This proposal describes a 5 year mentored training program to develop a research career in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Research will focus on the CBCL-Dysregulation Profiles as a measure of mood instability, attention problems, and aggression that is often seen in child and adolescent psychiatry clinics, but poorly studies and understood
Role: Principal Investigator
A face that is looking directly at us stands out more prominently than the other faces in a crowd; this phenomenon is called the stare-in-a-crowd effect. Initially, the ability to pick out these self-directed faces played an evolutionary role. Quick identification of faces allows us to determine if another being is looking at us and whether or not they are a threat (Senju et al 2005). In our world today, the ability to detect direct gaze plays an important role in social awareness (von Grunau 1995). In particular, identifying direct gaze is important to understand how another individual is feeling (Baron-Cohen 1995) and to recognize their facial expression (Pelphrey et al 2002). Speed in identifying gaze direction is still important; once a person recognizes that a face is directed at them, they allocate more cognitive resources to detecting information about this other person (Conty et al 2007). With the importance of direct gaze detection already established, this study will employ advanced eye tracking technology to look at this effect in situations that more closely simulate real social situations. Much of the field uses photos of individuals for this research; the proposed study will use stimulus photographs of groups of people. Additionally, the eye tracking technology will allow us to manipulate the stimulus photographs in reaction to where a subject is looking.
Children with severe and profound problems with self-regulation commonly present to the clinic of a child and adolescent psychiatrist. These children often come with an array of problems in attention, cognition and behavior. While some of these children have previously been labeled as “bipolar”, the majority of these children do not fit that designation because they do not have episodes of elevated, expansive moods alternating the depression. Rather, they have chronic, nonepisodic irritability. We have been studying the nature of this kind of “dysregulation” and have demonstrated that it has both genetic and environmental influences, with the environmental influences being the most profound earlier in life. Unfortunately, there are no current treatments that have been demonstrated for these children. The proposed research protocol aims to test the utility of psychoeducational psychotherapy in children with dysregulation, but without bipolar disorder. Participants will be 20 children and adolescents ages 8-13 and their parents recruited from the Pediatric Psychiatry Clinic (PPC) at the Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families (VCCYF). Children and their families seeking evaluation and treatment at the VCCYF and the PPC are routinely offered the opportunity to participate in research studies (research protocol CHRMS# 09-210).
Klingestion Third Generation Foundation. "Donald J. Cohen Medical Student Training Program"
The goals of the program, in keeping with the mission of the Department of Psychiatry and the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry within the Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families:
- to create positive mentoring relationships between medical students and child psychiatrists
- to teach empirically-based and family-centered assessment
- to encourage students to consider a career in child and adolescent psychiatry
Vermont Center on Behavior and Health:
The proposed center will investigate relationships between personal behavior patterns (e.g., substance abuse, sedentary lifestyle, medication non-adherence) and risk for chronic disease and premature death. The overarching focus will be on developing and evaluating clinical interventions for these risk behaviors and examining biases in decision-making and other potential mechanisms underpinning vulnerability to unhealthy behavior patterns using a behavioral economic conceptual framework.
Role: Project PI (Higgins, PI) Multi Investigator Project
Training in Behavioral Pharmacology of Drug Abuse
(Higgins, PI) Role: Co-I
Last modified July 28 2015 03:30 PM