Combining Parent and Teacher Training for Early ADHD: A Randomized Study of Effectiveness

Parent training (PT) has been documented as an effective intervention for early ADHD based on parental assessment, but documentation of transfer of its results outside the family context has been limited. Due to the cross-contextual impairments typically caused by ADHD, it has been proposed that PT in combination with an intervention in kindergarten or school based on systematic teacher training (TT) would be better suited. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a combination of PT and TT in a community sample of children with early ADHD problems. Families of 64 3-8-year old children were randomized to either PT alone with “The Incredible Years” PT or to a combined PT?+?TT intervention. Moderate to large pre-post effect sizes on mother-reported outcomes were revealed in both groups, in line with those generally reported in the literature on PT interventions for early ADHD. With an n of 64, the current study was powered to detect superiority of the PT?+?TT intervention if the difference was of a moderate effect size (Cohen’s d?=?0.5). There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups on any of the outcome measures as rated by parents or teachers. In conclusion, the study did not provide support for the combined PT?+?TT intervention for early ADHD problems as a superior intervention in comparison with PT alone.     

The Sociocultural Context of Sexually Diverse Women’s Sexual Desire

Women’s sexual desire is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. According to the biopsychosocial model of female sexual function, a comprehensive understanding of women’s sexuality requires awareness of the presence of and interaction between biological, psychological, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors. Other sexuality scholars in the field have similarly stressed this perspective, emphasizing that sexual desire in particular is impacted by medical, relational, psychological, and sociocultural influences. Given the influence of sociocultural variables like sexism and heterosexism on women’s lives, we sought to understand the impact of the sociocultural context on sexual desire in 31 bisexual, lesbian, and heterosexual women. Women ranged in age from 20 to 69 and answered a number of questions related to their experience of sexual desire and the ways in which desire related to their sexual identity. The semi-structured interviews focused on women’s retrospective, subjective accounts of their experiences. Using a consensual qualitative research approach and thematic analysis, the interviews revealed four themes and seven subthemes: (1) minority stress (heterosexist discrimination, stigmatized identities, coming out, impact of visible/safe spaces); (2) gender expectations (gendered relationship expectations, gender binary impacts, body image); (3) religion; and (4) taboo and changing cultural times. Participant responses suggest that the sociocultural context can influence the sexual desire of diverse women, supporting both sexual desire exploration and suppression of desire expression by context. Practice and advocacy considerations include understanding of the impact of systems of privilege and oppression (e.g., sexism, heterosexism, racism) on women’s sexual desire experiences and opportunities for supporting diverse women’s sexual empowerment.     

Psychometric assessment of the processes of change scale for sun protection

The fourteen-factor Processes of Change Scale for Sun Protection assesses behavioral and experiential strategies that underlie the process of sun protection acquisition and maintenance. Variations of this measure have been used effectively in several randomized sun protection trials, both for evaluation and as a basis for intervention. However, there are no published studies, to date, that evaluate the psychometric properties of the scale. The present study evaluated factorial invariance and scale reliability in a national sample (N = 1360) of adults involved in a Transtheoretical model tailored intervention for exercise and sun protection, at baseline. Invariance testing ranged from least to most restrictive: Configural Invariance (constraints only factor structure and zero loadings); Pattern Identity Invariance (equal factor loadings across target groups); and Strong Factorial Invariance (equal factor loadings and measurement errors). Multi-sample structural equation modeling tested the invariance of the measurement model across seven subgroups: age, education, ethnicity, gender, race, skin tone, and Stage of Change for Sun Protection. Strong factorial invariance was found across all subgroups. Internal consistency coefficient Alpha and factor rho reliability, respectively, were .83 and .80 for behavioral processes, .91 and .89 for experiential processes, and .93 and .91 for the global scale. These results provide strong empirical evidence that the scale is consistent, has internal validity and can be used in research interventions with population-based adult samples.     

Spirituality and mental health status among Northern Plain tribes

Spirituality measures often show positive associations with preferred mental health outcomes in the general population; however, research among American Indians (AIs) is limited. We examined the relationships of mental health status and two measures of spirituality – the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) and a tribal cultural spirituality measure – in Northern Plains AIs, aged 15–54 (n?=?1636). While the MIDI was unassociated with mental health status, the tribal cultural spirituality measure showed a significant relationship with better mental health status. Mental health conditions disproportionately affect AIs. Understanding protective factors such as cultural spirituality that can mitigate mental health disorders is critical to reducing these health disparities.     

Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults,revealed by electrophysiology

Voices transmit social signals through speech and/or prosody. Emotional prosody conveys key information about the emotional state of a speaker and is thus a crucial cue that one has to detect in order to develop efficient social communication. Previous studies in adults reported different brain responses to emotional than to neutral prosodic deviancy. The aim of this study was to characterize such specific emotional deviancy effects in school-age children. The mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a evoked potentials, reflecting automatic change detection and automatic attention orienting, respectively, were obtained for neutral and emotional angry deviants in both school-age children (n = 26) and adults (n = 14). Shorter latencies were found for emotional than for neutral preattentional responses in both groups. However, whereas this effect was observed on the MMN in adults, it appeared in an early discriminative negativity preceding the MMN in children. A smaller P3a amplitude was observed for the emotional than for the neutral deviants at all ages. Overall, the brain responses involved in specific emotional change processing are already present during childhood, but responses have not yet reached an adult pattern. We suggest that these processing differences might contribute to the known improvement of emotional prosody perception between childhood and adulthood.     

A “spoon full of sugar” helps the medicine go down: How a participant friendly version of a psychophysics task significantly improves task engagement,performance and data quality in a typical adult sample

Few would argue that the unique insights brought by studying the typical and atypical development of psychological processes are essential to building a comprehensive understanding of the brain. Often, however, the associated challenges of working with non-standard adult populations results in the more complex psychophysical paradigms being rejected as too complex. Recently we created a child- (and clinical group) friendly implementation of one such technique – the reverse-correlation Bubbles approach – and noted an associated performance boost in adult participants. Here, we compare the administration of three different versions of this participant-friendly task in the same adult participants to empirically confirm that introducing elements in the experiment with the sole purpose of improving the participant experience, not only boosts the participant’s engagement and motivation for the task but results in a significantly improved objective task performance and stronger statistical results.     

Prospective writing: Randomized controlled trial of an intervention for facilitating growth after adversity

Little is known about how posttraumatic growth (PTG) can be fostered and controversy surrounds how it is best measured. We designed and tested an intervention, prospective writing, to facilitate PTG by encouraging people to explore new possibilities after adversity. Adults (N = 188) with recent adverse experiences were randomly assigned to do prospective writing, factual writing, or no writing weekly for one month. PTG was assessed with both retrospective and current-standing measures. Hierarchical linear modeling and response profile analysis were used to assess the intervention’s impact, and latent growth curve modeling was used to test mediation. Prospective writing participants showed the greatest gains in PTG as assessed by the current-standing measure, but did not reliably show greater retrospective PTG than controls. Although large effect sizes for the mediation paths suggested that engagement with new possibilities may be a plausible mechanism, this result fell short of statistical significance. Prospection-based interventions merit further investigation.