Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the presence and degree of treatment effects found for direct attention training on three individuals with idiopathic Parkinsons disease (PD) using the Attention Process Training, Third Edition (APT-III; Sohlberg & Mateer, 2010). APT-III was designed for use with individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and was selected for this study because of the similarities in cognitive deficits between those with TBI and those with PD. Methods: This study was designed as a phase 2, randomized baseline, A1-B-A2-A3 (baseline, treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up assessment), single-subject experimental design. The study followed the APT-III protocol (Sohlberg & Mateer, 2010) to train attention processes over the course of 6 weeks in two 60 minute sessions per week. Results: Participants all displayed treatment effects in at least one attentional domain following this study. Results of secondary outcome measures designed to quantify level of impairment, activity, and participation were variable. All participants remained within functional limits for working memory for healthy adults their age, and all reported making progress toward functional goals. Discussion: The results of this study suggest that direct attention training using APT-III can improve attention in people with PD (PPD), and that these improvements can be generalized to increase performance on activities of daily living and other functional activities. It also suggests that PPD may benefit from future research investigating the use of APT-III.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dually implicated processes of language and self-regulation in reading comprehension and to determine if self-regulation contributes unique variance to reading comprehension beyond word recognition/decoding and oral language comprehension. The study also sought to determine if the unique contribution of self-regulation to reading comprehension differs for students with language/learning difficulties and students with typical language/learning histories. Thirty-two 6th, 7th, and 8th graders participated in this study. Of these participants, 17 students had language/learning difficulties and 15 students had typical language/learning histories. All participants attended a low performing public middle school located in a rural school district. Each participant was administered a battery of assessments that elicited measures of reading comprehension, oral language comprehension, word recognition/decoding, and self-regulation. The dependent variable in the analyses was the performance score on the reading comprehension measure. Independent variables included the measures of oral language ability, word recognition/decoding, and self-regulation. Hierarchical multiple regression and correlation analyses were used to explore the relationship among these variables and to determine their contribution to reading comprehension. The results of this investigation indicated that self-regulation contributed significant variance to reading comprehension in addition to the variance accounted for by oral language comprehension and word recognition/decoding in adolescent learners. Further, the investigation found that self-regulation was moderately correlated with word recognition/decoding and highly correlated with oral language comprehension. Findings also revealed that self-regulation contributed a greater proportion of variance to reading comprehension for students with typical language/learning histories than for students with language/learning difficulties, supporting earlier research showing poor readers fail to use active comprehension strategies when reading.

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No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Psychiatry / Master / Master of Philosophy

Previous research demonstrates an uneven pattern of cognitive abilities in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study examined whether this uneven pattern exists in preschool children. Participants include 24 children with high-functioning ASD and 28 typically developing (TD) children aged 4 to 6 with comparable average age and development level. No significant group difference in cognitive abilities was found between the ASD and TD group on the MANOVA. Patterns of cognitive functioning found include better performance on memory, weaker performance on language comprehension and expression, fine motor and speed of processing. Nonverbal and visual motor abilities were comparable between groups. Language expression was less impaired than language comprehension, and fine motor abilities were correlated with more cognitive abilities. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

In the literature, a well-known effective program in reducing children’s anxiety symptoms is the ‘Coping Cat’ program (Kendall, 1994). However, effectiveness studies of parental education program have been relatively limited. Parenting factors are important as the risk for anxiety disorders appears particularly high in the offspring of anxious parents (McClure, Brennan, Hammen, & Le Brocque, 2001). Further parenting styles such as over-involvement and criticism was found to play a significant role in the development and maintenance of childhood anxiety (Gar, & Hudson, 2008). Therefore, this study adopted the ‘Coping Cat’ treatment program and delivered exclusively to parents of 14 children with anxiety symptoms of ages 6-11. The intervention group consisted of 6 2-hours group sessions of 4 to 7 parents. Psychological questionnaires were administered to parents during pre and post treatment. The outcome measures were compared with another 14 parents who did not receive the parental education program. Self-reported questionnaires were administered, including Parenting Stress Scale (PSS), Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ), Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE 13), Brief COPE and Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED), to assess parental stress, parental styles, parental stress-coping styles and indirect effect on children’s anxiety symptoms. Repeated-measures ANOVA and paired sample t-tests was computed to evaluate the effects of the parental program. Results suggested that the intervention group showed significantly reduction in parents and children’s levels of stress and anxiety symptoms. It also demonstrated significant decrease of child’s separation anxiety symptoms and school avoidance behaviours after intervention. Moreover, significant reduced level of negative parental practices and increased practices of positive stress-coping strategies were found at post-treatment. Furthermore, perceived efficacy in stopping unpleasant emotions and thoughts as well as getting support from friends and family had improved. Additionally, the reduced stress symptoms among participants in the intervention group were negatively correlated with the increased use of humour coping strategies. Likewise, the reduced level of anxiety symptoms at post-treatment was positively correlated with the reduced practices of negative and ineffective discipline. / published_or_final_version / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

No description available.