Press releases – March 2017

Whether it is new and groundbreaking research results, university topics or events – in our press releases you can find everything you need to know about the happenings at Goethe University. To subscribe, just send an email to ott@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de

Goethe University PR & Communication Department 

Theodor-W.-Adorno Platz 1
60323 Frankfurt 
presse@uni-frankfurt.de

 

Mar 8 2017
14:35

Household chaos makes bringing up children with ADHD more difficult

An utter shambles

FRANKFURT. Researchers often observe inadequate parenting, a negative emotional climate and household chaos in families of children with ADHD. A research group at Goethe University Frankfurt and the universities of Bremen, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Kiel has now explored how these factors interrelate. The result is astounding.

“We assumed that the parents of children with ADHD found it difficult to maintain a structured family life and daily routines due to their children’s symptoms. In turn, household chaos has an adverse effect on emotional climate and parents’ behaviour”, explains Dr. Andrea Wirth, research associate at the Department of Educational Psychology of Goethe University Frankfurt.

The data of 84 children aged between 7 and 13 years was included in the study, of which 31 children were assigned to the ADHD group and 53 to the control group. Parental behaviour was assessed using a standardized questionnaire, which asked to what extent the parents looked after their children, praised or criticized them, how consistent they were in their parenting and whether they resorted to physical punishment. In order to document the emotional climate in the family, the psychologists asked one of the parents to talk about his or her child for five minutes and describe the child’s personality as well as his or her relationship to it. Household chaos was also recorded using a standardized test.

As expected, parenting by the parents of children with ADHD was less adequate, they criticized their children more often und reported more household chaos than the parents of the children in the control group. However and to the psychologists’ surprise, the parents of children with ADHD rated their relationship to their children more positively than the parents of children without ADHD. The researchers presume that a possible reason, amongst others, might be that some of the families involved were already undergoing therapy, since improvements in the parent-child relationship have already been proven both for interventions with medication as well as those based on behavioural therapy.

The exact relationship between the three constructs was examined with the help of statistical analyses (mediation analyses). “Household chaos seems to be some kind of mechanism through which the symptoms of children with ADHD have a negative impact on their parents’ behaviour towards them”, says Andrea Wirth. However, a chaotic environment does not appear to affect the emotional climate in the family. This contradicts earlier studies which had found a link between inadequate parenting and emotional climate. “A highly chaotic and unstructured household, to which the children’s ADHD symptoms are a contributing factor, makes it difficult for their parents to be authoritative in their upbringing. At the same time, it can be assumed that the parents - despite the prevailing chaos - are fond of their children, speak positively about them and enjoy spending time with them.”

The research group at the LOEWE centre IDeA, of which Andrea Wirth is a member, is drawing up recommendations for future research aimed at designing parent training which can help parents to plan family life better, establish fixed routines and rituals, and organize daily life more efficiently. These may include, for example, turning off the radio and the television when the child is doing its homework, leaving the room to make phone calls, only receiving guests at certain times and letting the child do its homework alone in a quiet room.

Wirth, A., Reinelt, T., Gawrilow, C., Schwenck, C., Freitag, C. M. & Rauch, W. A. (2017). Examining the relationship between children’s ADHD symptomatology and inadequate parenting: The role of household chaos. Journal of Attention Disorders. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/1087054717692881

Further information: Dr. Andrea Wirth, Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Sports Sciences, Westend Campus, Tel.: +49(0)69-798-35398, wirth@psych.uni-frankfurt.de.

 

 

Mar 6 2017
14:56

Next exhibition at Goethe University’s Giersch Museum opens on March 19th

Freedom at Last: Abstraction in the 1950s

The 1950s represented an era of new beginnings. Abstraction dominated the art of the young Federal Republic of Germany. Featuring 74 works by 20 artists, Giersch Museum’s new exhibition is a tribute to the artistic diversity of that decade.

Organic and vegetal, rigorously geometrical, impulse and gesture-oriented or tentatively scriptural; bursting with colour, subdued in tone, even monochrome – the abstract art of the period was vastly heterogeneous in terms of form and colour alike. Yet the dissolving boundaries also granted new freedom in the definition of the painting as such and its various genres.

The exhibition at Goethe University’s Giersch Museum starts with the Darmstädter Gespräch (Darmstadt Dialogue) of 1950, which served to take stock of post-war contemporary art and its conflict between figuration and abstraction. The focus is on the most important artists’ groups of the time – “junger westen” in Recklinghausen, “ZEN 49” in Munich and “Quadriga” in Frankfurt – with their wide-ranging origins, venues and protagonists. Works by painters Gerhard Hoehme, Emil Schumacher and Heinrich Siepmann and the sculptor Ernst Hermanns testify to the new paths explored by the “junger westen” (“young west”). Rupprecht Geiger, K. R. H. Sonderborg, Fritz Winter and the sculptress Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff stand for the Munich group “ZEN 49”. The exhibition pays special attention to the painters of the Frankfurt “Quadriga” – K. O. Götz, Otto Greis, Heinz Kreutz and Bernard Schultze: a representative selection of their works from the 1950s sheds light on the four artists’ individual paths. Finally, with examples by Hermann Goepfert, Hans Haacke, Peter Roehr and Franz Erhard Walther, a look at Kassel’s documenta II of 1959 and the emerging generation of artists marks the transition to the 1960s, the age of the “ZERO” movement and object art.

Goethe University’s Giersch Museum perceives itself as the “university’s window” on the city of Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region. For many years, the museum has been dedicated to the research and mediation of regional art – which is unique within Frankfurt’s rich museum landscape.

This profile will remain and at the same time a particular aspect will become more important: the museum as a location for exhibitions that show important elements of scientific and intellectual life at Goethe University and which allows suitable topics and exhibits to be presented to a wider audience. 

 

 

Freedom at Last: Abstraction in the 1950s

Exhibition at Goethe University's GIERSCH MUSEUM

March 19th 2017 – July 9th 2017

Private guided tours in English (1 hour) by arrangement: +49(0)69-13821–010
Price on weekdays € 75 (plus admission)
Price on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays: € 80 (plus admission)

Address:

Schaumainkai 83 (Museumsufer)
60596 Frankfurt am Main