Physical growth delays and stress dysregulation in stunted and non-stunted Ukrainian institution-reared children

To study the effect of institutional rearing on physical growth and stress regulation we examined 16 institution-reared children (3–6 years old) in Ukraine and compared them with 18 native family-reared children pair-matched on age and gender. Physical growth trajectories were examined on the basis of archival medical records and current measurements of height, weight, and head circumference. Stress regulation was studied on the basis of diurnal salivary cortisol sampled six times during 1 day. 31% of institution-reared children were stunted at 48 months whereas none of the family-reared children were. Substantial delays in physical growth were observed in institution-reared children especially during the first year of life. From 24 months onwards a tendency for improvement in physical growth was evident among the temporarily stunted institution-reared children, with complete catch-up in weight and partial catch-up in height by the time of assessment. Chronically stunted institution-reared children demonstrated persistent severe growth delays. Institution-reared and family-reared children showed similar patterns of diurnal cortisol production with decreases over the day. However, temporarily stunted institution-reared children had a significantly higher total daily cortisol production than both chronically stunted institution-reared children and family-reared children. These data confirm previous findings regarding physical growth delays and stress dysregulation associated with institutional care, but also point to differences in cortisol production between stunted and non-stunted institution-reared children.     

Assessing risk of reoffending in adolescents who have committed a sexual offense: the accuracy of clinical judgments after completion of risk assessment instruments

As courts often rely on clinicians when differentiating between sexually abusive youth at a low versus high risk of reoffense, understanding factors that contribute to accuracy in assessment of risk is imperative. The present study built on existing research by examining (1) the accuracy of clinical judgments of risk made after completing risk assessment instruments, (2) whether instrument-informed clinical judgments made with a high degree of confidence are associated with greater accuracy, and (3) the risk assessment instruments and subscales most predictive of clinical judgments. Raters assessed each youth's (n = 166) risk of reoffending after completing the SAVRY and J-SOAP-II. Raters were not able to predict detected cases of either sexual recidivism or nonsexual violent recidivism above chance, and a high degree of rater confidence was not associated with higher levels of accuracy. Total scores on the J-SOAP-II were predictive of instrument-informed clinical judgments of sexual risk, and total scores on the SAVRY of nonsexual risk.     

Bayes nets and babies: infants' developing statistical reasoning abilities and their representation of causal knowledge

A fundamental assumption of the causal graphical model framework is the Markov assumption, which posits that learners can discriminate between two events that are dependent because of a direct causal relation between them and two events that are independent conditional on the value of another event(s). Sobel and Kirkham (2006) demonstrated that 8-month-old infants registered conditional independence information among a sequence of events; infants responded according to the Markov assumption in such a way that was inconsistent with models that rely on simple calculations of associative strength. The present experiment extends these findings to younger infants, and demonstrates that such responses potentially develop during the second half of the first year of life. These data are discussed in terms of a developmental trajectory between associative mechanisms and causal graphical models as representations of infants' causal and statistical learning.     

Neighborhood Risk, Parental Supervision and the Onset of Substance Use among African American Adolescents

The consequences of the early onset of substance use on later outcomes are a public health concern. In the present study, we examined neighborhood risk factors as a possible predictor of the onset of substance use in adolescents. In addition, we assessed the potential buffering effects of parental supervision on the relationship between neighborhood risk and the onset of substance use. The participants included 95, abstinent, African American 6th graders (mean age = 11.5 years) who enrolled in one site of a national, multi-site study of high-risk youth participating in a federally sponsored program. In the 6th and 8th grades, the participants completed self-report measures regarding substance use, perceived negative neighborhood activities and parental supervision. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that both exposure to negative neighborhood activities and low parental supervision increase the onset of substance use by the 8th grade among African American adolescents. However, the results suggested that parents can protect their adolescents from the impact of exposure to adverse neighborhood factors by providing appropriate supervision.     

Seeking the source of emotional Stroop interference effects in PTSD: A study of P3s to traumatic words

We investigated the source of emotional Stroop interference effects in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by measuring reaction times and P3 latencies and amplitudes to personal traumatic, personal positive, and neutral words in a modified Stroop paradigm. Individuals with PTSD were slower to indicate word color, especially for traumatic words, thereby replicating emotional Stroop interference in PTSD. Individuals with PTSD also had significantly reduced and delayed P3 components across word types. Across diagnostic groups, frontal P3 amplitudes were larger to personal positive and traumatic words compared to standard neutral words. However, the absence of Diagnosis x Word Type interactions for P3 measures suggests that individuals with PTSD do not differ from individuals without PTSD in the encoding and recognition of the color of traumatic relative to nontraumatic words, and that Stroop interference does not occur during these early stages of processing.     

An investigation of immune system disorder as a "marker" for anomalous dominance

Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) proposed that immune disorder (ID) susceptibility, along with left handedness and familial sinistrality (FS), is a "marker" for anomalous dominance. The theory predicts lesser left lateralization for language processes, lessened left hemisphere abilities, and enhanced right hemisphere abilities. We assessed language laterality (dichotic consonant vowel task) and performances on spatial and verbal tasks. Subjects were 128 college students. The factors of handedness, sex, FS, and immune disorder history (negative or positive) were perfectly counterbalanced. Left-handers were significantly less lateralized for language and scored lower than right-handers on the spatial tasks. Females scored lower on mental rotation than males, but performed comparably to males on the spatial relations task. The only effect of ID was by way of interaction with FS on both spatial tasks--subjects who were either negative or positive on both FS and ID status factors scored significantly higher than subjects negative for one but positive for the other factor. A speculative explanatory model for this interaction was proposed. The model incorporates the notion that FS and ID factors are comparably correlated, but in opposite directions, with hormonal factors implicated by other research as relevant for spatial ability differences. Finally, no support for the "anomalous dominance" hypothesis predictions was found.     

Cross-modal correlation of dichotic and tachistoscopic language laterality tasks: the importance of familial sinistrality

Previous studies have found little if any correlation between dichotic and tachistoscopic language laterality task performance asymmetries. Problems with these studies have been that quite dissimilar auditory and visual tasks have often been used, and the reliability of the asymmetry measures has generally been unknown or, when known, relatively poor. We assessed the cross-modal correlation for two tasks, the Bilateral Object Naming Latency Task (BONLT) and the Dichotic Object Naming Latency Task (DONLT). These tasks are highly similar and have demonstrated high reliabilities. A significant, though rather small, cross-modal correlation was found (r = +.28). When cross-modal correlations were computed for FS- and FS+ subjects separately, no correlation was found for FS+ subjects (r = +.02), but the correlation for FS- subjects was highly significant (r = +.54, p less than .004). This led us to reexamine some previously collected data (P.L. Van Eys and W. F. McKeever, 1988, Brain and Cognition, 4, 413-429) which had administered two highly reliable language laterality tasks (the BONLT and the Dichotic Consonant Vowel Task), but had not assessed cross-modal correlation. A significant cross-modal correlation was found for FS- but not for FS+ subjects. The results are consistent with the hypothesis of H. Hecaen, M. De Agnostini, and A. Monzon-Montes (1981, Brain and Language, 12, 261-284) which suggests that one effect of FS+ is to induce a greater heterogeneity of localizations of different language processes.     

Dating violence in the United Kingdom: A preliminary study

A small-scale study of “dating violence” in a sample of UK college students is described. Methodology involved the rating-scale used in existing US studies, with the addition of an assessment of inter-respondent reliability, which was found to be high. A high incidence of some form of violence was found, with women showing higher levels than men, thus replicating previous US findings based on victim reports. Violence in the present relationship was found to be unrelated to violence in past relationships.     

Early Caregiver–Child Interaction and Children’s Development: Lessons from the St. Petersburg-USA Orphanage Intervention Research Project

Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review - We review a series of interrelated studies on the development of children residing in institutions (i.e., orphanages) in the Russian Federation or...