Trial Parameters
Brief Summary
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.
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria: * Children must be between the ages of 4 years old and 5 years, 11 months old * Parent must be the legal guardian of the target child and must live with the child full-time * Parents will be 18 years and older (no maximum age limit) * Only one child and one parent per family can participate in the study * Child is Medicaid eligible, defined as receiving Medicaid or eligible based on family income (up to 142 percent of the federal poverty level) * At enrollment the child will have moderate-to-severe (i.e., (sub)clinical) impairments in executive functioning as indicated by having a global executive composite standardized score greater than or equal to 60 on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P), which will be completed by parents at the initial screen * Given that some assessment materials are only validated in English, parents and children for this study will need to be English-speaking * Child does not have a prior or curre