Passive Students in Junior High School: The Associations with Shyness, Perceived Competence and Social Support

Sleep duration moderates the association between children's temperament and academic achievement

The primary goal of this study was to determine whether sleep duration moderated the relations of two dimensions of children's temperament, shyness and negative emotion, to academic achievement. In the autumn, parents and teachers reported on kindergarteners' and first graders' (N = 103) shyness and negative emotion and research assistants observed negative emotion in the classroom. In the spring, children wore actigraphs that measured their sleep for five consecutive school nights, and they completed the Woodcock Johnson-III standardized tests of achievement. Interactions between temperament and sleep duration predicting academic achievement were computed. Interactions of sleep duration with parent-reported shyness, teacher-reported negative emotion, and observed negative emotion indicated that the negative relations of shyness or negative emotion to academic achievement were strongest when children slept less. Results suggest that sleep duration may be an important bio-regulatory factor to consider in young children's early academic achievement.

Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a group cognitive-behavioral course for depressed adolescents

BACKGROUND

School dropout is considered a serious problem in high schools in Norway. Despite studies which emphasize the importance of mental health as a unique risk factor for dropout, interventions have only taken this into account to a limited extent. Depression is one of the most prevalent mental health issues. Here we report the study protocol of a cluster randomized controlled trial of a group-CBT intervention, "Adolescent Coping with Depression Course" (ACDC) for depressed adolescents in upper secondary school.

METHOD

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which ACDC can reduce depressive symptoms, prevent dropout and improve academic and social functioning among adolescents in upper secondary school. This study investigates the effectiveness of ACDC through a cluster randomized trial, in which course leaders are randomized to experimental or control conditions where the control groups receive usual care.

DISCUSSION

The intervention is expected to reduce depressive symptoms among adolescents. The study will further investigate whether the intervention can prevent dropout and improve academic and social functioning among adolescents in upper secondary school.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ISRCTN registry ISRCTN19700389 . Registered 6 October 2015.

Shyness in late childhood: relations with attributional styles and self-esteem

BACKGROUND

Shyness in late childhood is related to social and psychological problems. The present study examined the relations among shyness, attributional styles and self-esteem. It was hypothesized that self-esteem mediated the effects of attributional styles on shyness.

METHODS

Self-reported data on degree of shyness, attributional styles and self-esteem were obtained from 326 Chinese children with mean age of 10.85 years.

RESULTS

It was found that positive attributional styles predicted shyness in the negative direction and the effects were fully mediated by self-esteem, and negative attributional styles predicted shyness in the positive direction both directly and through self-esteem.

CONCLUSION

The results imply that how children attribute positive and negative outcomes affect both self-esteem and shyness. It is suggested that practitioners should conduct attribution-retraining workshops for shy children and help teachers and parents learn how to mitigate negative attributional style and foster positive attributional styles in children.

The impact of loneliness on self-rated health symptoms among victimized school children

BACKGROUND

Loneliness is associated with peer victimization, and the two adverse experiences are both related to ill health in childhood and adolescence. There is, however, a lack of knowledge on the importance of loneliness among victimized children. Therefore, possible modifying effects of loneliness on victimized school children's self-rated health were assessed.

METHODS

A population based cross-section study included 419 children in grades 1-10 from five schools. The prevalence of loneliness and victimization across grades was analyzed by linear test for trend, and associations of the adverse experiences with four health symptoms (sadness, anxiety, stomach ache, and headache) were estimated by logistic regression.

RESULTS

In crude regression analysis, both victimization and loneliness showed positive associations with all the four health symptoms. However, in multivariable analysis, the associations of victimization with health symptoms were fully attenuated except for headache. In contrast, loneliness retained about the same strength of associations in the multivariable analysis as in the crude analysis. More detailed analyses demonstrated that children who reported both victimization and loneliness had three to seven times higher prevalence of health symptoms compared to children who reported neither victimization nor loneliness (the reference group). Rather surprisingly, victimized children who reported no loneliness did not have any higher prevalence of health symptoms than the reference group, whereas lonely children without experiences of victimization had almost the same prevalence of health symptoms (except for stomach ache) as children who were both victimized and lonely.

CONCLUSIONS

Adverse effects of loneliness need to be highlighted, and for victimized children, experiences of loneliness may be an especially harsh risk factor related to ill health.

Shyness Predicts Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents

This study examines the relation between shyness, social support and depressive symptoms in a sample of 259 students (aged 14—16 years) in two secondary schools. Results at both time-points showed positive associations of depressive symptoms with shyness and with being female and negative associations of depressive symptoms with social support and extraversion. Cross time-point results showed that shyness at T1 predicted change in depressive symptoms at T2, even when the effects of gender and extraversion were partialled out. In addition, a significant interaction effect appeared of shyness and peer support in relation to depressive symptoms.

Shyness as a Risk-Factor for Somatic Complaints Among Norwegian Adolescents

The associations between shyness, school-related stress, social support and somatic complaints, were assessed in a sample of 501 pupils from two secondary schools in Norway. The main finding from this cross-sectional study revealed a positive significant association between shyness and somatic complaints. Findings also showed a significant positive association between perceived school-related stress and somatic complaints, while there was a negative relationship between emotional support from teachers and somatic complaints. Girls reported a significantly higher degree of somatic complaints than boys did. No significant differences between the genders were found in level of reported shyness.

Social Passivity and Grades Achieved Among Adolescents in Junior High School

The main objective of this study was to gain knowledge as to how social passivity in school is related to the grades pupils achieve. The relation between social passivity and school grades received in eight different subjects, varying according to familiarity to teachers, demands of cooperation with peers and demands for public display of learning results were investigated. Five hundred and one pupils in grades 8, 9 and 10 (aged 13—16 years) from two secondary schools in a city in the southern part of Norway participated in the study. Results indicate a tendency for the more socially passive pupils to receive significantly lower grades than the more socially active pupils in subjects characterized by low familiarity to teachers, high demands of cooperation with peers and high demands for public display of learning results, such as oral and practical-esthetical subjects. In contrast, no tendency for lower grades among the socially passive pupils was found for mathematics.