Current projects
1. Study on the Evaluation of the ADHD 101 Program for Parents of Children Recently Diagnosed with ADHD
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)is a health condition often seen in pediatric primary care settings. It affects 6-7% of children worldwide. For different reasons, many families do not receive the necessary treatments of ADHD. This puts children at risk of having poor health outcomes. To prevent this problem, colleagues at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have developed the ADHD Bootcamp program a few years ago. This program is called “ADHD 101” in Canada. The objectives of the ADHD 101 program are: a) To help parents gain support from other parents who are in the same situation as them; b) To learn more about ADHD; and c) To learn how parents can take charge of their child’s ADHD to help him/her in the long run. Dr. Normand wants to evaluate if the ADHD 101 program is feasible, acceptable, and potentially useful according to parents from Canada’s National Capital Region. Dr. Normand hopes that this information will help develop and make accessible new effective services for children with ADHD. We hope the information found in this study will make it possible to develop and offer effective new services for children with ADHD. This project is financially supported by the Institut du savoir Montfort.
2. Children's Social Behaviours Study
Children who have trouble with peer relationships during their childhood, especially those with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), are more likely to experience loneliness and sadness, and are at a higher risk for future problems such as disinterest in school, depression, anxiety, and behaviour problems. Unfortunately, the treatments that are currently known to be effective in reducing ADHD symptoms are much less effective at improving peer relationship problems. Consequently, children with ADHD are at risk for developing various health problems. This conclusion highlights the importance of developing and evaluating new treatments that target the social difficulties of children with ADHD. The goal of this randomized, controlled, dual-site (Vancouver and Ottawa/Gatineau), and longitudinal study is to compare the effectiveness of two new intervention programs in helping parents better understand and manage the social difficulties experienced by their children with ADHD. We expect that these two intervention programs will help families who have children with ADHD, but our reason for conducting this study is to find out if they are useful in different ways or for different types of problems. We hope this information will help us to offer better adapted and more effective treatments in the future. The clinical trial has started in the fall 2013 and will go untill summer 2020. It is funded by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) awarded to Dr. Amori Mikami (Nominated Co-Principal Investigator, University of British Columbia), Dr. Sébastien Normand (Co-Principal Investigator, Université du Québec en Outaouais), and Dr. Victoria Savalei (Co-Applicant, University of British Columbia).
3. Children’s Attention and the Challenges of Close Friendship
For children, having adequate relationships with their friends—and with the right friends—is very important, not only for children’s personal adjustment, but also for their success in school. Children without friends lose out on opportunities to develop their social skills. This also causes them to lose their interest in school. To make and keep friends, children must communicate well with their friends, pay attention to their friends’ needs and wishes, maintain their self-control when they are with their friends, and play according to the established rules. Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often have difficulty establishing and maintaining such friendships. In this research project funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Principal Investigator: Dr. Barry H. Schneider), researchers are attempting to understand the differences in dyadic friendship interactions of children with and without ADHD during a six-month follow-up. To achieve this, Professor Normand's team is using observational measures developed by Professor Schneider and his Italian colleagues (see Fonzi et al., 1997).
4. The Unique Role of ADHD in Children’s Friendship Development
In this observational study conducted in collaboration with the University of Virginia and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, 1R21MH091486, Principal Investigator: Dr. Amori Mikami, University of Virginia), researchers are investigating the role of ADHD in predicting whether or not school-age children are able to make friends. Is a child’s ADHD diagnosis related to having friends or not? How are mental health and behavioural problems related to having friends or not? Is the effect of mental health problems on the presence/absence of friendship worsened by the presence of an ADHD diagnosis? In addition, researchers are interested in understanding the predictors of the perceived and observed quality of children’s friendships. Researchers want to know how, besides the ADHD status and the mental health of a given child, the characteristics of the child’s friend are related to the quality of friendship in the dyad. Dyadic interactions between friends were coded, and statistical analyses are underway.
5. The Impact of Behavioural and Cognitive Inattention on Children's Academic Achievement
6. Attention Problems in Cuban Children
In the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V; APA, 2013), ADHD is listed with three different current symptom presentations: predominantly inattentive presentation, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive presentation, and combined presentation. However, given the heterogeneity of ADHD symptoms and the changes in symptoms throughout development, some researchers have questionned the current theoretical structure of ADHD. In order to better understand the structure of ADHD, we are using sophisticated statistical techniques to test new theoretical ADHD models in a sample of Cuban elementary schoolchildren. Collaborators include Dr Barry H. Schneider (University of Ottawa), Maria del Pilar Soteras del Toro, Yorkys Santana Gonzalez (Universidad de Oriente, Cuba), Dr. Maggie E. Toplak (York University), and Dr. Rosemary Tannock (University of Toronto/Hospital for Sick Children). This study is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC # 801-2006-0016, Principal Investigator: Dr Barry H. Schneider). Marie-Claire Losier is currently working on statistical analyses under the supervision of Professor Normand.
