Two experiments used eye tracking to examine how infant and adult observers distribute their eye gaze on videos of a mother producing infant- and adult-directed speech. Both groups showed greater attention to the eyes than to the nose and mouth, as well as an asymmetrical focus on the talker's right eye for infant-directed speech stimuli. Observers continued to look more at the talker's apparent right eye when the video stimuli were mirror flipped, suggesting that the asymmetry reflects a perceptual processing bias rather than a stimulus artifact, which may be related to cerebral lateralization of emotion processing.

Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) is characterized by a passive form of inattention that may not overtly disrupt classroom goals. Due to the nature of these symptoms, children with SCT may be "falling through the cracks" in schools. The current study examined pre-service teachers' perceptions of SCT in the classroom. Undergraduate education majors (n = 161) read vignettes describing fictitious fourth-grade boys presenting with symptoms of SCT, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or a non-ADHD-related control: social anxiety disorder (SA), and rated each of the vignettes in terms of their perceptions of the boy described. Results were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs and paired-sample t tests. Pre-service teachers viewed all three sets of symptoms as concerning, but viewed ADHD behaviors as the most problematic. These results are promising, as they suggest that pre-service teachers are concerned about both hyperactive (i.e., ADHD) and non-hyperactive behavioral problems (i.e., SCT and SA). Implications and future directions are discussed.

No abstract

School consultation is a service delivery model that increases the potential of school-based interventionists to provide services to children. This is due to consultation’s indirect nature and emphasis on training consultees. In a consultative model, a consultant (e.g. school psychologist) works with a consultee (e.g. teacher) who will deliver an intervention to a child. The chapter describes the relative advantages of such practices, such as efficiency, improved outcomes for students, enhancement in knowledge of consultees, and fostering of family-school partnerships. The chapter presents a model for behavioral consultation, with considerations that should be made in order to enhance the effectiveness of consultation. In particular, elements of sincerity, trust, communication, and partnership are described. Following, the chapter describes both traditional behavioral consultation and conjoint behavioral consultation.