The Importance of Training to Manage a Church as a Predictor of Emotional Exhaustion and Ministry Satisfaction.

The study found that pastors who agreed they were trained to manage a church ranked high in ministry satisfaction and low in emotional exhaustion compared to those who disagreed to receiving such training. This work has implications for seminaries, congregations, denominational leaders and clergy themselves to ensure clergy are properly prepared and continue their career journey. This study could be used to modify curricula at seminaries and produce post seminary training and educational information.

Understanding academic readiness for kindergarten: The interactive role of emotion knowledge and teacher-child closeness.

One goal of this study was to test the role of emotion knowledge and teacher-child closeness and conflict in predicting academic readiness for kindergarten over and above demographic factors and executive functioning skills (especially inhibitory control) known to predict readiness. Another goal was to test teacher-child closeness as a moderator of the association between emotion knowledge or executive functioning and academic readiness. A total of 141 4- and 5-year-old children completed emotion knowledge, academic readiness, and inhibitory control measures.

Emergent literacy in print and electronic contexts: The influence of book type, narration source, and attention.

Young children learn from traditional print books, but there has been no direct comparison of their learning from print books and tablet e-books while controlling for narration source. The current project used a between-subjects design and examined how 4-year-olds (N = 100) learned words and story content from a print book read aloud by a live adult, a print book narrated by an audio device, an e-book read aloud by a live adult, and an e-book narrated by an audio device. Attention to the book and prior experience with tablet e-books were also measured and included in analyses.

Zinc supplementation sustained normative neurodevelopment in a randomized, controlled trial of Peruvian infants aged 6-18 months.

A double-blind, randomized clinical trial was conducted to determine the effects of prevention of zinc deficiency on cognitive and sensorimotor development during infancy. At 6 mo of age, infants were randomly assigned to be administered a daily liquid supplement containing 10 mg/d of zinc (zinc sulfate), 10 mg/d of iron (ferrous sulfate), and 0.5 mg/d of copper (copper oxide), or an identical daily liquid supplement containing only 10 mg/d of iron and 0.

Now, Pay Attention! The Effects of Instruction on Children's Attention.

We investigated the effects of instructions to "stay on task" on preschoolers' attention and cognitive performance in the face of either incomprehensible or comprehensible distraction. Three- and 4-year-olds completed problem-solving tasks while a distracting event played continuously in the background, under conditions of (a) no instruction, (b) moderate instruction, or (c) frequent instruction to "stay on task." Under conditions where an incomprehensible distractor was present, any amount of instruction reduced looking to the distracting event.

What Habituates in Infant Visual Habituation? A Psychophysiological Analysis.

Despite the use of visual habituation over the past half century, relatively little is known about its underlying processes. We analyzed heart rate (HR) taken simultaneous with looking during infant-controlled habituation sessions collected longitudinally at 4, 6, and 8 months of age with the goal of examining how HR and HR-defined phases of attention change across habituation. There were four major findings.

Structure and Continuity of Intellectual Development in Early Childhood.

We evaluated over 200 participants semiannually from 12 to 48 months of age on measures of intellectual (Bayley Scales, Stanford-Binet Scale) and verbal (MacArthur-Bates Inventory, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) status. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear (growth curve) analyses were applied to address the nature of development and individual differences during this time. Structural analyses showed a strong and robust simplex model from infancy to the preschool period, with no evidence of qualitative reorganizations or discontinuities.

Maternal DHA levels and toddler free-play attention.

We investigated the relationship between maternal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) levels at birth and toddler free-play attention in the second year. Toddler free-play attention was assessed at 12 and 18 months, and maternal erythrocyte (red-blood cell; RBC) phospholipid DHA (percentage of total fatty acids) was measured from mothers at delivery. Overall, higher maternal DHA status at birth was associated with enhanced attentional functioning during the second year.

Maternal DHA and the development of attention in infancy and toddlerhood.

Infants were followed longitudinally to document the relationship between docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) levels and the development of attention. Erythrocyte (red-blood cell; RBC) phospholipid DHA (percentage of total fatty acids) was measured from infants and mothers at delivery. Infants were assessed in infant-control habituation at 4, 6, and 8 months augmented with psychophysiological measures, and on free-play attention and distractibility paradigms at 12 and 18 months.

Attentional Engagement in Infancy: The Interactive Influence of Attentional Inertia and Attentional State.

We evaluated the interactive influences of attentional state and attentional inertia on infants' level of attentional engagement. We assessed infants' distraction latencies longitudinally at 6.5 and 9 months as they explored toys, and we coded both their attentional state (focused vs.

Developmental changes in endogenous control of attention: the role of target familiarity on infants' distraction latency.

This study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. In Experiment 1 (N = 54), infants' distraction latencies as they investigated both familiar toys (ones they previously had seen in a familiarization procedure) and novel toys (ones they had not seen in the familiarization procedure) were assessed longitudinally at 6.5 and 9 months of age.