. Project Goals
The individual project has several goals. These goals are:
1. To provide you with the opportunity to study a behavior disorder or problem of childhood
or adolescence in greater depth;
2. To provide you with the opportunity to develop the skills to translate scientific
information about the particular behavior disorder or problem of childhood or adolescents
into a format understandable by lay people such as parents or teachers;
3. To provide you with an opportunity to critically evaluate the work of two of your
classmates.
II. Project Scope
For the project you will pretend that the local school has asked you to give a presentation to
parents on a particular behavior disorder or problem of childhood or adolescence (e.g., ADHD,
Autism Spectrum Disorder). You will thus prepare a Power Point presentation of approximately
40-50 slides to help parents:
1. Understand the features of the particular behavior disorder or problem (approximately
25% of your presentation length); and
2. Understand the best treatment procedures for the particular behavior disorder or problem
(75% of your presentation length).
The phrase “best treatment procedures” means treatment procedures with scientific support,
sometimes referred to as empirically supported treatments or evidence-based treatments.
You will thus develop a presentation designed to accomplish these two goals. You should
pretend that you have approximately 60 minutes for your presentation.
In this part of the project you will provide a description of the behavior disorder or the problem.
Here you will use text and media (e.g., pictures) to provide the audience for your presentation
with a description of the behavior disorder or problem. For example, if you selected autism
spectrum disorder, then you would inform the audience about the characteristics (e.g., symptoms
of the disorder) with text, pictures, and/or video clips of children with autism. If you use video,
please link them to the power point file (don’t embed them as it makes the file much too
large).
Again, you want to use text and media to communicate this information. Part 1 of your project
should make up 25% of your presentation (for example, 25% of 50 slides would be 12-13 slides).
Part 2: Overview of the Best Treatments for the Behavior Disorder or the Problem
Part 2 will be the most important part of your project. This part should make up approximately
75% of your presentation (for example, 75% of 50 slides would be 37-38 slides). Here you will
provide an overview of the best scientifically based treatments for the disorder. It will be very
important to identify treatments that have scientific support (e.g., empirically supported
treatments). For example, if your behavior disorder was oppositional defiant disorder of
childhood, then you would want to identify the best psychological treatments for oppositional
defiant disorder. Your presentation would use text and media to demonstrate how the treatments
work. If the behavior disorder or problem that you pick has several empirically supported
treatments, then you may decide to review one treatment in depth or to review one treatment in
depth or to review several of the treatment choices in your presentation.
Do NOT review the efficacy of medications for the treatment of the disorder. While the
