Executive Function and Parenting in Childhood — EPIC  

Executive Function Clinical Trial

Official title: Improving Brain-Behavior Markers of Preschool Executive Function Through a Group-Based Parenting Intervention for Low-Income Families

Status Recruiting

Clinical Trial 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.

Clinical Trial Description

Impairments in executive functioning (EF), cognitive processes that support self-regulation, disproportionately impact children living in poverty and increase vulnerability for childhood disruptive behavior, which trigger a cascade of mental health problems and psychosocial difficulties across the lifespan. Poverty-related stress and maladaptive parenting styles have been linked to alterations of neural and behavioral EF markers in children; despite this, no studies have studied if parenting prevention programs can directly target childhood EF, and through improving EF, reduce disruptive behaviors in at-risk children. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award project seeks to conduct a mechanistic randomized clinical trial to determine whether neural-behavioral indices of childhood EF is an experimental therapeutic target that can be modified via caregiver participation in the Chicago Parent Program. Consistent with the NIMH Research Domain Criteria framework, childhood EF will be assessed across brain and behavior measurement units. The second aim of the clinical trial seeks to evaluate whether increases in childhood neural-behavioral EF mediate the effects of CPP in reducing disruptive behavior problems over a short-term follow-up. A third exploratory aim of the project is to preliminarily test whether increases in specific parenting practices (discipline, scaffolding), previously linked to individual differences in EF, mediate the effects of CPP in predicting change in childhood neural-behavioral EF. The sample will include 90 Medicaid eligible parent-child (ages 4-5 years old) dyads and will employ a novel recruitment approach where the target child will have moderate-to-severe EF delays at baseline but does not meet diagnostic criteria for a disruptive behavior disorder. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders
• Child Behavior Disorders
• Disruptive Behavior
• Disruptive Behavior Disorder, Childhood Onset
• Executive Function
• Mental Disorders
• Problem Behavior

• NCT number: NCT06241300
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: University of Illinois at Chicago
• Contact: Jennifer Suor, PhD
• Phone: 7733208989
• Email: jesuor@uic.edu
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: November 20, 2023
• Completion date: March 31, 2028