Biomedical subjects

Dara Musher-Eizenman

Publications and source records attributed to Dara Musher-Eizenman.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Developmental issues in school-based aggression prevention from a social-cognitive perspective.

Contemporary research on the development and prevention of aggressive behavior in childhood and adolescence emphasizes the importance of social-cognitive factors such as perceptual biases, problem-solving skills, and social-moral beliefs in the maintenance of aggression. Indeed, school-based social-cognitive intervention approaches have been identified as best practices by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, because child age is an important covariate of both intervention effectiveness and social-cognitive ability, school-based prevention program designers should keep in mind a number of issues identified through developmental research. In this paper, we review the social-cognitive model of aggressive behavior development as applied to prevention programming. We then discuss some of the ways in which the broader developmental research base can inform the design of aggression prevention programs. EDITORS' STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS: Educational administrators and policy makers will find evidence in this review that school-based programs that employ a social-cognitive model represent a strategy that works for preventing violence. Prevention researchers will also benefit from the authors' insights regarding theoretical mediating processes and the importance of a developmental view.

Aggression↗

PubMed2004

Psychosocial functioning and physical symptoms in heart failure patients: a within-individual approach.

OBJECTIVE: Heart failure (HF) markedly diminishes an individual's quality of life. However, little is known about how psychosocial functioning is related to heart failure physical symptom expression (e.g., chest pain or heaviness, shortness of breath) on a day-to-day basis. METHODS: Fifty-eight HF patients completed daily diaries that evaluated mood, social support, coping, and physical symptoms for 2 weeks. RESULTS: After being prewhitened for serial dependencies, the data were entered into regression analyses to determine the concurrent and lagged relationships among them. Significant concurrent relationships were obtained between physical symptoms and depression, social conflict, positive and negative mood, and symptom-focused coping. Furthermore, negative mood and distraction coping predicted greater physical symptoms the next day, while action/acceptance coping predicted fewer physical symptoms the next day. CONCLUSION: Our data provide evidence for an association between daily psychosocial functioning and HF physical symptoms. Implications for research and clinical work with HF patients are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2003

Exposure to "low-level" aggression in school: associations with aggressive behavior, future expectations, and perceived safety.

Examined associations with witnessing and being victimized by "low-level" aggressive acts (e.g., pushing, gossip) and three indicators of psychosocial functioning in a sample of 771 elementary school students from one urban and one suburban school district. Results indicated that exposure to low-level aggression appears to relate to psychosocial functioning in ways similar to more severe forms of aggression. Students who were exposed to higher levels of both witnessing and victimization by low-level aggression reported the highest levels of engagement in aggression, the lowest levels of positive expectations for the future, and the lowest levels of perceived safety. Findings are discussed in the context of research on exposure to aggression in general, with suggestions offered for future studies. Implications of the findings for school-based intervention programs are raised.

Aggression↗