A meta-analytic review of stopping performance in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: deficient inhibitory motor control?

This review discusses whether deficient inhibitory motor control is the core deficit of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Inhibitory motor control is commonly assessed using the stop-signal paradigm. Since the last meta-analysis that was performed, 33 new studies have appeared. The current meta-analysis revealed a significant difference between ADHD patients and matched controls in stop latency (stop-signal reaction time) in both children and adults. Basic reaction time was significantly longer in children with ADHD, but not in adults, and there was a significant interaction between the elongation of the latency to stop and to respond in adults, but not in children. Deficient inhibitory motor control may be less crucial in children than in adults with ADHD.     

Maternal and paternal parenting styles associated with relational aggression in children and adolescents: A conceptual analysis and meta-analytic review

How does parenting affect relational aggression in children? The goal of the present series of meta-analyses based on 48 studies (28,097 children) was to analyze and integrate the findings on the associations between various types of parenting behaviors and relational aggression, and to identify potential substantive and methodological factors that may moderate these associations. To distinguish between different parenting strategies, experts sorted the parenting measures used in the studies into 10 groups. Results of a multiple correspondence analysis revealed four separate clusters: Positive parenting, psychologically controlling parenting, negative/harsh parenting, and uninvolved parenting. The meta-analyses demonstrated that more positive parenting was associated with less relational aggression (combined effect sizes r = −.06, p < .05, for mothers, r = −.08, p < .01, for fathers). More harsh parenting (combined effect sizes r = .11, p < .01, for mothers, r = .12, p < .01, for fathers) and more uninvolved parenting (combined effect sizes r = .07, p < .01, for mothers, absent for fathers) were associated with increased relational aggression. Paternal psychologically controlling parenting was positively related to relational aggression (r = .05, p < .01), whereas maternal psychologically controlling parenting was not (combined effect sizes r = .04, p = .09). The effect of several moderators is discussed. The findings of this study suggest that dimensions of positive and negative parenting behaviors of mothers and fathers are associated with children’s relational aggression and that these associations are – in case of fathers – contingent upon a number of sampling and procedural characteristics.     

A Computational Model of the Self‐Teaching Hypothesis Based on the Dual‐Route Cascaded Model of Reading

The self‐teaching hypothesis describes how children progress toward skilled sight‐word reading. It proposes that children do this via phonological recoding with assistance from contextual cues, to identify the target pronunciation for a novel letter string, and in so doing create an opportunity to self‐teach new orthographic knowledge. We present a new computational implementation of self‐teaching within the dual‐route cascaded (DRC) model of reading aloud, and we explore how decoding and contextual cues can work together to enable accurate self‐teaching under a variety of circumstances. The new model (ST‐DRC) uses DRC’s sublexical route and the interactivity between the lexical and sublexical routes to simulate phonological recoding. Known spoken words are activated in response to novel printed words, triggering an opportunity for orthographic learning, which is the basis for skilled sight‐word reading. ST‐DRC also includes new computational mechanisms for simulating how contextual information aids word identification, and it demonstrates how partial decoding and ambiguous context interact to achieve irregular‐word learning. Beyond modeling orthographic learning and self‐teaching, ST‐DRC’s performance suggests new avenues for empirical research on how difficult word classes such as homographs and potentiophones are learned.     

In search of shared and nonshared environmental factors in security of attachment: a behavior-genetic study of the association between sensitivity and attachment security

The current article presents results from a twin study of genetic and environmental components of maternal sensitivity and infant attachment and their association. The sample consisted of 136 twin pairs from 2 sites: Leiden, the Netherlands, and London, UK. Maternal sensitivity was assessed in the home at 9-10 months, and infant attachment security was observed in the laboratory at 12 months. The study yielded little evidence that genetic factors are involved in variations between twins in maternal sensitivity ratings but did find that shared variance in maternal sensitivity was able to account for some of the similarity between twins in attachment security. Weak nonshared associations between sensitivity and attachment appeared to suppress the magnitude of the correlation between attachment and sensitivity in twin children. The results could indicate that the attachment security of one twin may depend on the relationship the parent has with the other twin. The results are brought to bear on the validity of attachment theory as a theory of primarily shared environmental effects in children's development and the continuing challenge posed to attachment theory by within-family differences in socioemotional processes.     

Social development from infancy to adolescence: longitudinal and concurrent factors in an adoption sample

In the present longitudinal study, early adopted children (N = 160) were followed from infancy to adolescence to assess the influence of previous and concurrent factors on the children's social development. This study allowed for more conclusive evidence of the influence of early and concurrent rearing experiences and temperament on adolescents' social development, independent of shared genetic factors between children and parents. Results showed that social development and temperament were stable over time and that both previous and current parental sensitivity were important in predicting social development in adolescence. Quality of the early parent-child relationship was indirectly associated with social development in adolescence through the influence on social development in middle childhood. Maternal sensitivity in middle childhood and in adolescence partly buffered the negative effects of difficult temperament on social development in adolescence. Adaptation emerged as the product of both developmental history and current circumstances.     

Parenting,corpus callosum,and executive function in preschool children

In this longitudinal population-based study (N?=?544), we investigated whether early parenting and corpus callosum length predict child executive function abilities at 4 years of age. The length of the corpus callosum in infancy was measured using postnatal cranial ultrasounds at 6 weeks of age. At 3 years, two aspects of parenting were observed: maternal sensitivity during a teaching task and maternal discipline style during a discipline task. Parents rated executive function problems at 4 years of age in five domains of inhibition, shifting, emotional control, working memory, and planning/organizing, using the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version. Maternal sensitivity predicted less executive function problems at preschool age. A significant interaction was found between corpus callosum length in infancy and maternal use of positive discipline to determine child inhibition problems: The association between a relatively shorter corpus callosum in infancy and child inhibition problems was reduced in children who experienced more positive discipline. Our results point to the buffering potential of positive parenting for children with biological vulnerability.     

Removing Limits to Growth: Implementing Knowledge Sharing Loops between Operators and Engineers

The author describes the origin and the structure of the expertise of Improvement Engineers and Process Operators (Duncan, 1987). Engineers develop expertise by deduction : the top-down development of a production process. Operators develop expertise by induction : the manual intervention into a process (De Keyser, 1987). Thus the mental model of an Engineer is ''abstract'' and ''explicit'' (easy to document), while the mental model of an Operator is ''concrete'' and ''tacit''. Therefore, the author calls the expertise of Engineers explicit knowledge and the expertise of Operators tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). The author also describes knowledge sharing loops which capture this tacit knowledge (Operators) and incorporate it into explicit knowledge (Engineers). The process produces Knowledge Based Solutions and Most Effective Technology (MET). The deployment of MET directly generates economic profit. Knowledge Based Solutions improve the troubleshooting skills of Operators and allow Engineers to focus on the deployment of MET. This new knowledge sharing process came out of a system analysis (Senge, 1990) embedded in a bottom-up business reengineering programme of the Styrenics Naturals Plant (SNP). Two years later, data show that this process creates value. But it is not robust. It's quickest gains are in process control and in product transitions.     

Disorganized infant attachment and preventive interventions: A review and meta‐analysis

Infant disorganized attachment is a major risk factor for problematic stress management and later problem behavior. Can the emergence of attachment disorganization be prevented? The current narrative review and quantitative meta‐analysis involves 15 preventive interventions (N = 842) that included infant disorganized attachment as an outcome measure. The effectiveness of the interventions ranged from negative to positive, with an overall effect size of d = 0.05 (ns). Effective interventions started after 6 months of the infant's age (d = 0.23). Interventions that focused on sensitivity only were significantly more effective in reducing attachment disorganization (d = 0.24) than interventions that (also) focused on support and parent's mental representations (d = ?0.04). Most sample characteristics were not associated with differences in effect sizes, but studies with children at risk were more successful (d = 0.29) than studies with at‐risk parents (d = ?0.10), and studies on samples with higher percentages of disorganized attachment in the control groups were more effective (d = 0.31) than studies with lower percentages of disorganized children in the control group (d = ?0.18). The meta‐analysis shows that disorganized attachments may change as a side effect of sensitivity‐focused interventions, but it also illustrates the need for interventions specifically focusing on the prevention of disorganization.     

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.