Parent-Child Memory Study: Improving Future Thinking Among Mothers
This study is looking at ways to help mothers in the Flint area improve their future thinking, especially regarding their children. It's testing two behavioral interventions: Episodic Future Thinking (EFT), which helps you imagine positive future events with your child, and Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT), which involves describing past events in detail. The goal is to see if these interventions can reduce a mother's tendency to prioritize immediate rewards over long-term benefits, which can sometimes lead to harsh parenting. Success will be measured by changes in how you value future rewards and how much you consider future consequences. This study is for mothers or grandmothers from Flint with a child or grandchild aged 5-10.
- Study design
- This is an interventional study planning to enroll 144 participants. It is a randomized controlled trial, meaning participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two intervention groups.
- What's involved
- You would participate in assessments at baseline, during the intervention, and then at 2 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 9 months. The intervention itself is brief.
- Compensation
- Not stated in the trial record.
- Follow-up
- Participants will be followed for 9 months after the intervention to measure changes in future thinking.
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Parent-Child Memory Study: Improving Future Thinking Among Mothers
At a glance
Conditions
Where it's being run
1 sites across 1 statesWho to contact
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What this trial measures
- Change in Monetary Choice QuestionnaireBaseline, Intervention, Week 2, Month 3, Month 6, Month 9
The Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ) is a 27-item binary-choice task, which asks participants to select between two hypothetical monetary amounts: a smaller reward available immediately (e.g. $49 today) or a larger reward available after a delay (e.g. $60 in 89 days). The measure is scored to derive a discounting rate k, with larger values reflecting more problematic rates of discounting. Because k distributions are typically skewed, post-hoc natural logarithmic transformations will be performed, which have been shown to approximate normal distributions. The MCQ has been shown to have strong psychometric properties among adults and correlates with real rewards, as well as real-world risk behaviors.
- Change in Consideration of Future Consequences Scale ScoreBaseline, Intervention, Week 2, Month 3, Month 6, Month 9
The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale1 (CFCS-14) is a 14-item self-report questionnaire that assesses active consideration of longer-term implications of an individual's actions. Lower scores on the CFCS-14 are associated with a greater focus on immediate needs and have been found to be associated with less engagement in health behaviors1819 and greater substance use. The measure has been used extensively among adult samples and demonstrates strong reliability and validity. Research suggests modest but significant correlations with the MCQ. Change in CFCS-14 score is measured by comparing scores at the post-intervention assessment timepoints with baseline scores.