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Self-talk has been recognised as an important tool used by children to regulate their thinking and behaviour. Existing studies typically characterise children's self-talk according to broad categories that do not allow for investigation of self-regulatory aspects of children's internalised self-talk. The findings reported in this paper are based on a pilot study aimed at eliciting information on self-talk that eight- to nine-year-olds employ in the context of their classroom tasks and at a stage when the children's self-talk is largely internalised. The findings offer useful insights into the types of self-regulatory self-talk employed by children in the classroom and suggest that these aspects should be considered in the characterisation and study of children's self-talk.

BACKGROUND: Optimized symptom-based COVID-19 case definitions that guide public health surveillance and individual patient management in the community may assist pandemic control. METHODS: We assessed diagnostic performance of existing cases definitions (e.g. influenza-like illness, COVID-like illness) using symptoms reported from 185 household contacts to a PCR-confirmed case of COVID-19 in Wisconsin and Utah, United States. We stratified analyses between adults and children. We also constructed novel case definitions for comparison. RESULTS: Existing COVID-19 case definitions generally showed high sensitivity (86-96%) but low positive predictive value (PPV) (36-49%; F-1 score 52-63) in this community cohort. Top performing novel symptom combinations included taste or smell dysfunction and improved the balance of sensitivity and PPV (F-1 score 78-80). Performance indicators were generally lower for children (

Background: Highly variable insulin sensitivity, susceptibility to hypoglycemia and inability to effectively communicate hypoglycemic symptoms pose significant challenges for young children with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Herein, outcomes during clinical MiniMed™ 670G system use were evaluated in children aged 2–6 years with T1D. Methods: Participants (N = 46, aged 4.6 ± 1.4 years) at seven investigational centers used the MiniMed™ 670G system in Manual Mode during a two‐week run‐in period followed by Auto Mode during a three‐month study phase. Safety events, mean A1C, sensor glucose (SG), and percentage of time spent in (TIR, 70–180 mg/dl), below (TBR, <70 mg/dl) and above (TAR, >180 mg/dl) range were assessed for the run‐in and study phase and compared using a paired t‐test or Wilcoxon signed‐rank test. Results: From run‐in to end of study (median 87.1% time in auto mode), mean A1C and SG changed from 8.0 ± 0.9% to 7.5 ± 0.6% (p < 0.001) and from 173 ± 24 to 161 ± 16 mg/dl (p < 0.001), respectively. Overall TIR increased from 55.7 ± 13.4% to 63.8 ± 9.4% (p < 0.001), while TBR and TAR decreased from 3.3 ± 2.5% to 3.2 ± 1.6% (p = 0.996) and 41.0 ± 14.7% to 33.0 ± 9.9% (p < 0.001), respectively. Overnight TBR remained unchanged and TAR was further improved 12:00 am–6:00 am. Throughout the study phase, there were no episodes of severe hypoglycemia or diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and no serious adverse device‐related events. Conclusions: At‐home MiniMed™ 670G Auto Mode use by young children safely improved glycemic outcomes compared to two‐week open‐loop Manual Mode use. The improvements are similar to those observed in older children, adolescents and adults with T1D using the same system for the same duration of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coordinates a labor-intensive process to measure the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among children in the United States. Random forests methods have shown promise in speeding up this process, but they lag behind human classification accuracy by about 5%. We explore whether more recently available document classification algorithms can close this gap. Materials and methods: Using data gathered from a single surveillance site, we applied 8 supervised learning algorithms to predict whether children meet the case definition for ASD based solely on the words in their evaluations. We compared the algorithms’ performance across 10 random train-test splits of the data, using classification accuracy, F1 score, and number of positive calls to evaluate their potential use for surveillance. Results: Across the 10 train-test cycles, the random forest and support vector machine with Naive Bayes features (NB-SVM) each achieved slightly more than 87% mean accuracy. The NB-SVM produced significantly more false negatives than false positives (P = 0.027), but the random forest did not, making its prevalence estimates very close to the true prevalence in the data. The best-performing neural network performed similarly to the random forest on both measures. Discussion: The random forest performed as well as more recently available models like the NB-SVM and the neural network, and it also produced good prevalence estimates. NB-SVM may not be a good candidate for use in a fully-automated surveillance workflow due to increased false negatives. More sophisticated algorithms, like hierarchical convolutional neural networks, may not be feasible to train due to characteristics of the data. Current algorithms might perform better if the data are abstracted and processed differently and if they take into account information about the children in addition to their evaluations. Conclusion: Deep learning models performed similarly to traditional machine learning methods at predicting the clinician-assigned case status for CDC’s autism surveillance system. While deep learning methods had limited benefit in this task, they may have applications in other surveillance systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little research in the developing countries of South East Asia on the effectiveness of bilingual education programmes that use first language instruction for ethnic minority children. This study investigated the effectiveness of a bilingual education programme involving ethnic minority children in Cambodia by comparing their performance in mathematics, Khmer literacy and oral Khmer to their ethnic minority peers whose education is in the national language only. The findings show that students in the bilingual schools performed better in mathematics than their peers in the monolingual schools, but the differences in Khmer literacy and oral Khmer test scores were statistically insignificant. The study suggests that bilingual education using first language instruction could benefit academic development among ethnic minority students in Cambodia, at least in terms of mathematics achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pediatric severe ulcerative colitis that is resistant to current medical treatment can successfully be managed surgically with a colectomy, ileal pouch creation and pouch-anal anastomosis. Key issues that should be considered and discussed before the pouch option can be offered include alternative surgical procedures, pouch function expectations, risk of surgical leak, pelvic sepsis, anastomotic strictures, acute and chronic pouch inflammation, Crohn's disease of the pouch and risk of reduced fertility for females. A long-term risk is malignancy of the residual colonic tissue. The decision to proceed with a pouch or not poses a substantial emotional burden to the child and family. Despite the risk of surgical complications and pouch inflammatory and functional challenges, the overwhelming majority of children and their families are satisfied with their pouch surgery outcomes. Further study is needed to assess preoperative risk predictors, prevention and treatment of complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Purpose: To determine the toxicity, efficacy and pharmacokinetics of trabectedin given over 24h every 3weeks to children with recurrent rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, or non-rhabdomyosarcoma soft tissue sarcomas. Patients and methods: Trabectedin was administered as a 24-h intravenous infusion every 21days. Two dose levels were evaluated (1.3 and 1.5mg/m2) for safety; efficacy was then evaluated using a traditional 2-stage design (10+10) at the 1.5mg/m2 dose level. Pharmacokinetics (day 1 and steady state) were performed during cycle 1. Results: Fifty patients were enroled, eight patients at 1.3mg/m2 and 42 at 1.5mg/m2. Dose limiting toxicities (DLTs) in the dose finding component included fatigue and reversible GGT elevation in 1/6 evaluable patients at 1.3mg/m2 and 0/5 at 1.5mg/m2. Efficacy was evaluated in 42 patients enroled at the 1.5mg/m2 dose of whom 22% experienced reversible grade 3 or 4 toxicities that included AST, ALT, or GGT elevations, myelosuppression and deep venous thrombosis. One patient with rhabdomyosarcoma had a partial response and one patient each with rhabdomyosarcoma, spindle cell sarcoma and Ewing sarcoma had stable disease for 2, 3 and 15 cycles, respectively. Conclusion: Trabectedin is safe when administered over 24h at 1.5mg/m2. Trabectedin did not demonstrate sufficient activity as a single agent for children with relapsed paediatric sarcomas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]