Date Presented 04/04/19
Half of the postmillennial participants had an apparent ability to successfully cope with demanding tasks (e.g., managing their daily schedule) in unexpected ways. However, they were equally effective in performing the performance-based assessment and in their parents' reports on their daily performance. Therapists are therefore encouraged to use a “guided discovery” of strategies during an intervention to facilitate strategy use for those who are less able to cope with their daily tasks.
Primary Author and Speaker: Sharon Zlotnik
Contributing Authors: Eynat Gal, Tamar Wiess
PURPOSE: To explore typical adolescents' self-perception of strategies for performance in daily life, via Video Modeling (VM), and compare it to their scores on a performance-based assessment and to parental reports of their daily performance.
BACKGROUND: Today's adolescents, referred to as “Post-millennials”, or "Generation Z" were born from 1995 to the present. Although they grew up in the digital 21st century, they are surprisingly different from millennials (born between 1981-1994), being more pragmatic, entrepreneurial, and skilled at face-to-face communication, yet less focused and with lower attention spans. They tend to crave immediate feedback, process information quickly and have very good multi-tasking and social skills (Holton & Fraser, 2015). Strategy use for performance of daily activities is an important factor in predicting academic and rehabilitation achievements and may be measured by performance-based measures. Video Modeling is a technique that involves observing video-recorded representations of a single problem and multiple solutions, of adaptive and maladaptive instances of a target behavior (Dowric, 1999). By comparing their self-perception scores on the VM to a performance-based assessment and to parental reports of their daily performance, we hypothesized that post-millennials who perceived themselves as using organized and structured strategies would score better on the WCPA and the BRIEF parental report, then those who perceived themselves as less organized.
METHOD: Participants: One hundred and nine healthy adolescent boys (n=31) and girls (n=78) with a mean age of 15.2 (± 1.86) years viewed 5 videotaped scenarios of common daily complex tasks that entailed strategy use (e.g., plan ahead, make lists, prioritize). They then rated their own performance relative to the strategies portrayed in the videotaped scenarios. Instruments: A video- modeling computerized application was used to present 5 situations and a choice of 2 possible solutions to each of them. Half of the solutions presented an organized /structured approach to accomplish a given task (i.e. type A), and the others a less organized /structured approach (i.e. type B). Participants also filled The Weekly Calendar Planning Activity (WCPA) (Toglia, 2015) and their parents filled the BRIEF-Parent Form. The Weekly Calendar Planning Activity (WCPA) (Toglia, 2015) is a performance-based measure of executive functions and strategy use. The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) (Gioia et al., 2000) - Parent Form, assesses EF Behavioral regulation (e.g. Emotional Control) and metacognition (e.g. Plan/Organize), in school and home environments, reported by parents.
RESULTS: The participants were categorized in accordance to their strategies as were defined based on their rating of the videotaped scenarios. Fifty-four % of them were “Type A” and 46% were “type B”. BRIEF scores were all within the normative range (<65). No significant difference was found between the groups in the WCPA scores [F (5,103) 3.53, p=.063].
CONCLUSIONS: The participants were almost equally divided in their reports of using either more organized/structured or less organized /structured strategies. Yet, they were equally effective in performing the WCPA and in their daily function as reported by parents. The results of this study suggest that about a half of the post millennials have an apparent ability to cope with demanding tasks (e.g., managing their daily schedule) in unexpected, yet successful ways. Therapists are therefore encouraged to use “guided discovery” of strategies during intervention to facilitate the strategy use for those adolescents who are less able to cope with their daily tasks.
References
Dowrick, P. W. (1999). A review of self-modeling and related interventions. Applied and preventive psychology, 8(1), 23-39.
Holton, T., & Fraser, B. (2015). Generation Z and Technology. Dunn & Jesion Smillie. Retrieved from http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc199/p802434_A1b.pdf
Gioia, G. A., Isquith, P. K., Guy, S. C., & Kenworthy, L. (2000). Test review behavior rating inventory of executive function. Child Neuropsychology, 6(3), 235-238. DOI:10.1076/chin.6.3.235.3152
Toglia, J. (2015). Weekly calendar planning activity : a performance test of executive function. AOTA Press.
