This dissertation is comprised of three manuscripts and presents a line of research aimed at improving the measurement of bullying in schools. The first manuscript investigated the impact of an educational video on self-reports of bullying. A sample of 1,283 middle school students in randomly assigned classrooms either watched or did not watch an…

Children from low-income families benefit remarkably from exposure to compensatory education that began with Head Start in 1965 and aimed to improve school readiness skills by design. While empirical evidence has supported more instructional time in elementary and secondary schools for low-income students, little is known that whether increasing…

Most school principals believe recess has a positive impact on the development of students' social skills and academic achievement. Research also suggests that physical activity and play during recess may be linked to improvements in both academic and prosocial behaviors (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2010). Recess, however, has been…

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are known to have impairments in various aspects of phonology, which have been claimed to cause their language and literacy impairments. However, "phonology" encompasses a wide range of skills, and little is known about whether these phonological impairments extend to…

This paper presents an assessment of how students perceive a typical classroom representation of center-of-mass. Participants were shown figures consisting of two filled black circles; they were told that these figures represented spheres or balls. They were then asked to indicate with a mark the point where the spheres would balance, i. e., they…

Wraparound is a team-based service planning and coordination process intended to improve outcomes for children and youth with serious emotional and behavioral disorders and support them in their homes, schools, and communities. Given the substantial resources devoted to implementing wraparound, a meta-analysis of outcome studies was conducted to…

We describe the late adolescent psychosocial outcomes from a relatively large, community-identified sample of children with ADHD who have been assessed longitudinally from childhood through late adolescence. A range of outcomes were compared between ADHD (n = 119) and normal control (n = 93) groups, as well as ADHD subgroups that varied as a…

In the present study, conducted with French-speaking children, we examined the reliability (group study) and the prevalence (multiple-case study) of dyslexics' phonological deficits in reading and reading-related skills in comparison with Reading Level (RL) controls. All dyslexics with no comorbidity problem schooled in a special institution for…

Typically embodied in classroom-based projects, service learning aims to link community service with the school curriculum to enhance both character development and academic skills. Service learning can also go beyond these goals to prepare students to become engaged citizens, by expanding their understanding of social problems and the role of…

In a retrospective study, we compared school performance of 53 children practicing music (group 1) with 67 controls not practicing music (group 2). Overall average marks as well as average marks of all school subjects except sports were significantly higher in children who do (group 1) than in those who do not practice music (group 2). In a…

This study examines the treatment outcomes of 139, 6-11 year-old, clinically referred boys and girls diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) or Conduct Disorder (CD) who were randomly assigned to a modular-based treatment protocol that was applied by research study clinicians either in the community (COMM) or a clinic office (CLINIC).…

The current study investigated the relevance of semantic processing and stimulus salience for memory performance in young ADHD patients and healthy control participants. 18 male ADHD patients and 15 healthy control children and adolescents participated in an ERP study during a visual memory paradigm with two different encoding tasks requiring…

Despite the high level of funding and policy interest in prisoner reentry, there is still little rigorous scientific evidence to guide jurisdictions in developing reentry programs to enhance public safety, particularly for managing those who pose the greatest safety risks. The Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) is an interagency initiative to help…

The authors examined how 12 Estonian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 60 children with normal speech development (ND) comprehended compound nouns with differing sequence of the components (first task) and how they produced compound nouns to label genuine and accidental categories by using analogy (second task) and…

In the neuropsychological case series approach, tasks are administered that tap different cognitive domains, and differences within rather than across individuals are the basis for theorising; each individual is effectively their own control. This approach is a mainstay of cognitive neuropsychology, and is particularly suited to the study of…