Kathryn J Lester
Biographic Data
| ID | 2747561 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kathryn J Lester |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kathryn J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lester |
| SIGNATURE | LESTER K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0853-2664 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Children's Use of Mental State Talk Is Connected Within Peer Dyads, but Unrelated to Theory‐of‐Mind Understanding
Across two studies we explore how individual and dyadic factors influence children's ( M age = 61 months; 52% male; 55% White British) use of mental state talk (MST) with peers during shared play. Results from actor‐partner interdependence modelling (APIM; n = 190 children) indicate that children's MST use is significantly linked to the MST use of their play partner but is unrelated to either their own or their play partner's theory‐of‐mind under…
“It felt a bit wartime”
Although primary schools in the UK were required to provide access to remote learning for pupils during Covid‐19 mandated school closures, there was less clarity for teachers and school leaders about expectations and priorities relating to the provision of social and emotional well‐being support for children at home during this period. Using an existing whole‐school approaches (WSA) framework we aimed to understand the extent to which well‐being …
Patterns of sub‐optimal change following CBT for childhood anxiety
BACKGROUND: Children and adolescents demonstrate diverse patterns of symptom change and disorder remission following cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. To better understand children who respond sub-optimally to CBT, this study investigated youths (N = 1,483) who continued to meet criteria for one or more clinical anxiety diagnosis immediately following treatment or at any point during the 12 months following treatment. MET…
Intervention for School Anxiety and Absenteeism in Children (Isaac)
The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen an increase in persistent school absenteeism and Emotionally-Based School Avoidance (EBSA). However, suitable evidence-based psychological interventions are often unavailable. We aimed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a new parent-focused online program, Intervention for School Anxiety and Absenteeism in Children (ISAAC), which has been co-designed with parents and practitioners. This …
I miss the normalness”
Remote well-being support for children during Covid-related school closures varied in quality with implications for children's mental health and well-being. Findings from this study highlight the importance of ongoing social contact and enriched daily activities to protect children's well-being and development and present a framework of effective remote wellbeing support for primary schools in the event of future closures or prolonged pupil absen…
She didn't know how to go back
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures worldwide and unexcused absences have increased since schools reopened.AimsDrawing on multiple stakeholders' perspectives, we aimed to (i) develop a detailed understanding of how school attendance problems (SAPs) have manifested for primary school-aged children in the context of COVID-19; and (ii) identify promising community-based intervention strategies.MethodsWe used a qualitative des…
The Parent Play Questionnaire
We introduce the Parent Play Questionnaire (PPQ), a parent‐report measure designed to assess frequency of parent–infant play, parents’ attitudes towards play with their infant, and infants’ use of digital media. We describe measure development and empirical data across three samples of parent–infant dyads (total N = 414, offspring aged 0.3–2.5 years). Three latent factors explain the PPQ, corresponding with theoretically defined subscales. Summar…
Environmental sensitivity in children
A large number of studies document that children differ in the degree they are shaped by their developmental context with some being more sensitive to environmental influences than others. Multiple theories suggest that Environmental Sensitivity is a common trait predicting the response to negative as well as positive exposures. However, most research to date has relied on more or less proximal markers of Environmental Sensitivity. In this paper …
Relevance is in the eye of the beholder
Attentional biases are most often framed in a threat relevance framework. Alternatively, it could be that not only threat-related stimuli draw attention but also that preferential attention is drawn to all stimuli that have relevance for an individual. We investigated this stimulus relevance theory in primary school-age children by means of a visual search task. As predicted, children displayed attentional biases toward evolutionary and modern th…
But what about the Empress of Racnoss? The allocation of attention to spiders and Doctor Who in a visual search task is predicted by fear and expertise
If there is a spider in the room, then the spider phobic in your group is most likely to point it out to you. This phenomenon is believed to arise because our attentional systems are hardwired to attend to threat in our environment, and, to a spider phobic, spiders are threatening. However, an alternative explanation is simply that attention is quickly drawn to the stimulus of most personal relevance in the environment. Our research examined whet…
Flawed gun policy research could endanger public safety
A highly publicized recent study by Lott and Mustard concludes that laws easing restrictions on licenses for carrying concealed firearms in public substantially reduce violent crime. Several serious flaws in the study render the authors' conclusions insupportable. These flaws include misclassification of gun-carrying laws, endogeneity of predictor variables, omission of confounding variables, and failure to control for the cyclical nature of crim…
Environmental sensitivity in children
A large number of studies document that children differ in the degree they are shaped by their developmental context with some being more sensitive to environmental influences than others. Multiple theories suggest that Environmental Sensitivity is a common trait predicting the response to negative as well as positive exposures. However, most research to date has relied on more or less proximal markers of Environmental Sensitivity. In this paper …
She didn't know how to go back
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures worldwide and unexcused absences have increased since schools reopened.AimsDrawing on multiple stakeholders' perspectives, we aimed to (i) develop a detailed understanding of how school attendance problems (SAPs) have manifested for primary school-aged children in the context of COVID-19; and (ii) identify promising community-based intervention strategies.MethodsWe used a qualitative des…
Flawed gun policy research could endanger public safety
A highly publicized recent study by Lott and Mustard concludes that laws easing restrictions on licenses for carrying concealed firearms in public substantially reduce violent crime. Several serious flaws in the study render the authors' conclusions insupportable. These flaws include misclassification of gun-carrying laws, endogeneity of predictor variables, omission of confounding variables, and failure to control for the cyclical nature of crim…
Children's Use of Mental State Talk Is Connected Within Peer Dyads, but Unrelated to Theory‐of‐Mind Understanding
Across two studies we explore how individual and dyadic factors influence children's ( M age = 61 months; 52% male; 55% White British) use of mental state talk (MST) with peers during shared play. Results from actor‐partner interdependence modelling (APIM; n = 190 children) indicate that children's MST use is significantly linked to the MST use of their play partner but is unrelated to either their own or their play partner's theory‐of‐mind under…
The Parent Play Questionnaire
We introduce the Parent Play Questionnaire (PPQ), a parent‐report measure designed to assess frequency of parent–infant play, parents’ attitudes towards play with their infant, and infants’ use of digital media. We describe measure development and empirical data across three samples of parent–infant dyads (total N = 414, offspring aged 0.3–2.5 years). Three latent factors explain the PPQ, corresponding with theoretically defined subscales. Summar…
Flawed gun policy research could endanger public safety
A highly publicized recent study by Lott and Mustard concludes that laws easing restrictions on licenses for carrying concealed firearms in public substantially reduce violent crime. Several serious flaws in the study render the authors' conclusions insupportable. These flaws include misclassification of gun-carrying laws, endogeneity of predictor variables, omission of confounding variables, and failure to control for the cyclical nature of crim…
But what about the Empress of Racnoss? The allocation of attention to spiders and Doctor Who in a visual search task is predicted by fear and expertise
If there is a spider in the room, then the spider phobic in your group is most likely to point it out to you. This phenomenon is believed to arise because our attentional systems are hardwired to attend to threat in our environment, and, to a spider phobic, spiders are threatening. However, an alternative explanation is simply that attention is quickly drawn to the stimulus of most personal relevance in the environment. Our research examined whet…
Relevance is in the eye of the beholder
Attentional biases are most often framed in a threat relevance framework. Alternatively, it could be that not only threat-related stimuli draw attention but also that preferential attention is drawn to all stimuli that have relevance for an individual. We investigated this stimulus relevance theory in primary school-age children by means of a visual search task. As predicted, children displayed attentional biases toward evolutionary and modern th…
Environmental sensitivity in children
A large number of studies document that children differ in the degree they are shaped by their developmental context with some being more sensitive to environmental influences than others. Multiple theories suggest that Environmental Sensitivity is a common trait predicting the response to negative as well as positive exposures. However, most research to date has relied on more or less proximal markers of Environmental Sensitivity. In this paper …
The Parent Play Questionnaire
We introduce the Parent Play Questionnaire (PPQ), a parent‐report measure designed to assess frequency of parent–infant play, parents’ attitudes towards play with their infant, and infants’ use of digital media. We describe measure development and empirical data across three samples of parent–infant dyads (total N = 414, offspring aged 0.3–2.5 years). Three latent factors explain the PPQ, corresponding with theoretically defined subscales. Summar…
I miss the normalness”
Remote well-being support for children during Covid-related school closures varied in quality with implications for children's mental health and well-being. Findings from this study highlight the importance of ongoing social contact and enriched daily activities to protect children's well-being and development and present a framework of effective remote wellbeing support for primary schools in the event of future closures or prolonged pupil absen…
She didn't know how to go back
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures worldwide and unexcused absences have increased since schools reopened.AimsDrawing on multiple stakeholders' perspectives, we aimed to (i) develop a detailed understanding of how school attendance problems (SAPs) have manifested for primary school-aged children in the context of COVID-19; and (ii) identify promising community-based intervention strategies.MethodsWe used a qualitative des…
“It felt a bit wartime”
Although primary schools in the UK were required to provide access to remote learning for pupils during Covid‐19 mandated school closures, there was less clarity for teachers and school leaders about expectations and priorities relating to the provision of social and emotional well‐being support for children at home during this period. Using an existing whole‐school approaches (WSA) framework we aimed to understand the extent to which well‐being …
Patterns of sub‐optimal change following CBT for childhood anxiety
BACKGROUND: Children and adolescents demonstrate diverse patterns of symptom change and disorder remission following cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. To better understand children who respond sub-optimally to CBT, this study investigated youths (N = 1,483) who continued to meet criteria for one or more clinical anxiety diagnosis immediately following treatment or at any point during the 12 months following treatment. MET…
Intervention for School Anxiety and Absenteeism in Children (Isaac)
The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen an increase in persistent school absenteeism and Emotionally-Based School Avoidance (EBSA). However, suitable evidence-based psychological interventions are often unavailable. We aimed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a new parent-focused online program, Intervention for School Anxiety and Absenteeism in Children (ISAAC), which has been co-designed with parents and practitioners. This …
Children's Use of Mental State Talk Is Connected Within Peer Dyads, but Unrelated to Theory‐of‐Mind Understanding
Across two studies we explore how individual and dyadic factors influence children's ( M age = 61 months; 52% male; 55% White British) use of mental state talk (MST) with peers during shared play. Results from actor‐partner interdependence modelling (APIM; n = 190 children) indicate that children's MST use is significantly linked to the MST use of their play partner but is unrelated to either their own or their play partner's theory‐of‐mind under…
Psychology (11 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (5 works) · Psychiatry (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Anxiety (4 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (4 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (3 works)