User:Ellie Irving/sandbox

Article Evaluation

In the overview, the article states that within The Cave, Plato mentions that the philosopher is like the prisoner and that all of the prisoners are freed. Neither of these things are stated in the original text. The other terminology mentioned includes no citations. The summary is quotation heavy. I wonder if there are any more contemporary takes on The Cave. The article is not neutral in the symbolism that it alludes to; there are no citations for this section and it seems biased towards the authors opinion. The sources are credible with functioning links. There was much discussion about which popular references to include in this page. Indirect references were removed. This article is part of four WikiProjects, C-class, and high-importance. In class we focused on the application of the plot to the life of a scholar or researcher. --Ellie Irving (talk) 00:00, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Potiential Articles


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is it written neutrally?
 * Does each claim have a citation?
 * Are the citations reliable?

Debriefing

Debriefing is essential to any and all psychology research. It is missing citations and the overview is incomplete and confusing. It is incomplete.

Pathological Lying

The overview relies heavily on a single source. There are some sentence structuring issues and few examples. It is neutrally written but not well written. It is in need of additional citations and better quality citations.

Perruchet effect

This topic is just a stub. It is an important topic for understanding perception.

Lead section
School refusal is a child-motivated refusal to attend school and/or difficulty remaining in class for the full day. Child-motivated absenteeism occurs autonomously, by the volition of the child. This behavior is differentiated from non-child-motivated absences in which parents who withdraw children from school or keep them home, or circumstances such as homelessness.

Rates of absenteeism due to school refusal behavior are difficult to quantify because behavior the manifests in a variety of ways and are defined, tracked, and reported differently among schools and school districts. The literature estimates that rates of school refusal occurs in 1-2% of the general population, and in 5-15% of clinic-referred youth samples

Classification
School refusal behavior characterized by an emotional and behavioral component. The emotional component consists severe emotional distress at the time attending school. The behavioral component manifests as school attendance difficulties. School refusal is not classified as a disorder by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-5].

Emotional
Emotional distress typically does not occur until the morning before they are to attend school. Emotional distress is often accompanied by physical symptoms. The degree of distress children exhibit varies widely. There is also an instant return to a stable mood after the child decides not to attend school or is removed from school.

Behavioral
School attendance difficulties include a broad range of behaviors. The spectrum of refusal spans from occasional reluctance to complete refusal. Students may miss the entire day, a partial day, skip class, or arrive late. Some children may attend school regularly, but with high levels of duress. Students may also have difficulty remaining in class, complaining of real or imagined minor injury or illness.

Assessment
Because school refusal behavior is a multifaceted issue, there is not a single valid measure or assessment method for diagnosis. Assessment first involves measuring and evaluating the number of days the child is absent, late, or leaving school early. Parent and child reports of the child's emotional distress and resistance to attendance are also taken into account. Assessment aims to (1) confirm that the behavior represents school refusal as opposed to truancy or absence, (2) evaluate the extent and severity of absenteeism, the type(s) of anxiety and its severity, (3) obtain information regarding the child, family, school, and community factors that may be contributing to the behavior, and (4) integrate the information to develop a working hypothesis used for planning appropriate interventions. Tools used to obtain information about school refusal behavior include clinical behavioral interviews, diagnostic interviews, self-report measures of internalizing symptoms, self-monitoring, parent- and teacher-completed measures of internalizing and externalizing problems, review of attendance record, and systematic functional analysis.

Many children presenting school refusal behavior are also diagnosed with an internalizing disorder or disorders.

Kearney and Silverman (1993) developed the functional model of school refusal behavior (FMSRB)

Truancy is also a child-motivated refusal to attend school, but its definition also includes antisocial characteristics and/or a parental lack of knowledge regarding the absence. Commonly, school refusal is distinguished from truancy by a diagnosable anxiety disorder.

Signs or characteristics
School refusal behavior is a heterogeneous behavior characterized by a variety of internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Researchers are motivated to assess and treat this behavior because of its prevalence and potential negative consequences. Short-term negative consequences of school refusal for the child include distress, social alienation, and declining grades. Familial conflict and legal trouble may also result. Excessive absenteeism is commonly associated with various negative health and social problems.

Problematic school absenteeism is also associated with illicit drug use (including tobacco),suicide attempt, poor nutrition, suicide attempt, risky sexual behavior, teenage pregnancy, violence, injury, driving under the influence of alcohol, and binge drinking.

Causes
School refusal behavior is an umbrella term that includes all problematic absenteeism, therefor it has a broad range of potential causes. School refusal can be classified by the primary factor that motivates the child's absence. The School Refusal Assessment Scale identifies four functional causes: (1) avoid school‐based stimuli that provoke negative affectivity, (2) escape aversive social and/or evaluative situations, (3) pursue attention from significant others, and/or (4) pursue tangible reinforcers outside of school. Categories one and two refer to school refusal motivated by negative reinforcement. Categories three and four represent refusal for positive reinforcement.

The onset of school refusal can be sudden or gradual. In cases of sudden onset, refusal often begins after a period of legitimate absence. Gradual onset emerges over time as a few sporadically missed days become a pattern of non-attendance.

There are a broad range of risk factors, which may interact and change over time. Several authors have summarized the risk factors identified in the school refusal literature to include individual, family, school, and community factors.

There are a variety of primary and comorbid disorders associated with school avoidance behavior. Common diagnoses include separation anxiety disorder (22.4%), generalized anxiety disorder (10.5%), oppositional defiant disorder (8.4%), depression (4.9%), specific phobia (4.2%), social anxiety disorder (3.5%), and conduct disorder (2.8%). Negative reinforcement school refusal behavior is associated with anxiety-related disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder. Attention-seeking school refusal behavior is associated with separation-anxiety disorder. School refusal classified by the pursuit of tangible reinforcement is associated with conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

Treatment
The primary goal of treatment for school refusal behavior is for the child to regularly and voluntarily attend school with less emotional distress. Some scholars also emphasize the importance of helping the child manage social, emotional, and behavioral problems that are the result of prolonged school nonattendance. Treatment of school refusal depends on the primary cause of the behavior and the particular individual, family, and school factors affecting the child. Analysis of the child's behavior often involves the perspective of the parent/family, school, and child. When school refusal is motivated by anxiety, treatment relies mostly on child therapy during which children learn to control their anxiety with relaxation training, enhancement of social competence, cognitive therapy, and exposure. For children who refuse school in pursuit of attention from parents, parent training is often the focus of treatment. Parents are taught to set routines for their children and punish and reward them appropriately. Children refusing school in pursuit of rewards outside of school, treatment often takes a family-based approach, using family-based contingency contracting and communication skills training. Children may also engage in peer refusal skills training.

Most treatment plans involve a schedule that gradually reintroduce the child to the class room in a process called graded school return (desensitization).

History (such as early discoveries,historical figures)
There has been little consensus on the best method for organizing and classifying children demonstrating school refusal behavior. School refusal was initially termed psychoneurotic truancy characterized as a school phobia. The terms fear‐based school phobia, anxiety‐based school refusal, and delinquent‐based truancy are commonly used to describe school refusal behavior. Early studies required school refusers to have (1) persistent difficulties attending school, (2) severe emotional upset at the prospect of going to school, (3) parental knowledge of the absence, and (4) no antisocial characteristics. This criteria was later declared inadequate in capturing the full range of school refusal behavior.

While the term school phobia is still commonly employed, this anxiety-based classification is not appropriate for all cases of school refusal. School refusal is now considered an umbrella term for problematic absenteeism, regardless of the root cause.

Epidemiology
There are no accurate figures regarding the prevalence of school refusal behavior because of the wide variation in how the behavior is variety defined, tracked, and reported across schools, school districts, and countries. The most widely accepted prevalence rate is 1-2% of school-aged children. In clinic-referred youth samples the prevalence rate is 5-15%. There are no known relationships between school refusal behavior gender, income level, and race. While refusal behavior can occur at anytime, it occurs more frequently during major changes in a child’s life, such as entrance to kindergarten (ages 5-6), changing from elementary to middle school (ages 10-11), or changing from middle to high school (age 14). There are no known socioeconomic differences.