In this review I examine the role of play and assessment in the lives of young children. These two seemingly opposing constructs are first defined. Next, I address a particularly important form of assessment, “high stakes” assessment, and argue that if it must be used, we should use a variety of assessment methods. One such method that I discuss in great detail is the use of direct observations of children's play. Examples of reliable and valid inferences about children's social cognitive functioning made with this family of methods are provided. Two specific observational instruments (one for observing play in the classroom and one for observing play in the playground) are presented. Recommendations for their use by practitioners are made.

Over the past two decades, mental retardation research converges on three general themes: co-occurring mental retardation and psychopathology; families of offspring with mental retardation; and the developmental approach regarding behavioral sequences and profiles. Intertwined with each theme is a mounting body of research on genetic mental retardation syndromes. We first review recent progress in each of the three domains—psychopathology, families, and development—based on studies of groups with heterogenous or nonspecific mental retardation. We then show how new findings from specific genetic syndromes take this knowledge even further, as well as aid in the search for genetic, physiological, and environmental mechanisms associated with certain behaviors. We end the review by briefly summarizing our reasons for promoting an etiological approach to future mental retardation research, as well as by discussing methodological and other challenges.

This study investigated the longitudinal stability of sociometric classification in two groups of children aged 8 to 10 years over a 2-year period. Two simple, but sensitive and valid forced-choice sociometric measures were completed by 41 children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) and 375 mainstream children. On both occasions and on both measures (one using a ‘‘work with’’ and one a ‘‘play with’’ sociometric criterion) MLD pupils were significantly less likely to be classified as popular and more likely to be classified as rejected. Over the 2-year period just over half of the children, whether MLD or mainstream, were classified in the same sociometric category. However, the stability coefficients for the rejected and popular sociometric status groups were found to be higher in the included sample than in the mainstream sample. The results of this study are compared with previous longitudinal studies in the area that have focused on mainstream pupils, and implications for the use of sociometric measures in evaluating the outcomes of inclusion are discussed.

To examine the possibility that there is an early sensitive period for the effects of malnutrition on cognitive development, three groups of children (N = 197) were recruited from a birth cohort with known growth characteristics in south-west Ethiopia (N = 1563). All had initial weights [ges ]2500g. Early growth falterers dropped in weight below the third centile (z<−1·88) of the NCHS/WHO reference population in the first 4 months. Late growth falterers were children not in the first group whose weights were below the third centile at 10 and 12 months. Controls were a stratified random sample with weights above the third centile throughout the first year. All children were tested blind at 2 years using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, adapted for use in Ethiopia. Mean (SD) scores on the psychomotor scale were 10·2 (3·7) in the controls, 6·6(4·2) in the early growth falterers, and 8·5(4·3) in the late growth falterers. For the mental scale they were 28·9(5·8), 22·6(6·2), and 26·6(6·1) respectively. Both overall differences were statistically significant at p<·001, and planned comparisons between the control and the combined growth faltering groups, and between the early and later growth faltering groups, showed that each difference was statistically significant for both scales. However, early weight faltering was associated with weight at the time of testing (r = .33), which was associated with scores both on the psychomotor (r = .53) and the mental scale (r = .49). After taking weight at the time of testing into account there was no additional effect attributable to the timing of growth faltering. In this population, therefore, early malnutrition does not have specific adverse effect beyond the contribution that it makes to enduring malnutrition over the first 2 years.

The last decades have shown a rapid increase in nonresponse rates. For this reason it is important to study nonresponse and think about it critically. In this article we investigated whether nonresponse affected estimates of the levels of adjustment problems in children and the correlations between these outcomes. The nonresponse was caused by parents who refused permission to interview their children at school, parents who did not return a questionnaire, teachers who did not complete the questionnaire, and parents who refused to participate in an in-depth study, with nonresponse rates of 9%, 69%, 25%, and 46% respectively. The sample consisted of 1282 children aged 4–5 years and the dependent measures were peer-rated sociometric status, self-rated wellbeing at school, and teacher-rated behaviour problems. Despite considerable nonresponse in some conditions our results showed hardly any evidence for bias. This suggested that bias cannot simply be inferred from the amount of nonresponse and that standard rules such as ‘‘nonresponse rates higher than 50% are not acceptable’’ lack a scientific basis. Instead, we argue that to assess nonresponse bias the specific conditions and analyses of the study will need to be considered and special measures may be required.

The present study examined psychiatric functioning in a community sample of adolescents aged 14 to 17 years (average age of 15 years). We administered the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-2·25 (DISC-2·25) to 1201 adolescents and their mothers to obtain prevalence estimates of DSM-III-R disorders and the amount of perceived impairment associated with these disorders. While adolescent females reported a significantly higher prevalence of psychiatric disorders than males (15·5% vs. 8·5%), mothers indicated no sex difference. Compared with adolescent males, females had significantly higher rates of internalizing, anxiety, and depressive disorders. In contrast, the prevalence of externalizing disorders was significantly higher among adolescent males. The inclusion of an impairment criterion had a significant impact in reducing the prevalence rates of overall psychiatric disorders. This reduction occurred mainly through impairment's effects on internalizing disorders, specifically anxiety-based disorders (i.e., simple and social phobia). Given the limited research on the effect of impairment on the prevalence of adolescent psychiatric disorders, future work in this area seems warranted.

The aim of the study was to examine long-term sequelae in the children of mothers who were depressed at 3 months postpartum. In a community sample from two general practices in South London, 149 women were given psychiatric interviews at 3 months postpartum and 132 of their children (89%) were tested at 11 years of age. The children of women who were depressed at 3 months postpartum had significantly lower IQ scores. They also had attentional problems and difficulties in mathematical reasoning, and were more likely than other children to have special educational needs. Boys were more severely affected than girls, with the sex difference most pronounced on Performance IQ. The links between postnatal depression and the children's intellectual problems were not mediated by parental IQ and were not accounted for by measures of social disadvantage nor by the mother's later mental health problems. Breastfeeding did not remove the effect of the mother's illness on Full Scale IQ, but exerted its own influence on Verbal IQ and appeared to mediate the link with mathematical ability. The findings show that adverse experiences in infancy predict cognitive ability and academic performance a decade later.

This paper reviews research in pediatric psychopharmacology over the past decade. The authors first discuss social, economic, and other influences on pediatric psychopharmacology research and prescribing patterns including changing models of childhood psychopathology, increased government funding, and changes in industry regulations. Definitions are offered for current research terminology including efficacy, effectiveness, and adverse events. Design trends and new approaches to outcome measurement are also presented. New data from the last 10 years of research is reviewed for each major class of psychotropic agents. Criteria for inclusion in the review are presented and include aspects of study design (placebo-controlled, large sample size), source of funding (government funded vs. industry), and vision (creative applications). Data for short-term efficacy, long-term efficacy, effectiveness, and safety and adverse events are discussed for each class of medication, although for many, there remains little empirical data. Findings for stimulants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, neuroleptics, alpha-adrenergic agonists, mood stabilizers, buproprion, secretin, naltrexone, immune therapies, and natural supplements are all presented. Finally, the authors offer some speculations regarding the future of pediatric psychopharmacology research.

In this paper, we make a fundamental distinction between literacy attainment scores and the actual process of learning to read, and examine these two aspects of reading in atypical development. Reading skills in a group of children and adults with the genetic disorder Williams syndrome (WS) were compared to a group of typically developing children matched for reading age and receptive vocabulary scores. Study 1 focused on the product of reading and explored the relationship between reading, general cognition, and phonological skills. Phonological skills were shown to be related to individual differences in reading attainment in both groups, although more weakly in the WS group. Experiment 2 examined the process of learning to read. The two groups were taught to associate abbreviated spellings (cues) with spoken words. The cues differed in their phonetic closeness to the target words, whereas the target words differed on the semantic variable of imageability. Compared to controls, the WS group showed slower learning, less sensitivity to the phonetic quality of the cue, and reduced influence from the imageability of words. The results support the hypothesis that although reading levels in WS depend on phonological skills, the full development of their reading is compromised by weak semantics. The studies highlight the importance in atypical populations of examining both reading levels and the actual process of learning to read.

Information on everyday life activities and preferences in both social and nonsocial domains was obtained from parents and children who had taken part in an experimental study of central coherence. Comparisons were made between parents who had a son with autism, parents with a dyslexic son, and families without a history of developmental disorder, as well as the male siblings in these families. Data on everyday preferences and abilities were elicited by means of an experimental questionnaire. Significant group differences in social and nonsocial preferences were found, suggesting that some parents showed similarities with their son with autism, in preference for nonsocial activities and ability in detail-focused processing. A similar experimental questionnaire, completed by parents on behalf of their sons, discriminated between autism group probands and controls, but did not differentiate sibling groups. The relevance of the nonsocial items to central coherence is discussed in the light of the findings in Part I: autism parents who reported more autism-related nonsocial (but not social) preferences, tended to show a piecemeal processing style on the experimental tasks.

Data from two twin studies are examined to assess genetic and environmental influences on literacy, and the etiological relationship between language and literacy. Study 1 used children from 86 families previously recruited for a study of the genetics of specific language impairment (see Bishop, North, & Donlan, 1995), who completed tests of single-word reading and spelling. Literacy problems in this sample were common, were strongly heritable, and showed a close genetic relationship with poor nonword repetition. Study 2 included two subsets of children: 37 twin pairs who had taken part in study 1, 3 to 4 years earlier, and 100 twin pairs recruited from the general population by Bishop et al. (1999). All children were given a standardised test of nonword reading. There was no genetic influence on nonword reading ability, either across the normal range, or at the lower extreme, though there were significant associations with some social variables. However, bivariate DeFries–Fulker analysis suggested that in this study, as in study 1, there was shared genetic variance between poor nonword repetition and literacy deficits. It is concluded that poor nonword repetition, which is known to be highly heritable, puts the child at risk for literacy problems. However, in a general population sample, such as that included in study 2, poor nonword repetition is a relatively rare correlate of literacy problems, which are more likely to have an environmental origin. Thus the different pattern of results in the two studies can be explained if one assumes that genetic influences are substantial only when literacy problems are severe and/or accompanied by oral language difficulties.

Many anxiety problems begin in childhood and are a common form of psychological problem that can be highly distressing and associated with a range of social impairments. Thus, skills for conceptualising, assessing, and treating childhood anxiety problems should be in the repertoire of all child mental health specialists. This paper reviews psychosocial treatments for the most common anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Developmental models of anxiety disorders emphasise maximum risk in children with shy or inhibited temperaments who are exposed to high family anxiety and avoidance, and/or acutely distressing experiences. As children mature these temperamental and environmental experiences are internalised to low self-competence and high threat expectancy. Both individual or group-based interventions utilising cognitive-behavioural strategies to address multiple risk factors are highly efficacious and family involvement can contribute to positive outcomes. Guidelines for assessment and treatment are presented, and suggestions are made for effectively managing clinical process.

A group of 117 children who met criteria for Specific Language Impairment (SLI) at 7 years of age were reassessed at 11 years of age. The data gathered from both stages were used to identify predictors of good and poor outcome from earlier test assessments. Results of logistic regressions indicated that measures of narrative retelling skills and expressive syntax were the strongest predictors of overall prognosis. This finding persisted when a nonverbal measure was included as a predictor alongside language measures in the regression model. There was found to be a lack of independent predictive contribution of early measures of articulation to later overall prognosis. Demographic factors (maternal education and family income) were not differently distributed across outcome groups. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The aim of the present study was to follow up the long-term course of adolescent-onset anorexia nervosa by repeated assessment, to analyze the association between the course of the eating disorder and psychiatric comorbidity, and to evaluate psychosocial outcome. The sample consisted of 39 inpatients who were reinvestigated 3, 7, and 10 years after discharge. The patients and 39 controls matched for age, gender, and occupational status were assessed with structured interviews on DSM-III-R eating disorders, additional axis I and axis II psychiatric disorders, and psychosocial functioning. Results showed that 69% of the original subjects met the criteria for full recovery at the 10-year follow-up. One patient (3%) still exhibited the full syndrome of restrictive anorexia nervosa, two patients (5%) the full syndrome of bulimia nervosa. None of the patients had died. Of the subjects, 51% currently had an axis I psychiatric disorder and 23% met the full criteria for a personality disorder. Apart from the eating disorder, anxiety disorders and avoidant-dependent and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders were the most common psychiatric diagnoses. There was a significant association between psychiatric comorbidity and the outcome of the eating disorder and between outcome and psychosocial adaptation. With regard to psychiatric morbidity and psychosocial functioning, long-term recovered patients did not differ significantly from normal controls. It is concluded that in most patients adolescent anorexia nervosa takes a prolonged course, although it seems to be more favorable than in adult-onset forms. Those who achieve complete recovery from the eating disorder have a good chance of overcoming other psychiatric disorders and to adapt to social requirements.

The science of reading and developmental dyslexia has experienced spectacular advances during the last few years. Five aspects of this research are discussed in the article. (1) The holistic phenomenon of reading is complex. Many lower-level psychological processes (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonological decoding, ability to process stimuli rapidly and automatize this process, memory, ability to recognize words) contribute to a single act of reading. Conceptualizing the complex process of reading through its partly overlapping but partly independent components—which contribute to, but do not fully explain, the holistic process of reading—provides an excellent model for understanding complex hierarchies of higher mental functions. Those who master reading skills successfully and those who have difficulties doing so differ in a wide range of reading-related processes. The central deficit experienced by poor readers appears to be related to phonological processing (a complex hierarchy of functions related to processing phonemes), whereas characteristics of automatization processes seem to moderate the reading outcome for people whose phonological skills are weak. (2) There are new data addressing models of dyslexia in languages other than English. The most fascinating finding is that the model implicating phonological deficit as central to dyslexia, and the lack of ability to automatize as leading to troubled reading, appears to be universal, regardless of the specific language. However, there is an interaction effect between the characteristics of a particular language and the developmental model of dyslexia. In phonologically more difficult languages (e.g., English), the most pronounced weakness appears to occur in phonological processing, whereas in phonologically easier languages (e.g., German), the crucial role in the manifestation of dyslexia is played by the lack of the skills needed to achieve automatization. (3) There is abundant evidence that reading (i.e., any single act of reading as well as reading as a holistic process) is ‘‘cooked'' by the brain. Although no unified brain map of reading has been developed, some specific areas of the brain have been implicated in different reading-related cognitive processes by different laboratories and on different samples. (4) Indisputable evidence has been accumulated suggesting the involvement of the genome in developmental dyslexia. As of now, specific regions of the genome have been identified as being intimately involved with a number of different reading-related processes. Today the field of developmental dyslexia is the only area of genetic studies of human abilities and disabilities in which linkages to the genome have been robustly replicated in independent laboratories. (5) Finally, evidence suggests that developmental dyslexia might be only one of the manifestations of a deep, underlying, anatomical syndrome. The comorbidity of developmental dyslexia with both internalizing and externalizing behavioral disturbances, as well as with other learning disabilities, underscores the need for wide-ranging cognitive and behavioral approaches in the remediation programs offered to dyslexic children.

The “mindblindness” theory of core cognitive impairment in autism and at least one of the executive theories of the core cognitive deficit both predict that children with autism should find it difficult to report what their intention was when it diverged from an outcome. The former predicts this because it takes intention reporting to require a “theory of mind” and the latter predicts it because the theory posits an impairment in the monitoring of goal-directed actions. The latter also predicts impairments in the ability to monitor basic actions. Our three studies failed to support either of these views. Experiment 1 demonstrated intact abilities in the monitoring of basic actions (detecting which stimulus of a number of stimuli one is controlling). Experiment 2 demonstrated intact abilities in reporting an intention, both for self and for another agent, when the outcome was unintended but desired. In Experiment 3, using the novel “transparent intentions task”, we found (with a minor qualification) intact ability in reporting on nonballistic intended actions when the result that the action achieved was unexpected. The implications of these results for views of the relation between theory of mind and executive difficulties in autism are discussed.

In this study 160 children, aged 11 years with a definite history of specific language impairment (SLI), completed four tasks that could be potential positive psycholinguistic markers for this impairment: a third person singular task, a past tense task, a nonword repetition task, and a sentence repetition task. This allowed examination of more than one type of marker simultaneously, facilitating both comparisons between markers and also evaluation of combinations of markers in relation to identifying SLI. The study also provided data regarding the markers in relation to nonverbal IQ, made use of new normative data on all tasks, and examined marker accuracy in relation to current language status. The results show that markers vary in accuracy, with sentence repetition (a previously unused marker) proving to be the most useful. This psycholinguistic marker shows high levels of sensitivity (90%), specificity (85%), and overall accuracy (88%), as well as being able to identify the majority of children whose current language status falls in the normal range despite a history of SLI.

Studies of cognitive vulnerability to depression in young children have, in the main, relied on self-report questionnaires (e.g. of self-esteem, attributional style). They have failed to produce convincing evidence of a cognitive vulnerability to depression in children under 8 years. In the current study latent depressive cognitions were investigated in the 5-year-old children (N = 94) of depressed and well mothers in a situation of mild stress, that is, the threat of losing a card deal in a modified version of the competitive children's card game “Snap”. In the context of “losing”, but not “winning”, deals, children who had been exposed to maternal depression, either in the previous 12 months or at any other time during their lifetime, were more likely than nonexposed children to express depressive cognitions (hopelessness, pessimism, and low self-worth). The association between depressive cognitions and recent exposure to maternal depression was in part accounted for by current maternal hostility to the child. The results of this study stand in contrast to those of studies which have used questionnaire methods to assess vulnerability to depressive cognitions in this age group. They suggest that it might be important to employ ecologically realistic situations to access latent self-cognitions in young children; and they underscore the importance, increasingly evident in research with adults and older children, of employing methods that involve the induction of low mood in order to elicit cognitions relevant to depression.

This study tested the predictions of three different theories of hyperactivity: response inhibition deficit, working memory impairment, and delay aversion. A sample of 51 pervasively hyperactive children and 119 control children, identified by screening a general population sample of 1316 twin pairs, were assessed on tests relating to each of these theories. The hyperactive group performed worse than the control group on the delay aversion measure and some of the working memory tasks. Controlling for IQ removed the significant group differences on the working memory measures, however. There were no significant group differences on the inhibition variables derived from the stop task. However, there was evidence of a pattern of responding on the stop task that was strongly characteristic of hyperactivity: hyperactive children were variable in their speed, generally slow and inaccurate in responding. This pattern of responses may indicate a nonoptimal effort/activation state. Hyperactive girls were indistinguishable from hyperactive boys in their performance on the tasks.

Epidemiological surveys of child and adolescent mental disorders often rely on multiple informants to get a complete diagnostic picture. A consistent finding in the literature is that different informants often do not identify the same children as being disordered. However, because current strategies for estimating interinformant agreement often involve categorizing children using less than perfectly sensitive and/or specific symptoms, biased estimates of interinformant agreement are likely. The aim of this report was to illustrate how latent class analysis (LCA) can be used to model interinformant agreement in the absence of a “gold standard”. The proposed model consists of informant-specific latent variables each made up of two or more latent classes corresponding to different levels of symptomatology. Unlike most previous applications of LCA this model allows us to model the extent to which the prevalence of the disorder is the same across informants; and, in addition, the association between informants. The data set comes from a prospective longitudinal study of 2264 children from Québec (1155 boys and 1109 girls). In grade 2, teachers and mothers independently rated each child on three physical aggression behavior symptoms. We satisfactorily accounted for the cross-classification of the behavior symptoms by postulating the existence of two latent variables—one for each informant—each made up of three latent classes of children: low-, medium-, and high-aggressive. The results showed that the prevalence of low- and medium-aggressive children in the population differed from teacher to mother, but that the prevalence of high-aggressive children did not. We found that the association between teacher and mother was large and positive and did not vary according to the child's physical aggression state or gender; in contrast, the association between physical aggression and gender was not the same for mother and teacher. Limitations and other potential applications of the proposed model are discussed.