Dr. Price's Research Lab  

Developmental
Psychopathology Lab

The Developmental Psychopathology Lab is associated with the Developmental Program area in the Department of Psychology at SDSU, the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, and the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center at Rady Children’s Hospital, where the lab is located.

We are currently engaged in two programs of research:

The first program of research focuses on testing the effectiveness of the KEEP (Keeping Foster Parents Trained and Supported) parent-training intervention for foster and relative caregivers to reduce behavior problems of maltreated children and youth in foster care.

As an undergraduate I became interested in the prevention of psychopathology in children and adolescence, with a special interest in the impact of early social experiences on the developmental trajectories of children and the role of intervention efforts in modifying trajectories oriented toward atypical development. Consequently, I sought out doctoral programs in applied developmental science, which led me to Purdue University to work with Dr. Gary Ladd, now in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. Dr. Ladd’s research focused on the impact of family and peer relationships on children’s social, cognitive and emotional development. During this time I also became interested in the role of social cognitive processes in mediating the relation between social experiences and social behavior.

Following my doctoral training, I pursued post-doctoral training with Dr. Kenneth Dodge at Vanderbilt University, now Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy in Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. My work with Dr. Dodge led to the development of a program of research on the role of social information processing patterns in mediating the relation between the experiences associated with maltreatment and children’s social adjustment. Since joining the faculty at SDSU I have pursued this line of research with funding from NIMH and the W. T. Grant Foundation and in collaboration with colleagues at the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC).

In 1999, I began collaborating with Drs. Patti Chamberlain and John Reid from the Oregon Social Learning Center on the development and testing of a parent-based intervention designed to reduce behavior problems among maltreated children in foster care.  This program of research has been funded by NIMH and NIDA.

Minority Programs
Supporting Students

• NIH, MBRS Program

• NIH, Bridges to the Future Program
  
  

• Contract from the San Diego County Office of Education to evaluate the educational outcomes and access to tutoring and mentoring for youth in foster care in San Diego County.

In the first in this series of studies, the KEEP intervention was tested in a randomized effectiveness trial with 700 foster and relative caregivers of children ages 5 to 12 years of age.  .  The results of this effectiveness trial revealed that the intervention was effective in (a) reducing levels of child behavior problems (Chamberlain, Price, Landsverk, & Reid, 2008), (b) increasing parental use of targeted parenting strategies, which, in turn, served to mediate the effects of the intervention on reductions in child behavior problems (Chamberlain et al., 2008), (c) increasing the number of positive exits from the home (e.g., unification with biological parents, adoptions), and (d) mitigating placement disruptions for children with a history of multiple placements (Price et al., 2008). 
The second study, currently underway, extends the KEEP intervention to foster/kin parents caring for teens ages 12 to 17 and includes material for the prevention of drug abuse and health risk behaviors.  

The third study, beginning in the Fall of 2009 is designed to examine the process of implementing Project KEEP within the Child Welfare system of San Diego County, to determine whether the effects of the intervention generalize of other children in the home, and to examine the impact of the quality of the delivery of intervention on selected outcomes.

The second program of research in the Developmental Psychopathology Lab focuses on the link between social information processing patterns and social adjustment in maltreated children in early grade school.

Each of these programs of research are utilized to train undergraduate and graduate students in research methods in developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology, and intervention research and to enhance undergraduate and graduate classroom instruction in the developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology courses I teach.