Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fear in children Victoria'

Thesis (M.A.) -- Stellenbosch University , 2001.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The primary aim of this study was to establish the content and number of the fears expressed by pre-school children in a low to middle class socio-economic area. In South Africa, a similar study has only been undertaken in a high class socio-economic area (Martalas, 1999). A further aim of this study was to establish whether there were differences in the fears expressed by the participants and, if so, whether these differences correlate with specific biographical variables. A predominantly qualitative method of data collection was used in this research. The data was collected by conducting a semi-structured interview with the participants and obtaining drawings of their fears. The sample included 50 pre-school children between the ages of 5 and 7 years attending 3 preschools in a low to middle class socio-economic area. The broad non-verbal intelligence functioning of the participants were measured by the Goodenough-Harris-Draw-a-Man test (Richter, Griesel en Wortley, 1989). The average non-verbal intelligence functioning of the participants was low average according to the DAM norms. The data was analysed quantitatively. The content and number of fears, as reported by the selected group of pre-school children in the low to middle class socio-economic area, were established and grouped into existing categories. Furthermore the relationship between the number of expressed fears, with regard to content and number, and the three biographical variables, gender, socio-economic status and parent report, was established. Accordingly, differences between and correlations with biographical variables regarding race, parental marital positions, sibling structures, education of parents, their working patterns and the fears reported by parents, as well as by the participants were calculated quantitatively. The method of combining a semi-structured interview with participants and drawings of their fears proved to be successful, as none of the participants reported no fears. The results of this research showed that the content of the fears was similar in many ways to that of previous research results. Animal fears, at 57,24 % of all the fears expressed by the participants, comprised by far the largest category of fears. The number of the expressed fears ranged from 1 to 10 per participant, and the average number of fears per participant was 2,9. This figure was lower than the average number of fears found in previous South African research (Martalas, 1999). Consistent with previous research, the current study showed that girls (63,45 %) had reported more fears than boys (36,55 %). In the current study however, this difference was not statistically significant. Some gender differences were statistically significant in that girls reported more fears of wild animals than boys and boys reported more fears in the category "other" fears (for example a fan, a brick, a bomb, an accident and videos) than girls. Although these results differ from South African research by Martalas (1999) research, it is similar to most other research results. Parents reported fewer fears than the participants and they also reported the category "medical", which the participants did not mention. Parents also reported more fears for girls than for the boys. The researcher concludes with some recommendations for further studies.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die primêre doel van die onderhawige studie was om die inhoud en aantal vrese soos uitgedruk deur voorskoolse kinders in 'n lae tot middel sosio-ekonomiese statusgebied te bepaal. So 'n studie is in die verlede slegs in 'n hoë sosio-ekonomiese statusgebied in Suid-Afrika gedoen (Martalas, 1999). 'n Newe-doelstelling van die onderhawige studie was om vas te stelof daar verskille is tussen die vrese soos uitgedruk deur die deelnemers en, indien wel, of hierdie verskille verband hou met sekere biografiese veranderlikes. In die onderhawige navorsing is 'n oorwegend kwalitatiewe metode van datainsameling gebruik. Die data is ingesamel deur gebruik te maak van 'n semigestruktureerde onderhoud met die deelnemers, terwyl hulle terselfdertyd tekeninge gemaak het van dit wat hulle vrees. Die teikengroep was 50 voorskoolse kinders tussen die ouderdomme van 5 en 7 jaar wat drie kleuterskole in 'n lae tot middel sosioekonomiese status gebied bygewoon het. Die deelnemers se benaderde nie-verbale intellektuele funksionering is met behulp van die Goodenough-Harris-Draw-a-Man toets (Richter, Griesel en Wortley, 1989) bepaal. Die deelnemers het In oorwegend laag gemiddelde skaaltelling volgens die DAM norms (Harris, 1963) getoon. Die data is kwantitatief geanaliseer. Die inhoud en aantal vrese, soos deur die geselekteerde groep voorskoolse kinders in 'n lae tot middel sosio-ekonomiese statusgebied gerapporteer, is bepaal. Dit is in samehang met veranderlikes naamlik geslag, sosio-ekonomiese status en ouerrapportering gedoen. Die inhoud en aantal vrese, soos deur die deelnemers gerapporteer, is daarna volgens bestaande kategorieë ingedeel. Vervolgens is verskille tussen, en korrelasies met biografiese veranderlikes, soos geslag, huwelikstatus, sibbestruktuur, opvoeding en werkpatroon van ouers, ouerrapportering van vrese by hul kinders en die vrese wat die deelnemers gerapporteer het, kwantitatief bepaal. http://scholar.sun.ac.za/ IV Die metode om gebruik te maak van 'n kombinasie van die teken van vrese en 'n semigestruktureerde onderhoud met die deelnemers was suksesvol, aangesien daar geen deelnemers was wat nie gerespondeer het nie. Die resultate van die onderhawige navorsing het getoon dat die inhoud van die vrese in baie opsigte ooreengestem het met die van ander navorsingsbevindings. Gerapporteerde vrese vir diere, wat 57,24 % van al die genoemde vrese verteenwoordig het, was by uitstek die grootste kategorie van vrese. Die aantal vrese wat genoem is, het gestrek van 1 tot lOper deelnemer en die gemiddelde aantal vrese per deelnemer was 2,9. Dit was egter minder as by vorige Suid-Afrikaanse navorsing van dieselfde ouderdomsgroep volgens die navorsing van Martalas (1999). In ooreenstemming met die meeste navorsingsresultate, het meisies In die onderhawige studie meer vrese (63,45 %) as 'seuns (36,55 %) gerapporteer, hoewel hierdie verskil nie statisties beduidend was nie. Sommige geslagverskille was statisties beduidend in die sin dat meisies meer vrese vir wilde diere as seuns en seuns meer in die kategorie "ander" vrese, soos byvoorbeeld vir 'n waaier, 'n baksteen, bomme, om omgery te word en videos, as meisies gerapporteer het. Hoewel dit van Martalas (1999) se navorsingsresultate verskil, is dit in ooreenstemming met die meeste ander navorsingsbevindinge. Ouers het minder vrese namens hulle kinders as die deelnemers self gerapporteer en vrese is in die kategorie "medies" gerapporteer wat nie deur die deelnemers self gerapporteer is nie. Ouers het ook meer vrese namens die meisies as namens die seuns gerapporteer. Enkele aanbevelings vir verdere navorsing word ten slotte gemaak.

Research shows that children often confuse facial expressions of fear with surprise and disgust with anger. According to the perceptual-attentional limitations hypothesis, facial expressions are confused because they share action units (Camras, 1980; Wiggers, 1982). Experiment 1 tested this hypothesis for the confusion between fear and surprise and Experiment 2 for the confusion between disgust and anger. Eye movements were monitored in both experiments. In experiment 1, the results showed that children were more accurate when two distinctive action units were presented than when the brow lowerer was the only distinctive action unit differentiating between fear and surprise. Furthermore, the results showed that participants spent more time fixating on the mouth than the eyebrows. They made more saccades when the only distinctive cue was in the eyebrows. In experiment 2, participants identified the emotion as anger when the mouth was open, and disgust when the mouth was closed, spending more time on the mouth when the mouth was open. These findings suggest that facial expressions are confused, not only because of the amount of visual similarities they share, but also because children do not allocate their attention to facial regions equally; they tend to focus on the mouth.

The aim of this project is to establish whether video self-modelling is an effective approach in decreasing fear responses in children with ASD aged between five and 15 years. Participants were recruited through a flyer that was posted in the Autism New Zealand Canterbury newsletter and the Autism in New Zealand Facebook page. Three participants were recruited who were aged 11 to 12 years, who had a diagnosis of ASD and a fear. This study used a single-case, AB design replicated across the three participants. The participants met with the researcher to discuss their fear and what the study entailed. Baseline measures were obtained and videos were created to depict the child being in the same environment as their feared stimulus. Participants watched their videos for a two-week period then the baseline measures were repeated twice. Two out of the three participants showed some increase in steps achieved in their fear hierarchies. A similar pattern was found with the self-reported levels of fear, one participant showed a decrease in post intervention measure, the second showed variability and the third was not able to complete the intervention due to his extreme fear response. The results of this study reflect some of the literature, which suggest that while VSM can result in rapid learning, in some cases it may not work for all participants and individual differences can account for some of this variability. Due to the variation in the results and individual differences, it is difficult to determine the effects of this type of intervention for fears and phobias in children with ASD. Limitations on this study included the number of participants, as a larger number would have provided more data on the effects of VSM for different participants and the amount of time that was allocated to complete the study.

Very little research has been undertaken into the Catholic primary school as it existed in Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s. At this time, all over Australia, the infrastructure (which included school buildings) had been allowed to decline in order to allow everything to be directed towards the war effort. The situation that children all over Australia faced in their schools comprised outdated buildings and very little resources. There were insufficient teachers as fewer had been trained during the Second World War, and conditions were a long way from ideal. This was also the situation in government schools, but in Catholic schools it was much worse because there was no government funding to help to re-establish class rooms and provide needed resources. The end of the War brought the soldiers back to Australia resulting in a marked rise in the birth rate, which in turn brought a large increase in the numbers of children needing to begin school from the 1950s onward. Add to this situation, the arrival, from the late 1940s of thousands of refugees and displaced persons from Europe, the large number of whom were non-English speaking. More than fifty per cent of these migrants professed an association with the Catholic Church and were thereby in need of a Catholic education for their children. At the same time, the numbers of women entering the religious life was growing much more slowly than the numbers of children needing a Catholic education. The sum total of all these factors occurring simultaneously resulted in huge class sizes, insufficient quantities and quality of teaching resources, inadequate school buildings, either because of their age in inner city areas or because in new, outer suburban suburbs, there were no schools and such things as church halls or temporary buildings had to be used. Such was the need for teachers, that teacher training was often hastened so that classes would have a teacher. On top of all this, no provision was made for the teaching of English to those children whose first language was not English. None of the teachers, either in Catholic schools or government schools, had any idea of how to go about this and all expected the children to pick it up as they went along. Teachers coped as best they could to manage the situations in which they found themselves. This chaotic situation is what prompted the researcher to undertake a study to try to understand what the migrant children, in particular, experienced in order to gain an education. From such an oral history project, it was hoped: to gain some understanding of the situation in the Catholic education system at the time of peak migration in the 1950s and 1960s together with the changes which occurred at this time, and; to try to understand the situation under which the teaching Religious were working; to try to understand the experiences of the migrant children who were undertaking their primary school education at that time. Because there were so many migrant groups arriving in Australia at that time, the task of studying representative samples of all of them is far too large for a study of this kind, so a decision needed to be made as to which ethnic groups should be part of the project. The Italian was the largest group, but there has been a volume of study already undertaken about them. The next largest group was the Greek, but as they follow Orthodox beliefs, they were unlikely to be looking for a Catholic education for their children. The next two groups, both much smaller than the Greeks and the Italians, were about the same size. These were the Polish and the Maltese and it was decided that both groups could be studied and perhaps it could be determined not only what life had been like for them in a new country where the way of life was so different to what they had experienced in their home country and where they could not understand the language, but if they had experienced their transitions to Australia in the same way. An oral history project was decided as being the best way to gather the information needed, allowing the interviewees to tell their stories without being confined to the boundaries of a questionnaire. This would allow interviewees to describe events and situations of which the researcher was not aware. Investigations were undertaken to determine what the backgrounds were to each ethnic group’s lives in their respective countries of origin. What the situation was like in Australia at that time was also investigated. The researcher needed to know in what physical conditions the immigrants lived when they first arrived and what the financial situation of the family as well as the number of children in the family and where the interviewee fitted in the family. The physical situation in which they were schooled was considered important and what they learned from their teachers. The researcher believed it was relevant to find out what conditions were like in the school from the teachers’ point of view, to enable the broadest understanding of what the children experienced. Finding migrants who had attended a Catholic primary school in the 1950s and 1960s was much more difficult than anticipated and eventually the snowball method of sampling was employed. In this approach, the interviewee who had responded to the initial requests for interviews which were made through ethnic organisations and clubs, and through the church newspapers, were asked to recommend others of their ethnic group to become interviewees. Social encounters sometimes resulted in more suitable references, thus more snowballing as more suggested interviewees were recruited. The teaching sisters were found by sending letters to each of those orders who had been responsible for providing sisters to teach in Catholic schools, requesting interviewees willing to talk about their experiences. Several of the sisters from these orders agreed to be interviewed. How they managed to cope under the very difficult situations in which they found themselves, adds to the picture. A list of questions was drawn up to set the direction of the interviews not to be a rigid path to follow. From here interviewees were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences and what they felt about their primary school life. Each of the interviews was carefully dissected to find out what the common experiences were and what factors most impinged on the stories. Experiences to more than one interviewees were considered most important, and what the sisters talked about enhanced the whole picture. From this research project, it was hoped that a better understanding of what the post-war child immigrants to Australia experienced as they settled, would be illustrated. Although many advances have been made in teaching migrant children and of the need to teach them English as a second language, rather than letting them learn from the other children, it is the more personal experiences of ‘slings and arrows’ that can be transferred to today’s migrants, so that we can teach them with more understanding.

Otitis media and consequent hearing loss are known to be high in Koori communities. Previous research on otitis media in Koori communities has focused on its identification, treatment and management. Little research has focused on the prevention of otitis media. Victorian Aboriginal communities often have small populations which result in small sample sizes for research projects. Consequently use of traditional quantitative methods to measure of change arising from health interventions can be problematic. The aim of the research was to describe Koori children’s otitis media risk factors using a Koori research method in order to develop, implement and evaluate preventative interventions.

Though using virtual reality as a substitute for exposition therapy in phobia treatments has become more popular in recent times, many of these treatments require the assistance of a psychologist or a therapist. Furthermore, most of virtual reality therapy is targeted at socially based phobias or anxiety disorders. Fear of the dark is one of the most common fears in children and can develop into a diagnosed phobia in their later lives but has yet to be prevented or treated with virtual reality therapy programs. A measure to help children overcome their fears in a safe environment together with their caretakers could help improve familial relationships and ease the stress that this kind of phobia introduces in home life. This investigation developed, implemented and evaluated a virtual reality prototype with usability testing and established a case study with a final user in an effort to approximate this investigation to reality. It was concluded that the case study documentations find that the user had positive emotional reactions towards the prototype and its narrative. The results of this research’s testing are quite promising, though the final user’s degree of fear is not comparable to a child with a diagnosed phobia of the dark. Future work should therefore include testing with users diagnosed with phobias.
A utilização de aplicações de realidade virtual para tratamento de fobias está a tornar-se cada vez mais popular, mas muitos destes tratamentos requerem a assistência e/ou presença de um psicólogo ou terapeuta. Ademais, a maioria das terapias de realidade virtual são visadas para fobias sociais ou para distúrbios de ansiedade. O medo do escuro é um dos medos mais comuns em crianças e pode transformar-se numa fobia durante a sua vida adulta, mas ainda não é possível de prevenir ou tratar com programas terapêuticos de realidade virtual. Uma medida para ajudar crianças a ultrapassar os seus medos num ambiente seguro, em conjunto com familiares ou zeladores, pode ajudar a melhorar relações familiares e a apaziguar o stress que a fobia do escuro cria no lar. Este trabalho de investigação concebeu, implementou e avaliou um protótipo de realidade virtual com testes de usabilidade em ambiente simulado e desenvolveu um caso de estudo com um utilizador final em contexto próximo do real. Concluiu-se que o caso de estudo documenta reações emocionais positivas face ao protótipo e à sua narrativa. Os resultados do presente estudo são bastante promissores, no entanto, o grau de medo do utilizador final não é comparável a uma criança com fobia diagnosticada, pelo que, no futuro, devem estender-se os testes a utilizadores diagnosticados com fobias.
Mestrado em Comunicação Multimédia

This thesis examines a series of social and emotional strategies undertaken by children to cope with social situations that arise through economic insecurity. Drawing on 18 months fieldwork in regional Victoria with children, parents and two school communities, I argue that children in this cultural environment make sense of economic insecurity through the re-appropriation of cultural narratives of "fairness". I distill four sets of strategies that children develop and enact in order to cultivate and sustain feelings of belonging when faced with situations of economic uncertainty. I call these practices Going Without, Staying Within, Cutting Down and Managing Stigma, and show how each is distinctively tied to cultural ideas around fairness. As I evidence, these strategies are shaped by children's own experiences of classed and racialised identities, cultural constructions of stigma, and the socio-cultural, political and economic environment in which they live. Through this analysis, I show how cultural narratives around fairness, recreated by children in different social spaces of everyday life, provide an avenue through which to repatriate feelings of envy and sustain meaningful relationships with others. Furthermore, I demonstrate ways in which such actions, while generating forms of inclusion, potentially recreate boundaries of exclusion in children's social worlds. More broadly, I argue that children's understandings of economic insecurity in post-industrial contexts are deeply tied to the dominant cultural narratives that underpin their lives. I contend that such narratives intersect with market-based imperatives, neoliberal articulations of childhood, and the culture-making practices of children's own collectively-focused peer group interactions. In making sense of economic insecurity, children must strategically balance these interests as they both compete and converge, in ways that generate and sustain feelings of belonging. By focusing on children's uses of "fairness" in this local context, I further bring to light the overt and subtle social and emotional impacts of broad economic restructuring on children and parents in Australia. The ethnographic focus here moves between the collective worlds of children and the private lives of their families, illuminating how market-driven global and state changes in education and employment are negotiated and absorbed in relationships between children, their peers and their parents. As I demonstrate, these structural and social transformations surface in daily life through dilemmas over care, dignity and belonging. The ways in which children use the cultural resources available to manage such experiences forms the subject of this thesis.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 2007.
Title from PDF title page (viewed on Nov. 28, 2007) Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Thesis adviser: Jezewski, Mary Ann. Includes bibliographical references.

research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Nursing Johannesburg, 2017.
Introduction: Hypoglycaemia is the most widespread acute side effect of insulin therapy in individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Severe hypoglycaemia can cause loss of consciousness, seizures, accidents or physical injuries, and even death. Given these severe consequences, it is almost inevitable for patients or their caregivers not to develop fear of hypoglycaemia. Fear of hypoglycaemia in children and their parents has not, thus far, been measured at diabetic clinics in South Africa. Fear of hypoglycaemia among paediatric type 1 diabetes mellitus patients and their parents affects quality of life and adherence to diabetes management strategies. However, behavioural workshops can address and decrease such fears and therefore increase compliance with T1DM management programmes. An improved understanding of fear of hypoglycaemia should assist nurses running clinics to develop appropriate programmes to offer support. Aim of the study: To assess fear of hypoglycaemia among parents whose children have type 1 diabetes mellitus. Study objectives: The objectives of the study were: 1. To identify aspects suggestive of worry about hypoglycaemia among parents whose children have type 1 diabetes mellitus, and 2. To determine the behaviours adopted by parents to prevent hypoglycaemia among children with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Method: A descriptive and cross-sectional survey design was used to identify factors suggesting fear of hypoglycaemia among parents and the actions parents take to prevent hypoglycaemia. In this study the population comprises parents of type 1 diabetes mellitus children attending a specific diabetic outpatient’s clinic (N=140). The total population was used as a sample over a period of three months due to the limited population size. Fifteen (15) patients are pre-booked for clinic services every Monday from 08h00–13h00. vi Only parents or guardians of children aged 3 to 18 years, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus and on insulin therapy, were considered eligible for the study. Data collection: A self-administered Hypoglycaemia Fear Survey – Parent version (HFS-P) was used to collect data. Besides demographic data, the HFS-P’s data collection tool focuses on worry and avoidant behaviours, with a total of 25 questions scored using Likert Scales ranging from 0 (“never”) to 4 (“always”). The Worry subscale HFS-P (W) measures different anxiety-provoking aspects of hypoglycaemia. The Behaviour subscale HFS-P (B) measures behaviours used to avoid hypoglycaemia and its consequences. The demographic data collected concerned parents’ ages, genders, marital status, employment status and levels of education. Data analysis: Data was analysed using STATA version 13.1. Data analysis was divided into descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: Parents of type 1 diabetes mellitus children are more likely to experience fear of hypoglycaemia and to practise negative behaviours to avoid hypoglycaemia, which eventually impact negatively on glycaemic control. Nurses should be able to intervene and teach such parents how to manage type 1 diabetes mellitus correctly.
LG2018

Although fear is an integral part of normal human functioning, it is important to obtain knowledge of children’s normative fear and defence mechanism in order for parents and caregivers to understand and contribute towards mediating potentially stressful experiences of children in their care. This combined qualitative and quantitative study aimed to identify a dominant defence mechanism for children in their middle childhood in dealing with fear. In order to reach the aim of this study a conceptual framework was done exploring terms central to this study including: development in middle childhood, fear, coping mechanisms and defence mechanisms. Miller and Dollard’s learning theory as a theoretical perspective was applied to the study. Interviews were conducted with eleven children in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. The data was analyzed and several findings were identified and explored. Implications, limitations as well as suggestions are part of the concluding chapter of the report.
Sociology
M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

博士
高雄醫學大學
牙醫學研究所
96
Objectives: Many people experience discomfort to a greater or lesser degree about the prospect of dental treatment. Dental treatment can be a terrible experience, especially for children with dental anxiety. Dental fear has been singled out as one of the most troublesome problems facing paediatric dentistry today. Children with dental fear may avoid visiting dentists; therefore, their oral health protection is often compromised. However, the etiology of dental fear is still not entirely understood. The purposes of this study were: (1)To modify the Chinese version Children’s Fear Survey Schedule- Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) (2)To estimate the prevalence of dental anxiety among 5- to 8-year-old children in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. (3)To explore the higher-order factor structure of the parental Chinese version of the CFSS-DS with a large sample of young children in Taiwan. (4)To investigate the dental visiting habit, the previous dental experiences, the conditioning pathway and the clinically-related predictors of dental fear in children. Methods: Study1 The Children’s Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) was translated into Chinese, and a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was made based on criteria determined from pretest clinical observations of a sample population to set a cutoff score. Then, the parental CFSS-DS was used as a screening tool to survey the dental anxiety levels of 5- to 8-year-old children at kindergartens and elementary schools in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Participants were selected by stratified random sampling. The stratification was done by geographic district, age group, and sex. Total of 3,597 valid questionnaires were collected. Study2 A first-order factor analysis was performed using the principal components method with promax rotation, and a second-order factor was obtained by applying the Schmid-Leiman solution (SLS). Study3 The dental history of 247 children (2-10 years old) was obtained when they came to a dental clinic for treatment. The level of dental fear in these children was assessed using the Dental Subscale of the Children’s Fear Survey Schedule (CFSS-DS). Observers rated the clinically anxious responses and uncooperative behavior toward dental treatment in these children. Three stepwise regression analyses were performed to determine significant predictors of CFSS-DS score, clinically anxious responses, and uncooperative behavior of children respectively. Results: Study1 The Chinese version of the CFSS-DS had an optimal cutoff score of 38/39 (sensitivity was 0.857, specificity was 0.882) with an area under the ROC curve of 0.912. The estimated prevalence of dental anxiety among 5- to 8-year-old children in Kaohsiung City was 20.6 percent. The dental anxiety score was found to decrease as age increased; primary school boys had significantly lower scores. Study2 The present study found three first-order factors, defined as: (1) fear of dental aspects, (2) fear of medical aspects, and (3) fear of potential victimization. The second-order factor defined as “dental fear” accounted for most of the variance in the second-order factor structure. The results of higher-order factor analysis according to different gender or age levels were identical. Study3 We found that the CFSS-DS score and clinical anxiety have different predictors, but age ≤3.99 years old and cooperativeness in the first dental visit were important predictors for both the CFSS-DS score and the clinical anxiety. Furthermore, the other predictors of the CFSS-DS score were maternal dental fear, unbearable pain during the first dental visit, and visiting dentists in a regular dental clinic; and the other predictors of the clinical anxiety were first-born, regular-dentist, and CFSS-DS score. Finally, the only significant predictor for uncooperative behavior was clinical anxiety. Conclusions: Study1 The prevalence of dental anxiety was found to be high for 5- to 8-year-old Taiwanese children. The study’s findings point to the urgent need for preventive health education and intervention programs in Taiwan to promote children’s oral health and reduce dental anxiety. Study2 A higher-order factor structure consisting of a single second-order factor and three first-order factors was extracted, giving a fuller understanding of the CFSS-DS. Study3 Children’s dental fear and their anxious response during dental treatment were dynamic processes that consisted of many different factors. The direct conditioning of subjective experience of pain was more important than the objective pathway of child dental fear, and the indirect conditioning does not seem influential in this study sample.

Currently one-quarter of Canadian children are meeting the minimal Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) daily. These alarming data suggest there is an urgent need to examine factors associated with children’s engagement in physical activity. Motor skill proficiency is associated with time spent in MVPA and predictive of participation in organized sport among adolescents. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between motor skills and physical activity of children in their first year of school. As gender-based differences in motor skill proficiency and physical activity are common, the influence of gender was also examined. Motor skills were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development – 2 and physical activity measured with accelerometers (Actigraph GT1M). Of the 106 (mean age = 6y3m) consented kindergarten children, 58% met the accelerometer wear-time inclusion criteria of 10 hours per day on at least 4 days. A MANCOVA revealed no significant gender based differences in motor skills or physical activity; therefore subsequent analyses included all children. Mastery of individual components of each skill as a percentage, were 54.1% of locomotor and 42.3% of object control skills. Using a cut-point of 4 metabolic equivalents, all of the children achieved 60-minutes of daily and weekday MVPA, and 82% of children achieved 60-minutes per day on the weekend. Both object control and locomotor skills were significantly related to the intensity of recorded activity. However, linear regression revealed that total motor skills predicted more variance in MVPA (9%) than either locomotor skills or object control skills independently. The findings of this study reveal that the kindergarten children engaged in MVPA at a rate equivalent to, or higher than, the minimum recommendations for Canadian children. However, motor skill proficiency was somewhat low. Children’s motor skill proficiency predicted a small, but significant, proportion of children’s physical activity.
Graduate