Online Training for Foster and Primary Parents of Neglected Children

描述（由申请人提供）：在第一阶段，我们将为被忽视儿童的养父母和原生父母开发和评估一个在线严肃游戏的第一个单元。培训的目的是学习处于这两种历史上划分的角色中的父母如何通过合作来改善他们的养育方式。研究表明，交叉训练策略可以优化寄养儿童成功与原生家庭团聚的机会，这是寄养系统的中心目标。我们的方法的核心心理结构是父母反思功能，这是一个新兴的概念，用于理解和改善社会互动，并被应用于养育子女。在这个特定的背景下，它指的是父母理解孩子和他们自己的内部状态（思想、感情、意图）的能力，以及这些与外化儿童行为问题的发生和减少之间的关系。我们的方法采用严肃的游戏形式，通过预先录制的亲子场景的互动视频反馈，激发父母在亲子互动中认识和利用父母的反思功能。在第一阶段开发的游戏的第一个单元《In Touch: A Day In the Life》中，原生父母和养父母两人一组，学习解读和回应虚拟父母和孩子的内心状态，因为他们在充满摩擦的互动中度过了典型的一天，就像在戏剧视频片段中呈现的那样。游戏形式大致基于流行的电视游戏节目《Family Feud》。在我们的版本中，父母将成双成对——一个养父母和一个原生父母。在这个游戏中，家长们尝试将最常见的调查回答与视频片段中父母和孩子的内心状态相匹配。调查的答案将由20位有经验的养父母填写。家长们在FosterParentCollege.com(R)上玩这个游戏并参与可行性研究。FosterParentCollege.com是西北传媒公司在SBIR资助下开发的一个在线培训中心。每组的交流将通过讨论板进行。我们将仔细评估严肃游戏是否能显著提高家长对反思功能的理解，超出他们在标准行为管理培训计划中所期望了解的内容。家长将被随机分配到小组、配对和实验条件中。治疗组将观看行为管理训练和严肃游戏训练，而对照组只观看行为管理训练。我们还将完成对该领域目前正在开发的父母反思功能的核心测量方法的初步分析，即“父母发展访谈-修订简短版”，该方法将用于第二阶段研究。在第二阶段，我们将制作六个额外的游戏训练单元，包括：1)理解和解决儿童外化行为问题；2)反思对成瘾、家庭冲突和母亲抑郁的解毒剂作用；3)反思性养育与儿童情感搭建；4)接触式育儿如何增强和补充其他培训方法；5)儿童理解和向照顾者表达自己内心世界的启蒙读物；6)向辅助专业人员、机构工作人员和法院工作人员讲授反思性育儿。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this Phase I we will develop and evaluate the first unit of an online serious game for foster and primary parents of neglected children. The goal of the training is to learn how parents in these two historically compartmentalized roles can improve their parenting by working cooperatively. Research shows that cross-training strategies can optimize the chances that the foster child will be successfully reunified with the primary family, a central goal of the foster care system. The central psychological construct of our approach is the parental reflective function, an emerging concept for understanding and improving social interactions that is being applied to parenting. In this specific context, it refes to parents' aptitude for understanding their child's and their own internal states (thoughts, feelings, intentions) and how these relate to the occurrence and reduction of externalizing child behavior problems. Our approach uses a serious game format, with interactive video feedback of prerecorded parent-child scenarios, to motivate parents to recognize and utilize the parental reflective function during parent-child interactions. In the first unit of the game developed in Phase I, titled In Touch: A Day in the Life, primary and foster parents work in pairs to learn to read and respond to a virtual parent's own and their child's internal states as they navigate a typical day of interactions fraught with possible friction, as presented in dramatized video segments. The game format is loosely based on the popular TV game show, Family Feud. In our version, parents will be paired into dyads-one foster and one primary parent. In the game, parents try to match the most frequent survey responses to questions regarding the parents' and child's internal states in the video segments. Answers to the survey will be generated by 20 experienced foster parents. Parents play the game and participate in the feasibility study at FosterParentCollege.com(R), an online training center developed by Northwest Media, Inc. via SBIR funding. Communication in each dyad will take place via a discussion board. We will carefully evaluate whether the serious game significantly improves parents' understanding of the reflective function, above and beyond what they would be expected to learn about it in a standard behavior management training program. Parents will be randomly assigned to teams, pairs, and experimental conditions. The treatment group will view a behavior management training as well as the serious game training, while the comparison group will view only the behavior management training. We will also complete the preliminary analysis of a central measure of the parental reflective function currently being developed in this field, the Parent Development Interview-Revised Short Version, which will be used in the Phase II study. In Phase II we will produce six additional training units of the game that covers: 1) Understanding and Addressing Children's Externalizing Behavior Problems; 2) Reflective Function as Antidote to Addictions, Domestic Conflict, and Maternal Depression; 3) Reflective Parenting and Emotional Scaffolding of Children; 4) How In Touch Parenting Can Augment and Complement Other Training Approaches; 5) A Primer for Children on Understanding and Articulating Their Inner World to Caregivers; and 6) Teaching Ancillary Professionals, Agency Staff, and Court Personnel About Reflective Parenting.