Pilot evaluation of a virtual training program for child injury prevention

Unintentional injuries are a leading cause of child death. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a behavioral injury prevention program for children aged 3-18 years and their caregivers. To accommodate families during the Coronavirus-19 pandemic, training was modified to be delivered virtually. Forty-one children aged 3-18 years and 14 parents/caregivers of children aged 3-5 years attended one of several 4-hour online injury prevention training sessions directed toward residents of Washington state. Training was targeted to three different developmental stages (ages 3-5, 6-12 and 13-18 years). Study outcomes included knowledge about injury prevention strategies, perceived vulnerability for injury, self-efficacy to engage in safety behaviors and behavioral intentions to be safe. Following training, participants showed improved self-efficacy to stay safe, excellent knowledge about the learned material and increased behavioral intention to engage safely. There was minimal change in perceived vulnerability to injury among children; caregivers of young children felt their children were somewhat less vulnerable to injury following the training. Almost all participants said they would recommend the program to others. Results suggest that a virtual behavioral training program delivered remotely is feasible and may be effective to create behavior change and reduce child injury risk. Given its scalability and reach, such programs are recommended for further study, refinement and, if demonstrated effective in larger-scale controlled trials, dissemination to address the leading cause of child mortality in the United States, unintentional injury.

Antecedents and consequences of pediatric dog-bite injuries and their developmental trends: 101 cases in rural China

OBJECTIVE

Study the contextual antecedents and consequences of pediatric dog bites in rural China.

METHODS

A total of 101 caregivers from rural Anhui Province, China, whose children had suffered dog-bite injuries in the past year, participated in a structured interview about the circumstances, antecedents and consequences of their child's injury.

RESULTS

Contextual circumstances identified frequently included outside-home environment and presence of peers but not adult supervisors. Frequent antecedents were dogs' initiation of the encounter, children walking to/from school, and dogs unleashed. Consequences to children identified frequently were rabies vaccines, restricted activity, and fear of dogs. Developmental trends emerged, with bite circumstances differing by children's ages.

CONCLUSIONS

These results offer data on common antecedents and consequences of pediatric dog bites in rural China, a necessary prerequisite for development of empirically supported prevention programs in a vulnerable population.

Dog safety in rural China: children's sources of safety information and effect on knowledge, attitudes, and practices

Dog bites are a significant pediatric public health challenge in rural China. This study evaluated the effect of various sources of dog-safety information on children's knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices with dogs. A total of 1925 children (grade 3-6) between 6 and 15 years old in four rural regions across China participated between May and September 2012. Results showed that teachers and especially parents were effective information sources for children to learn about dog safety. Learning from peers and children teaching themselves were ineffective education strategies. Multi-source learning (from both parents and teachers) did not differ from single-source learning (from parents but not teachers) but did exceed learning from teachers but not parents or no learning from adults. Older age was associated with greater safety knowledge but also riskier practices with dogs. Girls generally held more safety knowledge, less risky attitudes/beliefs and safer practices than boys. Neither age nor gender interacted with information sources on outcome measures. In conclusion, parents appear to play a major role in educating children in rural China on dog safety. Future dog safety interventions might focus on changing cognition and behavior as well as delivering basic knowledge to youth through teachers and especially parents.

Neurocognitive sequelae in African American and Caucasian children with multiple sclerosis

OBJECTIVE

To examine domain-specific neurocognitive differences between African American (AA) and Caucasian (CA) patients with pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis (POMS).

METHODS

An extensive battery of neuropsychological tests was given to each subject, including tests in all major domains of cognitive function. Point-biserial correlations between ethnicity and test performance were computed. Significant correlations were followed up with hierarchical multiple regression analysis, accounting for clinical and demographic variables before examining ethnic differences.

RESULTS

Forty-two patients with POMS including 20 AA and 22 CA subjects were assessed. The cohorts did not differ in age, gender, socioeconomic status, disease duration, disability score, immunoglobulin G index, or number of relapses in the first 2 years of disease. Retaining some of these variables as covariates in the hierarchical regression analysis, the AA cohort performed worse on measures of language (p < 0.001) and complex attention (p < 0.01) than their CA peers.

CONCLUSION

AA patients with POMS may be at higher risk for adverse cognitive impact in the areas of language and complex attention. Longitudinal characterization of cognitive pathology is critical for the development of effective intervention strategies to prolong cognitive functioning in POMS cohorts.

Integrating basic and applied developmental research: a new model for the twenty-first century

Until recently, basic and applied research agendas in the field of child development have followed separate paths. One reason the two have not merged is that the objectives of basic and applied research are often seen as incompatible. In this paper, we argue that researchers can simultaneously achieve the objectives of advancing basic knowledge and addressing applied problems within a single research program. We provide a framework for this perspective by first looking back at historical trends of basic and applied developmental research and then looking forward at potential new approaches for integrating basic and applied research. We use our own research on perception of affordances and unintentional childhood injuries to illustrate how researchers might implement these strategies for integrating basic and applied research. We conclude by discussing how we might extend this integration further to include nontraditional classes of application.

Longitudinal and concurrent relations among temperament, ability estimation, and injury proneness

This study examined longitudinal and concurrent relations between temperament, ability estimation, and injury proneness. Longitudinal assessments of Inhibitory Control were collected through a behavioral battery at toddler (33 months) and preschool ages (46 months). Parent-reported measures of Inhibitory Control and Extraversion also were obtained at those ages. At school age (76 months), children participated in a set of tasks to assess overestimation and underestimation of physical abilities. Parents provided reports of children's temperament and injury history at school age. Results showed that children who were high on Extraversion and low on Inhibitory Control as toddlers and preschoolers tended to overestimate their physical abilities and to have more unintentional injuries at age 6. Children low on Extraversion and high on Inhibitory Control tended to underestimate their physical abilities. Implications for injury prevention are discussed.

Cardiovascular reactivity and neuroticism: results from a laboratory and controlled ambulatory stress protocol

A laboratory and controlled ambulatory protocol was used to study whether there are differences in the cardiovascular reactivity of persons varying in neuroticism, the disposition to experience negative subjective emotions. Thirty-six individuals (19 men, 17 women) who scored approximately 1 standard deviation above or below the mean on the NEO PI-R Neuroticism scale (Costa & McCrae, 1992) were recruited from a larger pool of undergraduate students. Participants, who had been outfitted with an ambulatory blood pressure/heart rate monitor, were exposed to 5 laboratory stressors and 7 field stressors during a 6-hour protocol. Results indicated that individuals scoring high in neuroticism showed blood pressure reactivity to laboratory and field stressors that was comparable to that of persons low in neuroticism. Aggregrating responses across stressors, there was evidence of exaggerated heart rate responses. The results suggested that, although neuroticism is related to high levels of negative subjective experience, differences between persons scoring high versus low in neuroticism were not exhibited strongly at the cardiovascular level. The implications for stress, coping, and disease are discussed.

Preschoolers' attributions of mental states in pretense

When young children appear to recognize that someone else is engaging in make-believe play, do they infer what the pretender is thinking? Are they aware that the pretender is thinking about a pretend scenario yet knows what the real situation is? Preschoolers ages 3-5 (N = 45) viewed scenes from the Barney & Friends television series depicting either make-believe or realistic actions. Children were questioned concerning the presence of pretense and the thoughts and beliefs of the TV characters. The children were also presented with false belief and appearance/reality theory of mind tasks. Children who identified when TV characters were engaging in pretend play did not necessarily infer the pretenders' thoughts and beliefs. Inferring pretenders' thoughts was related to performance on false belief and appearance/reality tasks, but simply recognizing pretense was not. These data support the view that children initially learn to recognize pretense from contextual cues and are able to infer pretenders' beliefs only with further development of metarepresentational ability.

Social and temperamental influences on children's overestimation of their physical abilities: links to accidental injuries

This study examined social and temperamental influences on children's judgments about their physical abilities and relations between temperamental characteristics, ability overestimation, and accidental injuries. Six- and 8-year-olds first observed a peer succeed or fail on a set of physical tasks and then made judgments about their ability to perform those same physical tasks. At both ages, children who first watched a peer fail on the tasks made more conservative judgments about their own abilities than did children who watched the peer succeed. The relations between temperamental characteristics and judgment ability differed for the two ages. An aggregated temperament measure of Surgency/Undercontrol was related to judgment accuracy for 6-year-olds and to decision times for 8-year-olds. Likewise, the relations between temperament, ability overestimation, and accidental injuries differed for the two age groups. Ability overestimation was related to accidental injuries for 6-year-old boys whereas temperamental characteristics were related to accidental injuries for 8-year-olds. These findings suggest that both the factors that put children at risk for accidental injuries and the relations between temperamental characteristics and cognitive abilities change with development.