In this report we characterize associations between parental psychiatric disorders and children's psychiatric symptoms and disorders using a population-based sample of 850 twin families. Juvenile twins are aged 8–17 years and are personally interviewed about their current history of DSM-III-R conduct, depression, oppositional-defiant, overanxious, and separation anxiety disorders using the CAPA-C. Mothers and fathers of twins are personally interviewed about their lifetime history of DSM-III-R alcoholism, antisocial personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, panic disorder/agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia using a modified version of the SCID and the DIS. Generalized least squares and logistic regression are used to identify the juvenile symptoms and disorders that are significantly associated with parental psychiatric histories. The specificity of these associations is subsequently explored in a subset of families with maternal plus parental psychiatric histories with a prevalence > 1 %. Parental depression that is not comorbid or associated with a different spousal disorder is associated with a significantly elevated level of depression and overanxious disorder symptoms and a significantly increased risk for overanxious disorder. Risks are higher for both symptomatic domains in association with maternal than paternal depression, and highest in association with maternal plus paternal depression. Risks for other juvenile symptoms and disorders index the comorbid and spousal histories with which parental depression is commonly associated. Paternal alcoholism that is not comorbid or associated with a maternal disorder is not significantly associated with current psychiatric symptoms or disorders in offspring. Risks for oppositional-defiant or conduct symptoms/disorders in the offspring of alcoholic parents index parental comorbidity and/or other spousal histories.

The role of attachment style, self-esteem, and relationship attributions as possible mediators between abusive childhood experiences and difficulties in establishing supportive love relationships in adulthood were investigated in a sample of women known to be at risk of experiencing relationship problems. Measures of child abuse, the quality of love relationships, and the three potential mediators were made concurrently in adulthood. Participants who had experienced child abuse were found to be six times more likely to be experiencing difficulties in the domain of adult love relationships than those who had not. Self-esteem and relationship attributions were not found to be related to child abuse. When both child abuse and avoidant/ambivalent attachment style were considered together avoidant/ambivalent attachment style, but not child abuse, was found to be related to relationship difficulties. These findings indicate that avoidant/ambivalent attachment style, but not self-esteem and relationship attributions, is a mediating factor in the route from child abuse to adult relationship abilities.

Eighteen children aged between 7 and 16 years who had undergone a liver transplantation were interviewed using the Child Post-Traumatic Stress Reaction Index (CPTS-RI) to discover if they had post-traumatic stress symptoms. A case control design was used to define which factors were important for the development of post-traumatic stress. Results of a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), with post-traumatic stress symptom intensity as measured on the CPTS-RI as the dependant variable, revealed a significant difference between the liver transplantation group compared with children who had a chronic life-threatening illness or had undergone a routine surgical operation. A post hoc (Tukey's HSD test) statistical analysis was performed and significance at the .05 level was found between the liver transplantation group and both the chronic illness group and the routine surgical operation group. Our results indicate that the acute life-threat involved in the liver transplantation contributed to the development of post-traumatic stress. It was thought that dissociation may be important in preventing the resolution of the trauma. Additional investigations are needed with larger numbers in a longitudinal study beginning before the transplant to determine the course of the PTSD symptoms and the appropriate timing of interventions to reduce the harmful effects of these symptoms.

A 1-year cohort of children born at term in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1987/8 was screened for failure to thrive in infancy using a conditional longitudinal standard which identified those whose weight gain was in the lowest 5%. A group of 136 cases and 136 controls (from the same GP practice and living in a neighbourhood with the same deprivation index) was followed up at 7–9 years of age, when 79% of cases and 87% of controls were successfully studied. Cases at 7–9 were significantly shorter (mean 126.0 cm, SD 5.6) than controls (mean 130.7 cm, SD 5.9); adjusted for parental heights a difference of 4.4 cm (95% CI 2.92 to 5.90 cm) remained. They had smaller head circumferences (mean 51.9 cm, SD 1.8) than controls (mean 52.8 cm, SD 1.7), were significantly lighter (medians 23.8 kg, IR 21.5 to 26.9 in cases, and 27.9 kg, IR 25.2 to 31.6 in controls) and had a lower body mass index (median 14.9, IR 14.1 to 16.0 in cases, and 16.3, IR 15.3 to 17.8 in controls). Despite these large growth differences, no statistically significant differences in cognitive outcomes were found. Mean IQ was 87.6 (SD 17.4) in cases and 90.6 (SD 17.1) in controls; after adjustment for organic cause and mother's IQ the mean difference was 1.7 IQ points (95%CI −5.2 to 1.9). There were no statistically significant differences in the reading, spelling, or reading comprehension scores; the mean standardised reading score was 93.5 (SD 16.2) for cases and 94.5 (SD 15.6) for controls. These results show that when carefully defined by velocity-based anthropometric criteria, nonorganic failure to thrive in infancy is followed by persisting stunting and wasting, and a reduced head circumference, but is not associated with cognitive or educational disadvantages at school age.

Two studies, comprising training in phonological analogy and semantic analogy with pre- and post-training assessments, were conducted to investigate whether young children made orthographic analogies in learning to read a nonalphabetic script, Chinese, as alphabetic readers do. Twenty Chinese first-graders and 20 third-graders participated in each of the studies. The results showed that not only the third-graders, but also the first-graders made phonological analogies by the phonetic (i.e. the orthographic component in a Chinese character that provides sound cues) and semantic analogies by the radical (i.e. the orthographic component that provides meaning cues). It was, therefore, suggested that the roles and functions of the phonetics and radicals could be taught explicitly in school from an early age to help improve children's reading skills.

This study examined psychological development in 138 children at the age of 6–7 and 10–11 years, who had suffered prenatal radiation exposure at the time of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. These children were compared to a control group of 122 children of the same age from noncontaminated areas of Belarus. The examination included neurological and psychiatric examination, intellectual assessment, and clinical psychological investigation of parents as well as the estimation of thyroid exposure in utero. The exposed group manifested a relative increase in psychological impairment compared with the control group, with increased prevalence in cases of specific developmental speech-language disorders (18·1% vs. 8·2% at 6–7 years; 10·1% vs. 3.3% at 10–11 years) and emotional disorders (20.3% vs. 7.4% at 6–7 years; 18.1 vs. 7.4% at 10–11 years). The mean IQ of the exposed group was lower than that of the control group, and there were more cases of borderline IQ (IQ=70–79) (15.9% vs. 5.7% at 6–7 years; and 10.1% vs. 3.3% at 10–11 years). The mean value of thyroid doses from 131I 0.4 Gy was estimated for children exposed in utero. No correlation was found between individual thyroid doses and IQ at age 6–7 years or 10–11 years. We notice a positive moderate correlation between IQ of children and the educational level of their parents. There was a moderate correlation between high personal anxiety in parents and emotional disorders in children. We conclude that a significant role in the genesis of borderline intellectual functioning, specific developmental disorders of speech, language and scholastic skills, as well as emotional disorders in the exposed group of children was played by unfavourable social-psychological and social-cultural factors such as a low educational level of parents, the break of microsocial contacts, and adaptational difficulties, which appear following the evacuation and relocation from the contaminated areas.

There is growing recognition amongst child health care practitioners of children's rights to be informed about their condition and treatment, and to be actively involved in decisions pertaining to their care. In order to facilitate such understanding, there is a need to explore the ways in which such concepts can best be communicated, in particular to younger children whose conceptual ability may be regarded as limited. Consideration of the literature on how children's conceptualisation of health and illness develops reveals diverse perspectives, with seminal work heavily influenced by the work of Piaget (1929), and a belief that the understanding of younger children may be minimal. However, more contemporary theorists refute such beliefs, suggesting that children may have far more potential to understand complex illness concepts than they have previously been given credit for. The work of Carey (1985) and Vygotsky (1962) offers alternative developmental theories congruent with this perspective, which might more appropriately underpin current practice. A variety of clinical situations are then explored in the light of this debate, including preparation of children for hospitalisation, their competence to consent, their views of pain and death, and approaches to child health promotion. Guidelines are offered to practitioners throughout, with the aim of enhancing children's understanding of their conditions, and their active participation in care, which in turn has the potential to optimise care delivery.

Correlates of parents' ratings of behavioural problems were explored in a sample of 93 British families, in which mothers and fathers rated their children at the time of the fourth birthday on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist. As in other samples, there was moderate convergence in mothers' and fathers' total problem scores, but also signs that they were reporting different sorts of problems linked to different influences. The father's rating was primarily associated with the child's cognitive ability. The mother's rating was primarily affected by her own mental state and view of her marriage. The father's but not the mother's rating provided unique information that predicted teachers' reports of the children's problems 7 years later. In general, parents' ratings of preschool children's problems reflect particular informants' perspectives on family life.

Little research has addressed the relative influence of genetic and environmental factors on subclinical levels of anxiety in children. Of the two twin studies to date, one concluded that measures of adolescents' self-reported trait anxiety were best explained by shared environmental factors (Thapar & McGuffin, 1995), while the second determined that approximately half the variance was attributable to genetic effects (Topolski et al., 1997). The present study, using a sample of 547 twin pairs, reached conclusions similar to those of Topolski et al. Heritability was estimated at 45%. Measures of state anxiety conformed more closely to Thapar and McGuffin's findings, with environmental factors accounting for the variance.

Links between sibling relationships, mother–partner, and parent–child relationships were studied in a longitudinal community sample of 3681 sibling pairs. Individual differences in sibling relationship quality were related to mother–partner affection and hostility assessed 4 years earlier, to contemporary parent–child negativity, and to indices of social adversity. Evidence for both direct and indirect pathways (via parent–child relations) linking mother–partner and sibling relations were found. Comparisons of prediction for non-stepfamilies and stepfather families showed similarities in patterns of association, but also differences: In stepfather families, mother–partner hostility was unrelated to parent–child negativity and sibling relationship quality. Both positivity and negativity towards young siblings decreased with the age of older siblings, and older sisters were more positive than older brothers.

Health visitors and Clinical Medical Officers (CMOs) were trained in parent counselling and worked at home in a highly deprived area with parents of preschool children with multiple psychosocial problems. Their basic aims were to establish a mutually respectful partnership and to support parents in managing their diverse problems. Detailed evaluation indicated that the Service was highly valued by both parents and referrers, and suggested significant changes, including: improvements in the severity of problems; increased parental self-esteem; decreased levels of parental stress and emotional difficulties; more positive constructions of their children; improvements in the home environment; and decreased child behavioural problems.

Functional imaging studies of developmental dyslexia have reported reduced task-related neural activity in the temporal and inferior parietal cortices. To examine the possible contribution of subtle anatomic deviations to these reductions, volumes were measured for the major lobes of the brain, the subcortical nuclei, cerebellum, and lateral ventricles on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from 16 right-handed dyslexic men, ages 18 to 40, and 14 matched controls, most of whom had previously undergone PET imaging. A specific decrease in tissue volume was localized to the temporal lobes and was particularly prominent on the left (p < .01). An analysis of tissue composition revealed that this reduction was primarily attributable to decreased gray matter within the left temporal lobe (p < .002). Further segmentation of the temporal lobe showed that this reduction was not confined to the superior temporal gyrus, the primary location of primary auditory cortex. Reductions of temporal lobe gray matter may reflect a regional decrease in neuronal number or neuropil, which in turn may result in reading impairment.

Objective: To use the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) to assess Expressed Emotion (EE) in various samples of children with asthma in order to clarify (1) developmental and validity issues for the EE construct and (2) the use of the FMSS technique, specifically, in children with chronic medical illness.

Method: Data were collected on a sample of 84 adolescents with severe, chronic asthma who had failed outpatient management. In addition, a sample of 30 children with asthma, ages 6–9, were recruited from an outpatient pediatric clinic. A comparison sample of 15 children without any chronic illness, ages 6–9, were recruited by notices posted in the community. The primary caregiver of each child was assessed using the FMSS.

Results: FMSS interviews were reliability coded in all samples. Rates of high Criticism (FMSS CRIT), Emotional Overinvolvement (FMSS EOI), and EE were comparable to rates previously reported in child and adolescent samples. Although the validity for ratings of FMSS CRIT was well supported, the validity of FMSS EOI ratings and the overall EE construct were more problematic.

Conclusions: The FMSS is a useful and largely valid measure in children with asthma. Ratings of FMSS CRIT were found to have strong validity. There was little problem shifting the context of FMSS administration from chronic mental to chronic medical illness, but a variety of developmental considerations arose, especially regarding FMSS EOI ratings. Although we raise concerns about viewing EE as a valid construct, it may remain a useful predictive index.

Stability and change of attachment was examined longitudinally in a group of 48 children at 14, 24, and 58 months of age. Whereas attachment classifications showed stability between 14 and 24 months, lack of stability was the case between either 14 or 24 months and 58 months. Mothers of children who did not exhibit stability of attachment reported more negative and less positive life events. No correspondence was found between attachment classification at 14 or 24 months and mental representations at 58 months. However there was agreement between representational and behavioral measures of attachment at 58 months, where mental representations of attachment appeared to mirror and complement behavioral classification of the attachment relationship with the mother. Evidence for continuity of attachment from infancy to childhood internal representations was found only in a subgroup of children who showed stability of secure attachment between infancy and 58 months of age. These children exhibited greater Emotional Openness in the SAT at 4.5 years. Findings are discussed in terms of different positions in attachment theory and research regarding the stability and change of attachment relationships.

The nature and correlates of psychological disorders of preadolescent children from the longitudinal Australian Temperament Project (ATP) are reported. Almost half of the children identified via checklists completed by mothers, teachers, and the children themselves as being in the at-risk range for disorder received a DSM-III-R diagnosis. Nine per cent of comparison, or low-risk, children also received a diagnosis. Internalising disorders were the most common, and 44% of cases had multiple problems. Children rated as problematic by all three informants or by child plus teacher were the most likely to receive a diagnosis. The at-risk group had more difficult temperament, poorer family and peer relationships, lower levels of social skills, and were of lower SES than the comparison group. There were minimal differences on these variables between at-risk children who did, or did not, receive a DSM-III-R diagnosis. It is argued that especially for boys, checklists from multiple informants are effective tools for identifying clinically significant disorders.

Deaf children frequently have trouble understanding other people's emotions. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind can account for this. This research focused on the spontaneous use of mental states in explaining other people's emotions by 6- and 10-year-old deaf children as compared to their hearing peers. Within both age-groups deaf children referred to others' beliefs as often as their hearing peers and their references to desires even exceeded those of hearing children. This relative priority for the expression of desires is discussed in terms of possible communicative patterns of deaf children. The specific problems that deaf children meet in their daily communication might explain their abundance of desire-references: plausibly, they give a high priority to stress their own desires and needs unambiguously.

Teasdale's (1988) differential activation hypothesis proposes that a tendency for negative mood to activate latent negative self-schemas characterises people at risk for depression. The current study tested predictions from this hypothesis in a community sample of 102 adolescents who were free from history of psychiatric illness, and who were subdivided according to level of emotionality, a temperamental style as assessed by parental questionnaire. Amusical mood induction task was used to induce temporary mild dysphoria, and the effect of mood induction on self-schemas was assessed. There was no difference between high and low emotionality groups in the liability to sad mood induction. However, adolescents with high emotionality endorsed significantly more negative self-descriptors after dysphoric, but not after neutral, mood induction. This was not accounted for by level of self-reported depressive symptoms over the previous week. This suggests that a “dysphoric mood induction challenge” may provide important information about vulnerability to depression that is not identified by routine self-report of mood or cognitions.

This research reports the findings of two studies conducted to measure and then investigate differences between delinquent, nondelinquent, and at-risk youths' orientations towards reputation enhancement. In the first study, concerning item selection and scale development, the factor structure and content validity of a potential Reputation Enhancement Scale were tested by examining the item responses of the scale completed by 230 high-school students. In the second study, the scale was validated by comparing the item responses of 80 delinquent, 90 at-risk, and 90 nondelinquent adolescents with the responses of the original students. The instrument was found to be reliable (alphas from .64 to .92), indicating that the factors are dependable across different samples, and the coefficients of congruence were sufficiently high to investigate meaningful group differences. Three second-order factors (Conforming Reputation, Nonconforming Reputation, Self-presentation) were derived from the 15 first-order factors. Although multivariate analyses revealed significant differences between the reputational orientations of delinquent, at-risk, and nondelinquent participants, the self-presentation second-order factor did not differentiate the three groups.

Deaf children aged 4 to 16 years were given a false-belief test of theory of mind. Although the children experienced difficulty with the test, relative to hearing children, confirming a report by Peterson and Siegal (1995), performance was age-related, with a significantly higher proportion of 13- to 16-year-olds passing the test. It was concluded that deaf children raised in a spoken language environment show a developmental delay in theory of mind acquisition. This delay is consistent with the assumption that their early opportunities for learning about mental states are relatively restricted and that the normal development of theory of mind is dependent upon such opportunities.

This study provides the first prospective evaluation of the course and predictors of children's involvement with fire over a 2-year period in 268 nonpatient and patient children (ages 6–13 yrs). Selected predictor variables obtained at initial (intake) assessment, which included fire-specific and general psychosocial measures, were examined in each sample using hierarchical logistic regression. Both samples reported heightened involvement in matchplay and firesetting at follow-up, though the frequency of each behavior was nearly four times higher in patients than in nonpatients. Fifty per cent and 59% of the initial firesetters in the nonpatient and patient samples, respectively, became recidivists. In the nonpatient sample, the child's initial involvement in firesetting and level of covert antisocial behavior were the only psychosocial predictors of follow-up firesetting that added incremental variance beyond demographics. In the patient sample, the child's initial involvement in fire-related acts and level of covert antisocial behavior were the only predictors of follow-up firesetting beyond any initial involvement in matchplay. The findings highlight somewhat different risk factors for subsequent firesetting in nonpatient and patient children, especially prior firesetting and matchplay, respectively, and bear implications for the prevention of firesetting recidivism.