This study examined parenting stress among parents of adolescents with ADHD. The sample comprised 45 adolescents (26 ADHD; 19 Comparison) age 13 to 18 and their parents. The Stress Index for Parents of Adolescents was completed by both mothers and fathers of participating youth. Parents of adolescents with ADHD reported more stress than parents of adolescents without ADHD. Mothers of adolescents with ADHD experience higher levels of stress in all areas. Fathers of adolescents with ADHD experience more total stress and more stress in the Adolescent and Adolescent-Parent Relationship domains. Maternal inattention and adolescent externalizing behaviour mediated the relationship between ADHD status and maternal parenting stress, and ADHD status and adolescent externalizing behaviour were found to predict paternal parenting stress. The results of this study provide strong support for the need to provide parents of adolescents with ADHD with interventions designed to reduce or help them cope with parenting stress.

This study examined parenting stress among parents of adolescents with ADHD. The sample comprised 45 adolescents (26 ADHD; 19 Comparison) age 13 to 18 and their parents. The Stress Index for Parents of Adolescents was completed by both mothers and fathers of participating youth. Parents of adolescents with ADHD reported more stress than parents of adolescents without ADHD. Mothers of adolescents with ADHD experience higher levels of stress in all areas. Fathers of adolescents with ADHD experience more total stress and more stress in the Adolescent and Adolescent-Parent Relationship domains. Maternal inattention and adolescent externalizing behaviour mediated the relationship between ADHD status and maternal parenting stress, and ADHD status and adolescent externalizing behaviour were found to predict paternal parenting stress. The results of this study provide strong support for the need to provide parents of adolescents with ADHD with interventions designed to reduce or help them cope with parenting stress.

The current study was designed to investigate the effect of concussion on verbal learning and memory performance in youth hockey players. Concussed participants completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) prior to the start of the hockey season. Following recovery from concussion, six males (10-12 years), with one sustaining two concussions, completed a follow-up assessment. A difference score was calculated for five RAVLT index scores. Each instance of concussion was matched to two controls on age, gender, and testing protocol in order to control for the confounding influences of repeated testing sessions. Independent-samples t-tests revealed a trend towards a significant decrease in change scores for the concussed participants on the Delayed Recall Trial of the RAVLT. These results suggest that long-term verbal memory may be negatively affected by concussion; however, future studies are needed with larger sample sizes and additional follow-up points in order to better understand the impact.

The suicide of a loved one is a traumatic life event that brings considerable emotional suffering. In the present study, the term suicide survivor refers to an individual bereaved though suicide. In the aftermath of their loss, some suicide survivors become peer counsellors and thereby draw on their painful experiences to provide assistance to others bereaved in this manner. Although these individuals play an important supportive role, little is known about their experiences with doing this kind of volunteer work. This study sought to explore the phenomenon of peer counselling in suicide bereavement by addressing the question, what are the lived experiences of suicide survivors who become peer counsellors? The purpose of the study was to understand how these individuals conceptualize their volunteer work and how their volunteerism may affect their own ongoing healing from the loss to suicide. Participants were 15 individuals bereaved through suicide who had been volunteering with others bereaved in the same manner for at least two years. This research employed a qualitative phenomenological methodology to provide a detailed description of participants’ journeys that went from experiencing the suicide of a loved one, to the decision to become a peer counsellor, to, finally, providing support to other survivors. The findings suggest that participants understand the provision of peer counselling as a transformative process. As a result of their volunteering, they undergo personal growth and acquire new skills. They conceptualize providing peer counselling as reaching out to other survivors of suicide and thereby countering the loneliness and isolation of suicide bereavement. For the participants, being a peer counsellor means actively challenging the silence around suicide by speaking out about suicide-related issues and offering other survivors a safe space to share their stories. The broader implications of these findings for suicide postvention research and clinical practice are addressed.

The current study was designed to investigate the effect of concussion on verbal learning and memory performance in youth hockey players. Concussed participants completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) prior to the start of the hockey season. Following recovery from concussion, six males (10-12 years), with one sustaining two concussions, completed a follow-up assessment. A difference score was calculated for five RAVLT index scores. Each instance of concussion was matched to two controls on age, gender, and testing protocol in order to control for the confounding influences of repeated testing sessions. Independent-samples t-tests revealed a trend towards a significant decrease in change scores for the concussed participants on the Delayed Recall Trial of the RAVLT. These results suggest that long-term verbal memory may be negatively affected by concussion; however, future studies are needed with larger sample sizes and additional follow-up points in order to better understand the impact.

The current study explored the relationship between client’s history of childhood abuse and psychotherapy outcome, specifically, depressive symptoms, interpersonal problems, dysfunctional attitudes, self-esteem and attachment. The study also explored the relationship between client’s history of childhood abuse and current introject style, as well as the relationship between client introject style and psychotherapy outcome. The current study consisted of a sample of 60 clients and was drawn from an archival database of clients who were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and received 16 weeks of psychotherapy treatment (Watson, Gordon, Stermac, Kalogerakos & Steckley (2003). Client’s history of childhood abuse was determined using the Traumatic Stress Inventory (TSI short-form; McCann & Pearlman, 1992). Introject styles were established using the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour (SASB; Benjamin, 1974), an observer rated process measure. The middle 15 minutes of an early (session 3) and late session (session 15) were rated using the SASB. Results indicated that women who experienced childhood abuse showed a reduction in levels of their self-accepting introject style in session 15 compared to session 3 while women without childhood abuse showed increased levels of the self-accepting introject style in session 15 compared to session 3. Results also indicated that clients with managing and cultivating of self introject styles as measured at session 3 showed improvements in dysfunctional attitudes, interpersonal problems and self-esteem by the end of 16-weeks of psychotherapy. Having a history of childhood abuse was not related to any of the outcome measures; clients, regardless of history of childhood abuse improved over time. Results did show history of childhood abuse to be related to perceptions of early childhood attachment experiences; specifically, clients with histories of childhood abuse showed higher scores overall for perceptions of experiences with caregivers as rejecting and angry. Finally, results indicated that clients with a history of childhood abuse have a significantly greater number of depressive episodes on average than clients without a history of childhood abuse. Implications for future research and clinical work are discussed.

This thesis includes four studies designed to improve the ability to predict and assess language representation in healthy children and/or individuals with neurological disorders arising in childhood. In the first study, the role of pathology type on interhemispheric plasticity of language was determined by comparing lateralization in children with developmental, acquired, and tumour pathologies. Findings from 105 consecutive intracarotid sodium amobarbital procedures were retrospectively analyzed, revealing no lateralization differences between pathology groups. In the second study, a novel verb generation paradigm and magnetoencephalography (MEG) were used to determine the spatial-temporal characteristics of language expression in healthy subjects (n = 12) and children with neurological disorders (n = 4). Time-frequency and differential beamformer analyses revealed low-beta event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the left inferior frontal lobe for verb generation. The paradigm was well-tolerated by all subjects. The third study involved assessment of expressive language lateralization in 25 healthy subjects, aged 5-18 years, using two novel MEG paradigms: covert picture naming and verb generation. Novel analyses permitted objective quantification of ERD lateralization on an individual basis. For both tasks, left lateralization of frontal lobe ERD tended to increase with advancing age. Findings suggest that adult-typical left lateralization emerges from an early bilateral language network in normal development. In the fourth study, frontal lobe ERD lateralization for naming and verb generation was characterized in 14 children and adolescents with neurological disorders. Novel analyses permitted objective assessment of individual scans at multiple contrast time windows. In several cases, rapid hemispheric shifts in predominant frontal lobe ERD were observed through the response period. On an individual basis, the assessment protocol showed promise for future use in a presurgical context. These studies serve to advance the understanding of normal paediatric language representation, and improve the ability to predict and assess language lateralization in individuals who have experienced early neurological insults.

Despite the high prevalence of father-perpetrated maltreatment, relatively little empirical attention has been given to men who abuse and neglect their children (Dubowitz, 2006, 2009; Haskett, Marziano, & Dover, 1996). To further our understanding, the current dissertation explored father-child relational dynamics that underlie risk for child maltreatment. In the first study, data from a sample of 121 maltreating fathers were used to discern differential patterns of parenting dynamics using both theoretical and statistical approaches to classification. It was hypothesized that fathers would show problems predominantly in one of five areas: emotional unavailability; negative attribution, harshness, and rejection; developmentally inappropriate interaction; poor psychological boundaries; and exposure of a child to hostile inter-parental relations. Contrary to expectation, little support was obtained for the predominant problem hypothesis. Although methodological limitations may play a role, results indicated that men were more clearly differentiated by the degree of severity evidenced across their problematic parent-child interactions, than by differences in the specific pattern of problems they experienced. An interesting finding from Study 1 was that increasingly severe relational problems were associated with a misprioritization of parent and child needs. Study 2 further explored this dynamic by revising and re-evaluating a self-report measure of men’s ability to balance needs in the father-child relationship. Data from two samples (93 community fathers and 85 maltreating fathers) provided mixed results: Support was obtained for the internal consistency and construct validity of the image-emotional needs subscale of the measure; however, minimal support was obtained for the personal needs subscale. Furthermore, in contrast to expectation, discriminant validity was not obtained for either subscale, as maltreating fathers reported a better ability to balance needs on both scales than fathers drawn from a community sample. Social desirability was one of several factors deemed to play a key role in this finding. Each study’s contribution to the field is reviewed, along with discussion of limitations and future directions.

Research suggests that brain growth follows an abnormal trajectory in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A better understanding of when and how patterns of brain development diverge from that seen in typically developing children could yield insight into the etiology of the disorder, and resulting symptomatology. To investigate this hypothesis, three studies examined the relation between structural and functional brain measures and age in a group of children with an ASD, aged 6 to 14 years. Age by group interactions were found in all three studies, providing further evidence that brain development may follow an atypical trajectory in ASD. Study 1: Differences in the relation between structural indices and age were found in grey matter volume, surface area and thickness, as well as in cortical thickness of specific regions in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44) and left precuneus. These measures of grey matter structure generally decreased with age in the ASD children, compared to little or no change with age in the typically developing children. Study 2: Differences in the relation between age and measures of longitudinal, radial and mean diffusivity were found in frontal, long distant, interhemispheric and posterior white matter tracts; diffusivity decreased with age in the typically developing group, but showed little or no change in the ASD group. Study 3: Differences in the relation between BOLD activation on a set-shifting task and age were found in brain regions important for cognitive flexibility, such as areas of prefrontal, right insula and parietal cortex. These effects were mainly due to decreasing activation with age for the ASD group, but increasing or no age-related change in the TD group. The findings of these three studies provide converging evidence in support of an hypothesis of dysregulated brain development in this population, which could have significant, compounding effects on the development of neural connectivity, and contribute to atypical cognitive development in children with ASD.

The present investigation examined a sample of 64 offenders treated at the Regional Treatment Centre (Ontario) Sex Offender Treatment Program (RTCSOTP) and a sample of 55 untreated sexual offenders from the Ontario region of Correctional Service of Canada. Groups were matched on age at index offence, Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) score and type of sexual offender. The Rapid Risk Assessment of Sexual Offence Recidivism Scale was scored on all participants. Recidivism, based upon officially recorded charges and conviction data, was the primary dependent measure. Results indicated that both treated participants and control participants, including those with high PCL-R scores, evidenced low sexual recidivism rates. Based on a survival analysis using time to recidivism as the dependent variable, no differences were found between treated and untreated sexual offenders. The need to consider a wider range of treatment outcome measures and the benefits of using dynamic methods of risk assessment are highlighted.