Objective: This study evaluated the efficacy of a mindfulness-enhanced behavioral parent training (BPT) group program compared to standard BPT in families of children with ADHD. Method: Parents ( N = 63) of children (aged 6–11) diagnosed with ADHD were randomly assigned to either mindful or standard BPT, and participated in 12 weekly 2-hr group sessions. Parents completed a series of questionnaires assessing mindful parenting, parenting stress, harsh discipline practices, behavioral dysregulation, and child ADHD symptoms, before and after completing the group intervention. Results: Parents in the mindful group had decreased harsh discipline practices and improved self-regulation compared to parents in the standard group. Both groups improved in parenting sense of competence and child ADHD symptoms. No significant group differences were found in mindful parenting or parenting stress. Conclusion: There are some important parental benefits to enhancing BPT with mindfulness.

Background Many tools have been developed to measure physical activity parenting practices (PAPP). Currently, there is little standardization on how PAPP constructs are operationalized for 5–12 year-old children. Given this lack of consistency our team have started the process of standardizing the measurement of PAPP by developing an item bank which was conceptually informed by 24 experts from 6 countries. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the psychometric properties of the PAPP item bank using the expert-informed PAPP conceptual framework. Methods A sample (N = 626) of Canadian parents completed the PAPP item bank (100 items measuring 12 constructs). Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA), confirmatory bi-factor item analyses, and Item Response Modeling (IRM) were used to assess the structural validity of scores derived from the PAPP item bank. Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and Differential Response Functioning (DRF) were used to determine whether the PAPP items are invariant by parent sex, ethnicity of parent, and household income. Finally, Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) simulations were used to determine the efficiency of the item bank – this involved ascertaining whether each construct can be assessed with fewer items. Results The PAPP expert-informed conceptual framework was mainly supported by the CFA analyses. Notable changes included: a) collapsing smaller constructs into one general construct (modeling, co-participation, and monitoring constructs were collapsed into a construct assessing nondirective support); or b) splitting a construct into two smaller constructs (restrict for safety reason construct was split into indoor physical activity restriction and allowance for unsupervised outside physical activity). While the CFA analyses supported the structural validity of 11 constructs, the bi-factor item analyses and IRM analyses supported collapsing correlated constructs into more general constructs. These analyses further reduced the number of constructs measured by the PAPP item bank to nine constructs (65 items – reliability ranging from .79 to .94). As seven of the PAPP constructs had reliability greater than .80, CAT simulations further reduced the number of items to 31 items. Conclusion Overall, the PAPP item bank has excellent psychometric properties and provides an efficient way to assess PAPP.

To what extent are creative processes in one domain (e.g., technology) affected by information from other domains (e.g., music)? While some studies of professional creators suggest that creative abilities are domain-specific, other studies suggest that creative avocations stimulate creativity. The latter is consistent with the predictions of the honing theory of creativity, according to which the iterative process culminating in a creative work is made possible by the self-organizing nature of a conceptual network, or worldview, and its innate holistic tendency to minimize inconsistency. As such, the creative process is not restricted to the creative domain; influences from domains other than that of the final product are predicted to impact the creative process and its outcome. To assess the prevalence of cross-domain influences on creativity we conducted two studies: one with creative experts, and one with undergraduate students from diverse academic backgrounds. Participants listed both their creative outputs, and the influences (sources of inspiration) associated with each of these outputs. In both studies, cross-domain influences on creativity were found to be widespread, and indeed more frequent than within-domain sources of inspiration. Thus, examination of the inputs to, rather than the outputs of, creative tasks supported the prediction of honing theory that cross-domain influences are a ubiquitous component of the creative process.

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