This application seeks a two year extension of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Academic Award: Language and Developmental Disabilities in Children, for Carl Feinstein MD, Medical Director of the Developmental Disabilities Program at Bradley Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Brown University Department of Psychiatry. His research mentor is Thomas Anders MD, Professor and Vice-Chairman for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Bradley and Brown. Both the Hospital and the Psychiatry Department are committed to excellence in research, training and clinical service for developmentally disabled children and adolescents. The major objective of this award remains the development of Dr. Feinstein's research expertise and mentorship capacity in the psychiatric aspects of language and developmental disabilities in children and adolescents. In the proposed extension, Dr. Feinstein will complete two mentored research projects begun during the initial three year grant award. These research projects are: (1) Language and Neuropsychological Deficits in Psychiatrically Disordered Adolescents. This project studies language and neuropsychological deficits in psychiatrically disordered teenagers, and the relationship of these deficits to social skills problems that increase psychosocial vulnerability and impede effective treatment; and (2) Psychiatric Disorder and Social Deficits in Children with Higher Cerebral Function Disorders. This project studies the psychiatric vulnerability and social impairments of developmentally disabled preschoolers with mental retardation, developmental language disorder or pervasive developmental disorder from the ages of 3 to 9, employing a prospective longitudinal design. The objectives of this multidisciplinary project are to develop an empirically-based nosology for higher cerebral function disorders in children, and to better predict both positive and adverse developmental outcomes in these at-risk children, so that more effective preventive interventions may be designed.
| Walters, A S; Barrett, R P; Feinstein, C (1990) Social relatedness and autism: current research, issues, directions. Res Dev Disabil 11:303-26 |
