Enhancing stakeholder roles in autism early interventions in the United States: A stakeholder-driven research agenda.

LAY ABSTRACT: In this article, we outline a stakeholder-driven research agenda to guide future early intervention research for children with autism. Our research team collaborated with autism service providers, parents of individuals with autism, and autistic people to create this research agenda by (1) conducting workshops with community members and (2) distributing a survey to a larger number of community members around the country. The finalized research agenda includes (1) Guiding Principles for current and future research, (2) Research Priorities focused on early intervention for individuals with autism, and (3) Systems Implications to consider in future clinical, research, and policy efforts for early intervention. The full version of the research agenda is available in Supplemental Material. This article lists the main points of the research agenda and discusses unique themes highlighted by the community members. One main conclusion is that researchers need to include community members in decision-making and consultant positions throughout the research process to best meet the needs of the broader autism community. We have created a researcher workbook which we hope may facilitate these community consultation efforts. This workbook is available in Supplemental Material.

Student self-ratings of social-emotional competencies: Dimensional structure and outcome associations of the WCSD-SECA among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White boys and girls in elementary through high school.

School-based assessments of students' self-reported social-emotional competencies (SECs) are an essential part of social and emotional learning (SEL) initiatives. Few studies, however, have investigated whether such assessments align with the frameworks that inform SEL practices, especially for diverse populations. In the present study we investigated the dimensional structure of the 40-item Washoe County School District Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (WCSD-SECA), which was designed to measure the five domains of SECs defined by the widely used Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning framework (CASEL 5). Findings showed that a subset of 21 items fit a 3-factor solution that reflected Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Emotion-Focused competencies, a structure consistent with previous theorizing of broad SEC constructs. This 3-dimensional structure was partially invariant, with differences especially evident in item thresholds across subpopulations (defined by the intersection of grade level, gender, and race/ethnicity). Accounting for differences in item thresholds increased mean differences among subpopulations in the three domains. Across subpopulations, Intrapersonal scores were positively associated with students' standardized test scores and GPAs, and negatively related to the number of days they were absent from school, in multilevel models that adjusted for school-level clustering and included all three SEC scores and student demographic controls. Interpersonal scores were associated with fewer suspensions. Interpersonal and Emotion-Focused scores demonstrated unexpectedly negative associations with some outcomes in these models. Findings contribute to an emerging body of research that aims to deepen understandings of the content and structure of students' SECs as well as the factors that contribute to growth in these competencies.

The Developmental Significance of Looks from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence.

Physical appearance during the transition into adolescence matters for youths' socioemotional development. This study explored these implications by adding visual data to the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,049) to test how others' ratings of youths' looks (1 = very unattractive to 5 = very attractive) at the beginning (grade 3) and end (grade 9) of this transition shaped their emotional well-being, popularity/likability, and dating/sexual behavior. Results revealed recency effects of grade 9 looks on popularity/likability and dating/sexual behaviors and a lingering amplification effect of grade 3 looks on popularity/likability at the start of high school. Few associations were evident for emotional well-being. Thus, physical appearance offers an important lens for studying adolescent development.

Emotion-focused teaching practices and preschool children's social and learning behaviors.

Preschool classrooms are rich with emotions, from a teacher's enthusiastic praise for a child's work to a child's anger at another child who is using wanted materials. A wide variety of teaching behaviors may help children learn about their own and others' emotional states as well as regulation strategies to manage their emotions. In the present study, we relate teachers' emotion-focused teaching behaviors (including how teachers model emotions, instruct about emotions, and respond to children's emotions) using a new observational tool, the EMOtion TEaching Rating Scale (EMOTERS). In addition, social and learning behaviors with teachers, peers, and tasks were observed for 77 children in 18 classrooms. We used the EMOTERS to predict children's social and learning behaviors within time (fall, spring) and over time (from fall to spring). Results affirm that emotion-focused teaching practices (modeling, responding, instructing) vary across classrooms. We also found instances of these practices being related-within time and over time-to children's social interactions with teachers and peers, and engagement in tasks. Most significant associations were found with emotion instructing, despite its relatively infrequent use in classrooms. Findings offer valuable initial evidence about EMOTERS as a tool for measuring emotion-focused teaching behaviors and potentially as a tool for supporting professional development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Crowd Sourcing: Do Peer Crowd Prototypes Match Reality?

During the transition into high school, adolescents sort large sets of unfamiliar peers into prototypical peer crowds thought to share similar values, behaviors, and interests (e.g., Jocks). Often, such sorting is based solely on appearance. This study investigates the accuracy of this sorting process in relation to actual characteristics using video and survey data from a longitudinal sample of U.S. youths who attended high school in the mid- to late-2000s. To simulate this sorting process, we asked same-birth-cohort strangers to view short videos of youths at age 15 and to classify those strangers into likely crowd membership. We then compared the classifications they made to how adolescents characterized themselves at that same time point. Results show that peer crowd classification predicts aspects of unknown peers' mental health, academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, social status, and risk-taking behaviors.

Linking social and emotional learning standards to the WCSD Social-Emotional Competency Assessment: A Rasch approach.

Growing interest in understanding the role of students' social-emotional competence for school success necessitates valid measures for large-scale use. We provide validity evidence for the 40-item Washoe County School District Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (WCSD-SECA), a student self-report measure that came from a researcher-practitioner partnership. The WCSD's social and emotional learning standards, which detail when and at what grade students are expected to express different competencies, contributed to hypotheses about the social-emotional competency levels targeted by the WCSD-SECA items. Across two survey years, Rasch analyses showed that the empirical item ordering aligned with the expected ordering to varying degrees, that items better targeted students at low to middle competency levels, and that some items showed differential item functioning across grades and gender/race-ethnicity. Future research can use similar methods to theorize and test how items array along latent competency dimensions in general and for particular subgroups. Especially when accomplished within a researcher-practitioner partnership, such efforts can mutually inform district social and emotional learning standards, helping document student progress in a locally and practically relevant way. By making the WCSD-SECA items freely available, we make it easy for researchers and practitioners to complete future refinements and adaptations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Contemporary College Students' Reflections of their High School Peer Crowds.

High school peer crowds are fundamental components of adolescent development with influences on short-and long-term life trajectories. This study provides the perspectives of contemporary college students regarding their recent high school social landscapes, contributing to current research and theory on the social contexts of high school. This study also highlights the experiences of college-bound students who represent a growing segment of the adolescent population. 61 undergraduates attending universities in two states participated in 10 focus groups to reflect on their experiences with high school peer crowds during the late 2010s. Similar to seminal research on peer crowds, we examined crowds and individuals along several focal domains: popularity, extracurricular involvement, academic orientation, fringe media, illicit risk taking, and race-ethnicity. We find that names and characteristics of crowds reflect the current demographic and cultural moment (i.e., growing importance of having a college education, racial-ethnic diversity) and identify peer crowds that appear to be particularly salient for college-bound youth. Overall, this study illuminates how the retrospective accounts of college-bound students offer insight into high school social hierarchies during a time of rapid social change.

Measuring Constructs in Family Science: How Can Item Response Theory Improve Precision and Validity?

This article provides family scientists with an understanding of contemporary measurement perspectives and the ways in which item response theory (IRT) can be used to develop measures with desired evidence of precision and validity for research uses. The article offers a nontechnical introduction to some key features of IRT, including its orientation toward locating items along an underlying dimension and toward estimating precision of measurement for persons with different levels of that same construct. It also offers a didactic example of how the approach can be used to refine conceptualization and operationalization of constructs in the family sciences, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (n = 2,732). Three basic models are considered: (a) the Rasch and (b) two-parameter logistic models for dichotomous items and (c) the Rating Scale Model for multicategory items. Throughout, the author highlights the potential for researchers to elevate measurement to a level on par with theorizing and testing about relationships among constructs.

Serious Delinquency and Gang Participation: Combining and Specializing in Drug Selling, Theft and Violence.

Using Pittsburgh Youth Study data, we examined the extent to which over 600 gang members and non-gang involved young men specialized in drug selling, serious theft, or serious violence or engaged simultaneously in these serious delinquent behaviors, throughout the 1990s. We found that the increase in delinquency associated with gang membership was concentrated in two combinations: serious violence and drug selling; serious violence, drug selling, and serious theft. Several covariates were similarly associated with multi-type serious delinquency and gang membership (age, historical time, Black race, and residential mobility), suggesting that these behaviors may share common developmental, familial, and contextual risks. We encourage future research to further examine the association of gang membership with engagement in particular configurations of serious delinquency.

Physical attractiveness and the accumulation of social and human capital in adolescence and young adulthood: assets and distractions.

Beauty has a well-documented impact on labor market outcomes with both legal and policy implications. This monograph investigated whether this stratification is rooted in earlier developmental experiences. Specifically, we explored how high schools' dual roles as contexts of social relations and academic progress contributed to the long-term socioeconomic advantages of being physically attractive. Integrating theories from multiple disciplines, the conceptual model of this study contends that physically attractive youths' greater social integration and lesser social stigma help them accumulate psychosocial resources that support their academic achievement while also selecting them into social activities that distract from good grades. A mixed methods design, combining statistical analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and qualitative analyses of a single high school, supported and expanded this model. The data revealed that the benefits of attractiveness flowed through greater social integration but were partially offset by social distractions, especially romantic/sexual partnerships and alcohol-related problems. Interview and ethnographic data further revealed that adolescents themselves understood how physical attractiveness could lead to favorable treatment by teachers and classmates while also enticing youth to emphasize socializing and dating, even when the latter took time from other activities (like studying) and marginalized some classmates. These patterns, in turn, predicted education, work, family, and mental health trajectories in young adulthood. The results of this interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed methods study suggest that adolescence may be a critical period in stratification by physical appearance and that the underlying developmental phenomena during this period are complex and often internally contradictory. The monograph concludes with discussion of theoretical and policy implications and recommendations for future developmental research.

Beyond an "Either-Or" Approach to Home- and Center-Based Child Care: Comparing Children and Families who Combine Care Types with Those Who Use Just One.

Most research focuses on preschoolers' primary non-parental child care arrangement despite evidence that multiple arrangements are relatively common. Using the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we compare characteristics and outcomes of families whose 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care with those who attend either home- or center-based care exclusively or receive no non-parental care at all. We find that about one fifth of 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care. Mothers' priorities for care (getting their child ready for school, matching their families' cultural background) and perceptions of good local care options predict their combining home- and center-based care. Preschoolers score higher on reading and math assessments, on average, when they attend centers, alone or in combination with home-based child care, than when they are cared for only in homes, either by their parents or by others. Preschoolers' average socioemotional outcomes generally do not differ between families who do and who do not combine care types. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

A polymorphic, mucocutaneous eruption in a patient with end-stage renal disease.

An 81-year-old man is presented who developed cryptococcal infection after treatment for Clostridium difficile infection.

Does Child Care Quality Mediate Associations Between Type of Care and Development?

Studies document that, on average, children cared for in centers, as compared to homes, have higher cognitive test scores but worse socioemotional and health outcomes. The authors assessed whether the quality of care received explains these associations. They considered multiple domains of child development-cognitive, socioemotional, and health-and examined whether mediation is greater when quality measures are better aligned with outcome domains. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, they found that children in centers have better cognitive skills and behavioral regulation than children in homes, but worse social competence and generally equivalent health (N = 1,550). They found little evidence that quality of child care, as measured by standard instruments (e.g., the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised), accounts for associations between type of care and child developmental outcomes.

New evidence on the validity of the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale: Results from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort.

The Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale (CIS) has been widely used in research studies to measure the quality of caregiver-child interactions. The scale was modeled on a well-established theory of parenting, but there are few psychometric studies of its validity. We applied factor analyses and item response theory methods to assess the psychometric properties of the Arnett CIS in a national sample of toddlers in home-based care and preschoolers in center-based care from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. We found that a bifactor structure (one common factor and a second set of specific factors) best fits the data. In the Arnett CIS, the bifactor model distinguishes a common substantive dimension from two methodological dimensions (for positively and negatively oriented items). Despite the good fit of this model, the items are skewed (most teachers/caregivers display positive interactions with children) and, as a result, the Arnett CIS is not well suited to distinguish between caregivers who are "highly" versus "moderately" positive in their interactions with children, according to the items on the scale. Regression-adjusted associations between the Arnett CIS and child outcomes are small, especially for preschoolers in centers. We encourage future scale development work on measures of child care quality by early childhood scholars.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Nutrition of Preschoolers.

Children spend a considerable amount of time in preschools and child care centers. As a result, these settings may have an influence on their diet, weight, and food security, and are potentially important contexts for interventions to address nutritional health. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is one such intervention. No national study has compared nutrition-related outcomes of children in CACFP-participating centers to those of similar children in non-participating centers. We use a sample of four-year old children drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort to obtain estimates of associations between CACFP program participation and consumption of milk, fruits, vegetables, fast food, and sweets, and indicators of overweight, underweight status and food insecurity. We find that, among low-income children, CACFP participation moderately increases consumption of milk and vegetables, and may also reduce the prevalence of overweight and underweight. Effects on other outcomes are generally small and not statistically significant.

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in a patient treated with anti-TNF-alpha inhibitors.

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF) is a tick-bourne illness, which can be fatal if unrecognized. We discuss the case of a patient treated with an anti-TNF-alpha inhibitor for rheumatoid arthritis who later developed a generalized erythematous macular eruption accompanied by fever. The clinical findings were suggestive of RMSF, which was later confirmed with serology. Prompt treatment with doxyclycine is recommended for all patients with clinical suspicion of RMSF.

An assessment of the validity of the ECERS-R with implications for measures of child care quality and relations to child development.

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor analyses, and regression analyses with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort. The PCM identified rating category disordering, indicating previously unrecognized problems with the scale's response process validity. Factor analyses identified neither a single factor nor the ECERS-R six subscales, replicating prior research regarding the scale's structural validity. Criterion validity results were mixed, with small effect sizes for regressions predicting child outcomes and moderate effect sizes for regressions predicting teacher-reported quality. Our results lend empirical support to recent critiques of the ECERS-R, and we discuss implications for its future use and for the development of future measures.

Cutaneous phaeohyphomycosis caused by Paraconiothyrium cyclothyrioides.

Paraconiothyrium cyclothyrioides is a recently described coelomycetous fungal species. We present a case in a renal transplant patient with chronic skin lesions of the lower extremities caused by P. cyclothyrioides. Treatment with posaconazole led to complete resolution of the lesions. P. cyclothyrioides should be considered an opportunistic human pathogen in immunocompromised patients.

New antibiotic therapies for acne and rosacea.

Acne and rosacea compromise a substantial portion of the dermatology clinical practice. Over the past century, many treatment modalities have been introduced with antibiotics playing a major role. Today, both oral and topical antibiotics are used in the management of acne and rosacea, with several novel formulations and/or combination regimens recently introduced. The latest studies suggest anti-inflammatory actions to be the most likely mechanism of antibiotics in acne and rosacea, shifting the focus to subantimicrobial-dose oral antibiotics and/or topical antibiotic regimens as the preferred first-line agents. Here we will discuss the most recent oral and topical antibiotic therapies available for treatment of acne and rosacea, with special focus on efficacy data, indication, dosing, and mechanism of action.