Abstract: Child Parent Psychotherapy Improves Children's Executive Function Post-Exposure to Interpersonal Trauma (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

Schedule:

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Pacific D/L (Hyatt Regency San Francisco)

* noted as presenting author

Emily Cohodes, BA, Clinical Research Coordinator, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

Nicole Bush, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

Stephen Chen, PhD, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

Alicia Lieberman, PhD, Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair in Infant Mental Health, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

Introduction

A growing body of literature suggests that children’s executive functioning (EF) may be a key mechanism linking interpersonal trauma exposure to negative outcomes such as internalizing and externalizing disorders, cognitive delay and developmental psychopathology (Raver, 2004; Shonkoff, 2011; Teicher, et al., 1997). However, empirical research testing the efficacy of interventions to improve children’s EF in high-risk contexts has been extremely limited. The present study provides an initial test of the efficacy of Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP; Lieberman, Van Horn, & Ghosh Ippen, 2005) in improving children’s EF following exposure to interpersonal trauma. CPP has been found to reduce children’s total behavioral problems and traumatic stress symptoms post-exposure to domestic violence (Lieberman, et al., 2005), to aid development of preschoolers’ secure attachment to caregivers (Cicchetti, Rogosch, & Toth, 2006), and to increase children’s regulation of cortisol levels (Cicchetti, Rogosch,Toth, and Sturge-Apple, 2011).

We hypothesized that children engaged in CPP would show improvements in their EF performance over the course of treatment (mean sessions = 17.21; SD = 5.12) and that this change would be associated with reductions in children’s trauma symptomatology.

Method

Caregiver and child dyads (N=43) with a history of exposure to interpersonal trauma completed a multi-method, multi-informant assessment in a county hospital trauma clinic both prior to enrollment in CPP and post-treatment. To assess child EF, we used the Executive Function Scale for Preschoolers (EF Scale; Carlson & Harrod, 2013), which measures children’s inhibitory control and task switching abilities (Carlson & Harrod, 2013). Caregivers also reported on children’s trauma-related symptoms using the Trauma Symptoms Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC; Briere, 2001).

Results

As hypothesized, children’s age-corrected EF scores improved from baseline to follow-up assessment (t(46) = -5.91, p < .001). In addition, children’s improvements in EF were associated with improvements in parental report of children’s PTSD symptomatology (r(38) = .47, p < .01); anxiety (r(38) = .38, p < .05); depression (r(38) = .37, p <.05); and dissociation (r(38) = .42, p <.01).

Conclusions and Future Directions

Our preliminary results suggest that CPP impacts children’s development of key self-regulatory capacities and that this improvement is associated with reductions in children’s trauma symptomatology. Our results provide some of the first information on the efficacy of intervention to improve children’s EF in a trauma-exposed minority population of preschool-aged children. We expect to obtain longitudinal follow up data on 25 additional children and will rerun these analyses prior to May’s conference.

Abstract: Child Parent Psychotherapy Improves Children's Executive Function Post-Exposure to Interpersonal Trauma (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

232 Child Parent Psychotherapy Improves Children's Executive Function Post-Exposure to Interpersonal Trauma