The Impact of Individual Factors on Hyperactive Preschoolers’ Response to Executive Function Intervention

Hakala, Minna (2024) The Impact of Individual Factors on Hyperactive Preschoolers’ Response to Executive Function Intervention. Master thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Children’s executive function (EF) difficulties are associated with negative developmental trajectories. While various interventions have been found effective for alleviating the symptoms of these children, it is important to know who benefits the most from these interventions and why. The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether certain individual factors influenced the response to play-based EF intervention targeted for hyperactive preschool children. There was a special interest to assess whether the level of prior EF difficulties, parents’ education level, daily average playtime during the intervention, or certain character strengths of the child influenced the alleviation of difficulties. Along with this, the strengths of children with EF difficulties were evaluated, as these have been under little attention in the research field. Higher prior EF challenges, lower parents’ education level and higher daily average playtime were expected to be associated with greater intervention benefit. Hypotheses were not set for the analyses related to character strengths due to lack of previous research. The most common strengths observed were good imagination, enthusiastic, inventive, sporty, quick, sociability and good sense of humour. A weak/moderate positive and statistically significant correlation was observed between the intervention response and the playtime, the intervention response and certain strengths as well as between the playtime and certain strengths. Despite nonsignificant regression analysis, strengths and playtime explained most of the variance associated with intervention response. The study provides preliminary, albeit slightly contradictory indication that the children who played more with their parents and had certain strengths got better intervention gains. Keywords: executive function, hyperactivity, intervention, play, children, character strengths

Item Type:	Thesis (Master)
Supervisor name:	Fuermaier, A.B.M.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Clinical Neuropsychology (CN) [Master Psychology]
Date Deposited:	28 May 2024 12:11
Last Modified:	28 May 2024 12:11
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3368

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