Dr. Timothy A. Cavell
Director of Clinical Training
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Ph.D., Louisana State University, 1988
M.S., Texas A& M University, 1982
B.A., Louisana State University, 1978

I am a clinical child psychologist who tries to develop more effective interventions for aggressive, school age children. These children are at-risk for later delinquency and substance abuse. I have special interests in interventions that involve parents and adult mentors. Guiding my research is a relationship-based model of socializing difficult, troublesome children. I am also interested in aggressive children's view of themselves and their relationships with peers and teachers. I also have interests in peer relationships, peer rejection, and the assessment of children's social competence.

Parents of Aggressive Children. I have written a book addressing the complex issues involved in working with parents whose children are aggressive and antisocial. The book is guided by three premises: a) that practitioners must be responsive to parents if parents are to be responsive to their children, b) that most parent training programs have not kept pace with recent research on aggressive children and their families, and c) that the objective of parent-based interventions for aggressive children is to help parents build and sustain a parent-child relationship that effectively blends emotional acceptance, behavioral containment, and prosocial values. In such relationships, children have examples to follow, they have reasons for investing in those examples, and they are restricted from using antisocial means to achieve their goals. The challenge facing practitioners is finding a combination of acceptance, containment, and prosocial values that is sustainable given the parent, the child, and the child-rearing context. Related studies have examined the relation between parenting practices and child characteristics (e.g., perceived containment, callous/unemotional traits) that can affect the socialization process.

Mentoring Aggressive Children. I am interested in mentoring relationships because there are times when parents' efforts are insufficient to alter the negative trajectory of their aggressive. My colleague (Dr. Jan Hughes, Texas A&M) and I have conducted two intervention projects (PrimeTime 1 and PrimeTime 2) that pair college student mentors with aggressive 2nd- and 3rd-grade children. PrimeTime2 was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and by the William C. Hogg Foundation. We have learned a lot about mentoring aggressive children, but we still have much to learn. We have begun analyzing outcome data from our PrimeTime2 project and have found support for the benefits of mentoring. I have also requested (of NIDA) funds to conduct a new study involving mentors for aggressive children in grade 6, a time when the opportunities to expand a pattern of antisocial behavior are great.

Aggressive Children's Relationships with Teachers and Peers. Given that PrimeTime is a school-based prevention program, a lot of our work involves teachers and classmates of target children. We have learned a lot about the nature of aggressive children's relationships at school. We've learned that aggressive children's relationships with their teacher can predict later aggression and that peers' perceptions of how teachers relate to aggressive children can predict later peer acceptance.

Aggressive Children's Self-views. I also have an interest in how aggressive children view themselves and their relationships. We have found some evidence (in line with other researchers) that aggressive children tend to hold fairly inflated views about themselves and that this is generally associated with worse, not better, outcomes.

Publications

Articles:

Cavell, T.A., & Meehan, B.T., Heffer, R.W., & Holladay, J.J. (in press). The natural mentors of adolescent COAs: Characteristics and correlates. The Journal of Primary Prevention.

Schneider, W.J., Cavell, T.A., & Hughes, H.N. (in press). A sense of containment: Potential moderator of the relation between parenting and externalizing problems. Development and Psychopathology.

Cavell, T.A., (2001). Updating our approach to parent training. I: The case against targeting noncompliance. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice, 8, 299-318.

Hughes, J. N., Cavell, T. A., & Willson, V. (2001). Further evidence for the developmental significance of teacher-student relationships: Peers' perceptions of support and conflict in teacher-student relationships. Journal of School Psychology, 39, 289-301.

Hughes, J.N., Cavell, T.A., & Prasad-Gaur, A. (2001). A positive view of peer acceptance in aggressive youth: Risk for future peer acceptance. Journal of School Psychology, 39, 239-252.

Prasad-Gaur, A., Hughes, J.N., & Cavell, T.A. (2001). Implications of aggressive children's positively biased relatedness views for future relationships. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 215-231.

Cavell, T.A., & Hughes, J.N. (2000). Secondary prevention as context for assessing change processes in aggressive children. Journal of School Psychology, 38, 199-235.

Edens, J., & Cavell, T.A. (2000). A reformulation of adoptive parenthood and adoptee functioning from an attachment perspective. Adoption Quarterly, 3, 43-70.

Yoon, J., Hughes, J., Cavell, T., & Thompson, B. (2000). Social cognitive differences between aggressive-rejected and aggressive-non-rejected children. Journal of School Psychology, 38, 551-570.

Hughes, J.N., Cavell, T.A., & Jackson, T. (1999). Influence of teacher-student relationships on childhood conduct problems: A prospective study. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 28, 173-184.

Edens, J. F., Cavell, T. A., & Hughes, J. N. (1999). The self-systems of aggressive children: A cluster-analytic investigation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 40, 441-454.

Henington, C., Hughes, J. N, Cavell, T.A., & Thompson, B. (1998). The role of relational aggression in identifying aggressive boys and girls. Journal of School Psychology, 36, 457-477.

Hughes, J.N., Cavell, T.A., & Grossman, P.B. (1997). A positive view of self: Risk or protection for aggressive children? Development and Psychopathology, 9, 75-94.

Books & Chapters:

Cavell, T.A., Meehan, B.T., & Fiala, S.E., (in press). Assessing social competence in children and adolescents. In C.R. Reynolds & R. Kamphaus (Eds.), Handbook of Psychological and Educational Assessment of Children, 2nd Edition, New York: Guilford.

Cavell, T.A., Ennett, S.T., & Meehan, B.T. (2001). Preventing alcohol and substance abuse. In J. N. Hughes, J. C. Conoley, & A. LaGreca (Eds), Handbook of psychological services for children and adolescents (pp. 133-159). New York: Oxford University Press.

Cavell, T.A. (2000). Working with parents of aggressive children: A practitioner's guide. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Hughes, J., & Cavell, T.A. (1999). School-based interventions for aggressive children: PrimeTime as a case in point. In S. Russ & T. Ollendick (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapies with children and families (pp. 419-446). New York: Plenum.