabled through ordinary…