The proposed research entails two separate projects entitled, Social and Cognitive Treatments for Conduct Problems and Assessment of Childhood Depression. The objectives of the initial project are to examine alternative techniques to treat conduct problem children and strategies to maintain therapeutic changes after treatment has been terminated. The research will examine two treatments (parent training and self-instruction training) for aggressive behavior of children ages 6-12 who are hospitalized in a facility for acute psychiatric and behavioral disorders. The two treatments focus on family interaction patterns and cognitive mediation deficits, respectively, which have been identified as problematic among conduct problem children. The investigations compare the separate and combined effects of parent and self-instruction training and evaluate the impact of alternative maintenance strategies involving self-help materials for parents, telephone contact, and direct patient contact. The objectives of the second project are to examine the validity of existing measures and to develop new measures of childhood depression. Assessment devices will be administered to children referred for outpatient or inpatient treatment. The validational approaches include evaluation of concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity and differentiation of depressed, nondepressed, and normal children. In addition, the research will examine nonverbal behavior facial electromyography, and overt motor and social behaviors as measures of childhood depression. The overriding purpose is to develop a comprehensive and empirically-based assessment battery to measure severity of childhood depression.
| Kazdin, A E; Sherick, R B; Esveldt-Dawson, K et al. (1985) Nonverbal behavior and childhood depression. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry 24:303-9 |
