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1. COVID-19 and Resilience in Schools: Implications for Practice and Policy. Social Policy Report. Volume 34, Number 3

Author

Society for Research in Child Development, Luthar, Suniya S., Pao, Lisa S., and Kumar, Nina L.

Abstract

This is a mixed-methods study of risk and resilience in a sample of over 14,000 students from 49 schools, assessed during the first 3 months of COVID-19 in the United States. Over a third of students were of color and almost a third received financial aid. Participation rates were typically 90-99%. Overall, rates of clinically significant depression and anxiety were "lower" during distance learning in 2020 as compared to parallel rates documented during 2019, with a few exceptions. Hispanic students did not show reductions in depression rates, nor did gender non-binary youth. Analyses of multiple risk and protective factors showed that in relation to depression, the most potent predictor was "parent support," with effect sizes at least twice as high as those for any other predictor. Other robust predictors of depression included "efficacy of learning online" and "concerns heard by school adults." In predicting to anxiety, "parent support" again had the largest effect sizes, followed by concerns heard at school, students' "worries about their futures," and "worries about grades." In general, the absence of protective factors was more likely to be linked with high distress among youth of color than White students, and among girls and gender non-binary students as compared to boys. At a policy level, the findings call for concerted attention to the well-being of adults charged with caring for youth. Parents' mental health has been increasingly threatened with the protracted stress linked with the pandemic. Thus, all avenues must be considered toward providing them with support--using feasible, community-based interventions--as this is always the most important step in fostering children's resilience through adversity. Additionally, schools' expectations about learning will have to be adjusted. As educators try to make up for academic losses during the pandemic, they must avoid high workloads detrimental for students' mental health (and thus ability to learn). Finally, there must be ongoing institutional mental health support for teachers, counselors, administrators, and staff. Many of these adults have provided critical safety nets for youth since the start of the pandemic and are themselves at high risk for burnout. In conclusion, findings clearly show that if a central societal goal is to maximize resilience among youth through the continuing pandemic-related challenges, we will have to deliberately prioritize an "upstream" approach, ensuring ongoing support for the adults who take care of them in their everyday lives. more...

Published
2021

2. Verbal--Spatial IQ Discrepancies Impact Brain Activation Associated with the Resolution of Cognitive Conflict in Children and Adolescents

Author

Margolis, Amy E., Davis, Katie S., Pao, Lisa S., Lewis, Amy, Yang, Xiao, Tau, Gregory, Zhao, Guihu, Wang, Zhishun, and Marsh, Rachel

Abstract

Verbal--spatial discrepancies are common in healthy individuals and in those with neurodevelopmental disorders associated with cognitive control deficits including: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Non-Verbal Learning Disability, Fragile X, 22q11 deletion, and Turner Syndrome. Previous data from healthy individuals suggest that the magnitude of the difference between verbal IQ (VIQ) and performance IQ (PIQ) scores (the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy) is associated with reduced thickness in frontal and parietal cortices (inferior frontal, anterior cingulate, inferior parietal lobule, and supramarginal gyrus) that support cognitive control. Unknown is whether the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy is associated with functional deficits in these areas in healthy or ill children and adolescents. We assessed the effects of the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy on fMRI BOLD response during the resolution of cognitive conflict in 55 healthy children and adolescents during performance of a Simon Spatial Incompatibility task. As the magnitude of the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy increased, activation of fronto-striatal, limbic, and temporal regions decreased during conflict resolution (p < 0.05, corrected). In exploratory analyses, the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy was associated with reduced functional connectivity from right inferior frontal gyrus to right thalamus and increased functional connectivity to right supramarginal gyrus (ps < 0.03, uncorrected). The VIQ>PIQ discrepancy may be an important aspect of an individual's cognitive profile and likely contributes to, or is associated with, deficient cognitive control processes characteristic of many childhood disorders. In this study, functional MRI was used to explore in healthy youth the relationship between individual differences in cognitive abilities and brain activation during the resolution of cognitive conflict on a cognitive control task. Children and adolescents with greater verbal relative to spatial abilities under-engage fronto-striatal and limbic regions during the resolution of conflict. These findings suggest that the verbal-spatial discrepancy may contribute to deficient cognitive control processes, a characteristic of many childhood disorders. more...

Published
2018
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3. Close Analysis of Texts with Structure (CATS): An Intervention to Teach Reading Comprehension to At-Risk Second Graders

Author

Williams, Joanna P., Kao, Jenny C., Pao, Lisa S., Ordynans, Jill G., Atkins, J. Grant, Cheng, Rong, and DeBonis, Daniel

Abstract

We developed and evaluated an intervention that teaches reading comprehension via expository text structure training to second graders in urban public schools at risk for academic failure. Fifty lessons on 5 basic text structures (sequence, comparison, causation, description, and problem-solution) were embedded in a social studies curriculum that focused on U.S. historical communities. Second-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions: the intervention, a comparison program that focused on the social studies content and did not include text structure training, and a no-instruction control. Sixteen classrooms (N = 258) completed the study. The performance of the intervention group was higher than that of the other 2 groups on reading comprehension measures based on written summaries, demonstrating the effectiveness of the intervention. On social studies content measures, the intervention and the content groups showed higher performance than the control group, indicating that embedding the text-structure training did not lessen the amount of social studies content acquired. The study confirms previous findings and extends our earlier work by showing that all 5 basic text structures can be taught to second graders effectively within the academic year. Robust transfer effects were found on typical reading comprehension tasks (sentence completion, questions) when the text continued to be well structured, and there was also evidence of transfer to authentic (ill-structured) text. more...

Published
2016
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6. Effects of keyword generation and peer collaboration on metacomprehension accuracy in middle school students

Author

Pao, Lisa S.

Subjects
Cognition in children, Cognitive psychology, Educational psychology, Reading (Secondary), Confidence, Reading comprehension
Abstract

Metacomprehension refers to the ability to judge one's own comprehension. Studies in the literature have shown that generating keywords after reading helps adults and children make comprehension judgments that are better correlated with their actual comprehension. Researchers have also found that when metacomprehension is framed in terms of confidence, there is an effect of ability, where individuals with low ability tend to be overconfident in their judgments, while those with high ability tend to be underconfident. This paper describes two experiments investigating metacomprehension in seventh graders. Experiment 1 sought to replicate and extend the finding that generating keywords after reading improves the accuracy of comprehension judgments and the effectiveness of study choices. To account for potential effects of time on task, participants in the control condition were asked to read passages twice in lieu of generating keywords. Two measures of metacomprehension accuracy (signed differences and gamma correlations) were based on comprehension judgments taken at two time points (pre-test and post-test). The moderating effects of reading ability were also examined. The results of Experiment 1 showed that participants were overconfident in their judgments of their own comprehension. Overconfidence was greater for pre-test predictions than for post-test reflections, and it was also greater for participants with lower reading ability. Generating keywords caused participants to become significantly less overconfident- or more accurate- from pre-test to post-test in their comprehension judgments, but it did not actually boost comprehension scores. In other words, generating keywords helped participants know that they did not know; it did not, however, help them know more. In Experiment 2, the investigation of generating keywords and rereading text was situated within a new context incorporating practice test questions. Studies have shown that practice testing is an effective study strategy. Additionally, since researchers have found that learners can use information about peer performance as a basis for making judgments about themselves, Experiment 2 also asked whether peer collaboration might increase metacomprehension accuracy. Participants were randomly assigned to four conditions: individual/keyword, individual/reread, collaborate/keyword, and collaborate/reread. All participants answered practice test questions; participants in the individual conditions worked on the questions alone, while participants in the collaborative conditions discussed the questions with a partner. As in Experiment 1, participants in Experiment 2 were also overconfident in judging their own comprehension. Again, there was an effect for time of judgment, such that predictions were more overconfident than were reflections. Surprisingly, peer collaboration was found to lead to greater overconfidence in comprehension judgments. Participants who collaborated with a peer were more overconfident than participants who worked alone. Experiment 2 showed that in the presence of practice testing and peer collaboration, the interactive effect of keyword generation and time of judgment was minimized. Within the keyword group, participants who collaborated and participants who worked alone did not differ in overconfidence. Within the reread group, however, participants who collaborated were significantly more overconfident than those who worked alone. Taken together, these two studies suggest that middle school students are generally overconfident in their judgments of comprehension. However, the results indicate that study strategies designed to enhance comprehension and learning can be effective in reducing students' overconfidence about themselves. more...

Published
2014
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