International Group Honors UA Expert for Collaborative Research into Children’s Aggressive Behaviors

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. John Lochman, professor of psychology at The University of Alabama, has received the International Collaborative Prevention Research Award from the Society for Prevention Research.

Lochman holds the Doddridge Saxon Chair in Clinical Psychology at UA and is director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Behavior Problems.

The award “recognizes contributions to the field of prevention science in the area of international collaboration.”

Lochman has collaborated with colleagues at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands on treatments for aggressive behavior and substance abuse in children and adolescents. Since 2007, Lochman has been a special visiting professor in the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Utrecht, and in 2004 Utrecht awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Lochman’s research led to the development of “Coping Power,” a school-based program that provides a structured intervention into the lives of children in late elementary school and middle school who are the most aggressive and disruptive. The program takes a cognitive-behavioral approach that involves 34 group sessions with children and parents.

In these sessions, children learn and model different behaviors for handling stress, anger, peer pressure and other situations; parents learn how to give positive attention and consistent rules. Lochman has worked on an experimental trial of “Coping Power” in the Netherlands as well as a study of affective decision-making as a potential mediator of program effects on adolescents’ tobacco and marijuana use.

Lochman also has received the 2007 Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award at UA and has more than 260 publications to his credit. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and the American Psychological Association Society of Clinical Psychology.

The psychology department is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.