Melissa E. Derosier

3C Institute

Although digital mental health (MH) interventions are no longer new, adapting to an online learning environment involves a considerable learning curve. Numerous detailed models focused on instructional design and learning theory for online formats are available, as well as expert forums and articles on how to develop online content, but most of the...

School closures because of natural phenomena, such as COVID-19, have emphasized the importance of effective distance learning strategies when there are no in-person alternatives. Although infrequently mentioned in discussions of student performance, social-emotional skill building came to the forefront of conversations due to the isolation and stre...

Objective: Describe the development and preliminary impact of CAMP Air, a web-based intervention for adolescents with uncontrolled asthma. Materials and methods: CAMP Air was developed using an iterative process with input from stakeholders and incorporating usability testing results (n = 14 adolescents). To test CAMP Air's initial impact, 61 ad...

This commentary reviews the findings and recommendations from the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) Mapping Advances in Prevention Science (MAPS) IV Task Force as detailed in the article by Fagan et al. (Prevention Science, 2019). In addition to highlighting similarities and differences with the prior MAPS II Task Force findings, discussion foc...

Hall of Heroes, a digital game, was used to compare social and emotional skills of 63 adolescent female students matched for age across Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Participants were assessed on six social and emotional competencies during game play, namely impulse control, cooperation, communication, social initiation, empathy, a...

We are at a place in history where the prevention science literature has established a cadre of evidence-based programs and practices (EBPPs) that have been proven, under controlled efficacy and effectiveness trials, to significantly improve the well-being of those served. Research in implementation science has also repeatedly demonstrated the impo...

Traditional social skills training (SST) programs are delivered in person and suffer from significant time, financial, and opportunity barriers that limit their reach and potential benefits for youth. This paper describes the design and preliminary evaluation of Hall of Heroes , a digital game that presents SST through an engaging superhero-themed...

The role that video games play in the lives of teenagers has grown dramatically and without pause for the past generation or two. Between computers, smart phones, and dedicated game consoles, not only are individual adolescents spending more of their days playing video games, but the percentage of teens whose daily lives include video games is quic...

Zoo U is a game platform which implements performance-based assessment of social emotional (SE) skills through theory-driven content and customized game mechanics. Children engage with characters in a school-like story world to complete six virtual social situations specifically tailored to require the SE skills of communication, cooperation, empat...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a computer-based game to improve social skills and mental health in children with social skills deficits would be efficacious. The program, Adventures aboard the S.S. GRIN, translates a proven in-person intervention into a nine-episode interactive online adventure game that provides o...

This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health (5R44MH07071-03) awarded to Dr. Melissa E. DeRosier. Additional support comes from an Institute of Education Sciences post-doctoral fellowship training award to the University of Florida (R324B1200002). The research was conducted at 3-C Institute. The aut...

Social skills training (SST) programs can be an effective means of improving children’s social skills and behavior. However, significant time, financial, and opportunity barriers limit the number of children who can benefit from in-person SST programs. In this study, we conducted an initial evaluation of the efficacy of Zoo U, an interactive online...

The authors conducted a feasibility assessment of online training plus an online learning collaborative to support implementation of an evidence-based psychosocial treatment in a community mental health system. Two mental health centers were randomly allocated to in-person training with local supervision, and three were assigned to online training...

The purpose of this study was to test whether and how performance on a digital game-based social skills assessment tool, "Zoo U" (3C Institute, Durham, NC), differed for children in the United States and Japan across six core social skills. "Zoo U" was administered to 497 third and fourth grade children from the United States and Japan (46 percent...

This brief report describes results from an efficacy test of Adolescent ParentWays program, an intervention developed for parents of adolescents ages 13–16 years who have symptoms of behavioral problems and social difficulties. Families were assigned to one of three groups. The in-person treatment group included parents who attended a 10 week, mult...

This study tested the acceptability and efficacy of an innovative intelligent tutoring system (ITS), Adventures Aboard the S.S. GRIN, that translates the evidence-based in-person Social Skills Group Intervention (SSGRIN) into an interactive game-based social tutorial. This randomized controlled pilot trial tested the first half of the social tutori...

The purpose of this study was to test the impact of a preventive intervention program, celebrating the strengths of black youth (CSBY), on African American children's self-esteem, racial identity, and parental racial socialization messages. CSBY consisted of 10 in-person group sessions in which small groups of middle school students met two trained...

Direct observation of the child’s social behavior is a common approach to social skills assessment (SSA). Our discussion in this chapter focuses on naturalistic observations, in which the child’s behavior is observed in his natural environment. In other words, the observer simply watches the child as he goes through a typical everyday social situat...

An interview is simply what it sounds like—a professional has a private one-on-one conversation with a child during which he asks a series of questions and records the responses. The primary goal of an interview is to gather information both through verbal feedback—the child’s answers to specific interview questions—and through the child’s nonverba...

We know that the judgment of a single individual yields less accurate information than the combined judgments of multiple people with different experiences and perspectives on the child. In this chapter, we discuss peer nominations—also called sociometrics—which capitalize on this phenomenon to yield highly reliable and valid information about the...

In order for SSA data to be useful for planning an intervention strategy, scores generated through that SSA must be easy to understand and use. Access to high quality, valid data is worthless if it can’t be easily translated into concrete, meaningful decisions. For this reason, it’s important to consider the quality of the reporting features when s...

Not only is a sense of belonging a basic human need, but social support and connectedness are critically important for adjustment across a broad array of outcomes ranging from academic achievement to physical health to mental health. Children who are able to establish and maintain positive social relationships are more likely to experience positive...

CME Educational Objectives 1. Understand the various stressors experienced by college students. 2. Learn how stress, resilience, and mental health in college are interrelated. 3. Explore how resilience education can improve the mental health of college students. The transition to college can be an exciting, albeit stressful, time in students’ live...

Objective The authors examined the career achievement of early- and mid-career researchers in social, behavioral, and mental health who participated in a career-development conference. Method Trainees participated in a career-development conference either through attending a live conference supplemented with an online version of the conference (Com...

The transition to college can be a difficult time as students adjust to new social and academic demands while adapting to new living circumstances in a collegiate environment. The ability of students to cope with the stress of such a transition and display positive outcomes despite challenges has important impli-cations for psychosocial well-being...

This paper describes the design and evaluation of Zoo U, a novel computer game to assess children’s social skills development. Zoo U is an innovative product that combines theory-driven content and customized game mechanics. The game-like play creates the opportunity for stealth assessment, in which dynamic evidence of social skills is collected in...

This study tested whether social adjustment added to the prediction of academic outcomes above and beyond prior academic functioning. School records and peer-, teacher-, and self-report measures were collected for 1,255 third grade children in the fall and spring of the school year. Social acceptance by and aggression with peers were included as me...

This study tested the efficacy of a new social skills intervention, S ocial S kills GR oup IN tervention-High Functioning Autism (S.S.GRIN-HFA), designed to improve social behaviors in children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders. Fifty-five children were randomly assigned to S.S.GRIN-HFA treatment (n = 27) or control (i.e., traditional...

This paper describes a study of a prototype of a novel game-based intelligent tutor that teaches children positive social skills. The results provide considerable support for the po-tential value of this game as a social skills training tool, de-spite the comparatively brief play-through duration of the prototype. Key to the initial success is a de...

This study examined aggressive and pro-social classroom descriptive norms as predictors of change in aggression and victimization during middle childhood. Participants included 948 children in third through fifth grade. Measures of teacher-reported aggressive and peer-reported pro-social descriptive norms were completed at the onset of the study. C...

This study examined perceived behavioral atypicality as a predictor of children's school-based adjustment. First, a descriptive pilot study was conducted to examine children's reasons for nominating peers as behaviorally atypical. Then, atypicality was investigated in relation to school-based adjustment in a two-wave panel design. Social problems,...

This study investigated teacher preference, the degree to which a teacher likes a specific student, as a predictor of students' perceptions of teacher preference as well as conflict and support in the student–teacher relationship. Child and teacher reports of teacher preference and child reports of conflict and support were provided in the fall and...

This study assessed the importance of teacher preference of individual students, relative to peer rejection and student aggression, as an independent predictor of children's emotional adjustment and grades. First, a longitudinal, cross-lagged path analysis was conducted to determine the patterns of influence among teacher preference, peer rejection...

We evaluated the efficacy of a social skills training intervention designed to improve adolescents’ social, emotional and behavioral adjustment, Social Skills Group Intervention-Adolescent (S.S.GRIN-A). Seventy-four adolescents (ages 13–16years) and their parents were randomly assigned to either the treatment group (N=40) or a wait-list control gro...

We tested the efficacy of a social skills training program for the parents of school-aged children experiencing socio-emotional problems. Participating families (N=42) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: parent social skills training; parent plus parallel child social skills training; or no-treatment control. The two treatment groups...

This study assessed school climate for both interpersonal and intrapersonal character traits and examined the links between school climate and students' perceptions of safety at school. Sixty-four elementary and 159 secondary students completed questionnaires in the spring. Findings revealed that character traits were reliably assessed for both gra...

This study tested the long-term effectiveness of a social-skills program for peer-rejected, victimized, and socially anxious children. Third-grade children with peer problems were randomly assigned to treatment (TX; n=187) or no-treatment control (CO; n=194) groups. One year after the intervention, the pattern of findings was similar to that at pos...

This study investigated whether the perception of self as socially rejected might contribute to increased physical aggression among elementary-school children. It was hypothesized that physically aggressive children would become more physically aggressive over time if they perceived that they were rejected and tended to blame peers for social failu...

This study tested the efficacy of a generic social skills intervention, Social Skills GRoup INtervention (S.S.GRIN), for children experiencing peer dislike, bullying, or social anxiety. Third-grade children were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 187) or no-treatment control (CO; n = 194) groups. Examination of the direction and magnitude of chang...

Since September 11, 2001, ethnic tensions involving persons of Middle Eastern descent have increased in the United States. This study examined the peer relationships of 748 fifth-grade students of different ethnic groups both at one month and eight months post-9-11. Results indicated that only Middle Eastern children showed a large drop in positive...

This study assessed the strength of sociometric classification in the prediction of concurrent sociobehavioral adjustment. Differential adjustment for subgroups of unclassified children were also examined. Participants were 881 fifth graders (ages 9 to 12). Classification strength (CS) and unclassified subgroups were determined through newly develo...

The purpose of the present study was to examine similarity in demographic, behavioral, academic and social attributes as descriptors and predictors of children's friendships. The characteristics of all possible pairs of unique classroom dyads (N = 4725) were used to predict reciprocated school, home and best friendship choices among 554 third (M =...

4 models (risk, protective, potentiator, and person-environment fit) comparing the associations among ethnicity, income, and structural characteristics of families and neighborhoods on childhood aggression and peer relations were explored. The 1,271 second- through fifth-grade (M = 9.9 years) children were assigned to 1 of 8 family types based on e...

4 models (risk, protective, potentiator, and person-environment fit) comparing the associations among ethnicity, income, and structural characteristics of families and neighborhoods on childhood aggression and peer relations were explored. The 1,271 second- through fifth-grade (M= 9.9 years) children were assigned to 1 of 8 family types based on et...

The experience of peer rejection is associated with a number of concurrent and later problems for children. However, we know very little about differences in risk relative to different experiences of rejection over time. This study examined later academic and behavioral problems as a function of two dimensions by which rejection may vary over time:...

Very little is known about the influence of the social-psychological context on children's aggressive behavior. The purpose of this research was to examine the interrelations of group contextual factors and the occurrence of aggressive behavior in 22 experimental play groups of 7- and 9-year-old African-American boys. Group context was examined bef...

Cultural differences in Costa Rican and US children's perceptions of their relationships with social network members were examined. Fourth- and 6th-grade children ( N = 358) in both countries were given Furman and Buhrmester's (1985) Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI), which assessed 6 qualities of relationships (intimacy, conflict, companion...