If students at your school are not attending classes or coming to school at all, they may be engaging in school refusal. Understanding what school refusal is, as well as the functions behind it, is key to evaluation and a collaborative school-home approach to intervention.

Anxiety is a common mental health factor associated with school refusal behaviour. This study aims to identify different school refusal behaviour profiles and to determine whether or not these profiles differ from each other based on three anxiety dimensions (Anticipatory Anxiety, School-based performance anxiety and Generalized Anxiety).…

Anxiety is a common affective state, characterized by the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over an anticipated event. Anxiety is suspected to have important negative consequences on cognition, decision-making, and learning. Yet, despite a recent surge in studies investigating the specific effects of anxiety on reinforcement-learning, no…

This article concerns the positive feedback bias, which occurs when White instructors supply selectively more praise and less criticism to ethnic minority learners relative to White learners. The positive bias is reliable and enduring and affects feedback to various ethnic groups in North America and in Europe. The model of threat-infused…

In tutoring systems, a pedagogical policy, which decides the next action for the tutor to take, is important because it determines how well students will learn. An effective pedagogical policy must adapt its actions according to the student's features, such as knowledge, error patterns, and emotions. For adapting difficulty, it is common to…

Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health problems; it is known to impede cognitive functioning. It is believed to alter preferences for feedback-based learning in anxious and non-anxious learners. Thus, the present study measured feedback processing in adults (N = 30) with and without anxiety symptoms using a probabilistic learning task.…

This study examined the effect of different types of praise on writing students' anxiety, motivation, mindsets, and perceived competence. In doing so, 180 English-majoring university students (102 female, 78, male) were randomly assigned to praise for effort, praise for intelligence, and no praise conditions (N = 60 for each group). The groups…

Evidence on how different types of social media use contribute to digital stress in early adolescence is lacking. In-depth interviews were conducted with 24 13-14-year-olds. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded and thematically analysed. Themes were generated based on digital stressors specific to passive social media use (time-wasting and…

This study examined the effects of praise for intelligence and praise for effort on Iranian EFL learners' language mindsets, perceived communication competence, speaking anxiety, and willingness to communicate (WTC). The students in three English classes (N = 63, all junior high school students) in a private language institute filled in…

The development of oral presentation skills requires multiple opportunities to present and receive focused feedback. In typical discipline-based and general-education courses, class time is precious, and even when oral presentations are part of a course, students may receive only one or two opportunities to present with feedback. Here we describe…

The use of mindfulness as a tool to improve mental health has received increased attention. Schools provide ideal environments for short-term prevention and skill development for mental health. Further, teachers can promote and reinforce students' daily use of mindfulness. This study explored the effects of a short-term group mindfulness-based…

Teaching toilet training skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be challenging. Many techniques use Azrin and Foxx's Rapid Toilet Training method (RTT). However, some children with ASD find the first RTT step of entering the bathroom or restroom to be challenging due to the relatively loud sound of the toilet flushing. Although…

Evaluating knowledge and learning in psychotherapy is a growing field of research. Studies that develop and evaluate valid tests are lacking, however. Here, in the context of internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) for adolescents, a new test was developed using subject matter experts, consensus among researchers, self-reports by…

Background: Needle phobias are common in children and adults worldwide. One effective intervention for this phobia is exposure therapy where a participant is gradually exposed to increasing levels of the fear-evoking stimulus while differential reinforcement is applied. This intervention, however, may be difficult to implement with some medical…

The importance of affective states in learning has led many Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to include students' affective states in their learner models. The adaptation and hence the benefits of an ITS can be improved by detecting and responding to students' affective states. In prior work, we have created and validated a theory-driven model…