- Browse by Author
Browsing by Author "Pierce, Barbara J."
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Concrete services usage on child placement stability: Propensity score matched effects(Elsevier, 2020-11) Winters, Drew E.; Pierce, Barbara J.; Imburgia, Teresa M.; School of Social WorkBackground: Experiencing poverty and financial difficulties are significant barriers to outcomes of permanency and placement stability. This is particularly true for children who are in out of home placements. The provision of concrete services is intended to meet concrete needs of families to address this barrier. However, little is known about how concrete services meet the needs of families in need of these services or if the use of concrete services is a viable treatment for children who are in out of home placements. Methods: The present study examined differences between those who received and those who did not receive concrete services on factors of stability, child and caregiver traumatic stress, number of placements, and current out of home placement. Regression analysis examined the association between amount of concrete service spending and permanency. Then to test concrete services as an intervention for children in a current out of home placement, we used propensity score matching to match participants on characteristics that predicted whether they would receive concrete services. We then ran a hierarchical regression to test the treatment condition of concrete services with children who are in a current out of home placement. Results: Participants who received concrete services were at a much higher level of need with significantly higher levels of traumatic stress and number of placements and lower levels of placement stability. The amount of money spent on concrete services was associated with increases in placement stability. And, children in a current out of home placement had an increase in placement stability when they received concrete services. Conclusions: The present study is the first to evidence concrete service as a treatment for placement stability for children in current out of home placements. Spending on concrete services in addition to child welfare services improves a child's current placement stability. This is an important finding with implications for improving child welfare services' approach to those in their care with financial burdens.Item Network Functional Connectivity Underlying Dissociable Cognitive and Affective Components of Empathy in Adolescence(Elsevier, 2021) Winters, Drew E.; Pruitt, Patrick J.; Fukui, Sadaaki; Cyders, Melissa A.; Pierce, Barbara J.; Lay, Kathy; Damoiseaux, Jessica S.Empathy, the capacity to understand and share others' emotions, can occur through cognitive and affective components. These components are different conceptually, behaviorally, and in the brain. Neuroimaging task-based research in adolescents and adults document that cognitive empathy associates with the default mode and frontoparietal networks, whereas regions of the salience network underlie affective empathy. However, cognitive empathy is slower to mature than affective empathy and the extant literature reveals considerable developmental differences between adolescent and adult brains within and between these three networks. We extend previous work by examining empathy's association with functional connectivity within and between these networks in adolescents. Participants (n = 84, aged 13-17; 46.4% female) underwent resting state fMRI and completed self-report measures (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) for empathy as part of a larger Nathan-Kline Institute study. Regression analyses revealed adolescents reporting higher cognitive empathy had higher within DMN connectivity. Post hoc analysis revealed cognitive empathy's association within DMN connectivity is independent of affective empathy or empathy in general; and this association is driven by positive pairwise connections between the bilateral angular gyri and medial prefrontal cortex. These results suggest introspective cognitive processes related to the DMN are specifically important for cognitive empathy in adolescence.