Treatment Protocol
To control for the influence of gender, the participants were matched according
to gender and then randomly assigned to a BFT group and a control
group. There were 8 boys and 2 girls in each group. All the participants
completed measures before the intervention, following the intervention
and at a 6-month follow-up. In the study, members in BFT group received
a 2-stage, 5-part intervention (stage 1 had 1 part, and stage 2 had
4 parts), while the children in control group received no psychological
treatment.
In the first part, the parents were taught to correctly pay attention to
their children. When the children were put into a play context, they were
asked to react positively to the children’s appropriate behaviors and ignore
inappropriate ones, so that their children would learn about the appropriate
way to seek attention. In the second part, the parents were told to instruct
their children properly, and they were taught that the children’s compliance
should be motivated by clear instructions. In the third part, the parents were
taught to deal with their children’s noncompliance. They were told to react
positively to their children’s compliance, and use timeout (TO) strategies to
punish their noncompliance. In the fourth part, the parents were taught to
constitute some family rules. Though the procedures above were useful in
the context of intervention, the curative effect may be lost in family contexts.
Therefore, parents should establish some family rules to stop the children’s
aggressive behavior in a household context. In the fifth part, the parents were
taught to apply the strategies to real-life contexts. Similar to the household
context, parents were also instructed to establish certain rules, and TO could
also be used in some public places, such as in a park chair or a shopping
aisle.