No abstract

The relation between cognitive and motor performance was studied in a sample of 378 children aged 5-6. Half of these children had no behavior problems; the others were selected for externalizing (38%) or internalizing problems (12%). Quantitative and qualitative aspects of motor performance were related to several aspects of cognition, after controlling for the influence of attention. No relation between global aspects of cognitive and motor performance was found. Specific positive relations were found between both aspects of motor performance, visual motor integration and working memory, and between quantitative aspects of motor performance and fluency. These findings reveal interesting parallels between normal cognitive and motor development in 5- to 6-year-old children that cannot be ascribed to attention processes.

The results suggest that reported associations between childhood victimisation and adult psychosis can be understood in a developmental framework of onset of at-risk mental states in early adolescence. In addition, the data suggest that the traumatic experience of being bullied may also feed the cognitive and biological mechanisms underlying formation of psychotic ideation.

We investigated age-related improvement in semantic category verbal fluency (VF) in 309 Dutch schoolchildren attending first to ninth grade. Quantitative analyses of number of correct responses as a function of time as well as qualitative analyses of clustering and switching were conducted. Overall, Dutch VF task performance, i.e., number of correct responses over 60 seconds, was not established before mid-adolescence. This is in line with previously published studies, using VF number of correct responses over 60 seconds as the main outcome measure and examining VF task performance across other cultures and languages (e.g., Italian, French, Hebrew). Next, mean cluster size, a measure of lexico-semantic knowledge, was not established until at least grade 3. In contrast, performance on the VF outcome measures "number of switches/clusters" was established at least 4 years later. Qualitative and quantitative Design Fluency (DF) outcome measures support the notion that the numbers of switches/clusters are valid measures of higher order cognitive functions, such as strategy use and cognitive flexibility. In line of this, VF number of correct responses during 16-60 seconds, a measure of controlled information processing, is established at least 2 years later (i.e., grades 7-8) than number of correct responses during the first 15 seconds time slide, a measure of automatic processing. Finally, environment, i.e., the level of parental education, primarily affected automatic and lexico-semantic knowledge. No effects of sex on VF performance were found. These data suggest that the alternative scoring methods of VF tasks can be used to acquire knowledge on development of lower and higher order cognitive functions in healthy children and the influence of the environment on it.

Objective-This study examined whether neighbourhood level socioeconomic variables have an independent eVect on reported child behaviour problems over and above the eVect of individual level measures of socioeconomic status. 45).Conclusions-Living in a more deprived neighbourhood is associated with higher levels of child problem behaviour, irrespective of individual level socioeconomic status. The additional eVect of the neighbourhood may be attributable to contextual variables such as the level of social cohesion among residents. (J Epidemiol Community Health 2001;55:246-250) As it is known that behaviour problems in children increase the risk for later psychopathology, 1 unravelling the aetiology of early problem behaviour may provide possibilities for prevention of adult mental disorder. Many studies have shown that individual level variables, such as exposure to marital discord or coming from a low income family, are associated with behaviour problems in children. [2][3][4] In addition, behaviour problems occur more frequently in children living in deprived urban areas than in children living in rural communities.5 6 However, whether neighbourhood level socioeconomic variables have an independent eVect on child behaviour problems over and above the eVect of individual level variables has scarcely been studied. Duncan and colleagues have demonstrated that neighbourhood economic conditions and poverty status are powerful correlates of the behaviour of children even after accounting for family structure and maternal education.7 However, most studies on the eVects of neighbourhood on child behaviour have been hampered by the absence of data combining information at the individual, family, and neighbourhood levels in the appropriate statistical model. Thus, most studies on neighbourhood diVerences on child behaviour problems have not taken into account the hierarchical fashion in which such data are organised. Data that are grouped according to neighbourhood are, in statistical terms, part of a multilevel structure, with level one units (individuals) being clustered into level two units (neighbourhoods). Individuals from the same neighbourhood are more similar to each other than individuals from diVerent areas, implying that the variation of reported child behaviour problems is smaller than if it were completely random. A conventional regression technique cannot take into account the variance components of two diVerent levels, thus underestimating the standard errors of regression coeYcients.

Verbal fluency was operationalized as the number of words produced in a restricted category (i.e., semantic category [SCF] and words beginning with a given letter [ILF]) in 60 seconds. Word production in the first 15 seconds of either type of fluency task was defined as a measure of automatic information processing, whereas word production in the remaining 45 seconds (in 15-second periods) was taken as a measure of controlled information processing. Data revealed that over 60 seconds healthy children aged 8.4-9.7 years (n = 91) produced significantly more words and less incorrect responses on the SCF task than on the ILF task. Although word production was a function of both type of task and time, it was highest in the initial time slice of either type of fluency and decreased as time on task increased. Finally, no sex differences were found for any measure of performance on either type of fluency task. In contrast, the level of occupational achievement of the caregiver (LOA) appeared to be a determinant of the child's performance on either type of fluency task, indicating that LOA affects higher-order processes, such as the automation of newly learned verbal skills and effortful processing.

Emotional responses to negative daily experiences in young adolescents may provide important clues to the development of psychopathology, but research is lacking. This study assessed momentary mood reactivity to daily events as a function of risk profile in a school sample, ages 11-14. High-risk (HR, n=25) and low-risk (LR, n=106) subgroups completed frequent self-reports of mood and events for 5 days. HR adolescents reported more negative events involving family and peers. Multilevel modeling results showed that negative events, especially if stressful, were associated with increased negative and decreased positive affects, with heightened responses in HR adolescents. HR adolescents with greater stress over the last 3 months showed additional increases in depressed mood following negative events. Altered reactivity to and dysfunctional appraisals of daily events may link adolescent risk profiles to later mental health problems.

No abstract