Abstract
Neural changes were investigated for children with disruptive behavior problems one year after a treatment program ended. Thirty-nine children and their parents visited the research lab before, after, and a year after treatment ended. During those lab visits, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during a challenging Go/No-go task. Treatment consisted of intensive 14-week combined cognitive behavioral therapy and parent management training sessions. For the analysis, participants were divided into long-term improvers (IMPs) and long-term nonimprovers (NIMPs) based on changes in their externalizing problem scores. The results showed early no-go theta power (4–8 Hz, 100–250 ms) decreased for long-term IMPs compared to NIMPs. When participants were divided based on changes in their comorbid internalizing symptoms, effects were stronger and reductions in theta power were found for early as well as later phases (250–650 ms). We provided preliminary evidence that theta power is a useful neural measure to trace behavioral change linked to improved self-regulation even up to a year after treatment ended. Results may have implications for the characterization of children with disruptive behavior problems and may lead to the development of novel markers of treatment success.
Highlights
The ultimate goal of treatment is to show benefits long after treatment ends
We propose that, related to self-regulation, at an early stage of visual processing, theta power could act in recruiting attentional vigilance towards the encoding or monitoring of goal-relevant stimuli; and, at a later stage, theta power may be increasingly executive in nature and directly relate to dedicating attentional resources towards the inhibition of a response and subsequent evaluative processing
In addition to examining improvements in externalizing behavior, we aimed to investigate long-term changes in internalizing problems because emerging research indicates that anxiety may underlie the manifestation of disruptive behavior problems (DBP) behaviors
Summary
The ultimate goal of treatment is to show benefits long after treatment ends. follow-up studies examining treatment outcomes for children with disruptive behavior problems (DBP) are rare and typically show small effect sizes [1, 2]. Treatment studies often focus on testing the efficacy of a particular intervention by comparing an experimental treatment group with a control group (e.g., treatment as usual). This approach does not reveal the variability of outcomes within the treatment group itself: some children improve while others do not. What individuals can change is how they cope with and manage to control the tonic stressors that surround them This ability, to flexibly control one’s own emotions and cognition in the service of (long-term) internal goals, is broadly defined as self-regulation [7]. Effective selfregulation skills are believed to function as buffers against
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