Description:

Purpose: Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds often begin formal schooling at greater risk for negative social and academic outcomes. In recent years, researchers have identified children's early development of attention skills as an important indicator of later school success. For example, recent research has shown that attention skills such as working memory and selective attention are related to children's language and literacy skills. This research team developed an evidence-based intervention, Parents and Children Making-Connections-Attention (PCMC-A), under a previous IES grant award. The intervention led to improvements in children's early literacy skills, receptive language abilities, and nonverbal intelligence. Although the researchers reported significant findings, the original study population did not include Latino families. There is a need for the development and evaluation of intervention models that are designed to address the attention skills of children from Spanish speaking families, a growing segment of the preschool population. The purpose of the current study is to: (1) adapt and implement the intervention with a sample of Latino families, and (2) replicate the efficacy of the intervention with this sample. Adapting the intervention for Latino families and testing its efficacy in this large and growing segment of the population who are at high risk for school failure is a next step before scaling up the intervention to reach additional Head Start programs and, ultimately, all at-risk preschoolers.

Project Activities: This project will be conducted over a period of 4 years. In Year 1, researchers will develop a teacher's manual and a DVD with examples for delivering the intervention to Latino families. Research staff and preschool program staff will receive training to deliver the intervention to participating families. In the second half of Year 1, researchers will pilot both the training materials and the treatment fidelity procedures. Also in Year 1, the research team will evaluate the fidelity of implementation and assess family and child outcomes. In Years 1–4, the research team will randomly assign children and parents to the intervention group or the control group. In the intervention group, low socioeconomic status Head Start preschool children and parents will receive the 8-week attention training program (PCMC-A). In addition, the research team will collect child-, parent-, and teacher-level data to address the goals of the project. Members of the research team will conduct quantitative analyses to examine the relative effects of the PCMC-A intervention on cognitive and academic outcomes of Latino and non-Latino children and families.

Products: Products from this project include evidence of the efficacy of the PCMC-A intervention for Latino children and families enrolled in Head Start. Peer-reviewed publications will also be produced.

Structured Abstract

Setting: This study will take place in Head Start schools in Oregon and the Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon.

Population: Participants will include 150 Latino and 150 non-Latino preschoolers enrolled in Head Start and their parents.

Intervention: Researchers will adapt the intervention, PCMC-A for Latino families. PCMC-A is based on cognitive neuroscience research describing the development and neuroplasticity of attention, and on parent training research designed to reduce family stress levels by targeting family dynamics. The PCMC-A intervention is an attention training intervention with parent child components. The parent-directed component includes a scaffolded set of 25 strategies delivered in small group format to address the overarching goals of: (a) regulating family stress with predictability, planning, and problem-solving strategies; (b) creating and maintaining consistent family structure with contingency-based discipline strategies; (c) providing cognitive facilitation with iconic visualization strategies; (d) enriching the language environment of the home; and (e) increasing parents' knowledge of age-appropriate behavior and achievement across multiple domains, with a focus on attention. Parents also receive information on the childrens' attention activities, with suggestions for home-based modifications to provide further practice. Small-group instruction with parents is supplemented with support calls from research and program staff between meetings. The child component includes a set of 20 small group activities designed to address the overarching goals of increasing metacognitive awareness to support self-regulation of attention and emotion states. The activities target aspects of attention including selective attention, working memory, and attention/task switching.

Research Design and Methods: Within each subgroup (Latino and non-Latino), preschoolers will be randomly assigned to either PCMC-A or Head Start as usual. Low SES Head Start preschool children and parents in the treatment group will receive the 8-week attention training program (PCMC-A). In the first six months of Year 1 and prior to beginning the efficacy study, researchers will finalize training materials and intervention fidelity procedures and begin training additional staff who will deliver the intervention (for both parents and children). The adaptation of PCMC-A for Latino families will be carried out, and procedures will be established for recruiting and evaluating program staff from the bicultural/bilingual Latino community. In the second half of Year 1, researchers will pilot the training materials and the treatment fidelity procedures. Also in Year 1, the researchers will evaluate the program staffs' fidelity of instruction and assess family and child outcomes. Researchers will deliver the intervention and collect data from the winter and spring quarters of Year 1 and during all three quarters of Years 2–4. Thus, over the course of this project, researchers anticipate obtaining full data from 11 quarters. Out of approximately 300 children, 150 will receive PCMC-A and 150 will attend Head Start as usual; approximately 75 of each group will be Latino and 75 non-Latino.

Control Condition: Preschoolers and parents in the control group will not receive the PCMC-A intervention and will participate in Head Start as usual.

Key Measures: Behavioral tests of language (e.g., Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool: Second Edition-CELF-P2 and Get it, Got It, Go!), cognition and attention (e.g., Forward Word Span—a measure of working memory; Computer Stroop and Gift Delay Tasks— measures of executive function), and electrophysiological measures of attention will be administered. Parents and teachers will complete questionnaires documenting child behavior and family stress and interactions between parents and children will be videotaped and quantified to document parent language, turn-taking and conflict resolution.

Data Analytic Strategy: A series of planned comparisons using analyses of covariance will be performed to test the relative effects of PCMC-A on outcomes for Latino and non-Latino children and families. Structural equation modeling will also be used to examine the effects of the different components of PCMC-A on intervention outcomes.

Related IES Projects: Training Attention in Preschool: Effects on Neurocognitive Functions and School Performance (R305B070018) and Longitudinal Follow-up of Successful Parent/Child Intervention in Pre-school Children At Risk for School Failure (R305A110397)

Products and Publications

Book chapter

Pakulak, E., Hampton Wray, A., Longoria, Z., Garcia Isaza, A., Stevens, C., Bell, T., ... & Neville, H. (2017). Cultural Adaptation of a Neurobiologically Informed Intervention in Local and International Contexts. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2017(158), 81–92.

Stevens, C., and Neville, H. (2014). Specificity of Experiential Effects in Neurocognitive Development. In M.S. Gazzaniga and G.R. Magnum, Eds., The Cognitive Neurosciences (pp. 129–142. Cambridge: The MIT Press.