PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Awareness of ethnicity-based stigma found to start as early as second grade

2011-09-01
(Press-News.org) Students are stigmatized for any number of reasons, from the clothes they wear to what model cell phone they clench in their hands.

Now, in a new report, researchers from UCLA show that youths from a range of ethnic-minority backgrounds have an added burden to contend with: ethnicity-based stigmatization. Even elementary school–aged children are aware of such stigmatization and, like older youths, they feel more anxious about school as a result.

In the current online edition of the journal Child Development, senior author Andrew J. Fuligni, a UCLA professor of psychiatry, first author Cari Gillen-O'Neel, a graduate student working with Fuligni, and colleagues report that while children who are stigmatized are more likely to have less interest in school overall, ethnic-minority children, despite this hurdle, reported high interest in school. And for some of these students, feeling close to other students or school staff helps them maintain higher levels of interest in academics, despite the potentially negative effects of stigmatization.

The study included 451 second and fourth graders from New York City schools who belonged to one of the following ethnic groups: African American, Chinese, Dominican, Russian or European American. They ranged in age from 7 to 11 years old. European American students were not considered to be ethnic minorities.

For the study, each student participated in three individual interview sessions lasting approximately 40 minutes each, which took place in a private room on the school's campus during school hours. Each interview was conducted by a female researcher who had the same racial or ethnic background as the student. Students were asked questions about their awareness of stigma, their anxiety about school, their interest in academics and their feelings of belonging in school.

"We found that differences in the young children's awareness of stigma were similar to differences among adults, with ethnic-minority children generally reporting more awareness than ethnic-majority children," Fuligni said. "There were few differences by grade, suggesting that even second graders are sensitive to ethnic attitudes in society."

Ethnic-minority children also reported higher academic anxiety, he said, which the researchers attributed to their greater awareness of stigma.

But the study also found that some ethnic-minority students reported significantly higher interest in school than their ethnic-majority peers, despite past research by others that showed that awareness of stigmatization is associated with lower interest in school.

For Dominican children in particular, this seemingly paradoxical finding was explained, in part, by their feelings about belonging: For these youngsters, feeling close connections to people at school accounted for their high levels of interest in school, despite their awareness of stigma.

The study has implications for intervention efforts, Fuligni said. "Programs aimed at decreasing students' perceptions of group stigma, such as providing community role models, could help keep students' academic anxiety in check," he said. "And school-based interventions that foster close connections among individuals at school may help students stay interested in learning."

### The other author on the study was Diane N. Ruble of New York University. The study was funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Science Foundation. The authors report no conflict of interest.

The UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences is the home within the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA for faculty who are experts in the origins and treatment of disorders of complex human behavior. The department is part of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, a world-leading interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.

For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and UCLA News|Week and follow us on Twitter.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Argentina's Santa Fe government reducing lead ammunition for sports hunters

Argentinas Santa Fe government reducing lead ammunition for sports hunters
2011-09-01
The Wildlife Conservation Society applauds the government of Santa Fe Province for taking steps to reduce the amount of lead ammunition used in hunting of waterfowl, the first such action of its kind in Argentina. Enacted for this year's hunting season, the regulation requires hunters to reduce usage of lead shot by 25 percent. The regulation initiates a process that may lead to the eventual ban of lead shot. Lead is known to cause severe adverse effects on the health of animals and humans and permanently pollute the environment. "This is a huge step forward," said ...

British Airways Cabin Crew to Use iPads to Revolutionise Customer Service

British Airways Cabin Crew to Use iPads to Revolutionise Customer Service
2011-09-01
British Airways cabin crew are using the latest iPad model to bring a new dimension to customer service in the air. The iPads enable cabin crew to have prior awareness of customer preferences and a greater understanding of each customer's previous travel arrangements, allowing them to offer a truly bespoke, personalised service. The iPad lets crew quickly identify where each customer is seated, who they are travelling with, their Executive Club status and any special meal requests. It gives cabin crew a whole library of information at their fingertips including timetables, ...

Aging eyes linked to sleepless nights, new study shows

2011-09-01
DARIEN, IL – A natural yellowing of the eye lens that absorbs blue light has been linked to sleep disorders in a group of test volunteers, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the journal Sleep. As this type of lens discoloration worsened with age, so did the risk of insomnia. "The strong link between lens yellowing and age could help explain why sleep disorders become more frequent with increasing age," said Line Kessel, M.D., Ph.D., the study's lead author. In the Danish study, 970 volunteers had their eyes examined by lens autofluorometry, a non-invasive ...

Insomnia costing US workforce $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity, study shows

2011-09-01
DARIEN, Ill. – Insomnia is costing the average U.S. worker 11.3 days, or $2,280 in lost productivity every year, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the journal Sleep. As a nation, the total cost is 252.7 days and $63.2 billion. "We were shocked by the enormous impact insomnia has on the average person's life," said lead author Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D. "It's an underappreciated problem. Americans are not missing work because of insomnia. They are still going to their jobs but accomplishing less because they're tired. In an information-based economy, it's ...

Increased prevalence of stroke hospitalizations seen in teens and young adults

2011-09-01
Ischemic stroke hospitalization rates in adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 44 increased up to 37% between 1995 and 2008 according to a study conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The findings available today in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and the Child Neurology Society, report an increase in the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, lipid disorders, and tobacco use among this age group during the 14-year study period. The American Heart Association states that stroke ...

redspottedhanky.com Announces Fundraising for The Prince's Trust

2011-09-01
redspottedhanky.com is proud to announce it will be raising funds for The Prince's Trust. redspottedhanky is supporting the 2011 Prince's Trust 'Million Makers' corporate challenge, a charity competition which sees teams from a hundred organisations set up businesses in order to raise as much funding as possible for The Prince's Trust. redspottedhanky has entered a team into the 2011 'Million Makers' challenge and need customers to donate loyalty points in order to help it reach its target. Customers can log in to their online account using their normal username ...

Southern Rocky Mountain pikas holding their own, says new CU-Boulder assessment

Southern Rocky Mountain pikas holding their own, says new CU-Boulder assessment
2011-09-01
American pikas, the chirpy, potato-sized denizens of rocky debris in mountain ranges and high plateaus in western North America, are holding their own in the Southern Rocky Mountains, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. Led by CU-Boulder doctoral student Liesl Erb, the study team assessed 69 historical sites known to host pikas in a swath of the Southern Rockies ranging from southern Wyoming through Colorado and into northern New Mexico. The results showed that 65 of the 69 historical sites that had hosted pikas -- some dating back more than a century -- ...

British Airways Provides East Africa Relief Flight

2011-09-01
British Airways has flown a relief aircraft full of emergency supplies and equipment to victims of the food crisis in East Africa, where over half a million people are directly at risk of starvation. A Boeing 747 freighter with capacity for up to 110 tonnes of cargo, flew to Ethiopia on Friday, August 12, carrying aid from Oxfam and UNICEF. Following severe droughts, resulting in the worst food crisis the world has seen for 20 years, the two charities are among those working in the region to bring much-needed relief to over 12 million people at risk from famine, disease ...

Language speed versus efficiency: Is faster better?

2011-09-01
A recent study of the speech information rate of seven languages concludes that there is considerable variation in the speed at which languages are spoken, but much less variation in how efficiently languages communicate the same information. The study, "A cross-linguistic perspective on speech information rate," to be published in the September 2011 issue of the scholarly journal Language, is co-authored by François Pellegrino, Christophe Coupé, and Egidio Marsico. A preprint version is available on line at http://lsadc.org/info/documents/2011/press-releases/pellegrino-et-al.pdf. Their ...

Document Management Software Purchasing Contract Now Available to NJPA 35000+ Members

2011-09-01
Document Advantage Corporation has announced its selection by the NJPA, National Joint Powers Alliance, to serve as a preferred provider of Electronic Document Management Software and Services to its fast growing membership of 35,000 organizations. Now, NJPA members can begin working immediately with a premier document management provider without undertaking a complex, expensive, and lengthy RFP process. NJPA is a member-driven buying cooperative serving public and private schools (K-12 and higher education institutions), state and local governments, and non-profit ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Ultrasound-directed microbubbles could boost immune response against tumours, new Concordia research suggests

In small preliminary study, fearful pet dogs exhibited significantly different microbiomes and metabolic molecules to non-fearful dogs, suggesting the gut-brain axis might be involved in fear behavior

Examination of Large Language Model "red-teaming" defines it as a non-malicious team-effort activity to seek LLMs' limits and identifies 35 different techniques used to test them

Most microplastics in French bottled and tap water are smaller than 20 µm - fine enough to pass into blood and organs, but below the EU-recommended detection limit

A tangled web: Fossil fuel energy, plastics, and agrichemicals discourse on X/Twitter

This fast and agile robotic insect could someday aid in mechanical pollination

Researchers identify novel immune cells that may worsen asthma

Conquest of Asia and Europe by snow leopards during the last Ice Ages uncovered

Researchers make comfortable materials that generate power when worn

Study finding Xenon gas could protect against Alzheimer’s disease leads to start of clinical trial

Protein protects biological nitrogen fixation from oxidative stress

Three-quarters of medical facilities in Mariupol sustained damage during Russia’s siege of 2022

Snow leopard fossils clarify evolutionary history of species

Machine learning outperforms traditional statistical methods in addressing missing data in electronic health records

AI–guided lung ultrasound by nonexperts

Prevalence of and inequities in poor mental health across 3 US surveys

Association between surgeon stress and major surgical complications

How cryogenic microscopy could help strengthen food security

DNA damage can last unrepaired for years, changing our view of mutations

Could this fundamental discovery revolutionise fertiliser use in farming?

How one brain circuit encodes memories of both places and events

ASU-led collaboration receives $11.2 million to build a Southwest Regional Direct Air Capture Hub

Study finds strategies to minimize acne recurrence after taking medication for severe acne

Deep learning designs proteins against deadly snake venom

A new geometric machine learning method promises to accelerate precision drug development

Ancient genomes reveal an Iron Age society centred on women

How crickets co-exist with hostile ant hosts

Tapered polymer fibers enhance light delivery for neuroscience research

Syracuse University’s Fran Brown named Paul “Bear” Bryant Newcomer Coach of the Year Award recipient

DARPA-ABC program supports Wyss Institute-led collaboration toward deeper understanding of anesthesia and safe drugs enabling anesthesia without the need for extensive monitoring

[Press-News.org] Awareness of ethnicity-based stigma found to start as early as second grade