This proposal seeks funds to test a method of preventive mental health in low-income children. The project seeks to prevent the two major mental health problems of children: aggression/defiance and anxiety/withdrawal. It also seeks to prevent the academic failure that is strongly related to behavior disorders in children. The strategy of the proposed intervention is to promote competence in 1) cooperation, compliance, and kindness; 2) confident social interaction, and 3) proficient use of language. Subjects are socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers attending Head Start Centers. The proposed experimental intervention involves training parents to be """"""""preceptors"""""""" for their own children. The """"""""preceptor"""""""" has four or five sessions per week with the child, lasting about thirty minutes; the formal intervention lasts a school year, but parents are encouraged to continue the activities indefinitely. These sessions emphasize two activities: dramatic play, and the reading and telling of stories. Stories and plays have been constructed so as to provide models of the skills listed above. The preceptor uses attention and approval to encourage the child to enact rehearsals of prosocial patterns in fantasy as well as in real life. Standard written and videotaped training materials specify not only the intervention for the child, but the method by which preceptors are trained to carry out this intervention. The proposed research tests the efficacy of these methods, in such a way as to control for """"""""spillover"""""""" effects from experimental to control children. Seventeen head start centers will first be randomly assigned to be experimental or control centers; children in the experimental centers will be randomly assigned to experimental or control condition. Two hundred fifty-five families in all will be invited to participate. The control intervention involves a brief exposure of parents to classic social-learning methods used in parenting. Measures of psychological/behavioral functioning and language ability will be employed at pretest, posttest, and at follow-up eight months to one year after the intervention ends. All raters and testers will be blind to the experimental or control status of the children.
| Strayhorn, J M; Weidman, C S (1991) Follow-up one year after parent-child interaction training: effects on behavior of preschool children. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 30:138-43 |
| Martini, D R; Strayhorn, J M; Puig-Antich, J (1990) A symptom self-report measure for preschool children. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 29:594-600 |
| Strayhorn, J M; Weidman, C S (1989) Reduction of attention deficit and internalizing symptoms in preschoolers through parent-child interaction training. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 28:888-96 |
| Strayhorn, J M; Weidman, C S (1988) A Parent Practices Scale and its relation to parent and child mental health. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 27:613-8 |
| Strayhorn Jr, J M (1987) Control groups for psychosocial intervention outcome studies. Am J Psychiatry 144:275-82 |
