Longitudinal Pathways to Reading Achievement at Age 7 Years: Child and Environmental Influences

Using a bioecological perspective, this longitudinal study examined the contribution of child and environmental factors to the prediction of reading achievement at age 7. Participants were 99 boys and their parents. Child factors included 24-month temperament (reactivity and self-regulation), 36-month language level, and 7-year ADHD symptoms; environmental factors included quality of the home environment (54 months), maternal education, and learning disability (LD) in the family. There were direct and indirect pathways to reading achievement. Direct pathways included language skills, home environment, ADHD symptoms, and LD in the family. Unexpectedly, the direct pathway from self-regulation was negative. Indirect pathways included self-regulation, maternal education, and reactivity. Given the stability of the trajectory of reading skills and academic performance from first grade onward, the early identification of those children most at risk for reading difficulties has implications for the type of intervention most appropriate for individual children.     

MOTHER–CHILD AND FATHER–CHILD PLAY INTERACTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTAL PLAYFULNESS AS A MODERATOR OF THE LINKS BETWEEN PARENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CHILD NEGATIVITY

Based on the premise that father–child play is an important context for children's development and that fathers “specialize” in play, similarities and differences in the role of playfulness in the father–child and mother–child relationship were examined. Participants in this study included 111 families (children's age: 1–3 years). Father–child and mother–child play interactions were videotaped and coded for parental playfulness, sensitivity, structuring, and nonintrusiveness as well as child negativity. Results indicated that mothers and fathers did not differ in playfulness and that mothers and fathers who were higher in playfulness had children with lower levels of negativity. However, playfulness differently moderated the links between parents’ and children's behaviors for mothers and fathers. A double‐risk pattern was found for mothers, such that the links between child negativity and maternal sensitivity, structuring, and nonintrusiveness were significant only for the subgroup of mothers with low levels of playfulness. When mothers had high levels of playfulness, these effects were negligible. For fathers, a double‐buffer pattern was revealed, indicating that the links between child negativity and paternal sensitivity and structuring were significant only for fathers with high levels of playfulness. When fathers had low levels of playfulness, these effects were negligible. These findings demonstrate the important role that parental playfulness has on parent–child interaction as well as the need to examine moderation patterns separately for fathers and mothers.     

Parenting of 7‐month‐old infants at familial risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Patterns of interaction between parents and 7‐month‐old boys at familial risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a comparison group were studied during a warm‐up and two play episodes. The sample included 78 (47 at‐risk, 31 comparison) mother–child and 45 (27 at‐risk, 18 comparison) father–child dyads. A coding system developed by G. Kochanska (1997, 1998) was used. Infants in the risk group did not differ from the comparison group in the rate of emission of infant‐related events. However, they received less adequate responsivity from both their fathers and their mothers to these events, and specifically to negative emotions or distress, than did the comparison group. Maternal psychopathology did not account for these findings. Mothers were more adequately responsive than were fathers, especially for physiological needs. The association between nonoptimal interaction in infancy and the development of ADHD is discussed.     

Sleep patterns of 7‐week‐old infants at familial risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Sleep patterns of 26 seven‐week‐old boys at familial risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 18 control infants were compared by objective (actigraph) and subjective (maternal sleep diary) measures, over five consecutive 24‐hr periods. Actigraph findings indicated that the groups differed on stability (SD) of quiet sleep only during the day. Reports in maternal sleep diaries indicated that they also differed on stability of waking and stability of sleep duration, again only during the day. No group differences were found in terms of average scores, whether calculated for the entire 24‐hr periods, for nights, or for days. Mothers in the risk group reported that fathers were less involved in infant care than did those in the control group. These findings suggest that as early as 7 weeks of age, infants at risk for ADHD differ from controls only on stability of their sleep patterns during the day, when environmental regulatory factors are more intensive.     

The Ward and the Womb: An Integrated Therapeutic Approach for Treatment Resistant Adolescents

ABSTRACT

In mental health settings, we often meet traumatized and volatile youth who resist treatment and do not respond to engagement attempts. For such patients, the treatment refusal may be a representation of their level of personality organization; it can represent difficulties to relate to others, to regulate affective experiences, and to integrate different self-states. Using a case study of a treatment resistant adolescent in residential care, I discuss the limitations of engagement techniques with patients at the lower end of personality organization and argue that engaging “difficult to treat” adolescents requires a clinical shift from the therapeutic encounter to the development of a system-based “holding” environment. I present a modified intervention model that integrates psychodynamic formulation of personality development with process-oriented systemic work. The model described emphasizes the role of the therapist as the initiator and facilitator, helping to construct a coherent and attuned environment within the residential care system. Through case vignettes, I provide examples for the clinical shift from the therapeutic encounter to the environment of the ward and demonstrate how developing a holding environment can overcome engagement barriers and support the development of the patient’s ego capacities, sense of self, and object relations.     

Sentence comprehension and working memory limitation in aphasia: a dissociation between semantic-syntactic and phonological reactivation

The relation between working memory (WM) limitation and sentence comprehension was assessed in Hebrew-speaking aphasics, three conduction aphasics and three agrammatics. The study compared sentences that required different types of reactivation-syntactic-semantic reactivation, in relative clauses, and word form/phonological reactivation, in sentences with reanalysis of lexical ambiguity. The effect of phonological memory load, manipulated by number of words intervening between the activation and the reactivation, on comprehension of the two sentence types was examined. The findings were that agrammatic aphasics failed in the comprehension of object relatives but not on subject relatives irrespective of their antecedent-gap distance. Conduction aphasics, on the other hand, who showed severe WM limitation, comprehended well all types of relative clauses and were unaffected by antecedent-gap distance. The conduction aphasics failed to understand the sentences that required phonological reactivation when the phonological distance was long. These results suggest that the type of reactivation required by the sentence, as well as the type of memory overload are crucial in determining the effect of WM limitation on sentence comprehension.     

Prediction of Preschool Aggression from DRD4 Risk,Parental ADHD Symptoms,and Home Chaos

This study investigated the influence of a child’s DRD4 risk, parental levels of ADHD symptoms, and the interactive influence of these factors on the development of preschool aggression. Additionally, the study investigated the role of home chaos as a mediator between parental ADHD symptoms and child aggression. The sample consisted of 84 4.5-year-old children and their parents. Children were genotyped for the DRD4 polymorphism. ADHD symptoms were self-reported by parents when the child was 2 to 6 months old. Parental reports of home chaos and the child’s aggression were collected 4 years later. Child’s DRD4 risk and parental ADHD symptoms significantly contributed to the prediction of preschool aggression. However, contrary to our hypotheses, no interactions were found between the child’s DRD4 risk and the levels of parental ADHD symptoms. Home chaos played a mediating role in the relation between paternal ADHD symptoms and the child’s aggression. The relation between maternal ADHD symptoms and the child’s aggression was not significantly mediated through the level of home chaos. The current study emphasizes the importance of longitudinally investigating the contribution of parental ADHD symptoms to child aggression, while also exploring the differential contribution of maternal/paternal inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms. Moreover, home chaos was found to be a significant environmental mechanism through which paternal ADHD symptoms affect children’s aggression in the preschool years.     

Patterns of visual dyslexia

This study reports two Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired visual dyslexia. They made predominantly visual errors in reading, in all positions of the target words. Although both of them produced visual errors, their reading patterns crucially differed in three respects. KD had almost exclusively letter substitutions, and SF also made letter omissions, additions, letter position errors, and between-word migrations. KD had difficulties accessing abstract letter identity in single-letter tasks, and in letter naming, unlike SF, who named letters well. KD did not show lexical effects such as frequency and orthographic neighbourhood effects and produced nonword responses, whereas SF showed lexical effects, with a strong tendency to produce word responses. We suggest that these two patterns stem from two different deficits - KD has letter identity visual dyslexia, which results from a deficit in abstract letter identification in the orthographic-visual analysis system, yielding erroneous letter identities, whereas SF has visual-output dyslexia, which results from a deficit at a later stage, a stage that combines the outputs of the various functions of the orthographic-visual analyzer.     

Supervising Without Controlling: A New Authority intervention for Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes are at an elevated risk for reduced self-care and imbalanced blood sugar rates with long-term medical consequences. Despite...     

Impressions formed in response to public self-evaluation maintenance strategies

Two studies examined the impressions formed in response to public self-evaluation maintenance strategies. According to Tesser’s (1988) self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model, a person who has been outperformed by a close other perceives the field of performance as less relevant to preserve self-evaluation. Tesser and Paulhus (1983) showed that this same strategy is used for the purpose of impression management, or public self-evaluation maintenance. The present research examined the SEM model variables from the view of impression formation. In the first study, information regarding field relevance and psychological closeness was conveyed by the experimenter. In this context, field relevance had a significant impact on perception of competence. In the other study, in which the information was conveyed by the target person, relevance and closeness influenced the perception of manipulativeness and sociability. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of investigating the SEM processes from the impression formation perspective.