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The efficacy and effectiveness of the BrainPower Program have been evaluated in a series of studies conducted in both a school-based and an after-school context.  Three primary studies conducted over the past 15 years have validated the quality of this program.

INITIAL EFFICACY STUDY
The first implementation study was a highly controlled, experimental study designed to establish that BrainPower is actually able to change children’s thinking.  Participants included108 boys who were enrolled in grades four through six.  These students received either the BrainPower intervention or an academic enrichment program that taught critical thinking skills primarily through science and social studies activities.  As well, I included a comparison group that did not receive any special attention during the intervention period. The three groups contained roughly equal numbers of boys.

This particular 3-group research design was able to separate the effects of participating in a special program from the unique effects of the BrainPower Program.  With just an intervention group and a comparison group, I would have no way to tell if behavior change was in response to the general opportunity to receive special attention.  By adding a second group, I could compare changes in aggressive behavior for students in the BrainPower Program to those students who received unrelated academic enrichment in a “special program” as well as to those who received no special attention.  Based on my model, I expected that only the BrainPower participants would improve in their behavior as well as in their attributional bias.

Aggressive students who participated in the BrainPower Program showed a reduction in hostile attributional bias by the end of the program.  Aggressive students in the other two groups showed no change at the end of the intervention program. Further, BrainPower students were the only aggressive students who showed no significant increases on any of these measures.  This intervention apparently not only reduces attributional bias but also counteracts a normative developmental increase in the bias among some aggressive students.  Nonaggressive students across all of the groups showed no changes in attributional bias.

To get a sense of behavior changes, I had each participating student’s classroom teacher provide behavior ratings. Teacher perceptions are especially important in the study of children’s aggression, because teacher's judgments are arguably the most important standard for defining problem behavior in the schools. Therefore, the most effective intervention program will be one that improves student behavior as perceived by teachers.  Following the intervention, teacher ratings of aggression were significantly more positive in comparison to pre-intervention scores only for aggressive boys in the BrainPower group.  No such results were evident for teacher ratings of the comparison groups of aggressive students.  Teacher ratings of behaviors other than aggression were not affected by the intervention for any group, and there were no changes in teacher ratings for nonaggressive students (whose scores remained uniformly positive).

EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH

            The next study lasted over two years, so I was able to examine the duration of the effects of participation in the BrainPower Program.  Students in grades 3-6 were included, and teams of two classroom aides at each school led the groups.  Group leaders were all educational aides experienced in small group instruction who were nominated for the position by the principal of their respective schools. 

Once again, immediately following the intervention, aggressive students in the BrainPower Program showed greatly reduced hostile attributional bias.  In contrast, ratings by aggressive students in both comparison groups either remained the same or increased in their perception of hostile intent.  However, by the full follow up period, perceptions of hostile attributional bias had increased to the point that the three groups were more similar than they had been at the close of the intervention, although BrainPower students’ increases in perceptions of hostile intent were not as great as increases for the two comparison groups. 

The teacher ratings of behavior for aggressive students in the BrainPower Program showed the most improvements in self control at the close of the intervention activities, and these improvements were maintained over the entire follow up period.  Scores for the comparison groups of students remained consistent, with a slight decline in teacher ratings of self control.  Overall, findings indicate that perceptions of hostility generally increased over time for students in elementary school, and teacher perceived aggression remained relatively stable.  Participation in the BrainPower Program seems to improve on that natural developmental progression by slowing the increase in hostile attributional bias and maintaining positive behavior.

RESEARCH IN AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMS
Up to this point, my research program had shown that changing children’s thinking could successfully reduce aggressive behavior in school. However, my goal was to make BrainPower a part of a comprehensive intervention addressing a broader array of the influences that shape children’s behavior.  I believed that such a strategy would enhance BrainPower’s effectiveness over time.  I was fortunate to partner with a nationally known Youth Development Program when I studied BrainPower as a part of a comprehensive, community based intervention.  This program has been providing after school enrichment programs to youth (ages 7-12) since 1983, predominately in public housing projects.  The overarching goal of the program is to develop children’s intellectual, social, and behavioral competence and a sense of community among participants, both children and their primary caretakers.
For this study, I incorporated the BrainPower Program into the ongoing activities of the enrichment program and followed students for 18 months. I compared their progress to students of similar ages who also lived in the same housing projects but did not attend the after school program.  Therefore, the study was different in several ways from the preceding studies.  Any student between the ages of 8 and 11 who regularly attended the enrichment program was able to participate in the BrainPower curriculum.  The after school staff conducted BrainPower intervention groups of eight students.  As a result, BrainPower students simultaneously received aggression reduction activities as well as general youth development activities.  However, intervention groups were conducted separately for boys and girls in order to best match the intervention curriculum materials to the participants’ interests.  Earlier research had already shown that physically aggressive boys and physically aggressive girls respond differently to peers’ behavior.

Over time, both boys and girls in the after school program reduced their beliefs that peers were acting with hostile intent.  For the comparison group, boys’ perceptions of hostile intent became greater and remained higher than BrainPower students, but girls’ scores declined to levels that were similar to the BrainPower students.  Beliefs that physically aggressive behavior was an appropriate social strategy also changed over time, but in quite a different way.  The beliefs of boys in the after school program became less supportive of aggression, while comparison boys stayed steady at much higher levels.  Although girls overall tended to be less supportive of aggressive behavior, girls in the after school group remained relatively stable in their attitudes toward physical aggression over time, while the beliefs of comparison girls became as supportive of aggression as those for boys.  Parents of students in the after school program rated their children as having more self control, being more co-operative, being more responsible, and being less hyperactive then did parents of the comparison students.  Teachers’ ratings of self control also improved over time for both boys and girls in the after school program.  Teacher ratings of comparison girls also improved, but comparison boys’ scores of self control declined consistently. 

What lessons can we learn from the evidence presented in these three studies?  Fundamentally, we now know that children’s thinking can be changed with cost-effective, educational strategies, and these changes in thinking can produce changes in children’s aggressive behavior.  This lesson is one of the most important and heartening messages that I have taken away from a decade of research.  There is a chilling tendency in our society to give up on children much too quickly.  Therefore, concrete evidence that early behavior can be changed and more serious behavior forestalled is an important lesson indeed.  Conversely, we must never forget the important corollary of this lesson.  Left unaddressed, attributional bias and aggression in childhood will most likely lead to more, not less aggression. 

Hudley, C. & Graham, S. (1993).  An attributional intervention to reduce peer directed aggression among African-American boys.  Child Development, 64, 124-138.

Hudley, C. (1993).  Comparing teacher and peer perceptions of aggression: An ecological approach.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 377-384.

Hudley, C. (1994).  Perceptions of intentionality, feelings of anger, and reactive aggression.  In M. Furlong & D. Smith (Eds.),  Anger, hostility and aggression: Assessment, prevention, and intervention strategies for youth (pp. 39-56).  Brandon, VT: Clinical Psychology Publishing Co.

Hudley, C. (1994).  The reduction of childhood aggression using the BrainPower Program.  In M. Furlong & D. Smith (Eds.), Anger, hostility and aggression: Assessment, prevention, and intervention strategies for youth (pp. 313-344).  Brandon, VT: Clinical Psychology Publishing Co.

Hudley, C & Graham, S. (1995).  School-based interventions for aggressive African-American boys. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 4, 185-195.

Hudley, C. & Friday, J.  (1996)  Attributional bias and reactive aggression.  American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 12(Suppl. 1), 75-81.

Hudley, C., Britsch, B., Wakefield, W., Smith, T., DeMorat, M., & Cho, S.  (1998).  An attribution retraining program to reduce aggression in elementary school students. Psychology in the Schools, 35, 271-282.

Hudley, C.,  Wakefield, W., Britsch, B., Cho, S., Smith, T., & DeMorat, M. (2001).   Multiple perceptions of children's aggression: Differences across neighborhood, age, gender, and perceiver.  Psychology in the Schools, 38, 43-56. 

Hudley, C.  (2003).  Cognitive-behavioral intervention with aggressive children.  In M. Matson (Ed).  Neurobiology of aggression: Understanding and preventing violence (pp. 275-288).  Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

Hudley, C. & Taylor, A. (2006). Cultural competence and youth violence prevention programming.  In N. Guerra & E. Smith (Eds.), Ethnicity, Culture, and Youth Violence Prevention Programming (pp. .249-269).  Washington DC: APA.

Hudley, C. & Parker, R.N. (2006).  Pitfalls and pratfalls: Issues of null and negative findings in evaluating interventions.  New Directions for Evaluation. 

Hudley, C.  (2006).  Who’s watching the watchers? The challenge of observing peer interactions on elementary school playgrounds.  New Directions for Evaluation, 110, 73-85.

Hudley, C. & Novak, A. (2007). Environmental influences, the developing brain, and aggressive behavior. Theory into Practice, 46, 121-129.

Hudley, C. Graham, S. & Taylor, A. (2007).  Reducing aggressive behavior and increasing motivation in school.  Educational Psychologist, 47, 251-260.