Psychology Student Gets Fellowship for Dissertation Research, Presents in Belgium on ADHD

Nora Bunford

Psychology Ph.D. student  Nora Bunford was chosen to receive the 2013 American Psychological Foundation Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Child Psychology Graduate Student Fellowship, which will provide $25,000 to support her dissertation research. Bunford is pursing a Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology. She’s also headed to Belgium in June for two poster presentations.

“The Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Fellowship is perhaps the most prestigious fellowship awarded by the American Psychological Foundation. It is nationally competitive and open to students in a wide range of disciplines. Past recipients have established very successful academic careers at major research universities throughout the world,” says Dr. Bruce Carlson, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology.

Bunford’s primary research interests pertain to “the etiology and manifestation of emotion dysregulation in ADHD, the associations thereof with social impairment, and the way in which these inform the development of psychosocial interventions for adolescents with the disorder,” according to her bio. She is presenting some of this work as a co-author on two posters at the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology‘s Sixteenth Bienniel ISRCAP Scientific Meeting in Leuven, Belgium, in June:

• Executive Dysfunction in Children With ADHD: Associations With Social and Academic Impairment with Jana B. Dykstra, M.A.; Catherine Golden, Ph.D.; Nicole Evangelista Brandt, Ph.D.; Julie A. Suhr, Ph.D.; Julie S. Owens, Ph.D. Their conclusions: “These results are the first to measure and demonstrate the existence as well as specific nature of the relationship between emotion dysregulation and functional impairment in childhood ADHD. Our findings indicate that various aspects of neuropsychological impairment are associated with parent-rated functional impairment…. This has potential to inform treatment planning and outcome evaluation to ensure intervention strategies address factors contributing to impairment. Specifically, planning and abstract reasoning appear to represent areas in which intervention may be directed to reduce the impairment related to the deficits demonstrated by children with ADHD.”
• Validating a Frustration Task to Assess Emotion Dysregulation in Adolescents With ADHD with Steven W. Evans, Ph.D.; Peggy M. Zoccola, Ph.D.; Tiffany Rybak. “The purpose of this project is to present validation data on an experimental frustration task that allows for a multi-method, multi-informant measurement of ED among adolescents with ADHD…. Studies that comprise the small body of empirical literature have mainly relied on observational techniques or rating scales….The use of assessment techniques that allow for measurement precision and stimulus control, thereby complementing the ecologically valid but surface-level information provided by observation and rating scale measures, are needed. The present series of studies aim to begin filling the above-described gaps in the literature by assessing ED in adolescents with ADHD both via assessment of heart-rate variability and self- and parent-report rating scales.”

Her adviser is Dr. Steven Evans, Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Center for Intervention Research in Schools.

Recent peer-reviewed publications and symposia include:

• Bunford, N. & Bergner, R. (2012). Suicide and Impossible Worlds: An Empirical Investigation of Worlds Theory. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 33, 335-343.
• Brady, C. E., Evans, S. W., Berlin, K. S., Bunford, N., & Kern, L. (2012). Evaluating School Impairment with Adolescents: A Psychometric Evaluation of the Classroom Performance Survey. School Psychology Review, 41, 429-446.
• Evans, S.W., Brady, C.E., Harrison, J.R., Bunford, N., Kern, L., State, T. & Andrews, C. (2013). Measuring ADHD and ODD symptoms and impairment using high school teachers’ ratings. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 42(2), 197-207.

The Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Fellowship program supports graduate research projects and scholarships in child psychology to nurture excellent young scholars for careers and support scholarly work in areas of psychology, such as child-clinical, pediatric, school, educational and developmental psychopathology.

Bunford earned an M.S. in Clinical-Counseling Psychology from Illinois State University and B.A.s in Psychology and Philosophy from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.