Barbara Debaryshe

• PhD
• Specialist at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Emergent writing is a key component of early literacy development and contributes to later school success, yet it receives little attention in most preschool classrooms. This paper presents results of a quasi-experimental study of a teacher professional development package that included writing as one of four focal areas. The study was conducted in...

The Early Reading First program (ERF) was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to develop model ‘preschool centers of excellence’ that enhance the early language and literacy skills of low-income preschool children. In this chapter we report on the outcomes of an ERF project conducted with Head Start classrooms in Hawaiʻi. The intervention...

Childhood obesity has increased rapidly over the last three decades in the U.S. Individual-level interventions targeting healthy eating and physical activity have not significantly impacted clinical measures of obesity in children. Focusing “upstream” on physical, social, cultural, political, and economic environments may be more effective. The pur...

Underserved minority populations in the US Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI), Hawaii, and Alaska display disproportionate rates of childhood obesity. The region's unique circumstance should be taken into account when designing obesity prevention interventions. The purpose of this paper is to (a), describe the community engagement process (CEP) use...

The prevalence of early childhood obesity among Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Alaska Natives is disproportionately high compared to other US population groups. Sustainable, multi‐strategy, community‐based approaches, rather than individually targeted approaches, are increasingly recognized as effective strategies to obesity prevention. Pr...

Poor oral health in early childhood can have long-term consequences, and parents often are unaware of the importance of preventive measures for infants and toddlers. Children in rural, low-income families suffer disproportionately from the effects of poor oral health. Participants were 91 parents of infants and toddlers enrolled in Early Head Start...

The thesis of this chapter is that language, like many other complex skills, is acquired in part through the process of observational learning. In observational learning, one person’s behavior (the model’s) is witnessed by a second person (the observer). Observational learning has occurred when some aspect of the model’s behavior comes to control a...

Differentiated instruction is a strategy for meeting the needs of diverse learners. In this article, we describe a differentiated instruction model and examine the effects on high-risk children. One hundred twenty-eight children and their teachers from 8 Head Start classrooms participated in the project. Teachers provided developmentally sequenced,...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a preschool emergent literacy enrichment curriculum. Participants were 126 Head Start children, their teachers, and their parents. Matched centers were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: experimental literacy, experimental math, or control. Teachers in both experimental groups implemented e...

This study examines parenting practices and adolescents' sense of family obligation in promoting resilience in 155 Native Hawaiian youths living in poverty. Two aspects of adolescent well-being, behavioral adjustment and physical health, were studied. Four variables-supportive parenting, punishment, youth respect, and youth support-predicted the li...

Subjects in this exploratory study were 19 five‐ to six‐year‐old children and their mothers. Mothers completed surveys of family literacy practices and beliefs about early reading Instruction and children's emergent literacy skills were assessed. Results showed that one group of mothers held implicit theories that resembled whole language models of...

A model of the development of anger in family and peer contexts is presented. Emotional socialization begins in early infancy, in the context of parent–infant caretaking. Children's awareness and understanding of their own and other people's anger depends on exposure to models of anger expression and conflict resolution, parental emotional coaching...

This study examined mother, father, and youth (mean age 14) questionnaire reports on family problem solving in 55 Asian American and Pacific Island American families. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test whether the ratings could be best represented in terms of behaviors, perceptions, relationships, or a family problem-solving style. The p...

Twenty children aged 5 and 6 years were observed attempting to write a letter alone and with their mothers' assistance. Children produced more sophisticated products with adult mediation, using conventional spelling, writing longer messages, and using more mechanical details such as punctuation and salutations. Children's self-talk about the meanin...

A hypothetical model of the determinants and outcomes of reading aloud was tested using two samples of families of preschool-aged children and their parents. Study 1 involved 60 low-income families. Study 2 involved 56 predominantly working-class families. The majority of subjects in both samples were African American. Measures were taken of SES, m...

This document describes a study of a home-based language stimulation program for disadvantaged children. The project sought to train parents to act as the primary change agents during a period of expected rapid developmental progress in their children's language skills. The subjects were 73 two- to five-year-old children and their parents, primaril...

This study assessed the psychometric properties of an instrument designed to measure parents' beliefs about the goals and process of reading aloud to young children. 155 parents of children ages 2 to 5 years completed the Parent Reading Belief Inventory. The inventory's items formed a single factor with high scores reflecting beliefs consistent wit...

Tests a model for conduct-related school failure in young adolescent boys. In this model, family characteristics and child antisocial behavior serve as predictors of school adjustment and academic performance. Ss were 206 youths and their families, followed from the 4th through 8th grades. Results indicated that low parental academic achievement wa...

The purpose of this study was to explore the relation between joint picture-book-reading experiences provided in the home and children's early oral language skills. Subjects were 41 two-year-old children and their mothers. Measures included maternal report of the age at which she began to read to the child, the frequency of home reading sessions, t...

The association of behavior problems with preschool language disorders has been documented extensively. However, researchers have typically failed to differentiate subgroups of language-impaired children, to use observational data in documenting the behavior disorders, or to study children at the youngest ages. Using a multimodal assessment, this s...

Developmental expressive language disorder is a frequently occurring condition in children, characterized by severe delay in the development of expressive language compared with receptive language and cognitive skills. Opinions differ regarding whether expressive language delay is a disorder worthy of active intervention or an indication of normal...

A developmental model of antisocial behavior is outlined. Recent findings are reviewed that concern the etiology and course of antisocial behavior from early childhood through adolescence. Evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that the route to chronic delinquency is marked by a reliable developmental sequence of experiences. As a firs...

A developmental model of antisocial behavior is outlined. Recent findings are reviewed that concern the etiology and course of antisocial behavior from early childhood through adolescence. Evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that the route to chronic delinquency is marked by a reliable developmental sequence of experiences. As a firs...

Developmental expressive language disorder (ELD) is a condition characterized by a delay in the development of expressive language compared with receptive language and IQ. Conditions that might contribute to the origins or maintenance of ELD are poorly understood. Unusual verbal interactions between parents and ELD children might be implicated in t...

We experimentally assessed a 1-month, home-based intervention, designed to optimize parental reading of picture books to young children. Parents in the experimental group received instructions to increase their rates of open-ended questions, function/attribute questions, and expansions; to respond appropriately to children's attempts to answer thes...

Intraverbal learning is a process through which semantic knowledge is acquired from purely linguistic information. The concern of this study is to investigate the role of intraverbal learning in the preschool-aged child's acquisition of semantic concepts. Three- and 4-year-old children were either shown pictures illustrating novel concepts or they...

Many observational systems in basic and applied research produce a record of sequences of events over time. Within such observational systems, important information may be found in the frequency of the transitions between events that does not emerge in the typical researcher''s focus on absolute event frequency. Indeed, if many behaviors are contro...

Reasons for use of different types of child-care arrangements by parents receiving government-sponsored child care subsidies, simi- larities or differences among these parents, and characteristics of kith and kin providers caring for the children of subsidy recipients were examined. Age of child; parent's ethnicity, education, and mari- tal status;...

A sian American and Pacific Islanders protective factors and resiliency processes across (AAPIs) are often portrayed as a AAPI ethnic groups (Yee, Huang, & Lew, 1998). resilient "model minority." AAPI indi-In this chapter, we highlight how AAPI families viduals have been described as being well edu-provide protection and diminish risk for family ca...