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Biomedical subjects

J Sprafkin

Publications and source records attributed to J Sprafkin.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1987

An observational study of emotionally disturbed and learning-disabled children in school settings.

It has been alleged that populations of learning-disabled (LD) and emotionally disturbed (ED) children are essentially indistinguishable on important intervention-related symptoms. To examine this claim, a direct observation study of social interactions during class, lunch, and recess settings in two public schools was conducted. Teacher ratings of school behavior were also collected. The results indicated that the ED boys exhibited significantly more nonphysical aggression and noncompliance than the LD boys across settings, and that the LD boys had significantly higher rates of physical and nonphysical aggression and immature behavior than the LD girls. The correlations between the observations and teachers' ratings were modest but consistent with previous studies. The results are discussed with regard to their assessment and treatment implications.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1987

Effects of viewing aggressive cartoons on the behavior of learning disabled children.

Forty-six learning disabled children (M = 7.6 years) were exposed to six aggressive and six control cartoons in school. Treatment effects were assessed using direct observations of five categories of social behavior. There were no main effects for condition, and neither initial aggressiveness nor gender interacted significantly with condition for any of the behaviors. There was a significant interaction of condition with IQ: the low IQ group became significantly more physically aggressive following control compared with aggressive cartoons. The results from the present study are compared with the findings from other field experiments, and their clinical relevance is discussed.

Aggression↗
PubMed1987

Reality perceptions of television: a comparison of emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and nonhandicapped children.

The Stony Brook Videotest (SBV), a measure of reality perceptions of television programs and commercials, was administered to 38 emotionally disturbed (ED), 35 learning disabled (LD), and 159 nonhandicapped elementary school children. The ED and LD children scored significantly lower than the comparison group, indicating that ED and LD children are less able to distinguish between reality and fantasy on television. The clinical implications of these findings and possible remedial actions are discussed.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Using television to improve the social behavior of institutionalized children.

This field experiment assessed the effects of a "TV diet" composed of ten prosocial programs on the social behavior of eight-to-eighteen year old behaviorally disordered youngsters who were institutionalized in a state psychiatric facility. The influence of a post-viewing group discussion which highlighted the televised positive messages was also examined. The prosocial diet resulted in the youngsters behaving more altruistically, less verbally aggressive, and less destructively relative to those exposed to the control diet containing programs the youngsters typically viewed. The post-viewing discussion reduced the effectiveness of the prosocial programming but mitigated some of the negative effects of the control diet.

Adolescent↗