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Educational goals
Friday, 29 May 2015
ES-1
Educational Seminar
17:00–18:00
w
Carron 1/2
Organisation and carrying out of parent training in
ADHD
Chair: C. Neuhaus, Germany
Purpose of the seminar:
Improving the communication-
strategies in families with ADHD.
Description of the seminar content:
Children with
ADHD have at least one parent, who has ADHD as well
(and knows the effect of negative communication: one
fails to react as one wants or should do). Parents should be
exceptionally well versed in the functionality of the brain
with ADHD, as those with one, are, amongst other things,
at the mercy of their emotions. This level of understanding
requires the assistance of a therapist with profound know-
ledge of ADHD in childhood, during adolescence as well
as in adulthood with all it‘s comorbidities. If parents really
understand this specific dysregulation of emotion, motiva-
tion and self-discipline, they can develop a positive atti-
tude towards the unique style of perception and reaction
in the family, learn to talk without nagging, to react sup-
portively, and to announce every task in a friendly fashion
(incl. learning to analyze conflicts and coping with self-
management deficits). If it is understood that the child
does not want to react inadequately and suffers from its
faults (along with the parent!) and parents are prepared
that „surprises“ may happen every minute of the day, they
can react promptly, albeit relaxed, and able to immediately
reinforce the next positive behavior. Since punishment or
negative consequences worsen the family interaction and
childs self-esteem, as has been proven in clinical practice,
the neuro-biological understanding of the child with
ADHD is essential to shift these into the positive.
Audience to be addressed:
Healthcare professionals in-
terested in getting an overview in ADHD-specific parent
training.
ES-2
Educational Seminar
17:00–18:00
w
Alsh 1/2
Ambulatory assessment to study ADHD patients in
their natural environment
Chair: C. Gawrilow, Germany
F. Schmiedek, Germany
Objectives:
Ambulatory assessment and experience sam-
pling methods have important advantages for behavioral
science. First, objective measures of behavior and subjec-
tive experience collected in real life provide more ecologi-
cally valid information than assessments in the laboratory
or retrospective self-reports. Second, measuring persons
repeatedly over many occasions provides the necessary
data to investigate intraindividual variability and within-
person processes. Given the importance of behavioral va-
riability in ADHD and its multifaceted symptomatology,
these aspects carry particular promise for research on this
disorder. Here, fluctuations of cognitive performance at
different timescale levels (moment-to-moment, within and
across days) and potential antecendent factors (e.g., mood
and motivation) will be used as an example to show how
multilevel models for repeated measures can be applied to
analyze ambulatory assessment data and address research
questions of (a) whether certain variables exhibit systema-
tic fluctuations within persons, (b) whether and how such
fluctuations are coupled across different variables, and (c)
whether and how persons differ in the strength of these
couplings.
Data from 110 third and fourth graders (without diagnosis
of ADHD) who took part in an ambulatory assessment stu-
dy over four weeks are used to illustrate the application of
multilevel models. On each day, children did several trials
of two working memory updating tasks (numerical and
spatial) on smartphones and provided self-reports (e.g.,
affect, motivation, sleep) on up to four occasions each day
during school and leisure time. Working memory perfor-
mance reliably fluctuated across and within days. Fluctua-
tions were significantly associated with other variables,
like sleep, affect, and motivation. Children differed in the
amount of fluctuations and in the strength of couplings to
other variables. Multilevel models allow investigating
within-person processes and between-person differences
therein and are therefore perfectly suited to analyze data
from ambulatory assessment studies. Extensions and alter-
natives (like multilevel structural equation or time series
models) are discussed. Another study extends this work by
addressing the question of whether ADHD symptoms
show considerable daily fluctuations within-person, and
analysing the factor structure of such symptom fluctu
ations. Altogether, 255 adolescents with and without
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Registration fee for Educational Seminars and Meet the Experts, per session: EUR 30.
Only valid in combination with the congress registration fee.