Rethinking child behavior: Attribution retraining improves child educators' understanding and response

What is it about?

Given that early child behavior problems predict negative adjustment if not addressed effectively, this study measures to what extent a brief virtual training intervention improves child educators' understanding of children's challenging behaviors, their attitudes, and planned responses. The training includes Attribution Retraining (AR) that is embedded in course content about child development and child traumatic stress response. The AR intervention significantly decreased educators' hostile attributions of child behavior and unsupportive/punitive intervention preferences, while increasing trauma-informed attitudes. Some changes maintained at one-year follow-up, but although total hostile attribution scores remained stable from post-training to one-week follow-up, they increased significantly from post-training to one-year follow-up, suggesting the need for ongoing training or coaching.

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