Browsing by Author "Merz, Emily, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Open Access
Assessing the impact of a music therapy program on attention in children with autism using behavioral and neurophysiological measures
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Coates, Carolyn, author; Davies, Patricia L., advisor; Merz, Emily, committee member; Stephens, Jaclyn, committee member; LaGasse, Blythe, committee member
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulty with auditory sensory processing. Music therapy is a common intervention approach for children with autism to address numerous behavioral and sensory challenges using auditory stimuli. Auditory processing capabilities have also been linked with attention skills and with attentional challenges often observed in children with ASD. This study seeks to understand the differences between children with ASD and their typically developing peers in auditory processing and attention. An additional study goal is to evaluate impacts of a music therapy protocol on those constructs. Baseline measurements were collected for 10 children with ASD using the Test of Everyday Attention in Children (TEA-Ch) and EEG under a sensory registration paradigm. These data were compared to those of age- and sex-matched typically developing peers (n = 10). The children with ASD participated in biweekly music therapy over 5 weeks for a total of 10 sessions and then completed the same assessments during a post-test. The sensory registration paradigm measured passive responses to four auditory tones at two different intensities (50 and 70 dB) and two different frequencies (1 and 3 kHz). The resultant event related potentials (ERPs) were averaged into a waveform for each child at each tone and amplitudes and latencies were calculated for N1, P2, N2 and P3 components. The TEA-Ch resulted in an overall attention score and a score for each of three subdomains of attention: sustained, selective and switching. Results indicated that children with ASD performed more poorly on the TEA-Ch with significantly poorer scores in overall attention, selective attention, and sustained attention. A series of independent sample t-tests on ERP components revealed few significant differences but a trend of increased latency at N1, P2, and N2 in children with ASD for each of the four tones. Children with ASD had lower amplitude of N1 components and greater amplitude P2 components compared with the typically developing children. Following the music therapy intervention, children with ASD improved significantly in selective attention and showed a trend of improvement in switching and total attention compared to pre-testing scores. The music therapy did not result in statistically significant changes in EEG results, but a trend of increased latency was noted for N1, P2, and N2. Amplitude of the P3 component decreased following the music therapy intervention in response to the high and loud tone when age was used as a covariate. Some significant associations were found between the latency of N1, P2, and N2 and sustained and selective attention in response to the 1kHz 70dB tone across all participants at baseline (TD children and children with ASD before music therapy). In conclusion, this study shows that children with ASD have different neural processing of simple auditory tones and reduced performance in multiple domains of attention. The music therapy intervention is a promising approach to improving attention skills. The intervention did not appear to alter neural processing in the expected way of children with ASD performing more like their typically developing peers. Further research at this foundational level of neural processing may help clarify the differences in processing between children with ASD and their typically developing peers and may provide a way of monitoring interventions which seek to alter neural processing to target attentional skills and behaviors.
Open Access
Supporting youth mental health through life coaching and mindfulness
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Moran, Megan J., author; Shomaker, Lauren, advisor; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel, advisor; Merz, Emily, committee member
School-based prevention programs are a promising avenue to support youth mental health on a broad scale. Life coaching and mindfulness-based intervention are two specific approaches that may be effective in promoting resilience in the face of risk factors for adverse mental health outcomes and may be particularly well-suited for universal school-based delivery. Theory and limited empirical evidence suggest that these two types of interventions may share underlying mechanisms; however, there has not been any research directly investigating this overlap. This randomized controlled trial examined the effects of a school-based life coaching intervention with a mindfulness component on depression and anxiety symptoms as well as resilience, emotion regulation, self-efficacy, and mindfulness. Participants were N=230 early adolescents 9–13 years of age. Participants in the intervention condition received up to six weekly one-one-one coaching sessions, incorporated into the school day. All participants completed pre- and post-test self-report measures using scales validated for use with adolescents. Linear mixed effects models revealed no significant effect of the intervention on mental health outcomes, resilience, self-efficacy, or mindfulness. However, participants who received the intervention had a greater reduction in emotion regulation difficulties, relative to control, from pre- to post-intervention. Findings suggest that life coaching and mindfulness may be effectively integrated within a school-based intervention to reduce difficulties in emotion regulation, which have been shown in prior research to be precursors to mental health symptomology in adolescence.
Open Access
Validation of the emotional availability self-report for use with children 0-5 years
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Scherbak, Veronica E., author; Dik, Bryan, advisor; Prince, Mark, committee member; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel, committee member; Merz, Emily, committee member
Emotional availability (EA) is a relationship construct that is used to assess the health and quality of the relationship between a caregiver and their child by examining the contribution of each member of the relationship. Empirical research has found a great deal of evidence that EA is an important factor to consider in parent-child relationship research and is linked with various parental and child outcomes, such as mental health issues, and various child development issues, such as depression and personality disorders in mothers and children's development of theory of mind. Most of the extant research measures EA using an observational EA System (Biringen et al., 2014). However, in 2002, an Emotional-Availability - Self-Report (EA-SR) instrument was introduced to assess parental perceptions of EA in their relationship with their child (Biringen et al., 2002). Evidence for the validity of EA-SR scores has been established for use with children 0-18 months, but has yet to be investigated with older children. This study aimed to establish the reliability and validity of scores on the EA-SR for use with children 0-5 years of age. Data analysis included an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to determine the factor structure of the EA-SR, as well as an examination of convergent and discriminant correlations between EA-SR scores and those on other measures. Initial evidence was found that a 13-item short form of the EA-SR may be a valid and reliable measure of EA for children ages 3-5.
Open Access
Youth increase in developmental assets during a mentoring program regardless of baseline risk
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Rzonca, Addie, author; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel, advisor; Zimmerman, Toni, committee member; Merz, Emily, committee member
The existing data on the benefits of mentoring programs for adolescent participants are promising, though often unclear in terms of who benefits the most and why (Raposa et al. 2019). In the literature, there tends to be an agreement that risk is likely to moderate program effectiveness to a certain extent, but there is inconsistency about whether greater risk strengthens or weakens program effects (Herrera et al., 2013; Weiler & Taussig, 2017). An important outcome to consider are developmental assets because the negative outcomes of youth risk can be mitigated through the presence of such factors (Scales & Leffert, 1999). The present study seeks to further investigate whether the benefits (in terms of developmental assets) that youth receive from participating in a therapeutic mentoring program differ by their individual level of risk-exposure prior to entering the program. Participants were 676 youth (11-18 years old) who participated in the mentoring program Campus Connections (Haddock et al., 2017) for at least one semester. Each participant was paired with a trained undergraduate mentor and attended four-hour long sessions hosted one night a week for 12 weeks. Each session consisted of four components: one-on-one free time between mentor and mentee, mentor-provided school support, "family style" meals, and prosocial group activities (e.g., games, crafts, team sports). Mentees completed the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP, Search Institute, 2004) before and after completing the program; primary caregivers completed a baseline youth risk assessment. Generalized estimating equation models were used to test the moderating effect of youth risk on change in youth developmental assets (controlling for gender, age, and ethnicity). Time and baseline risk were each significant predictors of developmental assets, such that there were significant increases in assets overall (b = 7.18, se = 1.15, p < .05) and those with higher levels of baseline risk reported lower levels of overall assets (b = -1.51 se = 0.25, p < .05). Whether change varied based on risk was tested via multiplicative interaction between time (baseline vs. post-test) and risk (mean centered) to predict levels of developmental assets. Risk was not a significant moderator, implying that on average youth gain developmental assets in a mentoring program regardless of baseline risk. These findings suggest that mentoring programs can benefit youth with a range of risk exposure.