Welcome

Welcome to the BNCD Center directed by Mabel L. Rice at the University of Kansas». The BNCD is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders» (P30-DC005803). BNCD is affiliated with the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies». BNCD researchers address the causes and treatment of communication disorders across the life span from infancy to old age.

Guide to BNCD Services

Core services are:

ATT - Analytic Techniques and Technology Core
PARC - Participant Recruitment and Management Core

Who can use BNCD services?

University of Kansas researchers with externally-funded projects related to the mission of BNCD. Preference is given to NIH-funded projects. To be invited to join the Center, submit a brief formal request to Director Mabel Rice, bncd@ku.edu. All projects are approved for affiliation based on scientific merit and relevance to the BNCD mission.

Where are services located?

Researchers are located at both the Lawrence and the Medical Center campuses of the University of Kansas. The BNCD administrative office is in suite 3031 of the Dole Human Development Center on Sunnyside Avenue in Lawrence, Kansas.

What are the benefits of affiliation with the Center?

The Center fosters productivity and collaboration among a group of leading scientists from a variety of disciplines. Shared resources enlarge the potential impact and the ease of doing research. The Center makes available the expertise of staff members who are skilled in statistics and participant recruitment.

Central Office

Mabel L. Rice, BNCD Director

phone 785-864-4570
fax 785-864-4571
email bncd@ku.edu

BNCD Center
University of Kansas
1000 Sunnyside Avenue
3031 Dole Human Development Center
Lawrence, Kansas 66045

funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders,
National Institutes of Health
www.nidcd.nih.gov »
grant P30 DC005803

Research

Yo Jackson, associate professor of clinical child psychology, child psychologist, and BNCD Investigator, studies the "process of resiliency" in children. While resiliency in children has been studied for at least 50 years, it is only now that there is statistical methodology that will allow Jackson and her colleagues to look at multiple environmental influences at the same time and over time.

Foster children and their foster parents in Jackson County, Missouri, are the focus of her study. "While the great majority of children exposed to maltreatment are never removed from their homes, foster children are those whose maltreatment has risen to a certain threshold such that they have been removed from their homes," Jackson explained.

Jackson said that the project will be able to provide those who design and implement programs for foster children with the necessary tools to be systematic about what they do. "Our project is the first step towards making meaningful change in translational research for this population by documenting the process of resiliency.

Jackson asserts that now there is a lot of trial and error, guessing and intuition about treating children who have been abused. "I'm fairly certain this study will net us quite a bit of counterintuitive results," Jackson predicted.

In addition to its central aims, the project will also explore the differences between verbal and nonverbal IQ scores, because the two scores are often not affected equally by traumatic experiences. Specifically, verbal skills are usually delayed and not as well developed as perceptual skills.

Preliminary results from a small sample indicate that children with higher verbal IQ scores demonstrate less anxiety, fear, and depression than children with lower verbal IQ scores. Therefore, verbal IQ may be an important factor in predicting positive outcomes for foster care youth.

So who is the resilient child? Resilient children are not super children, says Jackson, and you would never guess what they had been through. "What we are really talking about is the everyday process about everyday accomplishments."

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