Classroom-Level Intervention to Promote Peers' Acceptance of Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

University of Virginia

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Behavioral contingency management; Behavioral: Tolerance training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01133028

2010-0066-00

Details and patient eligibility

About

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) comprise about 5-10% of the elementary school-age population. One place where children with ADHD have great difficulty is in being accepted by peers and in making friends. It has unfortunately been very difficult for the field to find good treatments for peer relationship problems for this population. Even when children with ADHD do improve their behavior, it is common that peers do not seem to like the child with ADHD any better. This may happen because children often have negative reputations with their classmates that are hard to change. That is, once a class of children get the impression that one child is disliked or the social outcast, even if that child's ADHD symptoms get better, the peer group may not notice any of these improvements. It is hypothesized that the elementary school teacher may be able to help peers notice positive behavior changes in children with ADHD when they do occur. This clinical trial will design and pilot-test an intervention that would train teachers in classroom practices to reduce the peer rejection of students with ADHD. The pilot test will be conducted in a summer program created to be similar to a regular school classroom in structure. If the treatment seems to succeed in the summer program, then it will be tried in regular classrooms in a future study.

Enrollment: 102 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 6 to 8 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Children ages 6-8
• Primary diagnosis of ADHD

Exclusion criteria

• Pervasive Developmental Disorder
• Verbal IQ below 75

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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102 participants in 2 patient groups

Combined

Experimental group

Description:

This represents a combination of the tolerance training and behavioral management interventions together.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Behavioral contingency management

Behavioral: Tolerance training

Behavioral management

Active Comparator group

Description:

This represents the behavioral contingency management intervention only.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Behavioral contingency management