Deficits in executive functioning (EF) disproportionately impact children living in poverty and increase risk for psychopathology, particularly disruptive behavior disorders. This randomized clinical trial seeks to determine whether childhood EF, assessed across neural and behavioral units of analysis, is an experimental therapeutic target that can be directly modified through caregiver participation in the Chicago Parent Program (CPP), if increases in EF predict reduced disruptive behavior trajectories in low-income children over a short-term follow-up period, and identify which CPP-driven parenting skill improvements are the most influential in modifying EF. This work will contribute new knowledge as to whether a cost-efficient parenting intervention, developed for and with low-income families raising young children in poverty, can modify EF, a neural behavioral mechanism implicated in risk for childhood disruptive behavior problems.
Impairments in executive functioning (EF), cognitive processes that support self-regulation, disproportionately impact children living in poverty and increase vulnerability for childhood disruptive behavior, which trigger a cascade of mental health problems and psychosocial difficulties across the lifespan. Poverty-related stress and maladaptive parenting styles have been linked to alterations of neural and behavioral EF markers in children; despite this, no studies have studied if parenting prevention programs can directly target childhood EF, and through improving EF, reduce disruptive behaviors in at-risk children. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award project seeks to conduct a mechanistic randomized clinical trial to determine whether neural-behavioral indices of childhood EF is an experimental therapeutic target that can be modified via caregiver participation in the Chicago Parent Program. Consistent with the NIMH Research Domain Criteria framework, childhood EF will be assessed across brain and behavior measurement units. The second aim of the clinical trial seeks to evaluate whether increases in childhood neural-behavioral EF mediate the effects of CPP in reducing disruptive behavior problems over a short-term follow-up. A third exploratory aim of the project is to preliminarily test whether increases in specific parenting practices (discipline, scaffolding), previously linked to individual differences in EF, mediate the effects of CPP in predicting change in childhood neural-behavioral EF. The sample will include 90 Medicaid eligible parent-child (ages 4-5 years old) dyads and will employ a novel recruitment approach where the target child will have moderate-to-severe EF delays at baseline but does not meet diagnostic criteria for a disruptive behavior disorder.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
180
Chicago Parent Program is an evidence-based group parenting intervention designed to reduce disruptive behavior in young children (2-8 years old).
University of Illinois-Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, United States
RECRUITINGBehavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P)
Parents will complete the BRIEF-P to assess their child's executive functioning, and the Global Executive Composite score will be used in the analysis.
Time frame: an average of 4 months
NIH Toolbox Early Childhood Cognitive Battery
Children will be administered the NIH Toolbox Early Childhood Cognitive Battery to assess their executive functioning.
Time frame: an average of 4 months
EEG-Based indices of EF
Children will complete the Zoo Go/No-Go computerized task while EEG is simultaneously recorded. Event-related potential components that index EF and theta spectral power and error-related interchannel phase frequency between frontocentral and frontolateral regions, will be used in the analyses.
Time frame: an average of 4 months
Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL, 1.5-5)
Parents will complete the Child Behavior Checklist in order to assess children's disruptive behavior symptoms.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 16 months
Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI)
Parents will complete the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory in order to assess children's disruptive behavior problems.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 16 months
Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS)-COMPUTER (COMP)
Parents will be administered the clinician administered the K-SADS-COMP, which is a web-based semi-structured interview to assess children's disruptive behavior symptoms and to determine if children meet criteria for a disruptive behavior disorder.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 16 months
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