A Native Path to Courage

This three-year project is funded by the Montana State University Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity (CAIRHE; https://www.montana.edu/cairhe/projects/scott/index.html). The propose of this project is to work together with our Cultural Advisory Board and tribal communtiy members to culturally redesign an indicated prevention and early intervention program) for American Indian youth within a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework. Moreover, we will train American Indian providers and pilot-test the culturally adopted prevention and early intervention program among 8- to 12-year-olds in two schools serving a tribal reservation in Montana . We will evaluate feasibility and acceptability using mixed methods, including focus groups of key stakeholders (youth, parents, and teachers), and estimate changes in anxiety and depression using a pre-post, single-group design.

Physiology and Cognitive Performance

We are collobarating with Dr. Ketih Hutchison on a series of lab-based and applied studies aimed at understanding the specific relations between physiological markers of parasymathetic functioning (e.g., heart rate variablity), sympathetic funcitiong (eye-tracking) and cognitive performance in college students. In addition, we also are investigating whether changes in these physiological states have an impact on individual differences in cognitive performance.