The contribution of mastery experiences, performance feedback, and task effort to elementary-aged students' self-efficacy in writing.

Although intervention procedures exist for improving elementary-aged students' writing fluency skills, less is known about how their writing self-efficacy develops upon participating in these procedures. In this study, 117 second grade students participated in an evidence-based performance feedback writing intervention. Students reported higher levels of self-efficacy in their writing abilities after participating in the intervention than they did at baseline. Although their experiences with task mastery and positive feedback did not impact their writing self-efficacy, the effort they put forth during the intervention was a significant predictor. These results may provide initial guidance for the development of students' self-efficacy in the context of school-based interventions, and they have specific implications for how the performance feedback intervention procedures may be refined to more systematically target students' task effort in future research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Assessing children's perceptions of academic interventions: The Kids Intervention Profile.

The psychometric properties of the Kids Intervention Profile (KIP), a rating scale designed to measure academic intervention acceptability from the perspective of students, were examined as well as the influence of background factors on students' acceptability ratings. Data were extracted from 4 randomized controlled trials investigating the effects of a performance feedback intervention on third-grade students' writing fluency (n = 228). Results indicated that the KIP contains 2 factors (General Intervention Acceptability, Skill Improvement) and has adequate internal consistency and stability across a 3-week period. There were gender differences in students' acceptability ratings, with female students rating the intervention as significantly more acceptable than males. In addition, results suggested a modest, positive relationship between students' intervention acceptability ratings and their intervention outcomes. Considerations regarding the use of the KIP, as well as limitations of the study, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Programming generality into a performance feedback writing intervention: A randomized controlled trial.

Substantial numbers of students in the United States are performing below grade-level expectations in core academic areas, and these deficits are most pronounced in the area of writing. Although performance feedback procedures have been shown to produce promising short-term improvements in elementary-aged students' writing skills, evidence of maintenance and generalization of these intervention effects is limited. The purpose of this study was to examine the immediate, generalized, and sustained effects of incorporating multiple exemplar training into the performance feedback procedures of a writing intervention using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Results indicated that although the addition of multiple exemplar training did not improve students' writing performance on measures of stimulus and response generalization, it did result in greater maintenance of intervention effects in comparison to students who received performance feedback without generality programming and students who engaged in weekly writing practice alone.

Evaluating elementary-aged students' abilities to generalize and maintain fluency gains of a performance feedback writing intervention.

National estimates of students' writing abilities in the United States indicate that in 2002, 72% of elementary-aged students were unable to write with grade-level proficiency (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). Although performance feedback is one type of intervention that improves students' writing skills, no study to date has examined the generalization and maintenance of writing fluency improvements developed through these interventions. The primary goal of this study was to determine whether elementary-aged students assigned to a performance feedback intervention condition demonstrated evidence of greater immediate treatment effects, generalization, and maintenance than students assigned to a practice-only condition. Results revealed that in comparison with the practice-only condition (n = 52), students assigned to the performance feedback condition (n = 51) demonstrated significantly greater immediate and generalized writing fluency improvements. However, evidence of maintenance of intervention effects was limited. These findings suggest that, in isolation, performance feedback may produce short-term desired effects on students' writing fluency growth, but that explicit programming of generality may be required to produce long-term achievement gains.

Posttraumatic stress disorder in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: clinical features and familial transmission.

OBJECTIVE: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by clinically significant functional impairment due to symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity. Previous research suggests a link, in child samples, between ADHD and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is characterized by (1) chronically reexperiencing a traumatic event, (2) hyperarousal, and (3) avoiding stimuli associated with the trauma while exhibiting numbed responsiveness. This study sought to address the link between ADHD and PTSD in adults by providing a comprehensive comparison of ADHD patients with and without PTSD across multiple variables including demographics, patterns of psychiatric comorbidities, functional impairments, quality of life, social adjustment, and familial transmission. METHOD: Participants in our controlled family study conducted between 1998 and 2003 were 190 adults with DSM-IV ADHD who were attending an outpatient mental health clinic in Boston, Massachusetts; 16 adults with DSM-IV ADHD who were recruited by advertisement from the greater Boston area; and 123 adult controls without ADHD who were recruited by advertisement from the greater Boston area. All available first-degree relatives also participated. Subjects completed a large battery of self-report measures (the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire, items from the Current Behavior Scale, the Social Adjustment Scale Self-Report, and the Four Factor Index of Social Status) designed to assess various psychiatric and functional parameters. Diagnoses were made using data obtained from structured psychiatric interviews (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders, Clinician Version, and the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children-Epidemiologic Version). RESULTS: The lifetime prevalence of PTSD was significantly higher among adults with ADHD compared with controls (10.0% vs 1.6%; P = .004). Participants with ADHD and those with ADHD + PTSD did not differ in core symptoms of ADHD nor in age at onset, but those with ADHD + PTSD had higher rates of psychiatric comorbidity than those with ADHD only (including higher lifetime rates of major depressive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, social phobia, agoraphobia, and generalized anxiety disorder) and worse quality of life ratings for all domains. Familial risk analysis revealed that relatives of ADHD probands without PTSD had elevated rates of both ADHD (51%) and PTSD (12%) that significantly differed from rates among relatives of controls (7% [P ≤ .001] and 0% [P ≤ .05], respectively). A similar pattern of elevated risk for ADHD and PTSD (80% and 40%) was observed in relatives of probands with ADHD + PTSD (P ≤ .001 for both conditions). CONCLUSIONS: The comorbidity of PTSD and ADHD in adults leads to greater clinical severity in terms of psychiatric comorbidity and psychosocial functioning. The familial coaggregation of the 2 disorders suggests that these disorders share familial risk factors and that their co-occurrence is not due to diagnostic errors.