“When Will Your Program Be Available in Spanish?” Adapting an Early Parenting Intervention for Latino Families

This paper describes the Spanish adaptation of PACE—Parenting Our Children to Excellence. Successfully offered in preschools and daycare centers since 2002, PACE is a research-based preventive intervention to support families in their parenting task through discussions and activities that address practical childrearing issues and promote child coping-competence. Developed in response to community calls, the new program is known as CANNE –Criando a Nuestros Niños hacia el Éxito. The paper makes the processes linking original and adapted versions explicit by accounting for the conceptual and practical decisions that were made as CANNE was being developed. We begin by summarizing the challenges of adapting and translating a behavioral intervention, and by describing the coping-competence model that informs both versions of the program. We turn then to a detailed account of the adaptation itself and of its results. Specifically, we describe: (a) the consultation process at the origin of this adaptation, (b) the adaptation of the manual and the steps taken to establish the extent to which the English and Spanish versions correspond (adaptation fidelity), and (c) the translation of the manual and the cross-language comparison of measures to demonstrate that they yield comparable data when administered in English and Spanish.     

Implementation Intentions Increase Parent-Teacher Communication Among Latinos

This research tested an implementation intentions intervention to increase parent-teacher communication among Latino parents of young children. Parents (n=57) were randomly assigned to form implementation intentions or simply goal intentions to communicate with their child's teacher. They completed measures of communication and goal intentions immediately prior to the manipulation, and after the manipulation for 6 consecutive weeks. Implementation intentions increased parent-teacher communication among parents with higher initial (pre-manipulation) goal intentions, but not among those with lower initial goal intentions. The findings support existing work on the conditions for implementation intentions to work, and address an important aspect of Latino children's educational success.     

Burning and cutting: Identifying the traits of individuals with an enduring propensity to tan and to undergo cosmetic surgery

• The research investigated the trait predictors of the propensity to use two beautification procedures that have the potential to harm health – the propensities to tan and to obtain cosmetic surgery. The results of a survey of 231 adult consumers revealed that a different combination of hierarchically arranged traits was predictive of the two procedures. These results suggest that different strategies are required in order to market or demarket tanning and plastic surgery. The research also made methodological contributions by revealing that two forms of vanity identified in the literature – physical view vanity and physical concern vanity – represent two different constructs rather than two dimensions of an underlying construct.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parental Psychopathology Levels as a Moderator of Temperament and Oppositional Defiant Disorder Symptoms in Preschoolers

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is among the most prevalent disorders in preschoolers. It has been linked to temperament, since characteristics such as elevated surgency and negative affect, as well as low levels of effortful control, contribute to the development of this disorder. Evidence also indicates that parental psychopathology can accentuate temperamental traits. Our aim was to assess whether the levels of psychopathology of mothers and fathers acts as a moderator of the relationship between temperament and ODD symptoms in preschoolers, both cross-sectionally at ages 3, 4 and 5, and longitudinally between ages 3 and 5. The sample included 550 children evaluated at ages 3, 4 and 5 through questionnaires and a semi-structured diagnostic interview with parents. Parents also answered a questionnaire about their own psychopathology. The results indicated that negative affect and effortful control are associated with higher levels of ODD symptoms in preschoolers. At child age 5, higher levels of paternal depression and anxiety increased the effect of low effortful control on ODD. High levels of negative affect and low levels of effortful control at age 3 were statistical predictors of ODD levels at age 5, and this relationship was also moderated by paternal anxiety and depression. The results have important clinical implications for the proper orientation of interventions, suggesting that interventions should integrate the paternal caregiver in the treatment.     

Accumbens shell AMPA receptors mediate expression of extinguished reward seeking through interactions with basolateral amygdala

Extinction is the reduction in drug seeking when the contingency between drug seeking behavior and the delivery of drug reward is broken. Here, we investigated a role for the nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh). Rats were trained to respond for 4% (v/v) alcoholic beer in one context (Context A) followed by extinction in a second context (Context B). Rats were subsequently tested in the training context, A (ABA), or the extinction context, B (ABB). Pre-test injections of the glutamate AMPA receptor antagonist, NBQX (1 μg) into AcbSh had no effect on renewal of alcoholic beer seeking when rats were returned to the training context (ABA). However, NBQX increased responding when rats were tested in the extinction context (ABB). In a second experiment, rats received training, extinction, and test in the same context. Pre-test injections of NBQX (0, 0.3, and 1 μg) into the AcbSh dose-dependently attenuated expression of extinction. We also found that NBQX in the AcbSh had no effect on initial acquisition of extinction or the motivation to respond for reward as measured by break point on a progressive ratio schedule. Finally, we show that pharmacological disconnection of a basolateral amygdala (BLA) → AcbSh pathway via NBQX in AcbSh combined with reversible inactivation of the contralateral BLA attenuates expression of extinction. Together, these results suggest that AcbSh AMPA receptors mediate expression of extinguished reward seeking through glutamatergic inputs from the BLA.     

Child and parental outcomes of a group parenting intervention for Latino families: A pilot study of the CANNE program

Criando a Nuestros Ni?os hacia el éxito (CANNE) is the Spanish adaptation of Parenting Our Children to Excellence (PACE). A pilot study conducted with 124 parents of preschoolers (mostly recent Mexican immigrants) provides preliminary evidence for the community acceptability and efficacy of CANNE. Eighty-eight of the 124 parents who enrolled in the program attended one or more of the 8 sessions (17% attended 1 session, 11% attended 2-4 sessions, and 72% attended 5 or more sessions), participated actively in sessions, and expressed high degrees of program satisfaction. Over time, parents improved on measures of harsh-inconsistent discipline, and children improved on social competence and social-communication skills. When high-versus-low attenders were compared, high attenders (parents who attended 4 sessions or more) reported greater increases than low attenders in their appropriate-positive parenting practices and clear expectations, and in their children's social competence and communication skills, and they reported greater decreases in their harsh-inconsistent discipline and in their children's aggressiveness and hyperactivity. Some of these changes were evident by the end of the program, whereas others became apparent (or stronger) over a 3-month follow-up period. These encouraging results point to the need for an efficacy study that assesses how well CANNE can help larger numbers of Latino parents in the important task of bringing up their young children in the United States.