Rochelle Picardo - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
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Papers by Rochelle Picardo
Autism and child psychopathology series, 2023
This series of articles devoted to schoolbased interventions for students with attention deficit ... more This series of articles devoted to schoolbased interventions for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) addresses issues that are central to the treatment of this disorder. ADHD has been one of the most extensively investigated mental conditions of childhood. Still, important questions regarding the extent of treatment effectiveness remain unanswered. Research has principally evaluated treatment effects in terms of symptom reduction. However, it is the dysfunction evident in school behavior and performance that typically triggers a clinical referral and leads to a diagnosis of ADHD. Thus, it seems logical that the level of functioning in school be considered a critical outcome variable when assessing treatment effects. Although one might assume that beneficial changes in symptoms, such as reduction in disruptive behavior and increases in attention, will translate downstream into better overall school performance, it has been diffi-The opinions and assertions contained in this commentary are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the
<p>a) The “It” Game was a measure of subjective valence intensity. Participants were asked ... more <p>a) The “It” Game was a measure of subjective valence intensity. Participants were asked to point to the circle best describing how happy or angry “the person on the screen feels”. b) The “You” Game was a measure of subjective arousal. Participants were asked to point to the circle best describing the heart speediness/ sleepiness “<i>you</i> feel when you look at the person on the screen.” Circles ranged in size from the smallest amount (‘not at all,’ value of 1) to the largest amount (‘really really!’ value of 5).</p
<p>** <i>p</i> < 0.005, *** <i>p</i> < 0.001.</p
Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles sig-nali... more Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles sig-naling approval and reward, and angry faces signaling disapproval and punishment. The present study examined whether the subjective experience of positive vs. negative facial expressions differs between children and adults. Specifically, we examined age-related dif-ferences in biases toward happy and angry facial expressions. Young children (5–7 years) and young adults (18–29 years) rated the intensity of happy and angry expressions as well as levels of experienced arousal. Results showed that young children—but not young adults—rated happy facial expressions as both more intense and arousing than angry faces. This finding, which we replicated in two independent samples, was not due to differ-ences in the ability to identify facial expressions, and suggests that children are more tuned to information in positive expressions. Together these studies provide evidence that chil-dren see unambigu...
For all children, and especially those with special education needs, parent school involvement is... more For all children, and especially those with special education needs, parent school involvement is important to their experiences in school. School involvement is an umbrella term that encompasses various activities, including parent-teacher conferencing, attending open house events at school, reading to children, helping with homework, checking homework, and conveying expectations about academic achievement. Another form of school involvement is advocacy, or the actions taken by parents to ensure their children are receiving the most appropriate services at school. This form of involvement is especially important for children with special needs; parent duties described in IDEA (Leiter & Kraus, 2004) and the BC Ministry of Education Policy Manual echo this notion. While biological parents of children with special needs often face barriers to advocacy, foster parents in British Columbia (BC) may face these barriers in addition to ones imposed by the rules of the Ministry of Child and Family Development. For example, foster parents are typically not permitted to make decisions related to the education of the children in their care. In order to better understand the school experiences of children in foster care, it is important to understand the involvement and advocacy experiences of caregivers. Using IPA methodology, the experiences of school involvement and advocacy from the perspective of caregivers who foster children with special educational needs was explored. Participants in this study reported engaging in numerous school involvement activities, both at school and at home. In general, they reported feeling supported by schools, but they identified barriers to school involvement that are unique to the foster parent role. Further research on this topic is needed to understand how educators might better collaborate with foster parents.
Journal of vision, 2015
In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate worki... more In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate working memory representations of several types of event. Alternating between different event types may cause them to seem less salient in memory, leading to an overly optimistic view of a given trend. We tested this possibility in a visual task portraying a series of events related to the success of orchard crops over time. Each scenario in our task portrayed one decade worth of crops. Each "year", an icon was presented depicting either a healthy crop, a mild mold or insect infestation, a moderate infestation, or a severe infestation. In one condition, we structured the presentation order such that crop events of the same type occurred in sequence (e.g. mild mold, mild mold, moderate mold, healthy, mild insects, mild insects, moderate insects). Each "decade" in which crop events were grouped by type (the grouped condition) involved a different sequence - thus there was no...
Journal of vision, 2015
In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate worki... more In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate working memory representations of several types of event. Alternating between different event types may cause them to seem less salient in memory, leading to an overly optimistic view of a given trend. We tested this possibility in a visual task portraying a series of events related to the success of orchard crops over time. Each scenario in our task portrayed one decade worth of crops. Each "year", an icon was presented depicting either a healthy crop, a mild mold or insect infestation, a moderate infestation, or a severe infestation. In one condition, we structured the presentation order such that crop events of the same type occurred in sequence (e.g. mild mold, mild mold, moderate mold, healthy, mild insects, mild insects, moderate insects). Each "decade" in which crop events were grouped by type (the grouped condition) involved a different sequence - thus there was no...
Journal of Vision, 2015
Stimulus features such as brightness, color, and subjective arousal level are potent in capturing... more Stimulus features such as brightness, color, and subjective arousal level are potent in capturing attention. This capture facilitates perceptual encoding and subsequent processing. Yet, it is still unknown whether stimuli related to long-term personal concerns similarly capture attention. To address this question, we employed an attentional blink (AB) paradigm, where observers detected two targets embedded in a stream of distractors during rapid serial visual presentation. The second target (T2) was either a word related to climate change or a neutral word (Experiment 1). Observers were more likely to detect T2 if it was climate-related than neutral. We refer to this reduced attentional blink for words related to climate change as climate word AB sparing. To examine whether this was driven by emotional arousal, we added a condition with negative emotionally arousing words (Experiment 2). We again found that observers were more likely to detect climate-related and negative T2 words than neutral ones. However, the climate words (e.g. carbon) were rated as less arousing than the negative words (e.g. murder), suggesting that climate word AB sparing was not strictly due to immediate arousal. Finally, to examine whether the sparing was explained by semantic priming, because climate words share a semantic category, we performed a version of the experiment with health-related rather than climate-related words (Experiment 3). Observers were equally likely to detect health-related or neutral targets, suggesting that the climate-word AB sparing was not due to semantic priming. In all experiments, no mention of climate change was made in the instructions. In subsequent surveys, most observers expressed environmental concerns. Thus, the heightened perceptual encoding of climate change stimuli was driven by long-term concerns. In sum, these findings suggest that attentional tuning to salient stimuli can reflect associations with long-term concerns, rather than immediate arousal or priming of a semantic category. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.
PloS one, 2016
Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles signalin... more Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles signaling approval and reward, and angry faces signaling disapproval and punishment. The present study examined whether the subjective experience of positive vs. negative facial expressions differs between children and adults. Specifically, we examined age-related differences in biases toward happy and angry facial expressions. Young children (5-7 years) and young adults (18-29 years) rated the intensity of happy and angry expressions as well as levels of experienced arousal. Results showed that young children-but not young adults-rated happy facial expressions as both more intense and arousing than angry faces. This finding, which we replicated in two independent samples, was not due to differences in the ability to identify facial expressions, and suggests that children are more tuned to information in positive expressions. Together these studies provide evidence that children see unambiguous ...
Autism and child psychopathology series, 2023
This series of articles devoted to schoolbased interventions for students with attention deficit ... more This series of articles devoted to schoolbased interventions for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) addresses issues that are central to the treatment of this disorder. ADHD has been one of the most extensively investigated mental conditions of childhood. Still, important questions regarding the extent of treatment effectiveness remain unanswered. Research has principally evaluated treatment effects in terms of symptom reduction. However, it is the dysfunction evident in school behavior and performance that typically triggers a clinical referral and leads to a diagnosis of ADHD. Thus, it seems logical that the level of functioning in school be considered a critical outcome variable when assessing treatment effects. Although one might assume that beneficial changes in symptoms, such as reduction in disruptive behavior and increases in attention, will translate downstream into better overall school performance, it has been diffi-The opinions and assertions contained in this commentary are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the
<p>a) The “It” Game was a measure of subjective valence intensity. Participants were asked ... more <p>a) The “It” Game was a measure of subjective valence intensity. Participants were asked to point to the circle best describing how happy or angry “the person on the screen feels”. b) The “You” Game was a measure of subjective arousal. Participants were asked to point to the circle best describing the heart speediness/ sleepiness “<i>you</i> feel when you look at the person on the screen.” Circles ranged in size from the smallest amount (‘not at all,’ value of 1) to the largest amount (‘really really!’ value of 5).</p
<p>** <i>p</i> < 0.005, *** <i>p</i> < 0.001.</p
Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles sig-nali... more Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles sig-naling approval and reward, and angry faces signaling disapproval and punishment. The present study examined whether the subjective experience of positive vs. negative facial expressions differs between children and adults. Specifically, we examined age-related dif-ferences in biases toward happy and angry facial expressions. Young children (5–7 years) and young adults (18–29 years) rated the intensity of happy and angry expressions as well as levels of experienced arousal. Results showed that young children—but not young adults—rated happy facial expressions as both more intense and arousing than angry faces. This finding, which we replicated in two independent samples, was not due to differ-ences in the ability to identify facial expressions, and suggests that children are more tuned to information in positive expressions. Together these studies provide evidence that chil-dren see unambigu...
For all children, and especially those with special education needs, parent school involvement is... more For all children, and especially those with special education needs, parent school involvement is important to their experiences in school. School involvement is an umbrella term that encompasses various activities, including parent-teacher conferencing, attending open house events at school, reading to children, helping with homework, checking homework, and conveying expectations about academic achievement. Another form of school involvement is advocacy, or the actions taken by parents to ensure their children are receiving the most appropriate services at school. This form of involvement is especially important for children with special needs; parent duties described in IDEA (Leiter & Kraus, 2004) and the BC Ministry of Education Policy Manual echo this notion. While biological parents of children with special needs often face barriers to advocacy, foster parents in British Columbia (BC) may face these barriers in addition to ones imposed by the rules of the Ministry of Child and Family Development. For example, foster parents are typically not permitted to make decisions related to the education of the children in their care. In order to better understand the school experiences of children in foster care, it is important to understand the involvement and advocacy experiences of caregivers. Using IPA methodology, the experiences of school involvement and advocacy from the perspective of caregivers who foster children with special educational needs was explored. Participants in this study reported engaging in numerous school involvement activities, both at school and at home. In general, they reported feeling supported by schools, but they identified barriers to school involvement that are unique to the foster parent role. Further research on this topic is needed to understand how educators might better collaborate with foster parents.
Journal of vision, 2015
In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate worki... more In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate working memory representations of several types of event. Alternating between different event types may cause them to seem less salient in memory, leading to an overly optimistic view of a given trend. We tested this possibility in a visual task portraying a series of events related to the success of orchard crops over time. Each scenario in our task portrayed one decade worth of crops. Each "year", an icon was presented depicting either a healthy crop, a mild mold or insect infestation, a moderate infestation, or a severe infestation. In one condition, we structured the presentation order such that crop events of the same type occurred in sequence (e.g. mild mold, mild mold, moderate mold, healthy, mild insects, mild insects, moderate insects). Each "decade" in which crop events were grouped by type (the grouped condition) involved a different sequence - thus there was no...
Journal of vision, 2015
In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate worki... more In order to effectively assess trends in the severity of a problem, we must often integrate working memory representations of several types of event. Alternating between different event types may cause them to seem less salient in memory, leading to an overly optimistic view of a given trend. We tested this possibility in a visual task portraying a series of events related to the success of orchard crops over time. Each scenario in our task portrayed one decade worth of crops. Each "year", an icon was presented depicting either a healthy crop, a mild mold or insect infestation, a moderate infestation, or a severe infestation. In one condition, we structured the presentation order such that crop events of the same type occurred in sequence (e.g. mild mold, mild mold, moderate mold, healthy, mild insects, mild insects, moderate insects). Each "decade" in which crop events were grouped by type (the grouped condition) involved a different sequence - thus there was no...
Journal of Vision, 2015
Stimulus features such as brightness, color, and subjective arousal level are potent in capturing... more Stimulus features such as brightness, color, and subjective arousal level are potent in capturing attention. This capture facilitates perceptual encoding and subsequent processing. Yet, it is still unknown whether stimuli related to long-term personal concerns similarly capture attention. To address this question, we employed an attentional blink (AB) paradigm, where observers detected two targets embedded in a stream of distractors during rapid serial visual presentation. The second target (T2) was either a word related to climate change or a neutral word (Experiment 1). Observers were more likely to detect T2 if it was climate-related than neutral. We refer to this reduced attentional blink for words related to climate change as climate word AB sparing. To examine whether this was driven by emotional arousal, we added a condition with negative emotionally arousing words (Experiment 2). We again found that observers were more likely to detect climate-related and negative T2 words than neutral ones. However, the climate words (e.g. carbon) were rated as less arousing than the negative words (e.g. murder), suggesting that climate word AB sparing was not strictly due to immediate arousal. Finally, to examine whether the sparing was explained by semantic priming, because climate words share a semantic category, we performed a version of the experiment with health-related rather than climate-related words (Experiment 3). Observers were equally likely to detect health-related or neutral targets, suggesting that the climate-word AB sparing was not due to semantic priming. In all experiments, no mention of climate change was made in the instructions. In subsequent surveys, most observers expressed environmental concerns. Thus, the heightened perceptual encoding of climate change stimuli was driven by long-term concerns. In sum, these findings suggest that attentional tuning to salient stimuli can reflect associations with long-term concerns, rather than immediate arousal or priming of a semantic category. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.
PloS one, 2016
Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles signalin... more Facial expressions aid social transactions and serve as socialization tools, with smiles signaling approval and reward, and angry faces signaling disapproval and punishment. The present study examined whether the subjective experience of positive vs. negative facial expressions differs between children and adults. Specifically, we examined age-related differences in biases toward happy and angry facial expressions. Young children (5-7 years) and young adults (18-29 years) rated the intensity of happy and angry expressions as well as levels of experienced arousal. Results showed that young children-but not young adults-rated happy facial expressions as both more intense and arousing than angry faces. This finding, which we replicated in two independent samples, was not due to differences in the ability to identify facial expressions, and suggests that children are more tuned to information in positive expressions. Together these studies provide evidence that children see unambiguous ...