Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for College Students With ADHD: Temporal Stability of Improvements in Functioning Following Active Treatment.

Objective: This study examined the extent to which college students with ADHD continued to benefit from a cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) program beyond the active phase of treatment. Method: In successive cohorts over a 4-year period, a total of 88 college students with well-defined ADHD received CBT in an open clinical trial format that included active treatment and maintenance phases delivered across two consecutive semesters. Results: Immediately following active treatment, participants displayed statistically significant reductions in ADHD symptoms, improvements in executive functioning, and declines in anxiety and depression symptoms. Although grade point average did not improve significantly, there were statistically significant increases in the number of credit hours that participants attempted and earned across active treatment. Improvements in symptom severity, executive functioning, and educational functioning remained stable 5 to 7 months after active treatment concluded. Conclusion: Findings from this study support the use of CBT interventions for college students with ADHD.

Construct Validity of the Emotion Matching Task: Preliminary Evidence for Convergent and Criterion Validity of a New Emotion Knowledge Measure for Young Children.

Current emotion knowledge measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of emotion knowledge (EK), the Emotion Matching Task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive emotion knowledge, expressive emotion knowledge, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion expression matching. First, we compared the EMT and its parts to two widely used EK measures-the Kusche Emotional Inventory (KEI) and Denham's Affective Knowledge Test (AKT, 1986) in order to establish convergent validity. The EMT and its four parts were strongly correlated with both measures of emotion knowledge. Regression analyses revealed moderate to strong predictive validity for EMT. Compared to KEI and AKT, the EMT was a more robust predictor of teacher rated emotion regulation and parent reported effortful control. Compared to KEI and AKT, the EMT correlated similarly with verbal ability and age.

Accelerating the development of emotion competence in Head Start children: effects on adaptive and maladaptive behavior.

Separate studies of rural and urban Head Start systems tested the hypothesis that an emotion-based prevention program (EBP) would accelerate the development of emotion and social competence and decrease agonistic behavior and potential precursors of psychopathology. In both studies, Head Start centers were randomly assigned to treatment and control/comparison group conditions. In Study 1 (rural community), results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that compared to the control condition (Head Start as usual), EBP produced greater increases in emotion knowledge and emotion regulation and greater decreases in children's negative emotion expressions, aggression, anxious/depressed behavior, and negative peer and adult interactions. In Study 2 (inner city), compared to the established prevention program I Can Problem Solve, EBP led to greater increases in emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, positive emotion expression, and social competence. In Study 2, emotion knowledge mediated the effects of EBP on emotion regulation, and emotion competence (an aggregate of emotion knowledge and emotion regulation) mediated the effects of EBP on social competence.