Effects of a Center-Based Parent Training Package on Parents’ Accuracy of Generalized Program Implementations at Home

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a parent training package on parents’ accuracy of program implementations and their children’s goal achievements on parent-implemented programs at home. Parents also completed a quiz with questions about three-contingencies before and after the training. Three mother-child dyads participated in this study. All three children were 4-year-old boys with developmental delays. We employed a multiple baseline across three parent-child dyads as the primary design combined with a pretest and posttest. The individual parent training sessions consisted of office meetings and in-vivo classroom coaching sessions on program implementations. Each parent was trained individually to mastery criteria on program implementations using the Teacher Performance Rate Accuracy Scale (TPRA). After completing the parent training package, all parents acquired program implementations skills, and their program implementation skills were generalized to teach new behaviors at home with a high level of fidelity. Their quiz scores on three-term contingencies also increased to a relatively high level.     

Effectiveness of parent counselling in eating disorders

ABSTRACT

Eating Disorders (ED) are often severe illnesses entailing a heavy burden for families. Family therapy is recommended for young patients, but only a few studies have investigated therapeutic interventions with families tailored also to adult and longstanding patients. We recruited 87 families with daughters affected by an ED, aiming to assess the effectiveness of eight sessions of parent counselling. The primary outcome was the improvement of parents' coping abilities to achieve more effective support skills. Before treatment, 54% of parents showed poor coping resources whereas 43.7% of the sample improved after parent counselling. Parents with good coping resources responded significantly better to this treatment. Although future research is warranted, these preliminary findings support the effectiveness of parent counselling in ED.     

Child Support Enforcement and Father Involvement Among Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

The focus of this article will be intimate partner violence among custodial parents receiving welfare benefits and their required cooperation with the child support enforcement system to encourage the financial involvement of the noncustodial parent. The majority of the mothers in the study encouraged the father's continued emotional involvement with their child despite the violence. This article will illustrate through the use of a case study the desire of these mothers to encourage both a financial and emotional relationship with their child's father, with safety always a priority.     

Parent Reports and Laboratory Assessments of Child Temperament: A Comparison of Their Associations With Risk for Depression and Externalizing Disorders

Parent reports and laboratory assessments of child temperament traits were compared in terms of their associations with 2 indices of risk for future maladjustment: maternal history of depression and disruptive school behavior. A community sample of 99 pre-school-aged children completed a standardized battery of laboratory tasks designed to tap positive emotionality (PE) and anger. Parent reports of child temperament were collected, and maternal history of depression was assessed using structured clinical interviews. An average of 18.5 months after the initial laboratory assessment, teacher reports of disruptive school behavior were collected. Structural equation models were used to test the association between the 2 assessment approaches of child temperament and maternal history of depression and disruptive school behavior. Laboratory measures and parent reports of anger were equally good at predicting disruptive school behavior, while laboratory measures of PE showed stronger associations with maternal history of depression than parent report.     

Looking is not enough: Multimodal attention supports the real-time learning of new words

Most research on early language learning focuses on the objects that infants see and the words they hear in their daily lives, although growing evidence suggests that motor development is also closely tied to language development. To study the real-time behaviors required for learning new words during free-flowing toy play, we measured infants’ visual attention and manual actions on to-be-learned toys. Parents and 12-to-26-month-old infants wore wireless head-mounted eye trackers, allowing them to move freely around a home-like lab environment. After the play session, infants were tested on their knowledge of object-label mappings. We found that how often parents named objects during play did not predict learning, but instead, it was infants’ attention during and around a labeling utterance that predicted whether an object-label mapping was learned. More specifically, we found that infant visual attention alone did not predict word learning. Instead, coordinated, multimodal attention–when infants’ hands and eyes were attending to the same object–predicted word learning. Our results implicate a causal pathway through which infants’ bodily actions play a critical role in early word learning.     

Life satisfaction trajectories among junior high school students in China: The role of parent–child communication

A 3-year follow-up test (from grades 7 to 9) was administered to 807 junior high school students from two regions in Hunan Province, China, using multilevel analysis to examine trends in junior high school students' life satisfaction, differences by gender and location of life and the effects of father–child/mother–child communication on the development of life satisfaction. The results showed that (1) Chinese junior high school students' life satisfaction showed a decreasing trend from the seventh grade to the ninth grade, and there was a significant decreasing process in the eighth grade; (2) father–child communication and mother–child communication had a significant positive predictive effect on Chinese junior high school students' life satisfaction and (3) father–child communication and mother–child communication had a significant negative predictive effect on the decreasing trend of life satisfaction, in which the effect of mother–child communication was particularly significant.     

Community-Delivered Collaborative and Proactive Solutions and Parent Management Training for Oppositional Youth: A Randomized Trial

The aim of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) and Parent Management Training (PMT) for youth with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in a community setting. Based on a semistructured diagnostic interview, 160 youth with ODD (ages 7–14; 72% male; ethnicity representative of the wider Australian population) were randomized to CPS (n = 81) or PMT (n = 79) for up to 16 weekly sessions. The primary hypothesis was that participants in the CPS group, treated in a community setting, would exhibit significant improvement in ODD, equivalent to that of an evidence-based treatment, PMT. Assessment was conducted at baseline, post-intervention, and at 6-month follow-up, using independently rated semistructured diagnostic interviews, parent ratings of ODD symptoms, and global ratings of severity and improvement. Analyses were conducted with hierarchical growth linear modeling, ANCOVA, and equivalence testing using an intent-to-treat sample. Both treatments demonstrated similar outcomes, with 45–50% of youth in the nonclinical range after treatment, and 67% considered much improved. No differences were found between groups, and group equivalency was shown on the independent clinician and parent-rated measures. Gains were maintained at the 6-month follow-up. In conclusion, CPS works as effectively as the well-established treatment, PMT, for youths with ODD, when implemented in a community-based setting. As such, CPS provides a viable choice for families who seek alternate treatments.     

Do Brief Lab-Based Interventions Decrease Coercive Conflict Within Couples and Parent–Child Dyads?

Coercive conflicts between parents and children and between couples are implicated in the pathogenesis of a variety of psychological and physical health problems. Despite its seeming importance to population health, there are no widely available, easy-to-use methods with demonstrated efficacy to engage coercive conflict and reduce it. Identifying and testing potentially efficacious and disseminable micro-interventions (i.e., interventions that can be delivered in under 15 minutes via computer or paraprofessional) for targets with cross-cutting health implications, such as coercive conflict, is the focus of the National Institutes of Health Science of Behavior Change initiative. We experimentally tested four micro-interventions targeting coercive conflict in couple and parent–child dyads in a within-between design. There were mixed but supportive findings for the efficacy of most of the micro-interventions. Attributional reframing, implementation intentions, and evaluative conditioning all reduced coercive conflict as assessed by some but not all measures of observed coercion. No findings indicated any iatrogenic effects. Interpretation bias modification treatment improved at least one measure of coercive conflict for couples, but not for parents and children; additionally, it increased self-reported coercive conflict. Overall, these results are encouraging and suggest that very brief and highly disseminable micro-interventions for coercive conflict are a fruitful direction for inquiry. Optimizing micro-interventions and deploying them across the health care infrastructure could tremendously enhance family functioning and, in turn, health behaviors and health (ClinicalTrials.gov IDs: NCT03163082, NCT03162822).     

PARENT EDUCATION PROJECT II. INCREASING STIMULATING INTERACTIONS OF DEVELOP MENTALLY HANDICAPPED MOTHERS

Two studies are reported on the assessment and training of parent-child interactional skills in developmentally handicapped mothers. Study 1 compared the interactions of eight developmentally handicapped versus eight nonhandicapped mothers during play with their young (6–25 months) children. Results showed that the former group generally interacted much less with their children and that they were less likely to praise appropriate child behavior and imitate child vocalizations. Study 2 attempted to remediate these deficits, using a training package consisting of discussion, modeling, feedback, social reinforcement, and self-recording. Results showed, first, that the training did increase the targeted skills to well within the range found for the nonhandicapped mothers. Second, training effects generalized from the group instructional setting to the mothers' own homes. Third, newly acquired skills were generally maintained at or above levels found for the nonhandicapped mothers over a 5- to 10-month follow-up period. Finally, all seven children showed increases in vocalizations concomitant with parent training. The results suggest that developmentally handicapped mothers can be taught to provide more effective and stimulating interactions to their young children.