The FEREA Training: Multimodal, Personalised and Transdiagnostic
Silvia Conti, Elena Bongarzone, Valeria Flori, Gian Marco Marzocchi
Self-regulation, comprising emotional, behavioural and cognitive regulation (executive functions), plays a key role in both children’s typical and atypical development. The FEREA Training is a training programme which is continuously being updated, following the first efficacy study in 2021, in order to offer effective but at the same time sustainable therapy to children and families. Our latest study includes 22 children aged 3 to 9 with different diagnoses, who underwent 10 sessions of individual or group therapy for self-regulation and executive functions. Among these, 8 families actively participated in the process attending at least 2 FEREA Parenting counselling meetings for parents and at least 1 FEREA @School meeting for their teachers. Training with children includes motivating, challenging and personalised games and activities to stimulate inhibitory control, working memory and flexibility. Sessions with parents focus on the concept of positive parenting, while teachers work on the management of attention and behavioural difficulties. The effectiveness of the training, in the «child only» and «multimodal» modalities, was measured using the QUFE questionnaire for executive functions and the QOSA-P questionnaire for self-regulation, administered to parents (pre vs post). Preliminary results indicate significant improvements for all children regardless of diagnosis and age, and even better results for preschoolers.
Keywords
Executive Functions, Self-regulation, Multimodal Training.
